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Beginners in AI
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An AI just found something in DNA that scientists hadn't described before, and even the company behind it isn't sure what it does yet. It's a good look at how AI is starting to help with science, and at why the lab work still matters. As always, every story here is human picked and edited.
THE FRONT PAGE
An AI Found a New CRISPR-Like System in Virus DNA
TLDR: Anthropic says its Claude AI found a new CRISPR-like system hidden in virus DNA, but nobody knows yet what it does.
The Story:
Anthropic set about 950 Claude agents loose on a huge database of DNA sequences. In 21 hours they gathered more than 200,000 reverse transcriptases, enzymes that copy RNA into DNA, and narrowed them to 3,500 new candidates, then 20. One agent spotted a pattern no one had described: an enzyme sitting next to repeating DNA that looks like a CRISPR array, inside viruses that infect bacteria. Anthropic named it ART.
Lab tests so far show those repeats get turned into short pieces of RNA, according to Anthropic. What the system does is still unknown. CEO Dario Amodei said its "precise function, biotechnological utility (if any), or level of significance is not yet clear." CRISPR pioneer Feng Zhang of MIT and the Broad Institute called it "an exciting example of how AI agents can contribute to biological discovery."
Its Significance:
CRISPR started the same way. Scientists noticed odd repeats in bacterial DNA years before anyone knew they could be used to edit genes. If ART turns out to be programmable, it could become a new tool for fixing DNA, but that's years of lab work away and may never happen. What's new today is the method: hundreds of AI agents did the sorting in under a day, and people checked the result in the lab. Decrypt reports that gene-editing stocks dipped after the announcement.
QUICK TAKES
The story: Google is testing Call for Me, which has Gemini phone a business from your number, get through the menu, wait on hold and book the appointment. It says it's an AI when a person answers, and for now it's only for paid Gemini subscribers with a Pixel 11 in the US beta.
Your takeaway: If you put off calls for weeks, this is help you'd use every month. No Pixel 11? Today's Try This Prompt builds a call prep card for any phone.
The story: Lovable, the "vibe coding" app that builds websites and apps from a typed description, hit $600 million in annualized revenue, up from $500 million in June. Two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies use it, and apps built with it get nearly 1 billion views a month.
Your takeaway: A simple app no longer starts with learning to code. That business idea sitting in your notes app can become a first version this weekend.
The story: Oracle sent a force majeure notice, a formal warning that events outside its control could cause delays, on Project Jupiter, a 2.45-gigawatt Stargate campus due in 2028. The gas pipeline meant to power it has slipped nearly six months, to February 2027.
Your takeaway: Power, not chips, is AI's tightest bottleneck right now. Oracle says it's still on schedule, but expect more warnings like this.
TOOLS ON OUR RADAR
📊 LibreOffice Free and Open Source: Write documents, build spreadsheets and make slides that open Word and Excel files, with no Microsoft 365 subscription.
📖 Kiwix Free and Open Source: Download all of Wikipedia to your laptop or phone and read it anywhere, even offline.
📲 PairDrop Free and Open Source: Send photos and files between any phone and computer on your Wi-Fi, right in the browser, like AirDrop for everyone.
🖌️ Pinta Free and Open Source: Crop, resize and touch up pictures in a simple editor that works like Paint, a free swap for Photoshop Elements.
🧸 GCompris Free and Open Source: Give kids ages 2 to 10 over 100 ad-free learning games for reading, math, science and chess.
🎙️ Wispr Flow* Freemium: Talk instead of type in any app, in 100+ languages; the free plan has limits, and Pro is $12 a month.
🌐 Wegic* Freemium: Describe a website and Wegic says its AI builds it, like Lovable; 30 free credits, then $23.90 a month.
TRENDING
Meta Wants You to Build a Video Game by Describing It. Meta's Horizon Create app lets you type the game you want, then adjust the art, characters and levels, and share it on Facebook, Instagram and Horizon. It's testing with creators now, with a waitlist for everyone else.
Google Is Sending AI Chips Into Orbit to Test Space Data Centers. Project Suncatcher's first prototype satellite, built with Planet, rides a SpaceX launch to see if Google's TPU chips survive radiation and heat in space. Google says satellites there get up to eight times more solar power than panels on the ground.
A Tiny AI Model Could Run on Smart Glasses With No Internet. PrismML showed a 2-billion-parameter model that runs entirely on Qualcomm-powered glasses and answers questions about what you're looking at. No glasses using it have been announced yet.
Alibaba Unveils AI Glasses That Let You Pay With Your Eyes. The Qwen Glasses N1 Pro has a 50-megapixel camera and iris-based payment, and Alibaba also showed AI earbuds built with Bose. Sales start October 13.
A New Slack Rival Treats AI Agents Like Coworkers. Ando raised $20 million from Accel, Index Ventures and Emergence for team chat where agents join conversations and message people on their own. Teams in 15 countries already use it.
Gemini Can Now Talk to You as a Moving, Lip-Syncing Face. Gemini 3.8 Live with Live Avatar gives Gemini a real-time animated face in 97 languages. It's for businesses building customer service agents for now, and every frame carries Google's SynthID watermark.
TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, Grok, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
📞 Dreading a phone call? Get the exact words to say, what to have ready, and what to do if they say no.
Build a single-file HTML app called Call Prep Card in vanilla HTML, CSS and JavaScript. No API key needed.
I describe a phone call I keep putting off (like moving a dentist appointment), who I'm calling, the kind of call, the tone I want, and what makes the call hard for me. The app calls the Anthropic Messages API and writes a prep card in plain, friendly English. It must never invent facts about the business, like hours, prices or policies; it tells me to ask instead.
Show a title card with three tags, the exact first lines to say when someone answers, what to have in front of me, questions to ask before hanging up, "if they say this, say that" replies, a checklist of things to write down, one calming tip, and a copy button.
Style: near-black teal background, coral and mint accents, Outfit and Newsreader fonts.What this does: Describe the call you've been putting off, who it's to, and what makes it stressful. It writes your opening lines, what to have ready, what to ask, and how to answer if they say no.
Your traffic is fine. Your signups aren't.
Visitors land and leave, and "looks fine to me" isn't a diagnosis. SureThing audits SEO, speed, mobile, and messaging against the page, then ranks the fixes by impact.
WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s news)
✅ AI Can Now: Sort through more than 200,000 enzymes in under a day and flag a DNA system scientists hadn't described.
❌ Still Can't: Tell you what it does. Working out ART's job takes lab experiments that are still running.
✅ AI Can Now: Call a business, get through the phone menu, wait on hold and book an appointment for you.
❌ Still Can't: Do it without a backup. Google keeps a live transcript on screen so you can take over when a call goes sideways.
FROM THE WEB
The same kind of functionality that you get when typing into your AI is now available in voice mode, while driving.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING
🧬 The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson - Book
Isaacson's 2021 biography of Jennifer Doudna, who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for CRISPR gene editing. It shows how a strange pattern in bacterial DNA became a tool that can edit genes, the same long road ART would have to travel. It'll help you see why scientists are excited and careful at the same time.
How was today's edition? Tap one below. Pick "Could be better" and tell me what to fix; I read every answer.
How was today's edition?
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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