AI round-up: Week of June 16, 2025
The summer solstice is upon us! The longest day of the year, which you will need to get through…all this.
Let’s get to it.
Story 1: Live long and prosper. Thanks to AI.
Sam Altman released a blog titled ‘The Gentle Singularity’. In it, he discusses the fact that we are ‘past the event horizon’ and ‘close to building digital superintelligence’.
I’m not smart enough to say if that’s true or not. But I am smart enough (because I’m alive) to know that we are not ready for what he’s detailing in his blog. It’s surprising, as you get closer to the end of the piece, that he has (over) simplified the path forward into two steps: alignment and availability. Nowhere is how we deal with this – now or when it arrives – mentioned. In fact, Sam (kind of?) dismisses that by saying: “Looking forward, this sounds hard to wrap our heads around. But probably living through it will feel impressive but manageable.”
As we are about to see below, living through this may not be as manageable as it seems…
Story 2: News sites are getting crushed by AI tools.
Could we see traffic to news sites go to…zero? It’s possible, according to the insights in this article. (WSJ)
(Have I mentioned that NOW is the time to talk to your PR agency about leveraging your media relations program to offset search issues?)
Story 3+: Get a drink and dive in (I’m just putting all of these together)
New York has added ‘AI’ to its WARN notices. (Bloomberg)
Meaning there is now a box on the employer form WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) asking if this layoff/reduction was due to AI.
The CEO of BT Group (formerly British Telecomm) announced the company plans to cut more than 40,000 by 2030 due to AI (Financial Times)
They also plan to save more than $3B in the process.
Amazon expects to cut corporate jobs in favor of AI, according to its CEO. (NBC News)
Shhhhh!!!! AI use at work has doubled in the past two years (Gallup)
Story 4: One person. 15 clips. 3 Days. $2,000.
If you were wondering, that’s the formula for a commercial these days. Well, at least one that ran during the NBA Finals the other night.
Kalshi, a betting platform, hired an AI filmmaker to create an ad showing all the things people are betting on. Yes, who will win the finals (I’m saying the Pacers, if you’re interested) but also the price of eggs, how many hurricanes will hit and more.
Did I mention this ad took $2,000 to make?
A not-so-gentle reality thanks to the gentle singularity.
(The Verge)
Story 5: OpenAI and Microsoft are fighting.
I felt like I had to include this even though I have no interest in talking about billionaires fighting. In this case, however, it kind of matters because of how this relationship started.
Story 6: OpenAI wins $200M defense contract from the U.S. Government.
I guess that’s only fair considering it was pushing Teslas earlier this year.
Story 7: Midjourney can do videos now!!! (Shelly Palmer)
The Not-So-Heavy Stuff:
Story 1: That took longer than I thought…
Disney is finally suing Midjourney. No more photos of Mickey Mouse smoking weed, I guess. (Marketing AI Institute)
Story 2: The Trump administration is getting its own steak sauce!!
No. Wait. Sorry. It’s AI, not A1. (The Verge)
Story 3: AI can help us talk to our pets!
However, I would avoid any cat conversations. I’ll save you the trouble: they don’t like you. (BGR)
Story 4: How to keep your Meta AI chats private.
Wait a second…Meta has a privacy issue? (Digital Trends)
Story 5: Meet the new Chipotle AI hiring platform: Ava Cado. (CNBC Make It)
Ah! I see what you did there Chipotle!!!
But seriously…holy guacamole! Ava has cut hiring time by 75%!!
The Stuff That Doesn’t Fit in Either Category:
Story 1: Tech Bros about to be frenemies.
OpenAI is tapping Google’s cloud service to meet its growing need for computing capacity. I don’t understand this at all, which is why it’s in this section. (Reuters)
Story 2: From the ‘do we need this?’ department…
Google’s popular NotebookLM podcasters can now generate a podcast of your search results.
Story 3: Want more proof search is changing?
Traffic from retrieval bots grew more than 49% in Q1 2025 over Q4 2024. The numbers and findings shared in the report profiled in The Washington Post are staggering. The key takeaway? Start planning now for bots searching your page v. humans.
Story 4: Anthropic shares its research notes.
We talk so much about the effect of these tools that we have stopped talking about the tools themselves. So I was happy to include this piece, from Anthropic, where they detail the process followed to build its research capabilities.
Story 5: The Pope…has concerns. (ABC News)
At MAICON 2024 there was a session where one of the speakers was talking about talking to the Pope about societal concerns, specifically crisis of faith. Paul added to this and said regionally/locally, he had been experiencing the same thing. You don’t have to agree with the Pope’s religion to agree with his concerns over the gentle singularity.
Final note: Who will watch the watchmen?
This disturbing article from The New York Times digs into what happens when AI lies to us…manipulates us…and ultimately, deceives us.
This is real. And a real concern.
Not sure about you, but this doesn’t sound manageable to me.
Should we stop AI acceleration? No, of course not – that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that if we don’t take ourselves (humans) into consideration first, we will be allowing ourselves to be at a disadvantage when it comes to co-existing with AI.
WE have to be a priority in any AI integration plan. Any pursuit of superintelligence.
Let’s be realistic about our abilities to understand, accept and live with this technology.
Happy Friday!
-Ben
As a reminder, this is a round-up of the biggest stories, often hitting multiple newsletters I receive/review. The sources are many … which I’m happy to read on your behalf. Let me know if there’s one you’d like me to track or have questions about a topic you’re not seeing here.