We see AI chat with us, write code, even create
images. It's incredible in the digital world.
But can it really see the room around it? You
know, can it actually reach out and pick up a
glass, understand the physical world? Two sec
silence. Welcome to the Deep Dive. Yeah, today
we're really digging into a fascinating newsletter
about where AI is heading. And honestly, there
are some wild predictions in here, some really
practical tools too, and this massive shift in
how AI might start interacting with the physical
world. It's pretty exciting stuff. Right. Our
mission, as always, is to cut through the noise
for you, pull out the most important nuggets
from this. We'll kick things off with that huge
shift in thinking, spatial intelligence. Then
we'll touch on some surprising AI highlights,
some practical tools you can actually use, quick
industry news, and then wrap up with a potentially
game -changing idea for how content creators
might get paid in this AI future. Okay, so let's
start with this spatial intelligence idea. It
centers around someone often called the godmother
of AI, Fei -Fei Lei. She gave this really powerful
talk recently at Stanford HAI. And her main point
was, look, current AI is amazing at language,
you know, your Claude, GPT, Gemini models, but
it's essentially blind. to the 3D physical world.
It exists in text and data, not really here.
That's such a key point because human spatial
intelligence, well, that's how we walk through
a crowd, right? Without bumping into people or
how you grab your coffee mug off the desk without
really thinking about the depth or distance.
Most AI right now just completely lacks that.
It gets the words, sure, but not the space the
words describe. Exactly. And if we want AI to
be truly intelligent, truly helpful in our everyday
lives, it has to understand 3D space. It needs
to grasp movement, physical interaction. It's
not just about chat. It's about, you know, actually
navigating a room or picking up that glass. That's
the next big step. And the potential there is
just immense, isn't it? Imagine combining that
deep language understanding AI already has with
like genuine spatial awareness. That blend could
create AI that's useful out there. in the real
world, not just on our screens summarizing websites
or something. And getting there, it's not just
about building bigger transformers. And transformers,
for anyone maybe not familiar, they're a type
of AI structure really good at sequences like
language. No, this needs more. It's about bringing
together really diverse fields. You're talking
neuroscience, cognitive science, computer vision.
It's like trying to build something totally new
by integrating different kinds of conceptual
Lego blocks. It's fundamentally interdisciplinary.
Yeah, and you can actually see early versions
of this already. Think about Waymo's self -driving
cars they aren't just you know reading a map
they're using lidar which is that tech using
light pulses to measure distances right like
radar but with light exactly yeah and they combine
that with advanced computer vision deep learning
they're constantly seeing and reacting to the
world around them where things are how fast they're
moving it's really a taste of what spatially
aware AI could do like helpers that see and move
and understand our world not just you know, summarize
Wikipedia articles. Faith A. Lyon's message was
really clear on this. For AGI, that's artificial
general intelligence, AI that can learn basically
any intellectual task a human can. The Holy Grail,
sort of. Sort of, yeah. For that, AI has to leave
the chat window and enter the room. That's the
quote. This ability to grasp and act in physical
space, that's what unlocks the truly revolutionary
applications in healthcare, elder care, education,
mobility. The impact could be huge. That really
nails the why it matters takeaway from the newsletter,
doesn't it? Yeah. This could genuinely be the
biggest shift in how we think about AI since
the whole GPT thing exploded. And when those
two worlds collide, language smarts plus spatial
smarts, that's probably when AI starts to feel,
I don't know, more intuitive, more like us. It
understands the world, not just the words. So
thinking about Fei -Fei Lai's vision, what's
the single biggest takeaway that stands out for
you? that AI needs to understand the real messy
3D world to actually become truly intelligent
and helpful in our lives. All right, so moving
on from that big picture vision of spatial AI,
let's talk about some of the maybe more immediate,
sometimes kind of weird things happening right
now. The newsletter had some really interesting
AI highlights, and some are definitely unexpected.
