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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 Turned the World Cup Into an $11 Billion Data Machine
TLDR: The 2026 World Cup is the first one run on AI, and the data it creates is worth about $11 billion.
The Story:
The World Cup kicked off June 11 across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It's the biggest one ever, with 48 teams, 104 games, and 16 host cities. This year, AI is doing a big chunk of the work behind the scenes. Google's Gemini helps teams like Argentina and France break down plays and scout their opponents. Lenovo built a tool called Football AI Pro and gave it to all 48 teams, so smaller countries get the same data the rich ones do. Over about 30 days, the tournament will create roughly 2 exabytes of data. Bank of America says that's like 45 billion HD movies, and AI is what reads all of it.
Its Significance:
Data has been getting cheaper and more common for years, long before AI showed up. The "big data" boom already pushed companies to collect huge piles of it. What changed is what you can do with that data. AI gives you far more uses for the same information, from catching a fake bet to redrawing an offside call in seconds. The World Cup is just the loudest example. The data was always going to pile up. Now there's a new machine that can use all of it.
QUICK TAKES
The story: Google filed a lawsuit against a group called Outsider Enterprise, saying its members used Gemini to write code for fake websites and scam texts. The FBI says the operation stole 3.87 million credit card numbers and caused about $1.9 billion in losses since 2023.
Your takeaway: The same AI that helps you write an email can help a scammer build 8,000 fake sites fast. Google is teaming up with the FBI and phone carriers to shut it down, but this won't be the last case like it.
The story: Mayo Clinic researchers built an AI that read 30 years of health records to spot people at risk for primary aldosteronism, a common but often missed cause of high blood pressure. It flagged at-risk patients up to 12 months before a normal diagnosis.
Your takeaway: Up to 1 in 5 people with high blood pressure may have this and never know. Catching it early means treating it before it wears down the heart.
The story: Project CETI used AI to break sperm whale clicks into something like an alphabet, with patterns that act like vowels and consonants. Now the team is working with NYU Law to ask whether understanding whale speech could earn whales legal protections, like a right to be free from harmful noise.
Your takeaway: For a long time, language was the line we drew between humans and animals. If AI shows whales have something close to it, courts may have to rethink where that line sits.
TOOLS ON OUR RADAR
📖 Twine Free and Open Source: A wonderful creative tool that allows absolutely anyone to write interactive fiction and branching adventure stories without writing any complicated software code.
✍️ MarkText Free and Open Source: A distraction free writing application that hides all menus and complicated formatting options so you can focus entirely on typing your journal entries or essays.
🎵 Spotube Free and Open Source: A lightweight digital music player that allows you to listen to your favorite songs and playlists without annoying audio advertisements interrupting your listening experience.
🔍 Ueli Free and Open Source: A lightning fast desktop search utility that lets you find files open applications and perform web searches just by typing a few letters on your keyboard.
TRENDING
Meta Is Unwinding Its $2 Billion Manus Deal After China Stepped In - Meta has started pulling apart its $2 billion purchase of Manus, an AI startup founded by Chinese engineers, after Beijing ordered the deal undone over national security. Meta cut Manus off from its systems and stopped sharing data, a sign that governments now treat AI talent and tech like a national asset worth blocking a sale to protect.
Seattle Uses AI to Triage and Divert 911 Medical Calls - Seattle's fire department routes some low-level 911 medical calls to a nurse line that can suggest telehealth or a clinic ride instead of an ambulance. A new report found most callers still get sent to the hospital, and one woman's 10-hour wait for a nurse-ordered ambulance is now part of a lawsuit.
Apple's New Siri Gets a Hands-On Test in iOS 27 - Bloomberg got an early look at Apple's rebuilt Siri, which finally does much of what was promised two years ago and leans on Google's Gemini under the hood. The same beta also confirmed a foldable iPhone and a touch-screen MacBook are on the way.
A New CRISPR Tool Shreds Cancer Cells and Leaves Healthy Ones Alone - Scientists led by Nobel winner Jennifer Doudna built a CRISPR system that spots a mutation found in nearly half of all cancers, then destroys only those cells. It worked in mice with lung and liver tumors and could reach cancers once thought untreatable.
