Table of Contents

• This Week

• Business Use Cases

• Things to Pay Attention to

This Week

Bottom Line Up Front

• Demis Hassabis, head of Google DeepMind, is driving the AI revolution and believes it will be 10 times bigger than the Industrial Revolution and possibly 10 times faster.

• Demis Hassabis predicts that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) could be achieved in the next 5-10 years, leading to a world of "radical abundance" with significant medical, technological, and societal advancements.

• However, he acknowledges the potential risks and challenges associated with AGI, such as job replacement, energy consumption, and distribution of wealth, which need to be addressed through responsible stewardship. (aka. Possibly 10 years of hell first if we don’t recognize our role.)

• Hassabis believes that humans can adapt to the changes brought by AGI and that it will ultimately lead to a better future, comparing its impact to the Industrial Revolution, but 10 times bigger and faster.

Business Use Cases

Why is this important

• Exus Renewables North America is upgrading the Twin Ridges wind farm in Pennsylvania to increase power generation, driven by growing energy demand from AI data centers.

• The upgrade is expected to produce 170 megawatts of electricity, a 30% increase, and generate 150 local construction jobs, according to Exus North America president and CEO Jim Spencer.

• Despite President Trump's opposition to wind power, Exus is investing in wind and other renewables, with plans to add new wind farms in Central Pennsylvania to meet the surging energy demand.

Bottom Line Up Front

• Experts predict that "algorithmic auditing" using AI will become more common in the service industry, including hotels, to identify and charge for previously overlooked inefficiencies or losses.

• Hotels are already using AI-powered sensors to monitor issues like air quality and trigger fines, but most have not yet automated the billing step, instead using AI to flag potential issues and looping in a human for the final call.

• The use of AI for cost recouping raises concerns about customer backlash, with experts like Shannon McKeen and Jordan Hollander warning that hotels must balance operational efficiency with customer satisfaction and transparency to avoid undermining the customer relationship.

Bottom Line Up Front

• The AI revolution is driving a significant economic stimulus in the US, with big companies like Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet/Google, Amazon, and Meta spending heavily on chips, data centers, and energy.

• This investment is propping up the US economy, with AI capital expenditures contributing more to growth than consumer spending, and companies like Microsoft and Nvidia increasing their worth by over $2.5 trillion in a year.

• However, there are concerns about the sustainability of this boom, with warnings about hidden risks, debt, and the potential for a financial crisis, as well as the impact of AI on jobs and the need for workers to develop new skills.

Bottom Line Up Front

• Startups like Giggles and Base44 are leveraging AI to build products without traditional engineering teams, achieving rapid success and scalability.

• The concept of "vibe coding," coined by Andrej Karpathy, allows non-technical founders to create products using natural language and AI-generated code.

• While AI-native startups are democratizing entrepreneurship, they face challenges in scaling securely and reliably, requiring a balance between creativity and technical depth, as acknowledged by founders like Justin Jin and Edwin Wang.

Bottom Line Up Front

• Researchers at USC, including Aiichiro Nakano and Ken-Ichi Nomura, have developed an AI model called Allegro-FM that can simulate over 4 billion atoms at once to design better concrete materials.

• The model enables the creation of concrete that can capture carbon dioxide and last for centuries, potentially rivaling the durability of ancient Roman structures.

• Allegro-FM can accelerate the development of carbon-neutral concrete by testing different chemistries virtually, making it a significant breakthrough in reducing the 8% of global CO2 emissions currently accounted for by concrete production.

Bottom Line Up Front

• Waabi, an AV trucking startup, is using mixed reality testing (MRT) to test its autonomous vehicles ahead of a driverless launch later this year.

• MRT combines AI-generated simulations with testing on a closed-course track, allowing Waabi to test safety-critical situations in a reproducible and scalable way.

• According to Waabi CEO Raquel Urtasun, MRT has been crucial in achieving the milestone of becoming "feature complete" and will help build trust with customers and regulators, with potential applications beyond self-driving trucks.

Bottom Line Up Front

• Meta will allow some coding job candidates to use an AI assistant during the interview process.

• The company is testing this approach to make the interview process more representative of the developer environment and to reduce cheating.

• Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg aims to have AI play a significant role in coding, with the goal of having AI write most of the code for the company's AI efforts within the next 12 to 18 months.

Things to Pay Attention to

Bottom Line Up Front

• A 64-year-old hiker, Nicola Ivaldo, was found dead on the north face of Monviso in Italy's Piedmont region, over 10 months after his disappearance.

• His body was located using an artificial intelligence system that analyzed images taken by a drone and recognized his helmet.

• The search and recovery operation, led by the National Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps (CNSAS) and drone pilots Saverio Isola and Giorgio Viana, took less than three days to complete.

Bottom Line Up Front

• The AI revolution may perpetuate inequalities between the global north and global south, with the latter lacking economic leverage and geopolitical engagement in this technology.

• The global south is underrepresented in AI discussions and research, with limited access to tech hubs, computational power, and research activity, leading to a lack of inclusion in the benefits of AI "democratisation".

• To address this, countries in the global south should work together to build their own markets, establish sovereignty over their data and data labour, and prioritize the inclusion of diverse perspectives in the development of AI, as advocated by researchers like Fadhel Kaboub and authors like Mary L Gray and Siddharth Suri.

Bottom Line Up Front

• 60% of US adults use AI to find information, with 74% of those under 30 doing so, according to an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.

• Younger adults, such as Courtney Thayer and Sanaa Wilson, are more likely to use AI for tasks like brainstorming, work, and drafting emails, with about 6 in 10 adults under 30 using AI for coming up with ideas.

• The poll shows an age divide in AI adoption, with only about 4 in 10 Americans overall using AI for work tasks or coming up with ideas, and just under 2 in 10 using AI for companionship, although this is more common among young adults.

Bottom Line Up Front

• Physicists at MIT have conducted an experiment that confirms Albert Einstein was wrong in a century-old debate about the nature of light.

• The experiment, a variant of the double-slit experiment, used individual ultracold atoms as "slits" and showed that light exhibits both wave-like and particle-like behavior, but only one aspect can be observed at a time.

• The results side with Niels Bohr, who argued that observing a photon's path would disturb it and destroy the interference pattern, and were published in the journal Physical Review Letters.