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What Happens When AI Replaces Workers? š¤š
Plus, Kickboxing Robots, the Pope on AI, and AGI in 4 Years? š§

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This Week in AI š§

Pope Leo XIV will focus his attention on ensuring AI is safe and positive for humanity
Pope Leo XIV has made curtailing the risks of runaway AI a defining mission of his pontificate. He is positioning himself as a guardian of the social fabric in the face of unchecked modern technologies, echoing the stance of his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who promoted workersā rights during the Industrial Revolution. The Vatican, under Leoās predecessor, has been actively involved in AI ethics, advocating for the development of accountable and socially beneficial AI.
Mary Meeker is a legend in the tech world. She has sometimes been dubbed the āQueen of the Internet.ā Her annual presentations on the state of the internet and tech industry were always devoured by the tech crowd the moment they were released. Sheās now shining her insightful light on AI, and the new report is well worth your time to look through. Itās filled with charts, graphs, and thoughtful insights into the current state of the AI industry and where AI is heading next.
Writing in the opinion section of The New York Times, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has emphasized the need for transparency and regulation to ensure that AI companies properly test their new models for safety. Amodei highlights the potential risks of AI and advocates for a federal transparency standard requiring companies to disclose their testing and evaluation policies. Amodei believes this standard will encourage industry learning, help Congress understand AI development, and ensure responsible AI practices.
Quick Hits
New AI Test Can Predict Which Men Will Benefit From Prostate Cancer Drug - The AI tool determines the best candidates for abiraterone, which can halve the risk of death from the disease. š
Amazon Testing Humanoid Robots to Deliver Packages - The retail giant is reportedly building a āhumanoid parkā to test the robots. š¦
Meta Aims to Fully Automate Advertising with AI by 2026 - According to The Wall Street Journal, Meta plans to enable brands to create and target ads using AI. šÆ
Investor Laurene Powell Jobs Has Seen Jony Iveās Mystery AI Device - The billionaire tech investor and widow of Steve Jobs is a major investor in Jony Iveās LoveFrom design firm. She appears to be impressed with what sheās seen. Synthetic first reported on the new OpenAI/Jony Ive AI device in last weekās issue. š«
ChatGPT Introduces Cloud Connectors for Business Users - New integrations for Google Drive, OneDrive, SharePoint, Dropbox, Box, and others make ChatGPT much more useful by connecting your data and making it searchable and accessible. ChatGPT now supports MCP, the de facto standard for connecting data resources and tools. š
New York Times Inks Deal with Amazon to License Content - In its first deal, the New York Times has licensed its intellectual property to Amazon, including the content of its newspaper, NYT Cooking, The Athletic, and more. The Times is still in litigation with other tech companies, including OpenAI and Microsoft. š°
Perplexityās New Tool Can Generate Spreadsheets, Dashboards, and More - Perplexity Labs is a research and analysis tool that generates detailed reports for you, complete with visualizations. š
Microsoft Plans to Use AI to Accelerate Scientific Discovery - The software giant has created a new agentic AI platform named Microsoft Discovery, designed to transform the scientific process. It seems similar to Googleās Co-Scientist platform.
Driveless Trucks Are Now Hauling Freight in Texas - Aurora Innovation has launched commercial runs between Dallas and Houston. š
Video: Echo Hunter (AI-generated short film)
Want to see how good AI-generated video is now? Look no further than this fully AI-generated short film. The near-future sci-fi short is named āEcho Hunter,ā and the images produced using tools from Arcana Labs are impressive. (22 mins)
Syntheticās Take: Remember, AI is the worst itās ever going to be. Itās only going to get more capable from here on out. I canāt wait to watch the AI-generated sequel Iāve been waiting for now for 40 yearsā¦Ferris Buellerās Day Off 2! š Itās only a matter of time.
AI Tech and Innovation š”
In case you missed it, China recently hosted an unusual kickboxing tournament, one for robots. Unitree provided six of their G1 EDU robots for the tournament, which were controlled remotely by humans. The robots were pre-trained for combat, where they learned various techniques, including punches, hooks, jabs, kicks, and more. Check out the article to see the robots in action!
Groq is a lesser-known but important tech company. They build chips to accelerate AI inference, the computing needed to use large language models like ChatGPT and Claude. Nvidiaās chips are used to train these models, and also for inference. Groq refers to their chips as LPUs (Language Processing Units). Groq founder and CEO Jonathan Ross believes the next frontier for AI will be models that can not only retrieve and present existing information but also develop novel theories and approaches of their own: AIs that can invent.
In related news, Sam Altman has recently made similar comments, expecting AI will soon be able to ādiscover new knowledgeā and solve business problems.
AI Insights š®

Spike Jonzeās prescient sci-fi movie āHerā showed us what AI relationships might be like in the future. If youāve never seen it, itās a must-watch movie on AI.
AI Investor and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman is sounding the alarm about AI systems marketed as digital friends or romantic partners. āI donāt think any AI tool today is capable of being a friendā¦and I think if itās pretending to be a friend, youāre actually harming the person in so doing,ā said Hoffman. His remarks stand in stark contrast to those of Mark Zuckerberg, who views chatbots as a potential cure for the loneliness epidemic and has plans to promote AIs as digital friends.
Speaking at SXSW London, Sir Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, said he expects AI to be a bigger transformation for humanity than the Industrial Revolution. Hassabis is a deep thinker on the implications of AI for humanity. He said, āI think new jobs will appear, new very valuable jobs,ā and recommended that students today study STEM subjects.
In related news, billionaire Mark Cuban believes that AI will create new roles, rather than eliminate jobs, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has pushed back on concerns that AI will make up to half of Googleās engineers redundant, citing expansion plans.
Now, for the counterargumentā¦.
Last week, Synthetic reported that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years. The shift to AGI could lead to widespread technological unemployment, posing a challenge to the traditional work-based economy. While Universal Basic Income (UBI) is often proposed as a solution, Time Magazine argues that UBI may not provide people with sufficient bargaining power or societal influence, and that business leaders should focus on using AI to augment work rather than automate it.
No business has become the jewel of its industry by just cost-cutting
In related news, Business Insider has gone āall-in on AIā and laid off 21% of its staff. AI is already erasing some entry-level coding jobs. CNBCās Jim Cramer says AI might be āthe most important forceā when it comes to the future of employment. Axiosās CEO recently warned that AI will āreorder societyā and told people, āWhat weāre saying is: just pay attention.ā
Speaking at The Wall Street Journalās "The Future of Everythingā Conference in New York City, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap said that AGI (human-level intelligence) will be reached within the next few years. āI think it is possible that in the next four years, we do approximate something like [AGI], and itās a testament to how fast things are moving,ā he said.
Syntheticās Take: This is the central issue of our time that nobody is talking about. Or if theyāre talking about it, theyāre not talking about it enough. Whether AGI (human-level intelligence) arrives next year or two decades from now, its impact on employment will be profound. Some jobs will remain, no doubt about that, but there wonāt be enough to go around. We need to start having serious conversations about what a post-AGI economy looks like, how it will work, and how we can make life amazing and full of purpose for everyone in a world without work.
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