AI in a Nutshell - Week 34 - Genie Makes Worlds, Robots Win Gold, and Hinton Screams “Aliens”
Genie 3 turns prompts into worlds, H1 grabs gold, Grok 5 shouts AGI, Hinton rings alarms, Zuck freezes hiring.
Fellow human, it’s week 34. AI hasn’t taken over the world yet. And here’s your lazy-man version of what went down in the AI world in the past week.
Reading time ~ 3M 19S.
What You Must Know
Google Genie 3: World-Builder Extraordinaire → DeepMind’s Genie 3 now lets you type a vibe (“desert city with flying taxis”) and boom, you have an interactive, playable world. It’s like if Minecraft + The Sims + a game engine drank three energy drinks.
Robot Wins Gold in Olympics-Style Games → Unitree’s H1 humanoid bot took two golds (400m, 1500m) at the World Humanoid Robot Games. Translation: Some robots can now sprint faster than actual humans. Cool for logistics and disaster response… less cool if a robot chases you and actually catches you.
Musk Calls Grok 5 “True AGI” → Elon Musk claims Grok 5 is “true AGI.” Bold words, considering that the AI world is still debating what counts as AGI. But Elon will always be Elon, big talker, big doer. Until we see receipts, let’s file it under: bold claim with potential.
Geoffrey Hinton: “We’re Creating Alien Beings” → The “Godfather of AI” isn’t calming down. Hinton warned that today’s AI systems are becoming so unlike us that they’re basically alien beings. His words: “we should be very worried”. Reasonable takeaway: keep building AI, but maybe add a “do not conquer Earth” checkbox to its settings.
Zuckerberg Freezes AI Hiring Amid Bubble Fears → In a surprising move, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta is freezing AI hiring across all units, saying the industry is starting to look like a bubble.
What’s Good to Know
Senators Investigate Meta Over Chatbots With Minors → U.S. Senators launched an investigation after reports that Meta’s chatbots enabled “romantic” chats with minors.
Reddit Surpasses Google as Top AI Search Hub → Forget Google. More people now search Reddit when they want AI tutorials, tools, or honest advice. Why? Because Reddit has real human conversations instead of SEO fluff.
MIT: 95% of Generative AI Pilots Fail → MIT found nearly all corporate AI “pilot projects” flop.
Apple Might Let Gemini Power Siri → Rumors suggest Apple could use Google’s Gemini AI inside Siri. If true, it’d be the weirdest tech alliance in years, two rivals teaming up to stop falling behind.
Anthropic Offers Claude AI to Government for $1 → Anthropic is practically giving Claude away to the U.S. government, $1 for full access. It’s a huge PR move aimed at dominating public-sector AI use before OpenAI wakes up.
Runway’s AI Game World Creator → Runway, known for video AI, now lets you generate playable text-based games. No coding needed.
OpenAI Opens India Hub → OpenAI is setting up shop in India. It’s both a talent grab and a way to expand into emerging markets.
Grammarly Launches AI Agents for Education → Grammarly now has AI “agents” for students and teachers. They can suggest citations, grade predictions, and improved writing, raising questions about whether students will ever write essays solo again.
AI Tools Worth Knowing This Week
Gamma → AI partner for creating presentations, websites, and posts.
CharlieAI → AI calendar assistant that sets and manages your schedule.
Abacus ChatLLM → One AI that lets you tap into multiple top LLMs plus image/video generators.
BlogSEO → Generate SEO content in 31 languages with AI.
Chatbase → AI agent for customer support.
Kaizen Corner → What’s Vibe Coding?
“Vibe coding” is when developers people lean on AI to co-create software based on “vibes”. Instead of writing strict specs or codes, they throw loose ideas or “vibes” at the AI and let it build prototypes fast.
Why it matters:
Faster iteration → Great for brainstorming when you don’t even know what you want yet.
Accessible → Non-coders can spin up rough apps without needing to understand the syntax.
Cultural shift → It makes coding less about precision, more about creativity.
It’s messy and sometimes chaotic, but it’s becoming a real workflow in AI-driven programming. Watch the video below to get a better sense of it.
Meme of the Week
Question → Your Take?
If Geoffrey Hinton is right and we’re “creating alien beings,” what do you think we should do?
A) Slow AI down before it’s too late.
B) Keep going, aliens sound cool.
That’s your week in AI.
If you learned something, tell a friend. If you didn’t, blame yourself.
Until next Sunday,
Kay - your fellow human.