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OpenAI and Jony Ive Tease New AI Device šŸ”® DeepSeek Round 2 šŸ‡ØšŸ‡³

Plus, Anthropic CEO Warns AI Could Take 50% of White-Collar Jobs Within 5 Years 🤯

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This Week in AI 🧠

Synthetic took a break last week, and what a week it was! Google demonstrated impressive AI technology integrations at its Google I/O conference, OpenAI launched Codex, Anthropic unveiled its new chart-topping model, Claude 4, and Jony Ive and Sam Altman sparked a social media frenzy by teasing a new ā€˜AI-first’ device as part of what promises to be the most-talked-about merger of 2025.

Welcome to a double edition of Synthetic! Let’s dive in.

iPhone Designer Sir Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

OpenAI made clear the scale of its ambition by merging with io, the mysterious design company led by Sir Jony Ive, who played a key role in the design of the iPhone, iPod, iMac, iPad, MacBook, and Apple Watch. In a slickly produced, overlong video that sent the social media world crazy, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and dulcet-toned designer Jony Ive wax lyrically about the incredible device they plan to build. Details were thin to non-existent. Here’s what we do know:

  • According to reports in The Wall Street Journal, it’s neither a new AI-focused smartphone nor smartglasses.

  • The new device can sit on a desk or in your pocket.

  • It’s coming in ā€œlate 2026.ā€

  • OpenAI is in talks with ā€œmultiple manufacturersā€ about producing the device.

  • Altman believes the device could add $1 trillion to OpenAI’s valuation.

  • Altman expects sales volume to ramp to 100 million units faster than any device before it.

  • Altman says he knew the two companies had to merge because the device isn’t just an accessory; it will be a central facet of the user relationship with OpenAI in the future.

  • It’s a small computer that you will buy as part of your OpenAI subscription. Altman said, ā€œWe both got excited about the idea that if you subscribed to ChatGPT, we should just mail you new computers, and you should use those.ā€

Apple shares dropped on the news even though, as Bloomberg opinion columnist Dave Lee put it, ā€œIt’s easier for Apple to solve AI than it is for OpenAI to create the new iPhone.ā€

Synthetic’s Take: The ball is in your court, Apple. Google I/O and the OpenAI io merger should set off a 5-alarm fire inside Apple HQ. Alarm bells were surely already ringing with the failure of Apple Intelligence and the delay of Siri’s AI revamp. As we edge closer to the end of the app era and computing use cases pivot towards AI-first paradigms, Apple seems exposed. Tim Cook has done an incredible job of iterating existing products to maintain relevance, but Apple may need new leadership to reinvigorate product innovation and lead the company into the AI age.

Google launched an embarrassment of AI riches at its big annual conference last week. Mostly embarrassing for Apple, who seem to be 1-2 years behind Google in building AI features for its platforms that do anything useful for users. Here are the main things to know about:

  • AI Mode - Faced with competition from Perplexity and OpenAI, Google has gone all-in on AI-enhanced search. As predicted in the last issue of Synthetic, Google announced AI Mode, which enables conversational search, custom data visualizations, and a powerful, new shopping mode.

  • New Shopping Features - An impressive aspect of AI Mode is a new shopping experience that makes it easy to find what you’re looking for. You can even try on clothes virtually to see how they will look on you. For a review on the try-on feature and a how-to guide, click here.

  • VEO 3 and Imagen 4 - Google updated its video and image generation models, and wow, are they good. VEO 3 now automatically generates background sounds and dialogue along with video. Check out this fun video of a non-existent car show to see what it can do. This one asks if you can tell who’s real. And this one shows different accents. The realism is pretty incredible.

  • Google Flow - Google launched a filmmaking app that gives content creators control over camera movement, perspective, transitions, and effects as they generate video with AI.

  • Google Beam - This 3D video conferencing installation, formerly known as Project Starline, uses multiple cameras and AI technology to create the illusion that the person you’re speaking to is just on the other side of the screen. It’s wow technology years in the making.

  • Gemini Diffusion - Historically, diffusion was an AI technique used to generate images. Google has brilliantly applied diffusion technology to code generation, demonstrating an AI model that can create code at blindingly fast speed. It’s still a demo at this stage, but if it proves successful, it will become a powerful tool for software developers. Fortune called Gemini Diffusion the sleeper hit of Google I/O.

  • Android XR Glasses - Google continues to tease smartglasses and is building a special version of Android to power a range of head-mounted devices from smartglasses (integrated camera, microphone, speakers, and AI), to smart AR glasses with an overlay display, to a full smart VR headset.

