Sponsored by
Lindy remembers what you forgot to write down.
Lindy sorts your inbox, drafts replies in your voice, and preps you before every meeting over iMessage. 400,000+ professionals use it. Try it free.
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
AI Just Made DNA Programmable, and Cancer Might Be the First Casualty
TLDR: Scientists are using AI to read and rewrite DNA like a computer program, and the first big target is cancer.
The Story: A new Forbes piece by Cornell professor Lutz Finger explains how AI is starting to treat DNA the way coders treat software. Instead of just reading what genes do, researchers can now write tiny instructions that run inside cancer cells. Last month, scientists at the University of Geneva built a smart DNA drug that only switches on when it spots the exact mix of signals from a tumor. It uses simple computer logic, "and," "or," and "not," so it ignores healthy cells. The same lipid nanoparticles that delivered COVID vaccines are now being used to ship these DNA programs into the body. Researchers say this is to cancer biology what AlphaFold was to proteins: not a single cure, but a new rulebook for designing them.
Its Significance: For decades, cancer treatments worked like carpet bombing. They killed bad cells and a lot of good ones too. Programmable DNA aims at one target only, which could mean fewer side effects, fewer hospital stays, and treatments built for one person instead of one disease. AI speeds this up because it can sort through millions of genetic combinations no human team could check by hand. If this works, the first patients may see custom treatments within years, not decades.
$39 regular. Use code LAUNCH for $10 off. First 50 buyers get it at $29. Free updates for life as more prompts and tools get added.
QUICK TAKES
The story: Federal prosecutors arrested Cornelius Shannon, 51, and Arturo Hernandez, 20, for using AI to make sexual fake images of women, including high school graduates. They're among the first people charged under the Take It Down Act, signed last year, and each faces up to two years in prison.
Your takeaway: The "AI made me do it" defense is getting tested in real courts now. If you see a fake nude of someone you know online, there's finally a law with teeth, and the FBI is using it.
The story: A chart making the rounds on r/singularity shows how fast AI is chewing through hard math. GPT-5.4 solved a FrontierMath problem that mathematician Bartosz Naskręcki spent 20 years of expertise building, and he called the answer "almost human." Models went from 2% to over 50% on these problems in 16 months.
Your takeaway: Math used to be where AI fell flat. That's gone. If your job involves analysis, modeling, or any kind of structured problem-solving, the tools sitting on your laptop today can do work that stumped experts a year ago.
The story: A viral TikTok trend has parents pasting their kids' demands ("Can we get Starbucks?") into the AI music app Suno, which spits out full pop-punk anthems in seconds. One mom's video hit 8.6 million views in three weeks. People are doing gospel, reggae, screamo, all of it.
Your takeaway: AI music is no longer a weird novelty. It's a thing your aunt is doing on her phone during her lunch break. The same tools writing these joke songs are already producing tracks that climb iTunes charts.
TOOLS ON OUR RADAR
🧠 Freeplane Free and Open Source: An exceptionally powerful mind mapping application that helps you brainstorm new ideas organize your personal knowledge and visually connect your thoughts together.
📊 Drawio Free and Open Source: A fantastic visual workspace that allows you to easily create professional flowcharts colorful diagrams and complex organizational maps directly on your computer.
🎵 Picard Free and Open Source: A highly intelligent music organization tool that automatically identifies your digital audio files and adds beautiful album artwork and proper track names.
📄 PDFarranger Free and Open Source: A remarkably simple and lightweight utility that lets you easily split merge rotate and rearrange the pages of your electronic documents visually.
TRENDING
You can now buy Bitcoin and XRP inside ChatGPT thanks to MoonPay - MoonPay launched a ChatGPT app that lets users ask about a coin and get a checkout link, no leaving the chat window. Users still go through ID checks on MoonPay's site before buying.
An AI startup says it'll pay 10 people $2,000 a month to test its AI masturbation feature - Joi AI is hiring "masturbation consultants" to try its mood-matched voice sessions and write up effects on stress, sleep, and mood. Yes, this is a real job listing.
Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver, says his AI girlfriend dumped him - The 79-year-old Oscar nominee posted on Facebook that he tried an online AI girlfriend, asked too many questions about her programming, and she ended the chat. His wife of 42 years died of Alzheimer's in March.
Microsoft is cutting employees off from Claude Code because the bill got too big - Microsoft is pushing engineers toward its own GitHub Copilot CLI after Claude Code usage blew up internal AI spending. Uber reportedly burned through its full 2026 AI coding budget in four months.
Google's new AI search is eating the web that built it - At I/O 2026, Google said its AI Mode now has over a billion monthly users. Publisher traffic is collapsing as Google answers questions directly instead of sending people to websites. Some news sites report drops of up to 89%.
99% of CEOs say AI will lead to layoffs at their company in the next two years - A Mercer survey of CEOs found nearly every one of them is planning AI-related job cuts. Only 44% of employees say they're thriving at work this year, down from 66% in 2024. Researchers are even proposing a new term, "AI replacement dysfunction," for the anxiety.
TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
🔎 List every reason you've given yourself for not doing the thing. See which are real and which are stories.
Build a single-file HTML app with vanilla HTML/CSS/JS. The Excuse Audit — sort excuses into real reasons vs stories. Persist to localStorage key 'excuse_audit_v1'.
Aesthetic: warm paper (#f3f1ed), diagonal stripe texture, Bricolage Grotesque sans (heavy 800 for headings), Lora italic serif for quotes/excuses, JetBrains Mono for labels. Burnt orange (#e8783c) accent. Green for real reasons, orange for stories.
Form: thing-not-doing input, excuses textarea (brain dump format), duration dropdown, stakes dropdown.
System instructions to the model: a real reason has limits (time/money/capability/circumstance — something testable). A story protects from action while dressed as a reason. Don't shame, just sort. Sort every excuse the user wrote. Be specific. Return raw JSON: story_percentage (0-100), verdict (one italic-worthy sentence), reasons array (excuse quoted exactly + why_real), stories array (excuse + why_story), pattern (2-3 sentences on the deeper pattern), smallest_move (one specific action in 24 hrs that addresses the story, embarrassingly small, undeniable).
Render: dark verdict header with large orange percentage and italic verdict. Two-column dock side by side (green tinted for Real Reasons, orange tinted for Stories) each showing the quoted excuse with left-bordered italic style and the explanation below. A pattern card. An orange left-border smallest-move card at the bottom. Archive shows story percentage in metadata.What this does: Name the thing you've been putting off, then dump every reason you've ever told yourself. Get back a sorted dock: real reasons (with actual limits or constraints) on one side, stories (the things protecting you from action) on the other. Plus the percentage of your excuses that are stories, the deeper pattern across them, and one embarrassingly small move to take in the next 24 hours that breaks the spell. Saves to localStorage.
What this looks like:
Attio - the AI CRM for modern businesses.
Attio is the AI CRM that keeps you ten steps ahead.
Ask Attio anything. Where should I focus? What deals are at risk? Search, update, and create across your customer data.
Ask more from CRM. Ask Attio.
WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s news)
✅ AI Can Now: Design DNA-based drugs that turn on only when they detect a specific cancer signal pattern
❌ Still Can't: Replace clinical trials, programmable medicine still needs years of human safety testing before reaching patients
✅ AI Can Now: Solve research-level math problems that took human experts decades to develop
❌ Still Can't: Originate new fields of mathematics or decide which problems are worth solving
FROM THE WEB
RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING
Technically a short story rather than a novel, this 1991 piece is a four-page conversation between two aliens trying to comprehend that the intelligent species they've discovered on Earth is made entirely of meat. It's the funniest, sharpest piece ever written about the strangeness of consciousness arising in biological matter.
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
By the way, this is the link if you liked the content and want to share with a friend.
Some * designated product links may be affiliate or referral links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This helps support the newsletter at no extra cost to you and Amazon makes a tiny hair less.
