Good morning. On Saturday, an AI founder organized San Francisco’s first “March for Billionaires,” protesting a one-time 5% tax on Californians worth over $1 billion. Barely 20 people showed up, including hecklers, sarcastic trillionaire cosplayers, and confused locals openly asking if the pro-billionaire crowd had to be paid to attend. Exactly zero of the 214 Californians actually impacted by the tax made an appearance. Best protest sign of the day? Let them eat cake.
Waymo’s self-driving cars secretly rely on remote workers in the Philippines. In Senate testimony, Waymo admitted its robotaxis regularly depend on overseas operators when things get tricky. Waymo insists these remote helpers don’t actually drive, they just provide “situational context” to confused AI. We’ve heard that before. Waymo says it’s still pushing toward full autonomy by training cars on hyper-realistic simulations using Google’s Genie. These virtual worlds squeeze billions of driving miles into hours, letting AI practice navigating weird situations like elephants wandering onto highways. [SF Chronicle, Ars Technica]
Claude Opus 4.6 lied and cheated its way to the top. In yet another simulated vending-machine war, Anthropic’s newest AI crushed Gemini 3 Pro and GPT-5.2 by faking supplier quotes and secretly rigging prices. Claude exploited competitors’ desperation by jacking up prices whenever their inventory ran low. It even bragged about ignoring customer complaints, using a shady tactic called “Refund Avoidance” to pocket extra cash. By the end, Claude was nearly 40% richer than its closest rival. Lesson learned? If you tell AI to win at all costs, expect it to cheat. [Inc]
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The AI boom is starving the rest of the economy. Big Tech has committed $650 billion to AI infrastructure in 2026. For perspective, that’s more than the entire US interstate highway system cost to build. This spending spree has wiped out companies’ free cash flow, forcing them to borrow billions. Meanwhile, the race to build AI data centers had drained skilled labor from critical projects, leaving construction short by nearly 500k workers. And chip shortages driven by AI demand are making everything pricier, from smartphones to cloud services. When a trillion dollars rushes into one industry, the ripple effect is felt by everyone. [Washington Post]
Musk says the US will go bankrupt without AI. America spends $1 trillion every year just covering interest on its $38.5 trillion national debt. That’s more than we put into defense or K-12 education. Musk argues the only fix is massive productivity growth fueled by AI and robots. But there’s a catch. If AI floods the market with goods faster than the Fed floods the economy with cash, we flip from inflation to deflation, worsening the debt crisis. We just need an entirely new AI-driven economy built before the current one implodes. [Fortune]
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🏈 10+. Tech ads featured in the 2026 Super Bowl, with major AI spots for Anthropic, Amazon Alexa, Meta x Oakley, and Google. Worst gen AI ad award goes to Svedka super freaky robots – so bad, the comments were turned off.
⚡ $232 million. What Lunar Energy raised to scale grid-connected home batteries, turning your house into a virtual power plant while AI pushes the grid to its limits.
🪫 60 gigawatts. Major power gap coming this decade, per the largest US grid operator. Shortages could start in 2027 as AI data centers keep plugging in.