Good morning 👋 and apologies to pigeons everywhere. They’ve been called rats with wings, shooed from park benches, and dismissed as pests. But it turns out we’ve got them all wrong. Pigeons are secretly the brains behind today’s biggest AI breakthroughs. Psychologist B.F. Skinner used pigeons to pioneer “reinforcement learning,” where behaviors are learned through rewards and penalties. So next time ChatGPT fails to answer your question, maybe toss it a breadcrumb.
👑 Silicon Valley’s newest mafia wears Palantir hoodies. Over 350 startups, including more than a dozen unicorns, have one weird thing in common: founders who worked at Palantir. Now VCs are scrambling to fund anyone wearing that badge, turning former coworkers into an instant insider club. At this rate, putting Palantir on your LinkedIn might be the easiest way to raise a seed round.
🛠️ Tesla and Unitree are building two very different humanoid robots. Tesla’s going all-in on advanced AI, bespoke software, proprietary hardware, and big promises. Unitree, on the other hand, is going practical, with off-the-shelf hardware, affordable mechanics, and a simpler design aimed at mass adoption. Elon’s bot is still stuck in hype mode, while the other just brought home the gold in Beijing.
😉 AI tools fail to deliver 95% of the time. A new MIT report, based on 150 interviews, 350 employee surveys, and analysis of 300 real-world AI deployments, found that almost all company-run pilot projects fail to increase efficiency or revenue growth. The problem isn’t necessarily the AI tool. It’s that employees just can’t seem to figure out how to fit these tools into their workflow. And we all know why that is…
💥 Altman warns China’s AI is more advanced than you think. OpenAI’s CEO says the U.S. is underestimating how fast China is advancing with AI, especially with open-source models like DeepSeek and Kimi K2. Export controls? China’s already building its own chips and finding plenty of ways around restrictions. Maybe the real art of the deal is pretending you’re still winning.
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🍎 What do kids really think about AI? Some love how it simplifies late-night studying, serves up recipes, and helps organize messy class notes. Others worry it steals the joy from making art, turns texting fake, prioritizes profits over real-world issues, and harms the environment. Let’s hope this next gen uses AI to solve problems instead of creating new ones.
fun stats
invested by US companies in GenAI initiatives. So far they have almost nothing to show for it 💸 Only 5% have successfully integrated AI tools into production at scale.
[The Register/MIT report]
