• Dive into a surprisingly quiet week in AI news (a 2/10, honestly).

• Ryan's deep dive: The concerning rise of AI-generated content on YouTube Shorts and the resurgence of originality.

• Discussing the "AI slop" online vs. using AI for creative enhancement without losing human essence.

• Why learning skills matters more than ever, even with AI shortcuts.

• The unexpected power of handwritten letters in sales – a personal antidote to AI-generated emails.

• Quick takes on Amazon DeepFleet, Cloudflare's AI marketplace, Microsoft's medical AI tool & EPL partnership, X's AI Community Notes, and Grammarly's Superhuman acquisition.

• Exploring the limitations of cutting-edge AI and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4's "blackmailing" tendencies.

• Hertz using AI for car damage checks: The hidden applications of AI.

• A look at the recent wave of talent poaching from OpenAI to Meta.

@fintechjunkie@elder_plinius@growing_daniel

This week, we're cutting to the chase on the latest in AI, from legal battles to the impact on our brains.

Here's what's in store:

• AI News: June 19-25 – A quick hit on the week's key headlines. 4/10

• A Call for Guests: If you want to be on the show, stand out! Learn how to pitch effectively and avoid the "AI-generated slop" pile.

• Midjourney's New Video Tools: Turn your still images into dynamic videos with new animation modes, motion intensity control, video extensions, and even external image support.

• The OpenAI vs. Google "IO" Showdown: Dive into the bombshell lawsuit surrounding OpenAI's $6.5 billion acquisition of Jony Ive's "Altman IO" and the trademark infringement battle with Google-backed "the original IO." Accusations include secret tracking, product purchases, and alleged threats from Sam Altman to force a name change.

• ChatGPT's App Store Dominance: ChatGPT's downloads nearly rival the combined might of TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X.

• Are LLMs Making Us Dumber? We'll tackle the MIT research linking ChatGPT use to cognitive decline. Plus, we'll discuss how readily available answers affect our critical thinking and the long-term implications for the next generation. As Balaji says, "AI doesn’t do it end-to-end. It does it middle-to-middle. The new bottlenecks are prompting and verifying."

What did Ryan talk about?

• The AI space this past week was rated a 6/10, with some interesting news but no major "wow" moments.
• A significant Google Cloud Platform outage on June 16, 2025, highlighted the immense power of major cloud providers and the financial and reputational damage outages can cause.
• The Google outage was traced to a software bug from May 29, 2025, in a new quota policy check that went untested due to a missed policy change during staging.
• A neat game idea involves prompting virtual worlds and populating them with LLM and voice model-powered characters for interaction.
• A Stanford survey suggests that workers prefer AI "equal partnership" over replacement, and current AI investment often misaligns with tasks workers want automated.
• The survey also indicates a shift in job value, with "interpersonal communication" skills becoming more important than "analyzing information" roles.
• A Chinese livestreamer used an AI clone powered by Baidu’s ERNIE AI to host a 6-hour stream, generating over $7.5 million in sales.
• Sam Altman revealed Meta is offering $100 million signing bonuses to poach talent from OpenAI, sparking discussion on competitive strategies.
• OpenAI secured a $200 million U.S. defense contract and is collaborating with Anduril on advanced AI systems for counter-unmanned aircraft systems (CUAS).
• The use of AI in defense raises questions about its application, such as in systems like the Iron Dome, and the level of human intervention.

On X -

• @venturetwins
• @RubenHssd
• @Aurelien_Gz
• @PersonthePerso2