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Good morning, {{ first_name | AI enthusiasts }}. The “Year of AI Agents” prophecy came true, in certain respects — agents are everywhere, in every product, pitched by every company. But according to Andrej Karpathy, they don’t actually work.
The respected researcher just delivered a reality check, calling current agent output “slop” and saying the tech needs another decade to deliver on its hype-filled promises.
In today’s AI rundown:
Karpathy gives reality check on AI agents
Gemini gains live map grounding capabilities
Reverse-engineer winning ads to create high-quality AI videos
Anthropic co-founder: AI is a ‘real and mysterious creature’
4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
OPENAI
🛑 Karpathy gives reality check on AI agents
Image source: The Dwarkesh Podcast
The Rundown: Former OpenAI and Tesla researcher Andrej Karpathy threw cold water on the AI agent hype during an interview with Dwarkesh Patel, projecting a decade-long timeline before autonomous AI systems can deliver on current promises.
The details:
Karpathy believes industry messaging is overselling current agentic coding capabilities that output “slop,” saying the models “aren’t there yet.”
He said that agents “just don't work” due to fundamental gaps like insufficient intelligence, multimodal limitations, and lack of continual learning.
Karpathy also called reinforcement learning “terrible” and “noise,” but it looks good because “everything we had before it is much worse.”
Elon Musk challenged Karpathy on X to compete against Grok 5, though Karpathy said he’d rather collaborate with the model than compete against it.
Why it matters: As one of the most respected researchers in AI, Karpathy’s words hold significant weight — and provide a major technical reality check to the “Year of the AI Agent” hype. But despite the harsh critiques, it’s also possible that systems that fail to impress a top mind are still massively productive for the other 99% of users.
TOGETHER WITH SAMSARA
🚚 How AI could’ve saved the tequila
The Rundown: When 24,000 bottles of Guy Fieri’s tequila vanished on a highway, it proved one thing: visibility saves value. Samsara’s Complete AI Safety Solution uses AI dash cams, in-cab alerts, and coaching to detect risky or unauthorized activity before losses happen.
AI helps fleets:
Detect unsafe or off-route behavior
Prevent theft and crashes in real time
Protect drivers, assets, and cargo
Access the report and see how AI prevents risk before it happens.
📍Gemini gains live map grounding capabilities
Image source: Google Maps
The Rundown: Google just plugged Gemini into Maps, giving its AI direct access to real-world location data and letting developers tap the company's massive geographic intelligence trove.
The details:
The capability pulls from Google’s 250M venues worldwide, feeding Gemini current business hours, customer ratings, and venue specifics via API calls.
Developers can display interactive map widgets within their applications, preserving the Google Maps interface alongside AI-generated responses.
The system automatically IDs when geographic context enhances a query, retrieving relevant metadata without requiring triggers from users.
Pricing starts at $25 per thousand location-enhanced prompts, positioning the feature as a premium offering for enterprise apps.
Why it matters: This integration hands Google a competitive moat not easily replicable by rivals — the infusion of its already widely used mapping infrastructure into its advanced AI models. While the steep pricing may lend itself to more enterprise-focused needs, the combo opens a new level of location-aware AI-powered apps.
AI TRAINING
🚀 Reverse-engineer winning ads to create high-quality AI videos
The Rundown: Create professional marketing videos with Sora 2 by analyzing successful UGC ads, converting them to JSON formats, and generating polished AI videos that match proven patterns.
Step-by-step:
Search TikTok/Instagram for winning UGC ads in your niche, download videos with strong hooks and clear product demos you want to emulate
Upload to Google AI Studio with Gemini 2.5 Pro and prompt: “Analyze this video shot by shot. Return strict JSON with: scene, description, camera_angles, transitions, voice transcript, on-screen text. Constrain to 15 seconds”
Paste JSON in ChatGPT to adapt: “Take this JSON and adapt to [your niche/product]. Keep camera angles and pacing. Replace script with [your messaging]. Output Sora-compatible JSON”
Paste final JSON into Sora, generate, and review for script completion, logo fidelity, readable text, and clean transitions
Clean up with free tools: remove watermark, enhance speech with Adobe Podcast, upscale via Replicate, and strip AI metadata using video remixer
Pro Tip: Regardless if you’re on the free or paid plan for Sora, I’d recommend cleaning up your video in order to stand out on the “For You page,” as our feeds are dominated by AI video slop that can easily be identified as AI and not marketing-grade content.
PRESENTED BY IBM
🌐 Redefining Network Intelligence with AI
The Rundown: IBM Network Intelligence introduces a new human-AI model that blends analytical AI with “reasoning” AI — a dual approach developed to help enterprises filter noise, identify issues, and scale operations seamlessly.
With IBM Network Intelligence, you’ll experience:
Fast, accurate insights
AI that scales while humans guide strategy
Less tool bloat, more efficiency
AI RESEARCH
✍️ Anthropic co-founder: AI is a ‘real and mysterious creature’
Image source: Reve / The Rundown
The Rundown: Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark published a new essay titled “Technological Optimism and Appropriate Fear,” describing modern AI systems as mysterious entities exhibiting unexpected self-awareness rather than predictable tools.
The details:
Clark cautioned against considering AI just a tool, saying “what we are dealing with is a real and mysterious creature, not a simple and predictable machine.”
He said the recently launched Sonnet 4.5’s situational awareness has grown, and now “acts as though it is aware it is a tool.”
Despite calling himself a “technology optimist,” Clark said he's “deeply afraid” — especially of AI models helping design their own successors.
Clark believes AI firms need to “do a better job of listening” to concerns from the public and expand the conversation beyond tech elites.
Why it matters: Anthropic has been one of the few frontier labs truly considering the idea of AI as a “being” instead of simply a machine, and its co-founder’s latest words only reaffirm that — though hearing words like “deeply afraid” and “mysterious creatures” from a frontier leader likely won’t help reassure AI safety advocates.
QUICK HITS
📰 Everything else in AI today
Uber is launching “digital tasks” in its driver app, letting U.S. drivers earn extra cash by completing simple AI training work like uploading menus or recording audio samples.
Elon Musk revealed that he estimates the probability of xAI’s upcoming Grok 5 model achieving AGI is “10% and rising.”
OpenAI announced the pause of video generations featuring Martin Luther King Jr. on Sora following a request from the King estate.
Anthrogen unveiled Odyssey, a 102B parameter protein language model that uses a new “Consensus” architecture to design and optimize proteins more efficiently than traditional approaches.
Meta announced new parental controls coming in 2026 that will let parents block teens' chats with AI characters on Instagram and monitor conversation topics.
COMMUNITY
🤝 Community AI workflows
Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.
Today’s workflow comes from reader Barry in Australia:
“I’m a performance marketing manager for a global brand, and started using a new workflow for reporting. I use Gemini/ChatGPT/Claude with a fixed prompt with my specific needs and also provided my past framework on insights. I provide 3 different Google analytics screenshots along with some Google ads data and run the prompt. I then use that insights and paste it in a Notion database with the week. On a quarterly basis I ask Notion AI to find trends and insights based on my weekly insights. I've been able to find so many helpful and informative insights with this workflow, both on a weekly and quarterly basis.”
How do you use AI? Tell us here.
🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events
Read our last AI newsletter: Claude gains new Skills
Read our last Tech newsletter: Apple may finally embrace touch
Read our last Robotics newsletter: Waymo robotaxis head to London
Today’s AI tool guide: Reverse-engineer winning ads to create AI videos
RSVP to our next workshop @ 4PM EST Friday: Context Engineering
See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown
