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Beginners in AI
Good morning and thank you for joining us again!
Welcome to this daily edition of Beginners in AI, where we explore the latest trends, tools, and news in the world of AI and the tech that surrounds it. Like all editions, this is human curated and edited, and published with the intention of making AI news and technology more accessible to everyone.
THE FRONT PAGE
The Industry That Hated AI Art the Most Became Another Customer
TLDR: The art world, one of AI's loudest critics, is now one of its biggest customers, with museums like MoMA and auction houses like Christie's embracing AI art that sells for over $1 million.
The Story:
For years, the art world has been one of AI's fiercest opponents. Artists have called AI image generators "the greatest art heist in history" and filed lawsuits against the companies behind them. But according to a new 60 Minutes investigation, the very institutions that were supposed to protect traditional art are now cashing in on AI. Refik Anadol, a 40-year-old Turkish American artist who creates immersive visuals using AI and massive data sets, has had his work displayed at The Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Bilbao, and the Sphere in Las Vegas. His pieces have sold for over $1 million at auction. Christie's launched its first all-AI art auction in 2025, and Anadol is now building DATALAND, a 20,000-square-foot museum in downtown Los Angeles dedicated entirely to AI art, set to open this spring.
Its Significance:
This story isn't just about art. It's about what happens when money enters the picture. The same industries that pushed back hardest against AI are now finding it too profitable to ignore. That pattern is showing up everywhere, from publishing to music to Hollywood Hollywood Is Secretly Using AI Everywhere, and Nobody Wants to Admit It. If you're wondering whether AI-generated content will show up in your daily life, it’s been there longer than you suspect.
QUICK TAKES
The story: Google's Gemini can now create 30-second music tracks with lyrics or instrumentals from a text prompt, photo, or video using DeepMind's Lyria 3 model. Free users get 10 tracks per day. Separately, Apple is adding "Playlist Playground" to Apple Music, letting you type a prompt and get a 25-song playlist with AI-generated cover art, coming this spring with iOS 26.4.
Your takeaway: Music is the latest creative field getting the AI treatment from Big Tech. The music industry sued AI startups Suno and Udio for copyright infringement in 2024, but Google and Apple are pushing ahead anyway, with filters they say will check for IP violations. If you make music, this is worth watching closely. If you just listen, you're about to have a lot more tools to play with.
The story: The Department of War rolled out a new AI tool called "GenAI," powered by Google's Gemini 3, to all service members and civilian workers. Georgetown's Emelia Probasco, a Navy veteran and former Pentagon official, called it a "critical first step" in training the military workforce on AI.
Your takeaway: The U.S. military is putting AI directly into the hands of everyday workers, not just tech specialists. Before this tool, many service members were using unvetted AI tools or nothing at all. This is the government's largest bet yet on making AI standard issue for its 3.4 million workforce.
The story: As AI takes over more of the grocery supply chain, from automated shipments to risk algorithms, the system is becoming more vulnerable to cyberattacks. Whole Foods, JBS Foods, and Ahold Delhaize (parent company of Stop & Shop) have all been hit by major breaches that disrupted operations and exposed millions of workers' data.
Your takeaway: The same AI that keeps shelves stocked is also removing the human workers who know how to fix things when systems crash. If a major cyberattack or natural disaster hits, there may not be enough people left who understand the old way of getting food to stores.
TOOLS ON OUR RADAR
🐧 Jellyfin Free and Open Source: A private media system that lets you collect manage and stream your personal movies and television shows to any device in your home without any premium licenses or corporate tracking. (Alternative to Plex)
🎨 Krea Freemium: A real time creative workspace that generates and refines images exactly as you sketch or type giving you instant visual feedback for all your design projects.
📄 Teal Freemium: An artificial intelligence career platform that helps you rapidly tailor your resume to specific job descriptions and track all your submitted applications in one organized digital hub.
🏗️ *Marblism Freemium: A powerful software platform that allows anyone to build complete web applications simply by describing their idea in plain English handling everything from the database setup to the front end design.
TRENDING
Cities Are Shredding Their AI Surveillance Contracts - At least 30 cities have canceled contracts with Flock Safety, the AI surveillance company with 80,000+ cameras across the U.S., as activists push back against license plate readers that have led to wrongful arrests and racial profiling.
Palantir's Shyam Sankar on the "Lies" Being Told About AI - Palantir's CTO argues that both AI doom predictions and utopian fantasies miss the point, saying the real story is frontline workers using AI to boost productivity by 50% at factories and hospitals.
Nokia and KDDI Demonstrate Quantum-Safe Optical Transport for AI Infrastructure - Nokia is building encryption systems designed to protect AI data centers from future quantum computer attacks, using technology that secures data in transit across fiber optic networks.
Nobel Laureate Warns U.S. Democracy Won't Survive AI Job Losses - Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu says American companies cut 1.2 million jobs in 2025 (up 58% from 2024), with over 50,000 directly tied to AI, and warns that pursuing AGI without protecting workers will have "quite adverse" social consequences.
TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
🎯 Build a task priority matrix that sorts your work into four quadrants based on urgency and importance, so you stop reacting and start focusing on what actually moves the needle.
Build me a React web app called "Eisenhower Priority Matrix" with a dark navy background (#0b1120) and blue accent color (#5b8dee).
At the top, show the title and tagline "Stop being busy. Start being effective."
Below that, show two side-by-side panels:
- Left panel: "TODAY'S COMPLETION" showing a large percentage, progress bar, and a count of tasks per quadrant.
- Right panel: "ADD A TASK" with a text input, four quadrant selector buttons (DO FIRST, SCHEDULE, DELEGATE, ELIMINATE), and an "+ Add Task" button.
Below the panels, show a 2x2 grid of quadrants:
- Top-left "DO FIRST" (red): Urgent + Important
- Top-right "SCHEDULE" (blue): Not Urgent + Important
- Bottom-left "DELEGATE" (orange): Urgent + Not Important
- Bottom-right "ELIMINATE" (muted green): Not Urgent + Not Important
Each quadrant shows its tasks as rows with a checkbox, task text, and an X to remove. Clicking a checkbox marks the task done with strikethrough.
Pre-load 2 sample tasks per quadrant. At the bottom, a "Search Best Practices" button cycles through productivity tips.What this does:
This prompt builds an interactive Eisenhower Matrix where you sort tasks into four quadrants: Do First (urgent and important), Schedule (important but not urgent), Delegate (urgent but not important), and Eliminate (neither). Add new tasks, check them off as you finish, and watch your completion percentage climb. It’s a simple visual system used by CEOs and productivity nerds alike to stop confusing being busy with being productive.
What this looks like:
WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s news)
✅ AI Can Now: Train on 200 million photos of Earth to create living, ever-changing art installations that museum visitors watch for 38 minutes straight.
❌ Still Can't: Convince the Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic who called it a "glorified lava lamp" that it qualifies as real art.
✅ AI Can Now: Manage entire grocery supply chains from farm to shelf, handling shipments, risk calculations, and inventory in real time.
❌ Still Can't: Fix itself when a cyberattack shuts down the system, because the humans who used to know how are no longer part of the process.
FROM THE WEB
RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING
Newport’s argument is simple: the ability to focus without distraction is becoming rare and valuable at the same time. This book makes the case for carving out long stretches of uninterrupted work time, and gives practical strategies for doing it in a world full of Slack, meetings, and open-plan offices. A necessary reminder as AI accelerates our lives. Pairs well with the Eisenhower Matrix you just built.
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Thank you for reading. We’re all beginners in something. With that in mind, your questions and feedback are always welcome and I read every single email!
-James
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