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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
AI Takes Your Job? NY Lawmaker Wants to Send You a Check
TLDR: A New York lawmaker wants to pay Americans a check when AI takes their jobs, funded by a tax on how much companies use AI.
The Story:
Alex Bores, a New York State Assembly member running for Congress, announced a plan called the AI Dividend on Monday. The idea is simple. If AI starts taking lots of American jobs, the government would send direct payments to people. The money would come from three places: a small tax on how much companies use AI (measured in tokens), the government buying shares in big AI companies, and changes to the tax code so companies stop getting tax breaks for replacing workers with AI. Goldman Sachs says about 16,000 U.S. jobs a month have been lost to AI over the past year. Amazon, Meta, Intel, and Microsoft have all cut workers tied to AI efficiencies. Payments wouldn't start right away. They'd kick in if specific signs show up, like fewer people working, wages dropping in certain jobs, or AI making companies way more productive without hiring more people. The plan doesn't say how much each person would get or how often.
Its Significance:
This is one of the first real government plans for what happens if AI really does take a big chunk of jobs. Bores calls it "an insurance policy" rather than a punishment for AI companies. Right now, tax breaks actually make it cheaper for companies to buy AI than to hire people, which the plan wants to flip. If you work a job that could be automated, this is the kind of policy that could mean getting a check while you retrain instead of just losing everything. It's still just a proposal tied to one guy running for Congress, but could very well become a trend. Elon Musk has already proposed universal income for the same problem.
QUICK TAKES
The story: Alibaba released Qwen 3.6-Max-Preview on Monday, and it beat Claude and other top models on six coding tests, including real-world software engineering tasks. It's the first time Alibaba's biggest model is closed-source instead of free, signaling a shift as Chinese AI labs start charging for their best work.
Your takeaway: Chinese models went from 1% of global open-model usage in late 2024 to about 30% by end of 2025. That's huge. The "free Chinese models" era is ending, and the top ones are now direct competitors to OpenAI and Anthropic. If you build with AI, you've got a real third option now that's beating the big names on coding.
The story: Deezer says 44% of all new songs uploaded to its platform daily are AI-made, about 75,000 tracks per day. But real people only listen to 1-3% of total streams, and 85% of those plays are bots trying to farm fake royalty payments. Deezer has been demonetizing the fake streams.
Your takeaway: AI music isn't killing artists by stealing listeners. It's flooding the system with junk tracks hoping to scam pennies per play from the royalty pool. In a blind test, 97% of people couldn't tell AI music from human-made. The labels aren't done fighting this one.
The story: Yelp rolled out a big upgrade to its AI Assistant on Monday. You can now ask questions about any restaurant, shop, or business, then book a table, order delivery, or schedule an appointment without leaving the chat. It pulls from hundreds of millions of reviews, photos, and menus.
Your takeaway: This is Yelp trying to become your go-to app before Google or ChatGPT eats its lunch. The assistant still redirects you to DoorDash or OpenTable to finish the order, so it's not fully "agentic" yet. But the direction is clear: fewer taps, more asking in plain English, less scrolling through review pages.
TOOLS ON OUR RADAR
📖 Wallabag Free and Open Source: A convenient read it later service that allows you to save web articles for offline reading while automatically removing distracting advertisements and popups for a cleaner viewing experience.
🔒 Standard Notes Free and Open Source: A highly secure and end to end encrypted note taking application designed for people who value absolute privacy and want to sync their thoughts across all devices safely.
📋 Focalboard Free and Open Source: A collaborative project management tool that acts as an alternative to Trello or Notion by helping individuals and teams track their work through customizable kanban boards and tables.
🏠 Planka Free and Open Source: An elegant and easy to use kanban board for managing projects and tasks with your team while featuring real time updates and a clean visual layout for better organization.
TRENDING
NSA Is Using Anthropic's Powerful Claude Mythos AI as CEO Meets With White House - The NSA is reportedly using Anthropic's most powerful model, Mythos, on classified networks even though the Pentagon (which oversees the NSA) labeled Anthropic a "supply chain risk" in February and is still fighting the company in court. Every federal agency except the Defense Department reportedly wants access.
