So get this. China just hosted the first three
on three autonomous robot football match. No
kidding. Autonomous. Yeah. These weren't remote
control. They were, you know, zipping around,
passing, scoring goals all by themselves. Wow.
And I heard some buzz like they're playing kind
of close to the level of China's actual national
team. That's what they're saying. That's definitely
a aha moment. Seriously. It really is. But it's
not just a quirky headline. Yeah. This kind of
thing, this real world stuff, it hints at how
fast AI is progressing, like beyond the hype
into actual practical things. Tangible progress.
Yeah. Welcome to the deep dive. Hey, everyone.
Today, we're really digging into a pretty significant
new report. It's called The Builder's Playbook,
State of AI 2025. And it's from IconicQ. We've
also pulled in some other sources, too, to give
you the full picture. Yeah. And this one's interesting
because it's not about AI's like future potential
five years down the line. This report talked
to over 300 execs. It's about what companies
are actually building right now, what they're
deploying today. So our mission here is to pull
out the really crucial insights for you. We'll
look at how companies are scaling AI. Yeah, the
adoption piece. And the latest breakthroughs,
like in human -computer interaction, basically
help you navigate this shift from AI hype to
actual application. We're going to look at the
real numbers, some pretty surprising uses popping
up, and what it all kind of means for where AI
is heading this year and, well, beyond. Okay,
let's unpack this builder's playbook first. The
main message, it seems pretty clear. Yeah. 2025
is really shaping up to be the year of building
with AI. Definitely. And companies that started
out AI first, they're already seeing much better
results. Oh, absolutely. The numbers are stark.
Like 47 % of those AI native startups, the ones
built around AI, they've hit product market fit
already 47%. Compare that to like only 13 % of
the older companies that just tried to, you know,
bolt AI onto their existing systems. It's kind
of like building with Legos from the ground up
versus just trying to glue some Legos onto an
old brick wall. It just doesn't integrate the
same way. That makes sense. And this building,
it's not cheap experimentation anymore, is it?
No way. AI budgets are serious money now. We're
seeing, what, 10 to 20 percent of R &D spend?
At least. Yeah, 10, 20 percent dedicated to AI
across different industries. And that number
is actually going up. So companies are really
betting on this. They are. But here's where it
gets really interesting, I think. Internal adoption.
So the report says 70 % of employees in these
companies, they have access to AI tools now,
which sounds great, right? Yeah, that's a lot.
But only about half of them actually use the
tools regularly. So the access is there, but
not the usage. Exactly. It's kind of like having
a fancy gym membership, you know, but never quite
making it through the door. The potential is
there, but. Yeah. Yet for the companies that
do get people using it. Oh, the payoff is huge.
These high use organizations, the ones running
like seven or more internal AI things, they're
seeing big productivity gains. We're talking
15 to 30 percent. Wow. 15 to 30 percent. Yeah.
You can't ignore that. Nope. Businesses definitely
notice those numbers. Now, the tooling, the stuff
underneath, it's still a bit fragmented. Different
frameworks and stuff. Yeah. You got lane chain,
pie torch. companies building their own custom
stacks. But it is starting to settle down a bit.
For the big enterprise models, open AI is still
kind of the leader. Anthropix Cloud is a really
solid number two, though. And coding assistants,
that seems big, too. Huge. Tools like Cursor
or just using Cloud for coding. It's massive.
Get this. 33 % of code in these high growth startups
now generated by AI. A third of the code. Wow.
It's really augmenting developers big time. OK,
so if these AI native companies are shipping
faster, seeing these big games, what do you think
is the single biggest hurdle for the more established
companies trying to catch up? I'd say primarily
it's about changing the culture and just genuinely
getting employees to use the tools they're given
day in, day out. So it's less about the tech
itself sometimes and more about the people and
the processes. Yeah. Overcoming that internal
inertia. Exactly. That seems to be the core challenge
right now. And tied into that building theme,
this report really, really hammers home one point.
2025 is the year of AI agents. Agents, okay.
Almost 90%. Nearly 9 out of 10 high growth startups
are either deploying them now or experimenting
really heavily with them. Let's just quickly
define agents again. We're talking about AI programs
that can perform. Right. Often by using other
tools. Exactly. Like smart assistants that can
string actions together, you know, figure out
a plan to achieve a goal without you holding
their hand the whole time. Got it. And the report
suggests being AI native, using multimodal AI.
