Good morning, it’s FRIDAY. OpenAI’s CFO is stuck playing financial whack-a-mole with runaway costs, the new pope is immediately worried AI might smite humanity, and Walmart’s prepping for bots to do your shopping.
Plus, in our latest Forward Future Original, we examine why AI robots excel in demos but face real-world barriers like hardware limits, safety, and cost.
Read on!
🤔 FRIDAY FACTS
What was the very first computer program to claim artificial intelligence—and what kind of hardware was it running on?
The answer’s at the bottom—no spoilers, but it involves punch cards + logic.👇
🔆 Walmart readies for shopping by AI agents
Walmart is preparing for AI-driven shopping, where AI agents will act as shopping proxies—filtering options, applying preferences, and even negotiating pricing, reshaping how retailers present and sell products. Walmart is developing its own agents, but third-party bots like OpenAI’s Operator will reshape pricing, product display, and retailer-customer dynamics.
🚨 FBI warns of AI scams impersonating officials
The FBI has alerted the public to a new vishing scam using AI-generated voice memos to impersonate senior U.S. officials. Scammers target current and former officials and their contacts to gain access to personal accounts. The messages often hide malicious links or malware downloads; the FBI urges caution with unexpected official claims.
🎞️ TikTok unveils AI Alive image-to-video tool
TikTok has launched “AI Alive,” a feature that transforms static photos into animated videos within TikTok Stories. The tool adds dynamic effects like moving skies, drifting clouds, or subtle gesture highlights. AI Alive includes clear AI-generated labels and C2PA metadata for transparency. TikTok says rigorous moderation checks are in place before content is published.
🚀 China launches first AI space computing satellites
China has launched the first 12 satellites of a planned 2,800-strong AI space computing network, dubbed the Three-Body Computing Constellation. Developed by ADA Space and Zhejiang Lab, the constellation processes data in orbit to cut ground-based reliance. It delivers 5 POPS, laser links, and AI, marking a global first that may reshape space-AI rivalry.
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💸 ECONOMICS
OpenAI’s CFO Faces Uphill Battle as Soaring AI Ambitions Collide with Soaring Costs
While CEO Sam Altman enjoys the global limelight, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar wrestles with a brutal financial reality: AI’s relentless innovation is wreaking havoc on the company’s path to profitability. Despite tripling revenue to $3.7 billion in 2024, OpenAI lost an estimated $5 billion, with newer, more powerful models like o3 vastly outstripping their predecessors in energy and operational costs.
Competition from nimble rivals like China’s DeepSeek, offering nearly comparable models at lower costs, further squeezes margins and pricing flexibility. The company’s eye-popping $300 billion valuation feels speculative at best, hinging on a volatile market where every technological leap risks rewriting the business model overnight. → Read the full article here.
👾 FORWARD FUTURE ORIGINAL
Robots Are Getting Smarter—So Why Can’t They Handle a Strawberry?
AI-powered robots are dazzling in demos and drowning in real-world mess. From frozen warehouse floors to fragile ceramic mugs, the smartest machines still trip over the physical world—and the economics, politics, and physics that come with it.
If you’re curious about where the robotics revolution stalls, who’s betting big anyway, and what it’ll take to bridge the sim-to-real canyon, this is the one to read. → Read the full article here.
⛪ ETHICS
Pope Leo XIV Puts AI Ethics at the Top of the Vatican’s Agenda
Just days into his papacy, Pope Leo XIV has positioned artificial intelligence at the center of the Catholic Church’s moral concerns, warning of its potential to threaten “human dignity, justice and labor.” Drawing inspiration from his namesake Leo XIII, who confronted the excesses of the Industrial Revolution, the new pope called for global responsibility to guide AI development for the common good.
His early focus signals a bold attempt to engage with one of the defining issues of the 21st century, though whether the Vatican can sway governments or corporations in the AI arms race remains an open question. As one Vatican adviser put it: “It’s the first topic of a pope”—a sign of just how much the world has changed. → Read the full article here.
🛰️ NEWS
What Else is Happening
💰 Doji Scores $14M for AI Try-Ons: Fashion app Doji uses AI avatars for fun, social virtual try-ons. Backed by Thrive, it plans faster, more realistic shopping experiences.
📜 Google Leads AI Patent Race: Google overtook IBM as top filer of generative and agentic AI patents. U.S. filings surged 56%, with China emerging as a strong global competitor.
🤝 U.S. Nears Deal to Supply UAE NVIDIA AI Chips: A draft deal could send 500,000 NVIDIA chips yearly to UAE’s G42 and U.S. firms, potentially creating a third global AI hub.
🦾 Google Boosts Accessibility With AI: Android and Chrome updates add image Q&A, expressive captions, speech tools, and better screen reader support for Global Accessibility Awareness Day.
💔 ChatGPT “Predicts” Affair, Sparks Divorce: A Greek woman divorced her husband after asking ChatGPT to read his coffee grounds and “foresee” infidelity.
📽️ VIDEO
Create AMAZING 3D Scenes in Blender with ComfyUI! (Tutorial)
Learn to create stunning 3D scenes in Blender using NVIDIA’s ComfyUI. This tutorial shows how AI and prompts can transform simple models into vivid environments. Get the full scoop in Matt’s latest video! 👇
🧰 TOOLBOX
Decentralized AI, Creative Design Tools, and Smarter Coding Assistance
🤖 AIxBlock: Decentralized AI platform with low-cost GPUs, model deployment, data privacy, and validation tools.
🎨 Dreamina: AI design tool for text-to-image, image editing, game assets, and social media content creation.
👨💻 Cody: Enterprise AI code assistant with chat, autocomplete, and inline editing to boost coding speed and quality.
🤔 FRIDAY FACTS
The First AI Program Was Logic-Based—and Ran on a Machine the Size of a Closet
The honor of “first AI program” goes to the Logic Theorist, developed in 1955–56 by Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon. It was designed to prove mathematical theorems from Principia Mathematica, and in doing so, it introduced symbolic reasoning—essentially mimicking how a human might approach logical deduction. And the hardware? That would be the RAND Corporation’s JOHNNIAC—a vacuum tube-based behemoth roughly the size of a large refrigerator.
Powered by punch cards and perseverance, it had just 5,000 words of memory. Yet despite these humble specs, the Logic Theorist managed to prove 38 theorems, even finding more elegant proofs than the original authors in some cases. In short: the first AI wasn’t about neural networks or big data—it was about replicating human logic, one proof at a time, on hardware that made your microwave look futuristic.
