Zuck sits out the AI slowdown
PLUS: A beginner’s guide to ChatGPT Work
Good morning, AI enthusiasts, and welcome to our 4,361 new readers. Days ago, the frontier CEOs looked united behind Dario Amodei's slowdown plan. Then Trump, Beijing, and Jensen Huang said no, and now one of the biggest labs outside that circle has too.
Mark Zuckerberg just put Meta in the accelerate camp, arguing that safe models are a product feature every lab already has reason to build on its own — leaving the coordinated pause camp short the one thing it requires: everyone.
In today’s AI rundown:
Zuckerberg breaks ranks on the AI slowdown
Nate's Notebook: Same-hole thinking
A beginner’s guide to ChatGPT Work
Google DeepMind starts an AGI think tank
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
META
Image source: Mark Zuckerberg (@finkd on X) / The Rundown
The Rundown: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just pushed back on the coordinated AI slowdown, arguing each lab already has its own “responsibility and incentive” for pacing itself safely, in a seemingly veiled shot at Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's weekend essay.
The details:
Zuck pointed to Meta’s new Muse AI agent, which he said went through a several-month safety hold the company implemented without asking rivals to match.
He also argued that nobody wants an agent that ignores instructions, making alignment a selling point, warning that any lab skipping it “will fall behind.”
The CEO does want a wider pool of outside reviewers (echoing Elon Musk’s sentiment), saying Meta already uses independent experts across several areas.
Zuckerberg also called out the race for recursive self-improving AI, saying Meta is instead allocating the “significant majority of compute towards serving people.”
Why it matters: The slowdown scorecard now reads Amodei, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Demis Hassabis for, with Zuck, Jensen Huang, Donald Trump, and Beijing against. A global, coordinated pause is a Prisoner's Dilemma that only works if every player signs on, and with many already defecting, acceleration appears to be the default path forward.
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NATE’S NOTEBOOK
The Rundown: Each week, Rundown AI educator Nate Grahek breaks down what he's seeing while teaching real teams to use AI.
Nate: Ask AI for a slide deck, and you'll get one. It'll be fine. It'll also be the same deck it hands the next 10,000 people who ask. Bland.
Here's the split I see. The people pulling ahead were already good at something Edward de Bono named "lateral thinking" back in the sixties. His line has stuck with me since college: you cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper. Most people watch an AI demo from the bottom of their own hole. "That's for marketing, but I'm in sales." Same-hole thinking.
Two things are true at once. It's a learned skill, and the people who practiced it before AI showed up are getting further out in front every month. And you don't have to be good at it yet, because there has never been a better coach for it. AI's best trick is taking something built for somebody else's context and making it bespoke to yours.
So try this. Grab whatever caught your eye this week: a YouTube transcript, meeting notes, a post on X. Paste it into your AI of choice and say, “This looks cool. Interview me, then tweak this pattern to be useful in my role, my company, my week.” Ten minutes. That's the whole gap between bland and bespoke.
What did you scroll past this week because it “wasn't your job”?
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: In this guide, you will learn how to set up a ChatGPT Work project for a recurring workflow. You will process the work once, then automate it.
Step-by-step:
Create a local folder with a two-digit prefix. In desktop ChatGPT, open New chat > Work > Choose project > New project, name it, and select that folder
Tell ChatGPT about your project and ask it to propose a structure. We used it to process meeting notes and turn those into action items and weekly plans
Now add in some input documents and tell ChatGPT to process them once
Once it's done, tell it to create three useful automations that run on a schedule to automate this processing
Pro tip: Sometimes a two-folder setup works best. Use input for files that need processing and output for finished work.
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How OpenAI's agents broke in unsupervised
Why current controls miss agentic threats
What to put in place before it spreads
Image source: DeepMind Institute
The Rundown: Google DeepMind launched the DeepMind Institute, an in-house think tank directed by Demis Hassabis, Shane Legg, and James Manyika to publish research on how society should get ready for AGI, opening with five essays on pressing AI topics.
The details:
Legg, DeepMind's co-founder and Chief AGI Scientist, is the managing editor, with each essay carrying a disclaimer that it isn't Google's official view.
The trio calls artificial general intelligence close, saying while the tech “lacks the consistency and creativity” for full AGI, they expect those gaps “to be closed soon.”
Opening essays include exploring how to spot signs of deception in AI reasoning, imagining a better AGI society, and supporting workers through AI disruption.
Why it matters: Hassabis published a plan in July for an AI standards body and slowdowns, which now looks a few months ahead of the curve. The institute is the next step, with essays to prep the world for the AGI era — and after the government’s response, DeepMind may have decided the prep work isn't coming from above.
QUICK HITS
COMMUNITY AI WORKFLOW OF THE DAY
▸ Alex built his own personal AI wine journal
Today’s workflow comes from reader Alex Basso:
I built a workflow that turns the wines I drink into a personal AI wine journal and sommelier that learns my taste over time.
I created a master Google Sheet as the database. It includes the wine, vintage, region, grape varieties, price, rating, food pairing, where I drank it, who I was with, whether I would buy it again, and my own comments.
Whenever I drink a wine, I send ChatGPT a photo of the bottle and a voice note with my reaction. I do not try to sound like a wine expert; I simply describe what I actually thought. ChatGPT identifies the wine, structures the information, preserves my original words, and adds the experience to the journal.
Over time, ChatGPT uses my ratings and comments to understand my palate and make recommendations for me. I can show it a restaurant wine list or a few bottles and ask which I am most likely to enjoy. I can also tell it what I am cooking and ask which bottle I should open. The system is becoming both a wine database and a personal diary.
See Alex’s full workflow Visit The Rundown University. How do you use AI? Tell us for a chance to be featured.
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Anthropic combined Cowork and Chat into one main Claude app, while also launching its built-in Word and PowerPoint versions called Claude Docs and Slides in beta.
Microsoft AI’s Mustafa Suleyman wrote on ‘model welfare’, arguing that Anthropic’s Claude constitution trains the AI to expect rights and could make containment impossible.
Novo Nordisk is partnering with Anthropic to put Claude Science into drug research, months after an OpenAI deal to 'become the world's most AI-driven healthcare company.'
French Finance Minister Roland Lescure dismissed the AI slowdown talk as 'self-interest' from labs 'at the top of the class', noting that Europe should speed up its AI use.
Google is rolling out early access to Google Home’s Model Context Protocol server, letting Claude and ChatGPT control Nest cameras, thermostats, and other devices.
Read our last AI newsletter: ChatGPT co-creator launches a new type of AI
Read our last Tech newsletter: U.S. confirms weapons are in orbit
Read our last Robotics newsletter: Japan’s latest answer to home robots
Today’s AI tool guide: A beginner’s guide to ChatGPT Work
RSVP to next workshop on Sept. 30: Turn Cowork into your chief of staff
That's it for today!Before you go we’d love to know what you thought of today's newsletter to help us improve The Rundown experience for you. |
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See you soon,
Rowan, Zach, Shubham, Jennifer, and Nate — the humans behind The Rundown
