🗞️ THE WEEKEND RECAP

Top Stories You Might Have Missed

📈 ChatGPT App Tops $2B, Leaves Rivals in Dust: OpenAI’s mobile app has earned $2B since 2023, with $1.35B in 2025 alone. It outpaces Claude, Grok, and Copilot by 30x in spending. At $2.91 per install, it’s not just popular, it’s profitable.

🧸 AI-Powered Toys Target Kids: A startup is creating stuffed animals with built-in AI personalities that talk, learn, and adapt, raising excitement and parental privacy concerns alike.

🫶 AI Pioneers Say Empathy Is Our Last Defense: Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun argue that AIs need “maternal instincts” — empathy and submission — hardwired into their systems to stay aligned with humans. Without them, Hinton warns, “we’re going to be history.”

☢️ Anthropic Tightens AI Rules to Block WMD Help: Anthropic updated its usage policy to explicitly ban Claude from assisting in the development of chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons. The move comes amid rising concern over agentic AI’s potential for large-scale abuse.

🚶Claude Learns to Walk Away: Similarly, Anthropic says its AI can now proactively end harmful or abusive chats, aiming to make digital assistants safer and more human-like.

📉 Google’s AI Overviews Linked to Traffic Drop for Publishers: New data shows referral traffic from Google Search is down as much as 25% for some media brands since AI Overviews launched. Despite Google's denials, publishers say click-through rates are tanking fast.

💻 AI PCs Power Lenovo to Record Sales: Lenovo reported $18.8B in Q1 revenue, up 22% YoY, driven by booming demand for AI PCs and data center gear. Over 30% of shipped PCs had AI chips, securing Lenovo the top spot in the Windows AI PC market.

🤔 Global AI Sentiment Splits by Economy: A new 21-country survey shows emerging economies like India and Kenya are most optimistic about AI, while Western nations lean neutral or skeptical. In the U.S., 34% hold negative views — more than double India’s rate.

⚽ Premier League Taps AI to Deepen Fan Engagement: Partnering with Adobe, the Premier League now uses generative AI to personalize digital experiences, power fantasy football tools, and let fans create custom content. It’s AI as a creative teammate, not just a backend boost.

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🎓 EDUCATION

AI in Classrooms Is "Mid," Say Professors, Students Still Need Human Guidance

NYT writers Tressie McMillan Cottom and Jessica Grose argue that AI’s role in education is overblown, calling it “mid tech” — more average than revolutionary. They warn that tools like ChatGPT flatten the learning process, short-circuiting critical thinking and replacing discovery with regurgitation. Instead of supporting education, AI often shifts risk and responsibility onto students, who are pressured to adopt it without understanding its flaws. Meanwhile, teachers are stuck navigating its use without real guidance or oversight.

Still, many educators are adapting with creativity and care. Rather than banning AI outright, some humanities professors are redesigning their classes to emphasize community, conversation, and lived experience. From group discussions in public libraries to co-created classroom codes of conduct, these approaches center student agency and connection. In doing so, they highlight a core belief: real learning is social, emotional, and messy — everything AI isn’t. → Read the full article here.

👾 FORWARD FUTURE ORIGINAL

The Next Evolution in Software Development

At Microsoft Build 2025, an AI-powered Copilot agent automatically resolved a live production bug in under two minutes—entirely autonomously, with no human code input. This landmark demonstration marked the public debut of Agentic DevOps. The new term Agentic DevOps marks a significant evolution in software engineering, where AI agents actively collaborate with developers to manage the software development lifecycle (SDLC).

This approach builds on traditional DevOps by deploying autonomous AI agents that reason, plan, and execute tasks with human oversight. These agents extend beyond basic code suggestions, handling complex workflows like feature generation, testing, and incident resolution. → Read the full article here.

🔋 EFFICIENCY

Open-Source Costs More Compute Than You Think, Study Finds

A new report from Nous Research reveals a hidden cost of open-source AI: inefficiency. While open models may offer lower per-token pricing, they often consume far more tokens per task — sometimes up to 10x more — than closed systems like OpenAI’s or Anthropic’s. That means more compute, more energy, and ultimately, higher bills for enterprises banking on open AI to save costs. The inefficiency is especially glaring for basic knowledge tasks, where open models often overthink simple answers.

Closed models, by contrast, are being actively optimized for token efficiency — compressing their reasoning and cutting inference costs. The takeaway for AI buyers: don’t be fooled by the sticker price. In the race for enterprise adoption, compute-hungry models may lose out, not because they’re less smart, but because they’re less efficient. → Read the full article here.

📽️ VIDEO

AI News: Sam vs Elon, Claude 1m Context, Situational Awareness $1.5B

Elon Musk and Sam Altman feud over Apple App Store bias, Lindy launches 3.0, Anthropic expands Claude to 1M tokens, Perplexity adds video, and OpenAI wins gold at IOI.

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