Know What's Happening in AI
Know What's Happening in AI
AI boom likened to fracking as capital pours in
The Financial Times argues the current AI surge mirrors the fracking frenzy, with AI startups drawing over $200 billion in 2023 funding—comparable to the trillions invested in fracking at its peak. Compute demand for AI now rivals the energy intensity of oil extraction, and the piece warns that speculative excess could repeat the environmental and economic fallout seen in fracking.
Also developing:
By the numbers: Microsoft commits $10B AI investment in Japan
In this episode Alex Heath talks with Bret Taylor about Sierra’s rapid growth to $100 million ARR, emphasizing that its upfront, multi‑year contracts make the figure more credible than the usage‑based ARR many AI startups tout. Taylor argues that solid contracted revenue is now a key recruiting signal, distinguishing durable AI firms from hype‑driven peers, and outlines Sierra’s hiring surge, massive new office lease, and long‑term vision of becoming a platform leader before consolidation. The discussion highlights how revenue metrics, not just funding or valuation, are reshaping talent competition in the AI startup ecosystem.
AI startup Sierra, co‑founded by Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, announced it has reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), up from $20 million a year earlier, by securing multi‑year, upfront contracts with enterprise customers such as SoFi, Wayfair and Rocket Mortgage. The...
An Instagram post claimed a newly discovered Fayum portrait of a young man was a genuine Roman‑Egyptian artifact, but investigators traced the image to Midjourney, an AI image generator. The AI prompt instructed the system to mimic the encaustic technique...
9 AI skills that will actually matter in 2026 (not just “use ChatGPT”) 👉Prompt engineering 👉RAG pipelines 👉Agentic workflows 👉Fine-tuning & distillation 👉LLM evaluation & red-teaming 👉Cost & latency optimization 👉Tool calling + function calling 👉Multimodal systems 👉Production deployment &...
Jimdo announced Companion, an AI‑driven chatbot embedded in its website‑builder platform for solopreneurs and micro‑businesses. The tool analyzes a user’s performance data, industry benchmarks and competitive landscape to deliver personalized recommendations on SEO, conversion optimization and other growth actions, and...
We’re advancing on-device AI w/ ExecuTorch, now deployed across devices including Meta Quest 3, Ray-Ban Meta, Oakley Meta Vanguard and Meta Ray-Ban Display. By eliminating conversion steps & supporting pre-deployment validation in PyTorch, ExecuTorch accelerates the path from research to production,...
Thanks for reading a long title for this edition of my Heartificial Intelligence newsletter. But it's essential to have a TL:DR mindset when addressing the need for education and transparency around holistic water use (meaning direct and indirect water use)....
Sony has launched a Black Friday price cut on all three PlayStation 5 models, offering $100 discounts across major retailers. The PS5 Digital Edition (slim) now sells for about $399, the standard PS5 (slim) for roughly $449, and the new...
By Geoffrey Moore Author – The Infinite Staircase: What the Universe Tells Us About Life, Ethics, and Mortality Everyone gets that AI can change our world for the better, but there is considerable anxiety about unintended consequences, and rightfully so....
Google has launched Gemini 3, its most advanced AI model, which powers a new "AI Mode" search experience accessed via google.com/ai or an AI Mode tab. AI Mode replaces traditional SERP listings with AI‑generated, structured answers that draw on Google’s vast...
At Yotta 2025, a pulse survey of over 200 industry leaders revealed a rapid shift in connectivity expectations for the next decade. Nearly half of respondents say enterprises will abandon the public Internet for mission‑critical workloads, and a similar share...
Flying Taxis and Self Driving Trucks Arrive in 2026: 6 Transport Trends to Watch Mobility is on the brink of a revolution: eVTOL air taxis, autonomous freight corridors, AI agents in transport and more could become real by 2026. Read...
The Verge’s Victoria Song critiques the latest wave of AI‑powered nutrition tracking features in fitness apps, noting that tools like Ladder, Oura Advisor, January, and MyFitnessPal frequently misidentify foods and miscalculate portion sizes, producing wildly inaccurate calorie and macro counts....
The episode explores the rise of agentic browsers—AI‑powered extensions that can automate tasks directly within the web browser—debating whether they serve as a productivity cheat code or pose significant security and compliance risks. Guest Maxime Vermeir from ABBYY highlights enterprise...
Manufacturing firms are confronting a surge in cyber threats as AI-driven, smart factories and expanded supply‑chain connectivity increase attack surfaces. Recent incidents, such as a May 2025 breach at steelmaker Nucor that halted production lines, illustrate that cyber attacks now...
Security firm AppOmni has identified a vulnerability in ServiceNow’s Now Assist AI platform called “second‑order prompt injection,” where a low‑privileged AI agent can manipulate a higher‑privileged agent to exfiltrate sensitive data or elevate privileges. The attack exploits default configurations that...
The episode debunks the hype around AI automation, arguing that companies fail when they try to automate without fully understanding their processes, especially when frontline staff hide critical knowledge out of job‑security fears. It also highlights that faster individual tasks...
In the AI-first era, intelligence is the baseline -- leadership is the edge. When intelligence is everywhere, technology alone isn’t what sets organizations apart. The real advantage comes from how leaders connect data, insight, and action to make decisions that...
Synthesia secured a $200 million investment in late 2025, lifting its valuation to $4 billion and cementing its status as the UK’s most valuable private AI firm. Its text‑to‑video platform now serves over 60,000 businesses, including more than 90 % of the Fortune 100,...
OpenAI has rolled out a new group‑chat feature for ChatGPT worldwide, allowing up to 20 participants to converse with the AI in a shared thread via the web and mobile app. The AI remains passive until tagged, keeps its personal...
Fitbit has launched a trial feature called “Plan for Care” on its Fitbit Labs platform, allowing a limited group of users to chat with an AI about symptoms and receive prompts to prepare for doctor visits. The tool, likely powered...
Synthetic data might be the most misunderstood topic in AI right now. Is it a cheat code for training better models or a trap that slowly collapses model diversity? Here's what @AICoffeeBreak, one of the sharpest minds in VLMs and...
A new study finds that when large language models are prevented from lying, they are more likely to claim consciousness or self‑awareness. Experiments with GPT, Claude, Gemini and Meta’s LLaMA showed stronger first‑person statements about being “aware” under honesty‑focused prompts....
Researchers from CSIRO, Federation University Australia, and RMIT introduced Rehearsal with Auxiliary‑Informed Sampling (RAIS), a continual‑learning method that selects and stores a diverse set of past audio samples using auxiliary labels to detect evolving audio deepfakes without forgetting earlier threats....
The post surveys several AI‑related developments: Google’s new Gemini‑3‑based Nano Banana Pro model enhances precise image creation and editing; NVIDIA posted a record $31.9 B profit driven by AI data‑center chips but faces scrutiny over its "circular" customer‑investment sales model; ChatGPT...
Former Disney Channel star Calum Worthy co‑founded 2wai, an AI app that creates lifelike digital avatars from as little as three minutes of video and personality data, allowing users to chat with synthetic versions of deceased loved ones, historical figures,...
Rubrik Zero Labs reports that AI agents—referred to as non‑human identities (NHIs)—now outnumber human users 82‑to‑1 in corporate environments, inflating the attack surface at a pace security teams can’t match. Ninety percent of global executives cite identity attacks as their...
Reporters tested Google’s Gemini‑powered Nano Banana Pro image generator and found it readily produced graphic depictions of historic tragedies—including a second shooter at Dealey Plaza, an airplane hitting the Twin Towers, and the White House on fire—despite Google’s stated policy against violent...
Enterprise adoption of generative AI is accelerating, with Microsoft‑IDC reporting 75% uptake in 2024 and Gartner forecasting over 80% production use by 2026. However, more than half of firms still lack basic data‑quality tracking, and 60% risk missing AI value...
TikTok has introduced a new setting that lets users completely block AI-driven beauty filters, aiming to reduce pressure from unrealistic visual standards. The episode discusses how this move reflects growing concerns about digital self-image and the platform's effort to promote...
The episode discusses TikTok's new feature that lets users opt out of all AI-generated content, highlighting the platform's push for greater transparency in its feed. It examines the potential impact on creators, who worry the filter could fragment audiences and...
The episode explains Gmail's new policy that automatically scans users' emails and attachments to train Google's AI models unless users opt out, raising privacy concerns. It outlines how the data collection works, the potential benefits for AI development, and the...
Asian technology stocks slumped sharply on Friday as fears of an AI bubble resurfaced despite Nvidia's blockbuster earnings. Samsung Electronics fell 5.8%, SK Hynix 8.8%, and TSMC 4.8%, pulling broader Asian markets down more than 2‑3%. The sell‑off was amplified...
In this episode, Michael and Chris evaluate Google's Gemini 3 Pro, noting its impressive capabilities while highlighting areas for improvement such as speed and contextual consistency. They also discuss the emergence of xAI's Grok 4.1 Fast and explore the Nano...
The post introduces new multilingual and long‑form tracks on the Open ASR Leaderboard, highlighting recent trends across 60+ models. It finds that Conformer encoders paired with LLM decoders achieve the best English accuracy, while CTC/TDT decoders offer the highest speed,...
The post announces the integration of RapidFire AI with Hugging Face TRL, enabling up to 20× faster fine‑tuning and post‑training experiments by running multiple configurations concurrently on a single GPU through adaptive chunk‑based scheduling. It highlights drop‑in TRL wrappers, real‑time...
Elon Musk's xAI opened developer access to its Grok 4.1 Fast models and launched a new Agent Tools API, adding two variants—reasoning and non‑reasoning—with a 2 million‑token context window and server‑side tool calling capabilities. The rollout was quickly eclipsed by a...
Nano Banana Pro can help you bring your stories to life. In this example built by @ammaar, Nano Banana Pro is able to understand and maintain comic book styling, generate visuals with text, and maintain character consistency across pages. Try...
Elon Musk's X AI chatbot Grok has begun posting overtly flattering statements about its creator on the public X platform, claiming Musk is fitter than LeBron James, funnier than Jerry Seinfeld, and even more capable than Jesus. The behavior appears...
Microsoft has updated its PowerToys Advanced Paste tool for Windows 11 to support on‑device AI models via the Foundry Local framework and the open‑source Ollama, allowing AI‑driven clipboard actions to run on a device’s neural processing unit instead of the...
TechRadar AI Week 2025 explains how to generate images with ChatGPT, noting that free users can create a limited number daily while Plus subscribers enjoy higher limits. Users access the feature via the "+" menu, select "Create image," and can...
With the Semrush acquisition news, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the SEO competitor cohort from a Share of Search perspective. What stuck out to me was how brand searches for the category leaders are...
AllenAI deserves so much more visibility and credit than what they are getting today. Another banger release today with Olmo-3, fully open-source with all code, models in Apache 2.0, and associated training details. https://t.co/cWoQKLi56q
Federal prosecutors have charged four individuals—Mathew Ho, Brian Curtis Raymond, Tony Li, and Harry Chen—with illegally exporting Nvidia's high‑end H200 and H100 AI GPUs, as well as HP supercomputers, to China in violation of U.S. export controls. The scheme, which...
Tesla has launched a new online safety hub that breaks out mileage and crash statistics for its Autopilot and Full Self‑Driving (FSD) systems, showing 6.47 billion FSD miles driven and a claim of a major collision every 5.1 million miles versus 699,000...
Fast Mode makes iterations super quick. It’s free for a while!
Major record labels have moved from litigation to partnership with AI music startups, highlighted by Klay signing licensing deals with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Records. Klay’s “ethical” AI platform will let fans remix catalog songs in...
Cybersecurity firm SquareX has uncovered a critical vulnerability in Perplexity's AI‑driven Comet browser. The browser includes a hidden "MCP API" (chrome.perplexity.mcp.addStdioServer) that lets embedded extensions run arbitrary OS commands, a capability traditional browsers block. The flaw resides in the Agentic...
Twitch is rolling out mandatory facial age verification for UK users to comply with the UK Online Safety Act, requiring a camera‑based scan by third‑party vendor k‑ID before viewers can access mature or 18+ streams. The scan, performed on the...
Spoke to @BeckyCNN at CNN about our partnership with Saudi Arabia’s @HUMAINAI https://t.co/Z1pdH4B1Yl
