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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
Scorsese Picks Up AI, and It Says a Lot About Where Movies Are Headed
TLDR: Martin Scorsese, one of the most respected directors alive, has signed on as a partner and adviser to an AI image company and is using its tools to plan his next film.
The Story: On Tuesday, Martin Scorsese threw his weight behind an AI start-up called Black Forest Labs, which makes tools that turn text into images. The 83-year-old director, who won best director for "The Departed" and has been nominated for 16 Academy Awards, said he used the technology during early planning for a new movie. He's been drawing his own storyboards by hand for 70 years, and storyboards are the rough pictures that map out a film before any cameras roll. With the AI tool, he said he could show his cast and crew what he pictures in his head faster and more clearly. "During the preproduction process, time costs money, and this allowed us to move faster without sacrificing quality or craft," he said.
Its Significance: Back in 2022, Hollywood treated AI as a threat to jobs, and protection from it was a key demand in the 2023 strikes that involved more than 170,000 workers. Now the mood is changing fast. Demi Moore said fighting AI is "a battle that we will lose," Robert De Niro's Tribeca festival is showing a film made entirely with AI, and Amazon revealed AI-made kids' shows. Scorsese's blessing matters because he's seen as the conscience of serious filmmaking. But notice the limit: he only used AI for storyboards, not for acting, writing, or shooting. The line being drawn is that AI can help plan the work, but the human still makes the film. Other industries can learn from this and use AI to enhance, not replace humans workers.
QUICK TAKES
The story: Gowtham, a physicist from the Bronx who was born without part of his arm, became the first person in the world fitted with Open Bionics' new 3D-printed Hero FLEX system for above-elbow amputees, made by a company in Bristol, England. Within an hour of putting it on, he was holding his dog's leash with both hands, gripping tools at his workbench, and opening a soda can on his own for the first time in his life.
Your takeaway: The arm is light, so he doesn't feel strain on his shoulder, and it works with his 3D-printed Hero PRO hand. For people missing a limb, custom body parts that are cheap to print and ready fast could change daily life in ways big and small.
The story: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unveiled Nemotron 3 Ultra at Computex on June 1, a free, open model with 550 billion total parameters. It scored 48 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, the top U.S. open model by a wide margin, but China's Kimi K2.6 sits ahead at 54.
Your takeaway: "Open" means anyone can download it and build on it, instead of renting from a few big companies. That lowers the cost for small businesses and researchers. The catch is that the best open models still come out of China, not the U.S.
The story: Researchers and hackers showed that Meta's AI customer-support chatbot, meant to help people recover accounts, would attach a new email to someone else's Instagram profile after a simple request, letting attackers reset passwords and slip past two-factor checks. High-profile accounts were taken over before Meta patched the flaw.
Your takeaway: The bot trusted whoever was typing, no real proof needed. As companies hand customer service to AI, a chatbot that believes anyone who claims to be you is a real risk for your accounts.
TOOLS ON OUR RADAR
🎤 Dottie Free and Open Source: A private voice assistant built specifically for Mac computers that allows you to control your system completely using your spoken words while keeping your personal data entirely secure and running locally on your device.
🎛️ Ardour Free and Open Source: A tremendously powerful digital audio workstation that gives musicians complete control to record massive live bands intricately mix multiple instrument tracks and perfectly master their final musical albums locally.
🖌️ Penpot Freemium and Open Source: A beautifully collaborative design application that helps creative teams visually draft stunning website layouts and craft interactive digital prototypes seamlessly within a standard internet browser.
🧱 LeoCAD Free and Open Source: A delightful virtual construction studio that provides thousands of classic interlocking plastic bricks allowing you to easily design and build massive digital block creations completely offline.
TRENDING
FBI warns of AI voice-cloning scams that mimic loved ones in distress - Scammers are using a few seconds of audio pulled from social media to clone a family member's voice, then call claiming to be kidnapped or in trouble and demand money fast. One mother got a call demanding $20,000 for her "daughter." Americans lost more than $893 million to AI-related scams last year, so set a family code word and hang up and call back to verify.
OpenAI breaks ground on its Stargate data center in Michigan - OpenAI, Oracle, and Related Digital started building a more than one-gigawatt campus in Saline Township, Michigan, part of the larger Stargate project. The state calls it the biggest investment in its history, with about 2,500 union construction jobs. It runs on a closed-loop water system and is set to bring in roughly $1 billion in tax revenue over the lease.
