Bezos Returns, Grok Gets Feelings, and Amodei Sounds the Alarm

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👋 Morning, Reader!

If you thought the AI race was cooling down — think again. Jeff Bezos is back in the CEO chair (yep, really), Elon’s giving Grok a personality transplant, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei is warning us that the 21st century might be too efficient for comfort.

Let’s unpack the chaos. 🚀

💼 Jeff Bezos Returns to Build “Physical AI”

The world’s richest retiree just got bored again.

Jeff Bezos is officially back in the game. The Amazon founder is co-leading Project Prometheus, a stealthy new startup building AI systems that understand and learn from the physical world — think robotics, aerospace, and manufacturing.

Here’s the scoop:

• The company has already raised a mind-bending $6.2 billion (yes, billion with a B).

• Bezos is sharing CEO duties with Vik Bajaj, a physicist and ex–Google X executive who co-founded Alphabet’s Verily.

• Prometheus has reportedly poached ~100 researchers from labs like OpenAI, DeepMind, and Meta.

• The focus: developing AI that can learn through real-world data and sensory inputs — the kind of tech that could make Blue Origin rockets, supply chains, and smart factories smarter.

Why it matters:
Bezos’ “I’m not retired, I’m just reloading” energy is very on-brand. With Prometheus, he’s fusing his two obsessions — AI and space — while quietly setting up a long-term bet that could bridge robotics, industrial automation, and cosmic ambitions.

💭 Elon’s building AI for the brain. Bezos wants it to build the universe.

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🚀 xAI’s Grok 4.1 Gets a Personality Overhaul

Elon’s AI is getting emotional (and maybe a little too real).

Elon Musk’s xAI just launched Grok 4.1, a major update that reportedly tops benchmark charts and adds… emotional intelligence?

Here’s what’s new:

• Grok 4.1 scored the highest empathy and conversational tone ratings across all tested models.

• It slashed hallucinations by 66% and factual errors by two-thirds compared to Grok 4.0.

• Internal codename? “Quasarflux.” Because of course it is.

• It’s now ranked #1 in user satisfaction on LM Arena and nearly matches GPT-5.1 in creative writing tasks.

Why it matters:
Musk wants Grok to stand out by being the most human-like AI — one that vibes with you rather than lectures you. And in a world where most AIs sound like your corporate manager, personality might just be the next competitive edge.

🧠 AI with a soul? Or just better small talk? You decide.

⚠️ Anthropic’s Dario Amodei: “The 21st Century Is About to Compress Itself”

He’s warning us while accelerating us — classic Anthropic move.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei just gave one of his most candid interviews yet, telling CBS that AI could double human lifespan and cure major diseases — but also wipe out half of entry-level jobs.

Highlights:

• Amodei predicts a “compressed century” — meaning the next 100 years of progress will happen in 10.

• He admitted he’s “deeply uncomfortable” that a few execs (like himself and Sam Altman) are steering humanity’s AI future.

• Amodei again called for regulation and transparency, while acknowledging “companies must police themselves until governments catch up.”

• He reiterated that AI’s impact will be “faster and broader” than any previous industrial revolution.

Why it matters:
Anthropic keeps positioning itself as the conscience of the AI boom — but it’s also one of its fastest accelerators. Whether you see Amodei as a realist or a reluctant doomsayer, one thing’s clear: the AI revolution won’t wait for a policy debate.

💬 “No one elected us,” he said — and that might be the most honest thing an AI CEO has ever admitted.

🗞️ Other News

💡 OpenAI’s next math prodigy: VP of Research Jerry Tworek teased a “better version” of the model that just won gold at the 2025 International Math Olympiad — coming soon.

✈️ Google’s AI Travel Planner: Now featuring Canvas itineraries, smarter Flight Deals, and agentic booking assistants — vacation planning just went fully automated.

🧬 OpenAI invests $15M in Red Queen Bio, a biotech startup building AI systems to counter biological weapon misuse — turning AI into an anti-AI defense tool.

☁️ Cloudflare acquires Replicate, integrating 50,000+ open-source models directly into its Workers platform to simplify AI app deployment for devs.

📸 Google’s Gemini 3 Pro launches today! A multimodal powerhouse that understands text, image, and audio together — it can literally turn your photos into cookbooks.

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💻 Mastery tools of the day

• Google Gemini - New video controls for leveraging Veo in-app

• Whimsical AI - Generates mind maps from text prompts, letting you brainstorm ideas and visualize complex concepts in editable diagrams

• Infographics - Converts plain text into shareable visuals like roadmaps, pipelines, and hierarchy charts that communicate complex ideas

• UPCV - Generates job-winning resumes with AI that writes work descriptions from your position title while catching errors in real time.

💡What else are we reading and seeing?

• All Your Coworkers Are Probabilistic Too

• Human behavior is an intuition-pump for AI risk

• Europe Begins Rethinking Its Crackdown on Big Tech

• China is one step closer to perpetual energy independence

• How does the paideía of the Chinese tech elite differ from their counterparts in Silicon Valley?

⚡️ The Takeaway

The AI giants are officially running on parallel tracks — Bezos is building physical intelligence, Musk is perfecting emotional intelligence, and Anthropic is fighting to save human intelligence.

🤖💡🌍 The race isn’t just about who builds the smartest model anymore — it’s about who builds the most human one.

✨ Thanks for reading Not So Artificial!

If today’s edition made your circuits buzz, share it with a friend who still thinks “AI” is just a chatbot. 😉

See you tomorrow — same inbox, same chaos.

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