2025-11-05 AI’s energy appetite is blowing up the grid. Utility giants are spending record sums in Washington as data centers drive up demand, bills climb 10%, lobbying surges, and the politics of power turn literal. via Quartz [3].
Hank Green has a message for Georgia about why our electric bills are so high. This short (10 minutes) video explains why your electric bill is so high, and why it's so important to vote in the current PSC election. Here's some reddits around it [4][5]. Voted yesterday against the incumbent republicans. Let's see if that does anything.
2025-10-30 "Translation: AI enhanced creativity only for people who already knew how to think critically about their own thinking. AI is a tool for people who already know how to think. It’s a crutch for people who don’t." [6]
2025-10-17 Though OpenAI’s valuation has soared to $500 billion, making it the world’s most valuable private company and putting it far ahead of Anthropic’s $183 billionfigure, the two are closer on revenue than you might expect, with OpenAI’s annual revenue run rate reportedly hitting the $12 billion mark in late July and Anthropic getting to $7 billion this month. [7][8]
2025-10-14 "We also asked whether, for some of the more fact-based or list-driven AI shows, they would rather listen or simply read the same information. The answer was nearly unanimous. They would rather read it. Without the warmth, pacing, or personality that make podcasts engaging, a few students said it felt like having a Wikipedia page read aloud." --What Happens When College Students Critique AI-Generated Podcasts | Amplifi Media/Thought Letter <sjgoldstein@amplifimedia.com> [11]
2025-10-07 AI startups gobble up VC dollars. Last week, ChatGPT's parent company, OpenAI, hit a $500 billion company valuation.[12]
Nuriddeen Knight: Salaams! InshaAllah I hope I have time to write about this or at least talk about it in podcast form. Two quick points: -It amazes me how quickly ai chatbots have become a part of our lives. We’ve adopted this technology overnight* and seem to only be growing in our uses for it and dependence on it. -This article in particular reminds me of an idea I had long ago. Perhaps it’ll sound simple but simply put; we need more teachers -not scholars, not public speakers, but teachers. People who are accessible to inquiries on religious matters on a whim. People are desperate for that kind of connection and access to knowledge but it remains rare and in its absence we increasingly turn to the internet —before it was “sheikh google” now it’s “sheikh ai”. I’m sure there are positives but it’s hard not to see how dangerous this will increasingly become. Article below if you want to take a read ⬇️ *Not really ‘overnight’ but that’s a topic for another day. [13]
ChatGPT – used by 700 million people weekly by the end of July [14]
Writing includes the automated production of emails, documents and other communications, but also editing, critiquing, summarizing, and translating text provided by the user. Writing is the most common use case at work, accounting for 40% of work-related messages on average in June 2025. About two-thirds of all Writing messages ask ChatGPT to modify user text (editing, critiquing, translating, etc.) rather than creating new text from scratch. About 10% of all messages are requests for tutoring or teaching, suggesting that education is a key use case for ChatGPT. [15]
OpenAI’s co-founder, Greg Brockman, and Codex engineering lead Thibault Sottiaux discussed its importance in Monday’s episode of “The OpenAI Podcast.” In their discussion on what happens when AI becomes a true coding collaborator, as they discussed the new GPT-5 Codex agents, Brockman emphasized the importance of humans "in the driver’s seat,” alongside Codex. [16]
Are LLM-based agents like ChatGPT considered intelligent agents in AI? In 2024, chat agents like ChatGPT, DALL-E, Google Bard, etc., do not have the agency to make plans and take action. In that sense they are not examples of agentic AI. Instead, they run on the current generation of LLMs and respond to user “prompts” by predicting the most common combination of words that would follow. AI agents, in contrast, will have agency to define and accomplish tasks. [17]
Accelerated Intelligence > Artificial Intelligence? “Artificial” often has a negative connotation “Accelerating” our intelligence is a better-sounding goal. Accelerated Intelligence enables businesses with AI, but the ultimate goal is increasing human potential with AI, especially regarding personal development. People often aren’t vulnerable enough to talk to a human therapist. AI can analyze your patterns and personality traits through the information you give it Prompt: “Based on everything you know about me, describe me in one word…” Hmm, let me try...
“AI Psychosis” is basically a feedback loop where LLMs continuously... [20]
As AIPodcasts Emerge, Advertisers Need Disclosure Now [21] In the wake of the recent Hollywood Reporter article about Inception Point AI’s venture to produce AI-generated podcast content, podcast agency Adopter Media has called for creators and publishers to disclose when the majority of a podcast has been AI-generated, in the same way that they have to tick a box for explicit content. The key issue, according to the article, is transparency. Without proper disclosure and controls, the author argues, AI-generated content risks damaging the credibility of the entire podcast advertising ecosystem. One thing is for sure, the platforms themselves are keenly aware of these issues: Spotify has been booting AI-generated music from its platform for years, and YouTube already has a checkbox for this kind of disclosure.
