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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 Wrote 63% of the Religious Books Sold on Amazon
TLDR: A new study found that 63% of religious books sold on Amazon are likely written by AI, with spirituality and witchcraft titles topping the list at 78%.
The Story:
AI detection company Originality.ai checked 2,034 religious books on Amazon and found that 1,272 of them, or 63%, scored high enough to count as "likely AI-written." Witchcraft books scored highest at 78%, followed by Hinduism at 76% and Taoism at 74%. Satanism came in lowest at 22%. Report author Michael Fraiman said his team scored book descriptions, author bios, and writing samples, and anything hitting 50 or higher got flagged, though he was careful to say the results show likelihood, not proof. His team also spot-checked flagged titles by hand to confirm the pattern held up. Amazon lets authors self-report AI use on the honor system, and Fraiman says nobody knows how many actually do.
Its Significance:
If you buy a book about religion, healing, or spirituality on Amazon, there's a real chance a machine wrote most of it, and you won't be told. These are where researchers found that over half the fact-checkable claims were likely false, meaning someone looking for guidance on alternative spirituality, health or "detoxing" could be reading made-up advice with no fact-check behind it. Amazon runs on trust. Shoppers pick books off star ratings, not knowing if a person or a chatbot wrote what's inside. And if AI is already filling one of Amazon's oldest, most personal categories this fast, it's probably doing the same in cookbooks and self-help too. As we covered in a recent issue, surveys have shown that people prefer AI writing up until they know that it was AI.
QUICK TAKES
The story: ACE Robotics chairman Wang Xiaogang told Reuters he expects humanoid robots to hit their "ChatGPT moment" by the end of 2027. He says the real bottleneck is data. Robots need way more real-world training hours than exist today, and ACE plans to collect tens of millions within two years.
Your takeaway: Take the date with a grain of salt. ACE just raised over $100 million and is chasing an IPO, so a bold prediction is good for business. That said, robotics has sped up this year, so the underlying trend is real even if the exact timeline isn't.
The story: At Beijing's World Humanoid Robot Games, a humanoid robot from Chinese firm X-Humanoid ran the 100 meters in 9.39 seconds, beating Bolt's human record of 9.58. Another robot cleared a standing high jump of 2.88 meters against the human record of 2.45. More than 2,000 robots from 16 countries competed, and several others crashed, tripped, or caught fire during other events.
Your takeaway: This is a sprint built for robots, not proof they're ready for a job site. Still, it's a clear marker of how fast China is pushing humanoid hardware, and speed records like this tend to pull in more government and investor money fast.
The story: Flock Safety runs the largest license-plate camera network in the country, over 100,000 cameras across 49 states, feeding a database more than 5,000 police departments can search nationwide. CEO Garrett Langley told Fox News the country needs a "compromise" between privacy and safety as lawmakers from both parties push back. The Washington Post found 46 cases of police allegedly misusing the cameras to stalk exes or partners.
Your takeaway: Most people had no idea how much of their daily driving was already logged, or that AI is doing the plate and vehicle matching behind it. A private company built a surveillance system this size with almost no public vote on it, and now the backlash is catching up to the buildout.
TOOLS ON OUR RADAR
📈 ProductBridge Freemium: A highly intelligent feedback agent that continuously monitors multiple platforms to collect and prioritize user suggestions based on revenue impact so your team can make smarter product decisions.
🏃 MuleRun Paid: A highly personalized artificial intelligence assistant that actually learns your specific work habits and preferences over time to automate your repetitive daily tasks with extreme precision.
🌐 Tobira Free: A groundbreaking open network where your personal artificial intelligence agents can discover and communicate with other agents to negotiate deals and find professional collaborations on your behalf.
💻 VirtualBox Free and Open Source: A magical piece of software that creates a secure computer within your computer allowing you to safely try alternative operating systems or play older video games.
TRENDING
Fruit Fly Brains Just Improved a Machine Learning Trick — Researchers at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology built an algorithm called Spi-Fly, modeled on how a fruit fly's brain sorts smells using barely any neurons. It beat other AI methods at learning a new scent from just a few examples, and unlike most AI, it didn't forget older smells while learning new ones. The goal is AI hardware that uses far less power than today's chips.
Who Actually Built the Mystery AI Model Everyone's Talking About? — A free, surprisingly capable AI model called Ox Alpha showed up on the marketplace OpenRouter this week with no name attached to it. Stripe CEO Patrick Collison called it "very impressive," and guesses about the builder range from Chinese lab Z.ai to an unreleased Microsoft model. Nobody outside the company knows for sure, which means anyone testing it is handing code and data to a stranger.
