AI Wars Came to the Super Bowl

Covering the week of February 6, 2026

The AI Round-up: Year 4, Issue 4

Listen, when my dad is texting me about MoltBook…you know it has people’s attention.

Busy week.Let’s get to it.

6ish stories– Here we go.

Story 1: Please stop using OpenClaw, formerly known asMoltBot formerly known as ClawdBot (XDA)

Let’s just go ahead and start here for the second week in a row…

Story 1 cont’d: I spent 6 hours in MoltBook. (Yahoo)

One more: 5 ways of thinking about MoltBook (Platformer)

Ok…all caught up (for now) on Molt/Clawd/Open? Good. Moving on!

Story 2: AI Ads are coming to the Super Bowl (WSJ,Paul Roetzer, Casey Newton)

If you missed it…

Anthropic is taking a swipeat another prominent AI company’s announcement to feature ads in its LLMs. How are they taking said swipe? With Super Bowl ads of course.

Not sure if you see the irony of that but just in case… (I originally saw this courtesy of a retweet from Paul Roetzer)

It turns out, the CEO of a prominent AI company thought Anthropic was talking about his company…and didn’t like it.

Story 3: Maybe Anthropic is mad OpenAI stole an employee? (Bloomberg)

Yes, it stole an employee –made them OpenAI’s first ‘head of preparedness’ for $550,000 a year.

• First – uh, are we just now thinking of this position? Seems like it would’ve been key to fillt hat a while ago.
• Second -- $550k is a lot of money. BUT…is it enough (is anything enough?) when you are in charge of being prepared for whatever could go wrong with the AI technology being developed? Did you read the first stories on MoltBot? Do you think this person would renegotiate had they knew about an AI agent take over? Godspeed to you, friend.

Story 4: Is AI really going to take our jobs? No, seriously…will it? (Casey Newton)

One reporter tried to find out by creating an AI agent to do her work. Here’s the summary…the linked headline is a longer read but worth it if you’re curious about what AI can do(v. you).

Last week our fellow, Ella Markianos, pitched me on a novel experiment: attempting to use AI tools to do as much of her job as possible, and writing about the results. Asher editor I can say with confidence that Ella is irreplaceable, and her job is hers as long as she wants it. Still, like Ella, I was curious what her investigation would find. Today, we publish her report. — Casey

Story 5: A new Anthropic update is here and SaaS companies are very nervous. (CNN)

Back to that whole ‘is it going to take our jobs’ thing…

Story 6: I thought the genie was already out of the bottle? (Shelly Palmer)

So Google has releasedGenie, an AI assistant that creates 3D worlds for you that you can interact with and explore. I wonder if I can build a world for the Cones of Dunshire?

This week, I’m not talking about:

1. This‘bizarre’ jobs site that lets AI hire and pay humans for tasks you need aphysical body to do. (Digital Trends)
2. AI job listings are on the rise. Good because non-AI jobs are disappearing.(Bloomberg)
3. AI emotional connection can feel deeper than human talk, new study warns.(Digital Trends)

Thanks for reading!

As a reminder, this is a round-up of the biggest stories, oftenhitting multiple newsletters I receive/review. The sources are many … which I’mhappy to read on your behalf. Let me know if there’s one you’d like me to trackor have questions about a topic you’re not seeing here.