AI on Pause? Amazon Gears Up, Meta Trims Down

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👋 Hello Reader!
The AI world’s splitting into two camps — those yelling “Stop before Skynet!” and those strapping on smartglasses to move faster. Today we’ve got a dramatic open letter calling to halt superintelligence, Amazon turning drivers into cyborgs, and Meta quietly trimming its AI ranks. Let’s dig in. ⚙️

🚨 “Stop Building God” — Open Letter Pushes AI Pause

Tech icons want to hit the brakes on superintelligence — but Big AI’s not listening.

Public figures from across tech and politics just signed a Future of Life Institute letter demanding governments prohibit AI superintelligence development until it’s proven controllable and the public gives it a thumbs-up.

What’s in it:

• Concerns include “human economic obsolescence,” “loss of freedom,” and even potential extinction.

• Notably absent: OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, xAI, and Meta leadership.

• 64% of Americans want ASI work halted until proven safe, per new data.

• Signatories include AI pioneers Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, Steve Wozniak, and Richard Branson.

Why it matters: The “pause” movement keeps getting louder, but without buy-in from the labs actually building these systems, it may stay more symbolic than structural.

💡Takeaway: Everyone wants a safer AI future — but no one wants to be the one who slows down.

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📦 Amazon’s New Look: AI Glasses for Drivers

Navigation meets Terminator — Amazon gives its fleet a high-tech upgrade.

Amazon just unveiled AI-powered smartglasses for delivery drivers — projecting routes, packages, and delivery data right into their vision.

The specs:

• Real-time delivery info + turn-by-turn navigation.

• Clip-on controller with battery swaps and emergency alerts.

• Future updates: wrong-address detection, pet warnings, and brightness auto-adjust.

Why it matters: It’s the future of augmented labor. Drivers get smarter and faster — but the line between empowered and surveilled is getting blurrier.

💡Takeaway: Efficiency’s cool, but nobody wants “Big Glasses” watching them all day. 👀

✂️ Meta Cuts 600 Jobs in AI Division

FAIR gets leaner while Zuck bets big on superintelligence.

Meta just trimmed ~600 AI roles, mainly in its FAIR research arm, as Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang pushes to “move faster” with smaller teams.

Here’s the tea:

• FAIR research, product, and infra teams took the hit — TBD Lab (the superintelligence group) stays untouched.

• Wang said cuts reduce bureaucracy; laid-off employees can reapply internally.

• Meta recently poached big names like Ananya Kumar (OpenAI) and Andrew Tulloch (TML).

• FAIR researchers, including Yann LeCun, have reportedly clashed with Wang’s new direction.

Why it matters: Meta’s doubling down on AGI, even if it means internal turbulence. The “old guard” of FAIR may not love the speedrun culture Zuck’s chasing.

💡Takeaway: Meta’s AI dream isn’t shrinking — it’s just shedding some legacy code.

🗞️ Other News

💰 Anthropic x Google — Negotiating a multibillion-dollar cloud deal for TPU access, building on Google’s $3B investment.
⚛️ Google’s Quantum Leap — Willow chip runs an algorithm 13,000x faster than top supercomputers.
🌍 Tencent’s Hunyuan World 1.1 — Open-sourced model can recreate full 3D environments from videos or photos in seconds.
📜 Reddit vs. Perplexity — Lawsuit accuses the AI startup and others of scraping copyrighted content for training.
🚗 GM’s Gemini Move — Rolling out a Google Gemini–powered assistant in cars next year for smarter routes, messages, and diagnostics.

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☕ That’s a Wrap!

AI’s having a moment — some want to stop it, others want to wear it, and a few are being shown the exit. Either way, it’s getting wild out there.

Catch you tomorrow for more chaos from the machine frontier. 🤖
– The Not So Artificial Team