This Data Center Is Getting a $77 Million Tax Break to Create One Job - A JPMorgan data center expansion in Orangeburg, NY got a $77 million tax break after promising exactly one permanent job. Watchdog groups say it's the largest per-job subsidy in the country. The public hearing in 2024 had zero attendees.
GRAI Believes AI Can Make Music More Social, Not Replace Artists - A new music startup raised $9 million to build AI tools that let users remix songs and change their style inside a social app, with artists opting in and earning royalties. The goal is to use AI for fan interaction instead of flooding Spotify with more bot-made tracks.
Why AI Needs the Right Humans in the Loop - Trulioo's Chad Gerhardstein argues that when an AI agent goes rogue and moves money it wasn't supposed to, nobody knows who's legally responsible. He says companies need staff who can actually read and de-risk AI output, not just prompt it.
SoundHound AI to Acquire LivePerson in $250M Voice + Messaging Deal - SoundHound is buying LivePerson to combine its voice AI with LivePerson's 1 billion monthly customer messages. The combined company expects to hit $500 million in revenue and will serve 25 of the Fortune 100, including 12 of the top 15 global banks.
YouTube Opens AI Deepfake Detection Tool to All of Hollywood - YouTube is expanding its deepfake detection tool so any actor, athlete, musician, or creator at risk of being faked can sign up, even without a YouTube channel. Users upload a digital likeness, then get flagged when AI-generated videos using their face show up.
TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
Your four-category heat map for daily wins, quietly tracked.
Build me a single-file HTML app I can open in my browser without any setup. Pure vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, no frameworks, no CDN. Create a Momentum Dashboard that tracks daily wins across four life categories, with a deep navy (#0e1420) background and lavender (#a78bfa) accents. Each category has its own color: Work (blue), Health (green), Creative (pink), Relationships (gold). Include: a Today check-in panel where each category has 5 clickable dots to log a score 0-5 plus a note field for 'what happened', a 30-day heatmap grid with one row per category (or a combined view) where each cell's intensity reflects that day's score and today's column is highlighted, tab filters to switch the heatmap between All / Work / Health / Creative / Relationships, four streak cards showing consecutive days logged per category with a flame emoji once a streak hits 3+ days, an AI-style Today's Nudge card that changes based on current state (empty day, neglected category, long streak, balanced week, skipped yesterday, hot day) with a small library of gentle messages, an Overall Momentum section with 7-day and 30-day progress bars and stats for Total Wins, Active Days, Best Category, and Needs Love, a Recent Days history feed showing the last 10 active days as chip rows, a 'Seed 30 Days of Sample Data' button to demo the dashboard, and a Clear All button. Keep all data in memory only (no localStorage). The nudge text should be italic serif while the data is monospaced. Make it work in a single HTML file.What this does:
📈 Tracks daily wins across the four areas that actually matter (work, health, creative, relationships) as a living heat map. Click dots to score each category 0-5, add a quick note on what happened, and watch the grid fill in over 30 days. Streaks count up per category, lighting a flame once you hit three days in a row. A gentle nudge engine reads your current state (neglected category, broken streak, hot day, balanced week) and serves up a one-line piece of feedback written like a friend, not a productivity app. Built for a daily 30-second check-in, not obsessive tracking.
What this looks like:
WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s news)
✅ AI Can Now: Top Claude on coding and agentic benchmarks from a Chinese lab (Qwen 3.6-Max-Preview beat Claude on six major tests)
❌ Still Can't: Tell you who's legally responsible when an AI agent moves money it wasn't supposed to move (Trulioo on the governance gap)
✅ AI Can Now: Answer any question about a restaurant and book your table, all in one chat (Yelp Assistant)
❌ Still Can't: Fool streaming platforms into paying out royalties at scale anymore (Deezer demonetizes 85% of AI track plays as bot fraud)
FROM THE WEB
RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING
A hard sci-fi novel set 300 years in the future where humanity has spread across nearby stars but found no other intelligent life. Reynolds' answer to the Fermi paradox is genuinely unsettling, and the book's treatment of advanced AI and machine consciousness is more thoughtful than most. Long, dense, and not for everyone — but unforgettable if it clicks with you.
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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Hiring in 8 countries shouldn't require 8 different processes
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