A Tiny AI Agent Just Beat Anthropic and OpenAI at a Science Task — London startup Inherent, founded by former Google DeepMind staff, says its AI agent Faraday beat Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 and OpenAI's GPT-5.5 at reproducing results from published research papers without being told the answer first. Faraday runs on a much smaller 27-billion-parameter model, a fraction of the size of what it beat. Inherent's real goal is an AI that helps make new discoveries, not just check old ones.
AI Is Already Costing Jobs in China, and Young Workers Feel It Most — A Beijing programmer named Fei Zhaojun was laid off with about 160 coworkers weeks after his boss asked if AI could do their coding jobs. Unemployment for workers age 16 to 24 runs roughly triple China's national urban rate of about 5%. Some economists think AI could help more than hurt over time, since China's workforce is shrinking fast as the population ages.
AI Companies Are Ditching Nvidia for Custom Chips — Big AI vendors are turning to custom chipmakers like Cerebras and Marvell instead of Nvidia for parts of their AI workloads, and Waymo now designs its own chips for robotaxis instead of buying from Intel. Meanwhile Microsoft is walking back some of its AI push in Windows 11, letting users move the taskbar again after five years and showing more detail on what their AI chips are doing.
TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
Name a volcano. Get its current status pulled straight from the Smithsonian's own reporting, plus real nearby earthquake activity.
Build a single-file HTML app with vanilla HTML/CSS/JS. The Live Volcano Watch — name a volcano, get its current status via web search grounded in the Smithsonian GVP's own pages, plus real live nearby seismic activity from USGS.
Aesthetic: near-black volcanic (#100c0a), lava red-orange (#e0522a) primary with a warm glow top-left, ash gray (#8a8078) secondary. Space Grotesk for headings/volcano name, Newsreader serif for the summary text, JetBrains Mono for labels/earthquake data.
Form: single volcano-name text input, "Check Its Status" button.
Technical:
1. Call the Anthropic Messages API WITH tools:[{type:'web_search_20250305', name:'web_search'}] (works automatically), system prompt instructing it to search specifically for the named volcano's current status, prioritizing volcano.si.edu (Smithsonian GVP) and relevant national observatories (e.g. USGS for US volcanoes), honest and calm when there's no notable current activity rather than manufacturing drama, never inventing an eruption or alert level not found. Return raw JSON: volcano_name, location, status (short real phrase found), alert_level (real observatory level if found, empty if none), summary (2-4 sentences on actual current activity type), last_updated_context (1 sentence on recency).
2. Best-effort geocode the volcano name via geocoding-api.open-meteo.com/v1/search?name={name}&count=1 (wrapped in try/catch, gracefully skipped if it fails since not all volcano names geocode cleanly).
3. If geocoded: fetch real recent earthquakes via earthquake.usgs.gov/fdsnws/event/1/query?format=geojson&latitude={lat}&longitude={lon}&maxradiuskm=100&starttime={30 days ago}&minmagnitude=2&orderby=time&limit=10 — genuinely live USGS data.
Render: a gradient "current status" card with the volcano name/location, status and alert-level chips, the search-grounded summary in serif, and a clearly labeled source note ("based on current reporting found via search of the Smithsonian GVP... for the latest, check volcano.si.edu directly") so it's honest about being search-grounded rather than a live API feed. Below it, a "recent nearby seismic activity (USGS, live)" section listing real earthquakes with magnitude and location, or a calm empty state if none found. Clear error surfaced if the volcano can't be identified via search.What this does: Type a volcano's name and it searches specifically for its current status on the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program's own pages and relevant observatory sources, real status phrasing, an alert level if one exists, and a summary of actual current activity, honest and calm when there's nothing notable to report rather than manufacturing drama. It's upfront that this is current reporting found via search of the authoritative source, not a live data feed, and points to volcano.si.edu directly for the latest. Underneath, it geocodes the volcano and pulls a live layer: real earthquakes of magnitude 2 or higher within 100 kilometers over the last 30 days from USGS, since seismic activity is often the first sign something's changing.
What this looks like:
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WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s news)
✅ AI Can Now: Learn to recognize a brand new smell from a handful of examples without forgetting the ones it already knows.
❌ Still Can't: Move like a human outside a controlled sprint. The same robots setting speed records also crashed and caught fire in other events.
✅ AI Can Now: Match a license plate to a car's make, model, and even bumper stickers automatically, across a network of 100,000+ cameras.
❌ Still Can't: Guarantee that system won't be misused. Investigators have already found dozens of cases of police using it to stalk people.
FROM THE WEB
RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING
Air by Geoff Ryman - Book
A 2005 novel about a middle-aged, illiterate woman in a remote Central Asian farming village who works as the community's fashion expert, and whose life is upended when a new technology called Air is tested worldwide, delivering the internet directly into every human mind with no hardware required. Won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the BSFA Award, and the Tiptree Award in the same year. It asks what a sudden technology shock actually does to people who were never consulted about it.
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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