Synthetic’s Take: Smartglasses will be the next device category, and it will be a three-way battle between Google, Apple, and Meta to win the market. Currently, Google looks to be way out in front.

And that’s just the highlights! Google created a helpful list of the 100 things they announced at Google I/O.

Quick Hits

Video: Inside OpenAI’s Stargate Megafactory

Bloomberg’s Emily Chang visits the Stargate site in Texas and speaks with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son about why they are building one of the world’s largest data centers. This is an excellent, inside look at the huge effort to build AI capabilities at scale. (42m)

In related news, CNN reports that NVIDIA, Cisco, Oracle, and OpenAI will collaborate to build Stargate infrastructure in the UAE, starting with a 200-megawatt AI cluster that is expected to go live next year.

AI Tech and Innovation šŸ’”

The frontier AI research labs are all racing to build AGI first and leapfrogging each other on the way. The latest to take the lead is Claude 4 Opus from Anthropic.

The game of AI model leapfrog continues as the frontier labs continue to outdo each other, sometimes grabbing the title for most intelligent model (as determined by suites of benchmarks) for only a few weeks or days before another usurps them. Anthropic’s new reasoning models, Claude 4 Opus and Claude 4 Sonnet, have improved accuracy, performance, and new capabilities, and seem to be more intelligent and better at writing code than other models. The models support MCP, a Files API, and the ability to cache prompts for up to one hour. Anthropic, known for its focus on AI safety, was so impressed by the intelligence level of Claude 4 Opus that it invoked a new level of safety testing, AI Safety Level 3, concerned that hackers might jailbreak the model and use it to create chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) weapons. During testing of Claude 4, Anthropic discovered that the AI was willing to use blackmail when threatened with being shut down. It went through a (fake, test) email account, found emails implying the person was having an affair, and threatened to expose them.

AI agents are poised to transform work forever, as they work alongside humans to enhance our performance and automate tasks we prefer not to do. One of the first places agents are showing up is with coding agents, intelligent software that helps programmers generate, debug, and answer questions about their code. While tools like OpenAI’s Codex and Google’s Jules can’t code an entire app from scratch yet, they save developers a lot of time when working on previously written code. Early reviews have been very positive.

ā

ā€œThe arrival of this intelligence, both at the AI level, AGI, which is general intelligence, and then super intelligence, is the most important thing that’s going to happen in about 500 years, maybe 1000 years in human society, and it’s happening in our lifetime. So don’t screw it up!ā€

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt speaking at TED 2025 about the need to get AI right.

Storied AI researcher Ilya Sutskever was the lead research scientist at OpenAI before he quit over concerns that the company wasn’t putting enough focus on ensuring AI was safe for humanity. Sutskever now leads Safe Superintelligence Inc., a company dedicated to building safe artificial superintelligence. This article recounts the story of internal battles at OpenAI, concerns about CEO Sam Altman’s disregard for safety protocols, and his tendency to prioritize speed over safety.

Synthetic’s Take: We believe that future powerful AI installations may indeed be built inside underground bunkers, primarily to protect them from a first strike by a foreign power concerned that achieving AGI (artificial general intelligence) will give their opponent a huge, unassailable, and unacceptable advantage. The geopolitical concern is that the first country to achieve AGI will benefit from accelerated innovation, superior weapons, enhanced intelligence, and rapid economic growth, and thereby become a threat to others. Not a pretty picture.

AI Insights šŸ”®

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has offered a stark warning that those who fail to embrace AI, from artists to doctors, will be left behind. He warned that the pace of change could catch many off guard and told an audience at TED 2025, ā€œeach and every one of you has a reason to use this technology.ā€

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has a blunt warning about the future of work. Axios reports that Amodei warns AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next 1-5 years, spiking unemployment to 10-20%. Amodei believes AI companies and governments should stop ā€œsugarcoatingā€ the potential mass elimination of jobs in technology, finance, law, and consulting. In related news, Fortune reports that AI is ā€˜breaking’ entry-level jobs Gen Z workers need to launch their careers, removing the bottom link on the career ladder.

The debate over whether AI will expand the economy and create jobs or lead to widespread job destruction continues….

ā

ā€œThe world has a shortage of labor. We have a shortage of workers. By 2030…about a 30 to 50 million shortage. It’s actually limiting the world’s ability to grow. And so now we have these digital agents that can work with us. 100% of Nvidia software engineers now have digital agents working with them, so they can assist them in writing better code, and more productively.ā€

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, Speaking at Computex Taiwan 2025

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