Yeah. AI that gets text, images, audio. And being
talent stacked. Yeah. Having the right people.
That puts you ahead. Yeah. That's the winning
combo, according to this. And the message feels
pretty clear, you know, if your company's still
just kind of. AI curious, like no real budget,
no actual plan to build something, you might
already be slipping behind. So it's ship or slip
time, as they say. Pretty much. Build fast or
get left behind. That seems to be the vibe. Okay.
So that raises a really practical question for
people listening. How can individuals, maybe
tech leads, maybe just folks wanting to improve
their own work, how can they realistically start
building with these agents or just use AI better
day to day? Well, some of the other sources we
looked at had some really good practical stuff,
like tutorials on building agents connecting
Claude to Notion, maybe automate some tasks there.
Okay. Or guides on mastering AI research using
tools like Perplexity, which is pretty powerful.
Right. And just getting better at using chat
GPT effectively, like maintaining context. Ah,
context drift. Yeah. Vulnerable admission. I
mean, I still wrestle with prompt drift myself
sometimes. You know, you're having a long chat
with the AI and it just kind of forgets what
you were talking about. That happens all the
time. So, yeah, those tips on keeping the context
clear, they're gold. Really helps stay efficient.
So it's not just about knowing what agents are
conceptually, but really digging into how to
build them, how to direct them effectively. Totally.
Given that, how crucial is it, do you think,
for individuals to really get a handle on these
agent concepts now? Oh, it's super crucial. I'd
say it's becoming a foundational skill for productivity,
for staying competitive in almost any job, honestly.
So mastering these agent building skills, it's
not just for coders or AI specialists anymore.
It's becoming fundamental. Absolutely. It's moving
into the mainstream toolkit. OK, so beyond that
builder's playbook, we're also seeing just a
really wide range of AI stuff happening out in
the real world. Yeah, it's popping up everywhere.
It paints a pretty vivid picture of how fast
this is all moving. Totally. Like, remember that
robot football match we mentioned? It's not just
a gimmick, right? It shows real practical autonomy.
You can see how that applies to, I don't know,
warehouse logistics or manufacturing. Right,
the underlying tech. Exactly. And then there's
that weird thing with the indie band. I forget
their name. Oh, yeah. The one that went viral.
Yeah. And everyone's like, that's got to be AI,
right? But the band swears, nope, 100 % human.
It really does blur the lines, doesn't it? Makes
you question what's real creativity anymore.
For sure. And capabilities are just leaping forward
like crazy. TPT 4 .0, the latest model, just
scored an A -plus on law school finals. An A
-plus. Wow. Wasn't it like a C plus before? Yeah,
a huge jump. That's not just about passing a
test. That's showing deep understanding, reasoning,
complex legal stuff. It's kind of mind blowing.
It really is. And then on the totally other end
of the spectrum, you got this Redditor who apparently
spent 72 hours just meticulously tweaking a prompt.
72 hours just to get ChatGPT to do exactly what
they needed for some specific task. Wow. That's
dedication. Right. It shows how much human effort
and cleverness is still needed to really unlock
what these tools can do. It's not magic push
button stuff yet. No, definitely not. And then
in the bigger industry picture, Elon Musk's XAI.
Oh, yeah. The funding round. Raising a staggering,
what, $10 billion? $10 billion. to build a massive
supercomputer, a million GPUs just for training
rock. That's a huge power play against OpenAI
Anthropic. It's a serious statement. Like we're
going all in on raw computing power. It's a high
stakes race. You're seeing real societal impacts,
too, aren't we? It's not just tech anymore. Absolutely.
Like reports of entry level jobs in the UK being
down by a third. With a third. Wow. Yeah. And
they're linking it largely to AI tools, automating
some of those tasks. And then you have X, you
know. formerly Twitter, they're going to pilot
AI chatbots for community notes, which is, well,
it's going to be interesting. Yeah, interesting
is one word for it. Using AI for content moderation
and fact -checking at that scale. It's a massive
real -time experiment in AI trustworthiness,
basically. Okay, so taking all these things together,
the rapid advances, the huge investments, these
immediate societal effects, what does it all
tell you about the speed of AI integrating into
our lives? It's just... Accelerating, like mad,
hitting everything, jobs, social media, creativity,
how we even think about intelligence itself.
So this isn't some far off future thing anymore.