1:05:53Reddit's Power Play with Google - The Verge's Vergecast podcast. “Reddit Inc. is in early talks to strike its next content-sharing agreement with Alphabet Inc.’s Google, aiming to extract more value from future deals now that its data plays a prominent role in search results and generative AI training. Reddit, more than a year and a half after its first data-sharing deal with Google for a reported $60 million, is in talks for deeper integration with Google’s AI products, according to executives familiar with the discussions. It’s proposing a new kind of partnership that would encourage users to become active contributors to Reddit’s popular online forums, so Google traffic could help the company grow and generate content for future training. Reddit also plans to discuss with Google and OpenAI, which has a similar agreement, a future deal structure that could allow for dynamicpricing, where the social platform can be paid more as it becomes more vital to AI answers, said the executives, who asked not to be named discussing private conversations”
ChatGPTAIusageCasio is about to start selling a furry AI-powered pet robot in the US, as it bets on loneliness The watchmaker behind G-Shock is betting on the growing loneliness epidemic to save its struggling business. --Claire Yubin Oh [23]
Despite tragic news of AI partners continuing to make the headlines, some lonely people are choosing to turn to chatbots for social connections. According to a new working paper shared by OpenAI earlier this week titled, “How people use ChatGPT,” 5.3% of more than a million sampled conversations were for self-expression, conversation, relationships, or roleplay.
There’s no question that there is some demand for AI-powered companionship — any doubts about that can be allayed with just a few minutes on Reddit’s r/MyBoyfriendIsAI, where over29,000 people discuss their AI partners. --Wonder if the author Claire got that 29k number before Reddit nixed the displaying of it, even on https://old.reddit.com/r/MyBoyfriendIsAI/. Just for fun I joined https://old.reddit.com/r/MyGirlfriendIsAI/. Also saw a related substack article titled "Is it cheating if your illicit affair is with AI?"
It's possible that AI's a bubble but: That isn’t stopping Zuckerberg’s social media company from going all in on AI in hopes of achieving superintelligence, aka AI that’s smarter than humans. I saw Meta's new AI lab I saw Meta's new AI lab “If we end up misspending a couple of hundred billion dollars, I think that that is going to be very unfortunate, obviously,” said Zuckerberg, who’s shelling out $600 billion on US data centers and infrastructure through 2028. “But what I’d say is I actually think the risk is higher on the other side.” “The risk, at least for a company like Meta, is probably in not being aggressive enough rather than being somewhat too aggressive,” he added. [24]
Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok has 64 millionmonthly users, while OpenAI’s ChatGPT pulls in 700 million a week, according to The New York Times. [25]
Amplifi Media (listen via gDoc) founder Steven Goldstein has a new blog about generative AI podcasts and the analysis paralysis having many near-identical choices might cause for the average listener whose feeds are clogged with iterative podcasts. [35]
Inception Point AI announced it would launch (or maybe flood?) the podcast world with 3,000 new AI-generatedepisodes a week, at a cost of about $1 per show. The network is led by Wondery’s COO Jeanine Wright who retorts on LinkedIn with: "We’re starting with the most popular topic: the perspective that what we’re making is “AI slop” and bringing about the “AI slopocalypse” (love this neologism, BTW @AgustinLeBron3 on X). Spoiler alert: we’re not backing down."
I'm thrilled to emerge from stealth and share the public debut of Inception Point AI, the company I joined as Co-Founder and CEO this summer. We believe that in the near future half of the people on the planet will be AI. We’re bringing those people to life, and we’re building the next-generation content business model, all powered by AI. In the process, we've built what we believe to be the first all AI talent management agency - with an extensive roster of richly-crafted, AI-generated personalities - and the world's largest independent podcast network, Quiet.Please. A beautiful blend of media and tech. Many thanks to The Hollywood Reporter for the exclusive on our launch.[36]
2025-09-15 Love YouTube's Ask feature, didn't know YT Studio also has it now! Asked it where I stand before HausaFilmsTV can get re monetized again. Apparently I'm currently ready to re-apply!
2025-09-15 | Lost in translation - How Africa is trying to close the AI language gap 3 September 2025 - Pumza Fihlani BBC News in Johannesburg (video)
ChatGPT – which has 800 million weekly active users worldwide – recognises only 10 to 20 per cent of sentences written in Hausa, which is spoken by over 94 million Nigerians.
The African Next Voices project, funded by a $2.2 million grant from the Gates Foundation, represents the largest AI-ready language data creation initiative for multiple African languages to date.
From SEO to GEO: The AI Search RevolutionChatGPT, Claude, and similar tools offer more personalized and often superior search experiences while handling countless other tasks. They've completely replaced Google for certain informational searches in my workflow. https://www.norberthires.blog/why-im-not-ready-to-optimize-for-ai-yet/[38][39]
Google's Gemini app is the #1 app in the US App Store, driven by its Nano Banana model, which has been used to edit 500M+ images since its August 26 launch https://www.techmeme.com/250914/p11#a250914p11
https://x.com/JonathanShedler/status/1966937502096466176 There is no such thing as “AI therapy.” Once we adopt that term, all is lost: we have already legitimized it as “therapy,” even if we then critique it. “The power to define the situation is the ultimate power.” —Jerry Rubin Quote Jonathan Shedler @JonathanShedler · 22h If you find it easier to talk to AI than a real person, right there is why you need real psychotherapy—not AI pretend “therapy” Unless your goal is to train yourself to be more dysfunctional. In which case, carry on.
2025-09-12 Google was more humble when they cautioned users of its new Google Meet AI translation feature that “the model translates most expressions literally, which can lead to amusing misunderstandings.” But sure, let’s launch it. Funny. And the proofreader in me really wants to correct that typo in the post’s URL. Sorry, déformation professionnelle. https://blog.google/products/workspace/google-meet-langauge-translation-ai/
HausaDictionary.com Nano Banana.png 1,024 × 1,024; 1.62 MB