Microsoft and Uber Hit an AI Budget Wall - Microsoft pulled most internal access to one AI coding tool after the bills got too big, and Uber burned through its entire 2026 AI budget in just four months. The surprise overruns hint that AI isn't replacing workers as fast or as cheaply as the hype claimed.
New York Now Makes Ads Label AI "Synthetic Performers" - A first-of-its-kind New York law requires ads to clearly say when an AI-made person stands in for a real actor, with fines from $1,000 to $5,000. Movies, TV, and video games are exempt, and the actors' union SAG-AFTRA pushed hard for it.
TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
🏛️ Paste a list and a place you know by heart. Get a vivid spatial journey with absurd images placed room by room.
Build a single-file HTML app with vanilla HTML/CSS/JS. The Memory Palace Builder — turn a list + a known place into a method-of-loci spatial journey. Persist to localStorage key 'memory_palace_v1'.
Aesthetic: deep mystical purple-black (#120e1c), purple and gold radial glows. Cinzel serif (classical/Roman) for headings, EB Garamond for body and italic, IBM Plex Mono for labels. Royal purple (#9670dc / #b48ce0) primary, antique gold (#daa85a) for locations and key images. Vertical journey path with numbered circular station nodes connected by a gradient line. 🏛️ palace iconography.
Form: list textarea (one per line), place textarea (with help text encouraging layout description of a place known by heart), what-is-this input, image-intensity dropdown (vivid & absurd / maximally bizarre / funny / dramatic cinematic).
System instructions to the model: act as master of method of loci. Place each item at a specific location along a natural walking route through THEIR described place, encoded as vivid bizarre multi-sensory interactive images. Absurd and exaggerated is what makes it stick. Each image must clearly encode the actual item. Use their specific locations. Return raw JSON: palace_name (evocative, based on their place), intro (1-2 sentences setting the scene), stations array (one per item: location (specific spot in their place, natural walking order) + item + image (vivid bizarre 2-3 sentences with **bold** on core thing) + anchor (hook tying image to location, **bolded** cue)), walkthrough (flowing 3-5 sentence narrative through whole palace in order with **bold** items), practice array (4 steps with timing using mental rehearsal/spaced recall).
Render: purple palace intro card with Cinzel name. Vertical journey with numbered circle nodes on a gradient timeline. Each station card shows gold location with ⌖ marker, "remember: ITEM" line, large italic image text with bold/gold encoding, gold-bordered anchor callout. Gradient walkthrough card. White practice card with numbered steps. Markdown bold parsed throughout.What this does: Give it your list to memorize and a place you know intimately (childhood home, your commute, your office), and pick how bizarre you want the images. It uses the ancient method of loci to place each item at a specific location along a natural walking route through your place, encoded as a vivid, exaggerated, multi-sensory mental image. You get a numbered journey of stations (each with its location, the item, the absurd image, and the anchor that locks it in), a flowing walkthrough narrative to read aloud once, and practice steps to lock the palace in. Saves to localStorage.
What this looks like:
WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s news)
✅ AI Can Now: Sort sperm whale clicks into vowel- and consonant-like units and hunt for repeating patterns.
❌ Still Can't: Translate those clicks into meaning or hold a real conversation with a whale.
✅ AI Can Now: Read 30 years of health records and flag a hidden cause of high blood pressure up to a year early.
❌ Still Can't: Tell on its own when it's being used to write a scam, which is how one group turned Gemini into 8,000 fake sites.
FROM THE WEB
RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING
Westworld (1973) - Movie
Michael Crichton wrote and directed this 1973 sci-fi about a futuristic theme park where wealthy guests pay to live out Wild West, Roman, and medieval fantasies among lifelike android hosts, until the hosts start to malfunction. The HBO show has so completely eclipsed the original that almost nobody remembers Crichton himself made the source material, which is leaner, sharper, and possibly one of the most important AI films ever made. Yul Brynner's performance as the Gunslinger is still one of the great robot performances on screen.
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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