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Lex Fridman Podcast full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHWnPOKh_S0
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*GUEST BIO:*
Marc Andreessen is an entrepreneur, investor, co-creator of Mosaic, co-founder of Netscape, and co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

*CONTACT LEX:*
*Feedback* — give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey.
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*EPISODE LINKS:*

#GigaBerlinArt #TechPainters #RoboticMuralist.
At Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg, creativity meets technology in a remarkable initiative to transform concrete surfaces into stunning artworks. Inspired by Elon Musk’s vision to turn the factory into a canvas, the project began with local graffiti crews. However, the sheer scale of the endeavor required innovative solutions, leading to the collaboration with a robotic muralist startup. This groundbreaking graffiti printer combines cutting-edge technology with artistry, using a triangulation method to maneuver its print head along factory walls. With 12 paint cans onboard, the robot sprays precise dots of color—10 million per wall and 300 million for the west side alone—creating intricate designs composed of five distinct colors. The curated artworks draw inspiration from Berlin’s vibrant culture, Tesla’s groundbreaking products, and the factory itself—described as “the machine that builds the machine.” A blend of global and in-house artistic talent has contributed to the ongoing project, making Giga Berlin not just a hub for innovation but also a celebration of art and ingenuity.

Courtesy: X:@Tesla.

#FactoryArt #BerlinCulture #GigaBerlinTransformation #MachineThatBuildsTheMachine.

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In today’s AI news, OpenAI is announcing a new AI Agent designed to help people who do intensive knowledge work in areas like finance, science, policy, and engineering and need thorough, precise, and reliable research. It could also be useful for anyone making major purchases.

In what most would consider a halcyon time for AI, an anachronistic source has just added their two cents to the ethos around the AI revolution. The Vatican released a significant broadside addressing the potential and risks of AI in a new high-tech world. It’s a very interesting look at these new technologies, with a focus on human worth and human dignity.

In other advances, the one-person micro-enterprise is far from a novel concept. Cheap on-demand AI compute, remote collaboration, payment processing APIs, social media, and e-commerce marketplaces have all made it easier to “go it alone” as an entrepreneur. But what about scaling that business into something meatier — a one-person Unicorn.

And, this morning, Brussels announced plans to develop an open source AI model of its own, with $56 million in funding to do it. The investment will fund top researchers from a handful of companies and universities across EU countries as they develop a large language model that can work with the trading bloc’s 30 languages.

In videos, Lex Fridman speaks with Dylan Patel, Founder of SemiAnalysis, a semiconductor research and analysis company, and Nathan Lambert, a research scientist at Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) and author of an AI blog called Interconnects. They all discuss DeepSeek, China, OpenAI, NVIDIA, xAI, TSMC, Stargate, and AI Megaclusters.

Bloomberg on the Economic Singularity:

“If AI is about to get much cheaper, the path to an answer on its economic impact is going to get shorter. For workers nervously wondering if large language models will make their skills redundant, a lot is riding on which camp is right.”


For investors in artificial intelligence, the last week delivered a painful shock. The sudden appearance of DeepSeek — a Chinese AI firm boasting a world-class model developed at bargain-basement costs — triggered a massive selloff in Nvidia and other US tech champions.

What matters for the economy, though, is not the ups and downs of stock prices for the Magnificent Seven, but whether AI drives gains in productivity, and how those gains are divided up. For all the excitement, and the trillion-dollar valuations for AI firms, evidence of a boost to productivity remains thin on the ground.

Shoeb Javed is chief product officer at iGrafx.

Navigating the intricacies of compliance and risk management can seem overwhelming for businesses, especially those operating in heavily regulated industries. The rules are complex and the stakes are high, and the old ways of managing compliance aren’t enough anymore. By using smart tools and clear processes, businesses can handle tasks more efficiently, reduce risks and make audits less stressful.

Many organizations face a daunting array of compliance requirements, both external and internal. Regulatory demands vary across industries such as financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, retail and technology. Businesses may also have to contend with regulations that differ by country and even by region.

On the positive side, some human entrepreneurs could become very wealthy, possibly trillionaires if they could tap into these AI’s wealth somehow. Additionally, super rich AIs could be a solution to the United States’ growing debt crisis, and eliminate the need for whether countries like China can continue to buy our debt so we can indefinitely print dollars. In fact, can America launch its own AI agents to create enough crypto wealth to buy its debt?

Naturally, the risk is that these AIs might eventually try to buy other financial instruments, like existing bonds and stocks. But it’s unlikely they’d be able to do so, unless more of the U.S.’ economy went into crypto and became blockchain based. Additionally, AI bots aren’t allowed to have traditional bank accounts yet.

Whatever happens, clearly there is an urgent need for the U.S. government to address such potentialities. Given that these AIs could start to proliferate in the next few months, I suggest Congress and the Trump administration immediately convene a special task force to specifically tackle the possibility of an AI Monetary Hegemony.

The real danger is that even with regulation, programmers will still be able to release autonomous AIs into the wild—just as many illegal things already happen on the web despite the existence of laws. Programmers might release these types of AIs for kicks, while others try to profit from it—and some may even do so even as a form of terrorism to try to hamper the world economy. Whatever the reason, the creation of autonomous AIs will soon be a reality of life. And vigilance and foresight will be needed as these new AIs start to autonomously disrupt our financial future.

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to a new malware campaign that leverages fake CAPTCHA verification checks to deliver the infamous Lumma information stealer.

“The campaign is global, with Netskope Threat Labs tracking victims targeted in Argentina, Colombia, the United States, the Philippines, and other countries around the world,” Leandro Fróes, senior threat research engineer at Netskope Threat Labs, said in a report shared with The Hacker News.

“The campaign also spans multiple industries, including healthcare, banking, and marketing, with the telecom industry having the highest number of organizations targeted.”

In today’s AI news, a new $500 billion, private sector investment to build artificial intelligence infrastructure in the US, with Oracle, ChatGPT creator OpenAI, and Japanese conglomerate SoftBank among those committing to the project. The joint venture, called Stargate, is expected to begin with a data center project in Texas.

In other advancements, Perplexity has launched an aggressive bid to capture the enterprise AI search market, unveiling Sonar, an API service that outperforms offerings from Google, OpenAI and Anthropic on key benchmarks while also undercutting their prices. Perplexity — now valued at $9 billion — directly challenges larger competitors.

And, Santee Cooper, the big power provider in South Carolina, has tapped financial advisers to look for buyers that can restart construction on a pair of nuclear reactors that were mothballed years ago. The state-owned utility is betting interest will be strong, with tech giants such as Amazon and Microsoft in need of clean energy to fuel AI.

Then, Google is making a fresh investment of more than $1 billion into AI startup Anthropic, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. This comes after Reuters and other media reported earlier in January that Anthropic was nearing a $2 billion fundraise in a round, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, valuing the firm at about $60 billion.

In videos, Indeed CEO Chris Hyams, and Stanford Digital Economy Lab Director Erik Brynjolfsson, join Bloomberg’s Work for a discussion on the key trends impacting employees and employers in 2025 and beyond.

The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States. We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately. This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world. This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.

The initial equity funders in Stargate are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX. SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners for Stargate, with SoftBank having financial responsibility and OpenAI having operational responsibility. Masayoshi Son will be the chairman.

Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI are the key initial technology partners. The buildout is currently underway, starting in Texas, and we are evaluating potential sites across the country for more campuses as we finalize definitive agreements.