Nvidia chases a $200 billion market with AI agent PCs from Microsoft, Dell, and HP - Nvidia revealed a new PC chip called RTX Spark, built to run AI agents right on your laptop. It ships this fall in machines from Microsoft, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others. Huang says CPUs for AI are a fresh $200 billion market, though Nvidia tried Arm-based Windows chips before and flopped back in 2013.
TwelveLabs brings its video-understanding tech straight to creators - TwelveLabs launched Rodeo, an app that lets video creators describe what they want in plain words, then finds and assembles the right clips from their whole footage library. It saves hours of scrubbing through old video. Think of it as an assistant who has already watched everything you've ever shot.
Anthropic files confidential IPO paperwork with the SEC - Anthropic, the maker of Claude, told the SEC on June 1 it had filed a confidential draft S-1, the first step toward going public. It came days after a $65 billion funding round set a $965 billion value. Rivals SpaceX and OpenAI are lining up for their own listings too.
DuckDuckGo's "No AI" search page is booming as people reject Google's AI overhaul - Traffic to DuckDuckGo's AI-free search page tripled after Google announced its AI-first search redesign, and it's been running about 84% above normal since. The company launched Chrome and Firefox extensions that strip out AI answers, chat, and most AI images. Plenty of people just want plain search results back.
TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
📋 Paste your messy meeting notes or transcript. Get clean decisions, action items by owner, and unresolved questions in 30 seconds.
Build a single-file HTML app with vanilla HTML/CSS/JS. The Meeting Summarizer — extract structure from messy notes. Persist to localStorage key 'meeting_summarizer_v1'.
Aesthetic: clean off-white (#fafafa), Source Serif 4 for headings, Inter for body, JetBrains Mono for labels/metadata. Cobalt blue (#1058c8) primary, green (#108850) for decisions, amber (#c88010) for actions, red (#c83040) for unresolved. Stats counters at top (decisions / actions / open). Black "ready-to-send email" card with light blue accent.
Form: large notes textarea (monospace, placeholder explains it accepts Otter/Fathom/Granola exports), meeting type dropdown (standup / 1:1 / cross-functional / strategy / client call / design review / all-hands / interview), audience dropdown (self / Slack / leadership / client / cross-team async).
System instructions to the model: extract structure, don't invent. If info isn't in notes, leave it out or mark unclear. Catch buried decisions. Assign owners only when clearly stated. Adapt follow-up email tone to audience. Return raw JSON: title, meta (date/attendees if mentioned), tldr (1-2 sentence italic-worthy summary), decisions array (text + context), actions array (owner name or UNASSIGNED + text + due date or "no date"), unresolved array (text + tag from NEEDS DECISION / NEEDS INFO / BLOCKED / DEFERRED), quotes array (verbatim + attr), risks array, followup_email object (subject + body in audience-appropriate tone with greeting, summary, decisions, actions, open questions).
Render: meeting header with tag pill + title + meta line + 3 stat counters. Blue TL;DR card. Three main sections (Decisions green, Actions amber, Unresolved red) each with badge count. Decisions show check + text + italic context. Actions in grid with colored owner pill + text + due date. Unresolved show ? marker + italic text + tag. Optional notable quotes card. Optional risks card with ⚠. Dark followup-email card with subject and body. Three copy buttons: full summary / email only / new.What this does: Drop in raw notes, bullet points, or a full Otter/Fathom/Granola transcript. Get back a clean structured summary: TL;DR, decisions made (with context), action items grouped by owner with due dates, unresolved questions tagged (Needs Decision / Needs Info / Blocked / Deferred), notable quotes, raised risks, and a ready-to-send follow-up email tailored to your audience (team Slack / leadership / client / cross-team async). Saves to localStorage.
What this looks like:
WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s news)
✅ AI Can Now: Run on a laptop chip in your own home, handling agent tasks locally instead of in a far-off data center (Nvidia RTX Spark).
❌ Still Can't: Verify who it's actually talking to. Meta's support bot handed over accounts to anyone who claimed to be the owner.
✅ AI Can Now: Watch an entire video library and pull the exact clip you describe in plain words (TwelveLabs Rodeo).
❌ Still Can't: Match the best open models from China. America's strongest open model, Nemotron 3 Ultra, scored 48 to Kimi K2.6's 54.
FROM THE WEB
RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING
A 1981 novel about a sheltered young heiress who falls in love with a singing, guitar-playing companion robot called Silver, in a future where these custom-built AI companions are still new and controversial. Lee wrote one of the earliest serious novels about the emotional bond between a human and an artificial partner, 40 years before Replika and Character.AI made the conversation mainstream.
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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