It's actively reshaping our present, like right
now, incredibly fast. Absolutely. It's here and
it's moving quicker than most people probably
realize. OK, now here's where things get really,
really interesting. Almost moving into science
fiction territory. Oh, OK. Imagine being able
to communicate, express thoughts. Maybe even
sing. Just by thinking. Whoa. Okay, brain -computer
interfaces. Exactly. Researchers at UC Davis
just revealed this near -instant brain -to -speech
system. Near -instant? Yeah. It literally translates
raw brain signals directly into expressive sound.
Not just words, but pitch, intonation. Wow. Even
singing. Two -sec silence. Singing. Just from
brain signals. Whoa. I mean, imagine scaling
that to like a billion queries a day. Or just...
To every patient who can't speak. That's the
potential. It's profound. Genuinely mind -blowing.
And what's really amazing is how it works. It
completely skips generating text. Skips the text
part. It uses a custom AI decoder for the brain
signals. Then a vocoder. That's the thing that
makes the speech sound. Right. Synthesizes the
voice. And it matches the patient's natural voice.
All with a lag, a latency of just 10 milliseconds.
10 milliseconds. That's practically real time.
And unlimited vocabulary. Pretty much. You can
think of a new word. The system could potentially
voice it. The flexibility is nuts. Okay, but
how good is it? Like, can people actually understand
it? It's not perfect yet, for sure. Listeners
get about 56 % of the words right. 56%, okay.
But compare that to maybe 4 % for someone trying
to speak without aid who has severe paralysis.
Oh, wow. Okay, so 4 % versus 56%. That's a monumental
leap. Huge leap. Even if it's not quite ready
for, like... a totally fluid back and forth conversation
yet. Still, that's incredible progress. And the
next step, they're working on expanding it using
over 1 ,000 electrodes with a BCI startup, Paradroma.
1 ,000 electrodes, okay. And they're already
prepping for FDA trials for a more advanced implant,
which raises the question, how long before the
big tech companies, your Apples, your Metas,
how long before they jump into this with their
own neural vocoders? Yeah, you gotta think they're
watching this very closely. The potential for
totally new ways to communicate. It's just immense.
It could unlock so much. So if this tech keeps
scaling, keeps getting better, what do you think
might be the single most profound societal change
it could bring? Hmm. The ability to unlock the
inner thoughts, the voices of millions who've
been silent. Just fundamentally changing how
we understand consciousness connection. So it's
not just about restoring speech for some. It
could actually redefine human connection itself.
Precisely. It feels that big. So wrapping this
all up then, what does it all mean? Our deep
dive today, looking at the state of AI 2025,
all these other sources, it shows a really clear
shift happening, doesn't it? Yeah, it really
does. AI is moving fast. It's gone from being,
you know, a cool buzzword or something way off
in the future to being a fundamental tool, like
the tool you need for building and innovating
right now. And companies seem to be facing a
choice. Totally. They're either embracing it
strategically, really integrating it, or frankly,
they're risking getting left way behind. It feels
like a build or bust moment. We've seen everything
from those practical hurdles, like getting employees
to actually use the tools. Right, the adoption
challenge. All the way to these massive billion
dollar investments in supercomputers. Yeah, the
raw power race. And then these truly revolutionary
neuroprosthetics, bridging thought and sound.
It feels like AI is just rapidly reshaping everything,
how we work, create. Even how we communicate.
Yeah, the pace is just astonishing when you step
back and look at it all. It's not just about
what AI could do anymore, is it? No, not at all.
It's crucially about the how. How are companies,
how are individuals actually building with this
stuff? How are they integrating it, innovating
with it? Right now, that's where the real action
is. We covered a lot of ground today. From the
nitty -gritty of enterprise adoption to all those
diverse applications popping up everywhere. And
finally, that incredible, almost sci -fi possibility
of brain -to -sound communication. It really
makes you wonder, doesn't it? If our brains can
one day directly connect with AI to express thoughts,
maybe even music, just from intention, what other
forms of human creativity or communication or
even consciousness, what else might AI fundamentally
transform next? It just opens up this huge space
of possibilities. It really does. So maybe a
final thought for everyone listening. Reflect
on your own relationship with AI. Are you actively
building with it? Are you thoughtfully adopting
it? Or maybe still just curious, watching from
the front. the sidelines yeah there's always
more to learn always more to explore in this
space moving so fast out to row music