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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
The Military Says AI Safety Rules Could Get Soldiers Killed
TLDR: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei until Friday to remove safety limits on its AI model Claude for military use, arguing that an AI built for civilian office work can't have the same guardrails in combat because enemies would exploit those restrictions.
The Story:
The Pentagon summoned Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to a tense meeting on Tuesday over how the military can use Claude, the company's AI model. Claude is the only AI model currently approved for classified military systems, and the Pentagon has a $200 million contract with Anthropic. But the company won't remove its safety blocks on AI-controlled weapons and mass surveillance. Pentagon officials say that's a problem: an AI designed to be careful and cautious for office workers becomes a liability on the battlefield. If an enemy knows your AI won't do certain things, they can plan around those gaps. Hegseth gave Amodei until 5:01 PM Friday to agree to unrestricted military access, or face the contract being canceled, a "supply chain risk" label that would block other military contractors from using Claude, and the Defense Production Act, a 1950s law that can force companies to serve the military whether they want to or not.
Its Significance:
The Pentagon's argument is simple: war doesn't come with content filters, and an AI that hesitates or refuses in combat could cost lives. If bad words can cause the AI to malfunction, the results would be comically bad. Anthropic has some of the highest moderation and built-in guardrails out of all of the major AI producers. They say some lines shouldn't be crossed no matter what, like letting AI control weapons. How this plays out will shape the rules for every AI company working with the government going forward.
QUICK TAKES
The story: Jamie Dimon told investors that JPMorgan Chase already has "huge redeployment plans" to move workers whose jobs are being taken over by AI into new roles. The bank's total headcount stayed around 318,000, but operations and support staff quietly dropped 4% and 2% while front-office teams grew 4%.
Your takeaway: This is what AI job changes actually look like right now. It's not mass layoffs in one day. It's quiet shifts behind the scenes. Dimon warned that society needs to start planning now, asking: if self-driving trucks appeared overnight, would you put 2 million people on the street?
The story: OpenAI told investors it now plans to spend $600 billion on AI infrastructure by 2030, down from the $1.4 trillion it was bragging about just months ago. The company made $13.1 billion in revenue last year and is trying to close a $100 billion funding round, with Nvidia reportedly investing up to $30 billion.
Your takeaway: Even the biggest AI company on Earth is admitting its spending plans were too ambitious. That's a sign the entire AI industry is starting to face reality about costs vs. actual revenue.
The story: Stock markets in Asia and Europe reached record highs on Wednesday after weeks of worry about AI wiping out existing businesses. Investors calmed down after Anthropic announced new tools showing its AI is designed to work with existing software, not replace it.
Your takeaway: Anthropic's promise that it's building AI to fit into your current tools (not destroy them) was enough to move global markets. That tells you how much the world's money is riding on whether AI helps or hurts existing businesses.
TOOLS ON OUR RADAR
🐧 BentoPDF Free and Open Source: A highly capable client side document toolkit that runs entirely in your web browser. It allows you to merge split compress and edit your files locally meaning your sensitive documents never touch an external cloud server. (Alternative to Adobe Acrobat)
🌐 Harpa AI Freemium: A hybrid artificial intelligence extension that lives entirely in your browser turning any website into an interactive data source so you can track prices summarize long articles and automate repetitive clicks.
🧠 Fabric Freemium: A spatial internet operating system that automatically organizes your chaotic bookmarks files and notes into visual collaborative spaces so you never lose track of important research.
✂️ Kome Freemium: A clever browser companion that condenses long YouTube videos news articles and lengthy email threads into digestible summaries giving you the core insights in a fraction of the time.
TRENDING
Cursor Gives AI Coding Agents Their Own Computers to Test Their Work - Cursor's cloud agents now run in their own virtual machines where they can build, test, and even film themselves coding. Over 30% of Cursor's own code changes are now made by these autonomous agents.
Notion Launches Custom Agents That Work While You Sleep - Notion's new Custom Agents run 24/7 in the background, handling tasks like answering repeat questions in Slack, routing work requests, and compiling status reports. Early testers built over 21,000 agents, and Notion itself runs 2,800 internally. Free through May 3, 2026.
Google Adds AI Agent to Its No-Code App Builder Opal - Google's Opal tool now includes an agent powered by Gemini 3 Flash that can plan tasks, pick the right tools (like Google Sheets), and ask you questions when it needs more info, all without writing a single line of code.
Google Acquires AI Music Platform ProducerAI - ProducerAI (formerly Riffusion) is joining Google Labs, letting anyone create songs up to three minutes long using text prompts. It's powered by Google's Lyria 3 music model and is available globally with free and paid plans at producer.ai
Pope Leo XIV Tells Priests to Stop Using ChatGPT for Sermons - In a meeting with clergy, the Pope urged priests to resist "the temptation to prepare homilies with artificial intelligence," warning that AI can never share faith and that brains, like muscles, weaken without use.
TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
💰 Build a salary negotiation calculator that shows your anchor number, walk-away point, and ready-made negotiation scripts based on your current salary, target, and market data.
Build a salary negotiation calculator as a single-file React app.
Requirements:
- Sliders for current salary, target sal
and years of experience
- Calculate and display: anchor number (target x 1.15), walk-away p
(current x 1.05), percentage increase, and position vs market midpoint
- Show 3 ready-to-use negotiation scripts that update based on the numbers
-
- Use React 18 + Babel via CDN in one HTML file — no build tools neededWhat this does:
This one is practical. Adjust the sliders to match your situation and it instantly shows your anchor number (the high opener), your walk-away point, and how your target compares to the market midpoint. The three scripts at the bottom update in real time. Print them out before your next negotiation call.
What this looks like:
WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s news)
✅ AI Can Now: Write, test, and verify its own code changes inside isolated virtual machines, then film itself working and submit the finished code for human review
❌ Still Can't: Produce music that feels always sounds authentic without a human going back and forth with it, refining melodies, adjusting lyrics, and guiding the creative direction step by step
✅ AI Can Now: Quietly shift 4-6% of a major bank's workforce into new roles without making headlines
❌ Still Can't: Generate a church sermon that counts as sharing genuine faith, according to the Pope
FROM THE WEB
RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING
James Gleick tells the story of Richard Feynman, the brilliant Nobel Prize-winning physicist who thought about problems in ways nobody else could. Feynman's approach to breaking down complex systems and questioning every assumption feels eerily relevant to how we should be thinking about AI today. It's a biography, but it reads like a masterclass in creative problem-solving.
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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