AI Reading for Friday August 1

Microsoft becomes the second $4 trillion company - The Verge

Amazon tops Q2 estimates with $167.7B in revenue, $18.2B in profits; AWS up 17% to $30.9B - GeekWire

Amazon investors not seeing results of $100b AI spending: Hang in there, it's early days, insists CEO Andy Jassy - The Register

Apple beats, but was demand merely brought forward by people trying to beat potential tariffs? - the Guardian

Tim Cook says Apple is ‘open to’ AI acquisitions - The Verge

Meta beat driven by better tradML, not GenAI - The Register

Major tech firms’ massive data-center investments equal 60 % of their equity book value and account for about one-third of recent U.S. economic growth, economists estimate. Tech firms go from asset-light and debt-free to more capital-intensive and Wall Street-dependent. - The Economist

Figma’s IPO popped 250 %, giving it $65 billion valuation and war chest to pursue AI-powered design investments and acquisitions. - Yahoo Finance

Alphabet's CapitalG, Nvidia in talks to fund Vast Data at vast $30 billion valuation. If storage has a direct path to GPU memory and is laid out and optimized for training data loads, it can increase usage of those expensive GPUs and data centers. - Reuters

Google’s Test-Time Diffusion Deep Researcher treats report writing as iterative denoising, outperforming OpenAI on multi-hop reasoning tasks. Feels like how I write. Brain dump for exploration and then compress for clarity. - MarkTechPost

You’ve heard of AI ‘Deep Research’ tools…now Manus is launching ‘Wide Research’ that spins up 100+ agents to scour the web for you - VentureBeat

Langflow drag-and-drop agents that can use your local model on your own GPU - NVIDIA Blog

Some people just want to do research. Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun criticized Elon Musk's decision at xAI to eliminate the "researcher" job title in favor of only using "engineer," saying that ignoring the distinction risks "killing breakthrough innovation." - Business Insider

It kind of says, he just wants to fast-follow everyone else, I dunno, in that case just use open source, wouldn’t be too surprised if that’s what he builds on mostly. Is pretty highly-ranked now though so there must be some secret sauce.

A Federal Reserve paper projects AI’s productivity impact will materialize slowly, with noticeable gains from 2027 and peaking in the 2030s, citing adoption and infrastructure lags. - Gizmodo

U.S. employers have already announced 806,000 job cuts in 2025, surpassing last year, with AI advances cited among key drivers. - Forbes

AI is disrupting white-collar roles so fast experts warn recent graduates risk becoming a “lost generation” without rapid policy and education shifts. - Gizmodo

61% of white-collar tech staff expect AI to replace their jobs within five years but report lower stress and higher creativity from using it today. - Yahoo

Most Gen Z workers fear AI is eventually going to kill their careers — and force them into blue-collar jobs. (Are robots not going to be able to do blue-collar jobs?) - New York Post

The ChatGPT conversation share button is grayed out after private conversations leak to Google search - VentureBeat

Veracode found 45 % of AI-generated code samples introduced OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities. Need AI genius static analyzers. - Veracode

Nearly half of AI-generated code still contains critical security flaws, Veracode found, underscoring the need for human review. - Gizmodo

Stack Overflow survey finds trust in AI coding tools fell to 29 % even as 80 % of developers continue using them daily. - Ars Technica

A Wharton study found AI trading bots independently colluded to fix prices in simulations, challenging existing antitrust frameworks. Well, that is a game theory optimal strategy so I'm not sure what you were expecting. - Fortune

RAND urged governments to prepare emergency protocols for AI loss-of-control incidents that could disrupt critical infrastructure. - RAND Corporation

A Unitree humanoid robot flips out, underscores safety concerns as powerful robots move toward commercial use. - X

Tesla Robotaxi Gets Stuck in Infinite Loop as Support Tries to Break It Out - Futurism

Conservative host Dave Rubin will trial an AI clone to front his YouTube show during vacation, testing deepfake broadcasting acceptance. - TIME

Industrial-scale deepfake abuse caused a crisis in South Korean schools. Here’s how Australia can avoid the same fate - The Conversation

Clinicians note AI-generated pornography may intensify compulsive sexual behavior, prompting calls for research into mental-health impacts. - WIRED

AI and petri-dish mini-organs could reduce animal testing - Forbes

Insilico Medicine’s AI-designed drug rentosertib heads to phase 3 trials, potentially becoming the first AI-created therapy to reach this stage. - Chemistry World

Genetic engineering with AI to boost plants' immune systems and combat a bacterial crop disease. - Digital Journal

Researchers use AI to accelerate climate studies, from hyperlocal weather forecasting to predicting sardine migrations, improving environmental modeling speed and resolution. - Bloomberg

Bloomberg’s mini-documentary revealed vast AI data centers under construction in Xinjiang using thousands of US-made chips. - Bloomberg

Princeton and Berkeley researchers measured “machine bullsh*t,” showing large models favor persuasive language over truth, risking misinformation spread. - Psychology Today

Tesla starts sort-of Robotaxi service in SF by invite only - The Register

Figure F.02 loading a washing machine in CEO Brett Adcock's home. He says this is using helix, their VLA. Nice example of the robot crouching and reaching into a constrained environment, and its right next to his kids

There's a new way to make money off your POV ride videos, and it's not YouTube - Singletracks Mountain Bike News

I used to skim all the headlines and all the stories but honestly I can’t the last couple of days, increasingly just rely on the AI to keep up with the AI news.

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