Michael Chui

RIP James Goodall

Top A.I. Researchers Leave OpenAI, Google and Meta for New Start-Up Founded by a co-creator of ChatGPT, Periodic Labs aims to build artificial intelligence that can accelerate discoveries in physics, chemistry and other fields.

Periodic Labs, a start-up in San Francisco, aims to build A.I. that can accelerate discoveries in physics, chemistry and other fields. More than 20 researchers have left their work at Meta, OpenAI, Google DeepMind and other big projects in recent weeks to join the start-up.

Waymo driverless car stopped by Bay Area police during DUI operation Police in one Bay Area city expected to spend Friday night looking for impaired drivers. Instead, they found themselves pulling over a car with no driver at all.

www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

Deploying agentic AI successfully isn’t easy. Here’s what we’re learning about how to get it right. Crucially, agents aren’t always the answer. www.mckinsey.com/capabilities...

Two Valuable Satellites Are in ‘Perfect Health.’ They May Be Scrapped.

‘It’s like buying a car “and then running it into a tree after a few years, just to save the price of tank of gas,”’ via @sachimulkey.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/c...

Data Centers That Don’t Exist Yet Are Already Haunting the Grid Utilities see a massive opportunity in artificial intelligence but realize that many proposed data-center projects will never be built.

AEP and Sempra received requests to connect projects, many of them data centers, requiring almost 400 GW, more than half the peak demand in Lower 48 states on two hot days in July (potential projects being double counted by different utilities) via @jenhiller.bsky.social www.wsj.com/business/ene...

It’s a tough time to be a young person looking for a job—unless you’re in artificial intelligence www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-j...

Will embodied AI create robotic coworkers? A pragmatic look at what general-purpose robots can—and can’t yet—do in the workplace.

A pragmatic look at what general-purpose robots can—and can’t yet—do in the workplace
www.mckinsey.com/industries/i...

Drowning prevention program comes to a halt at the CDC A few years in, a CDC drowning prevention program was ready to share its findings on how to mitigate the leading cause of death among young children. Then the administration terminated that staff.

Drowning is largely preventable and costs the U.S. economy over $50 billion a year. www.npr.org/sections/sho...

There Is Now Clearer Evidence AI Is Wrecking Young Americans’ Job Prospects Young workers face rising AI competition in fields like software development, but some also benefit from AI as a helper, new research shows.

Via @erikbryn.bsky.social @jdlahart.bsky.social www.wsj.com/economy/jobs...

AI’s Big Leaps Are Slowing. That Could Be a Good Thing. Large language models’ pace of improvement has moderated, but investors shouldn’t panic.

The work of adapting large-language models to be useful for everyday tasks remains in its infancy. "you have to change a lot more than just, ‘Here’s a tool that a few of your workers can use,... All of that change is really hard.” www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ais-...

A Better Way to Think About AI AI can be used to automate tasks—and entire jobs. But it could also be designed to collaborate with humans. David Autor and James Manyika on why we should focus on the latter:

"Automation and collaboration are not opposites, and are frequently packaged together." Via @davidautor.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

How College Financial Troubles Could Reshape the Student Experience

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/u...

How China Went From Clean Energy Copycat to Global Innovator A surge in high quality research and patent applications has cemented China’s dominance in the industry.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/... (Via @rjnskl.bsky.social)

Which Economic Tasks are Performed with AI? Evidence from Millions of Claude Conversations Despite widespread speculation about artificial intelligence's impact on the future of work, we lack systematic empirical evidence about how these systems are actually being used for different tasks. ...

arxiv.org/abs/2503.04761

Working with AI: Measuring the Occupational Implications of Generative AI Given the rapid adoption of generative AI and its potential to impact a wide range of tasks, understanding the effects of AI on the economy is one of society's most important questions. In this work, ...

arxiv.org/abs/2507.07935

Measles cases surge to record high since disease was declared eliminated in the US | CNN There have been more measles cases in the US this year than any other since the disease was declared eliminated a quarter-century ago.

If cases continue to accumulate through January of next year, the US could lose its measles elimination status.

www.cnn.com/2025/07/05/h...

Exclusive | Amazon Is on the Cusp of Using More Robots Than Humans in Its Warehouses The number of robots in Amazon facilities just surpassed one million, the most the e-commerce giant has ever had.

Most of these are not humanoid www.wsj.com/tech/amazon-...

Lab-grown seafood is hitting restaurant menus. Would you eat it? Wildtype’s cell-cultivated salmon is the first seafood to earn FDA approval, marking a significant milestone for the alternative protein industry.

A salmon made from from cells grown in tanks became the first cell-cultured seafood to receive safety approval from the FDA.

Kann, a Haitian restaurant in Portland, is the first restaurant to offer it to diners.

The next innovation revolution—powered by AI R&D has been getting more difficult and more expensive. We look at how AI can accelerate the process and usher in a new era of growth across industries.

AI isn’t just for efficiency anymore. It can accelerate innovation and double the pace of R&D to unlock up to half a trillion dollars in value annually www.mckinsey.com/capabilities...

Trump Has Cut Science Funding to Its Lowest Level in Decades The lag in funding extends far beyond D.E.I. initiatives, affecting almost every area of science: chemistry, computing, engineering, materials and more.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

OPT is the program that allows foreign students graduating with STEM degrees stay and work for up to three years. Because of the oversubscribed H-1B lottery, OPT is one of the main ways that foreign students manage to transition to jobs in the US.

Ending it would destroy a major STEM pipeline.

Walmart Is Preparing to Welcome Its Next Customer: The AI Shopping Agent As consumers begin to use AI agents to do their shopping, retailers are trying to figure out how to market to bots in addition to humans.

Advertising to AI www.wsj.com/articles/wal...

Ed Smylie, Who Saved the Apollo 13 Crew With Duct Tape, Dies at 95

Square peg in a round hole www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/s...

Your A.I. Radiologist Will Not Be With You Soon

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/t...

Why Moderna Merged Its Tech and HR Departments The vaccine maker, which has partnered with OpenAI since 2023, is rethinking how it does workforce planning thanks to the growing capabilities of AI and other tech.

www.wsj.com/articles/why...

“I’m not screaming, ‘aliens!’ But I always reserve my right to scream ‘aliens!’”

1. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal but
2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but
3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So
4. Now the LLM code points to malware.

YouTube video by Accountable AI Medha Bankhwal and Michael Chui: Implementing AI Trust

Via @kwerb.com youtu.be/ZsIkVnrtQcU?...

Normally, U.S. Treasuries rally (interest rates go down) in a market downturn, because they are seen as a safe harbor. The fact that this isn’t happening is a serious red flag.