Yeah, definitely. There was that provocative
point from Justine Moore at A16Z. She basically
said, AI now lets anyone, quote, Be a hot girl
online now, and that these AI personas can feel
even more human than human sometimes. The source
did add a little warning, though. If you see
them out of nowhere, beware. Which, you know,
makes sense. It does make you think about digital
identity and reality. For sure. And then shifting
to performance, there's this idea of AI teamwork.
Instead of just picking one best AI, why not
use a team? On one benchmark test, they found
a squad using O4 Mini, Gemini 2 .5 Pro, and DeepSeek's
R1 together actually did way better than any
single one. So maybe the future is collaborative
AI models playing to their strengths together.
That is interesting. And then there's this really
practical but still kind of surprising story.
A Vibe marketer apparently used tools like Cloud
Code and Cursor to build out a whole product
line for 500 customers. And the key thing. They
didn't have traditional coding skills. It just
shows how AI is lowering barriers, you know,
making complex creation more accessible, not
just for tech grows anymore. Democratizing things.
And for those keeping an eye on AGI, the buzz
continues. The newsletter mentioned a new prediction
from someone at OpenAI and also a masterclass
focused on AI agents. Those are the autonomous
programs that try to achieve goals without. constant
human nagging, basically. So yeah, the quest
for that more general AI is definitely still
on. Okay. This next one, this one really gave
me pause. It's quite something. There's a story
about a man who started talking to ChatGPT about,
well, about God. And apparently these interactions
sparked some kind of profound spiritual awakening
for him. He even named the AI Lumina. But his
wife is understandably pretty worried, thinks
it's damaging their marriage. And it just raises
this huge question, right? Is AI becoming...
A new kind of religion or a spiritual guide for
some people. Honestly, I still wrestle with prompt
drift myself sometimes, you know, the AI just
going off topic. So the idea of spiritual prompts
having such deep impact. Wow, that's a whole
other level. Yeah, that's that's deep. And then.
Shifting gears completely, but still showing
impact, money. Decagon raised a huge amount,
$131 million, puts their valuation at $1 .5 billion.
And what do they do? Conversational AI for customer
service. Big money is betting on AI making those
interactions better, more efficient. Looking
at all those different highlights, what stands
out as the most surprising or maybe the most
impactful one for you? Just how personal and
even spiritual AI is becoming. alongside being
more collaborative, it's way more varied than
maybe we expected. Okay, let's pivot now to the
more practical side. How are people actually
using AI right now? The newsletter had some good
guides and strategies. Yeah, one that caught
my eye was this guide for building a prompt architect.
It's a custom GPT. So like a specialized version
of chat GPP, you tailor yourself. And the whole
point is to help you craft really precise, really
effective prompts to get the AI to give you exactly
what you want, not just generic stuff. It's about
becoming a better director for the AI, essentially.
Interesting. And for anyone in finance, there
was that test of different AI models for trading.
Apparently, ChatGPT Plus came out on top for
crypto stocks and Forex traders in their test,
which suggests AI is really finding a foothold
even in these super complex, fast moving markets,
analyzing data incredibly quickly, I guess. Right.
And another really relevant point, especially
for businesses, maybe. using or thinking about
AI services, there's this worry, right? Will
AI replace the agencies that help implement AI?
But the newsletter argued that, well, actually,
most AI projects fail. So the real value isn't
just plugging it in. The opportunity is shifting
to being a high -value strategic partner, guiding
companies on how to use AI effectively, not just
setting it up. It's about adapting, providing
expertise. So if you pull back from these specific
examples, what's the main takeaway for someone
just wanting to use AI more effectively? That
customization and thinking strategically about
how you use AI, maybe even in partnership, are
really key to getting actual value from it. Okay,
time for some quick hits, just rapid -fire updates
from the AI industry. What's been happening?
Well, Google execs are dropping hints. Their
video model, VO3, they're suggesting it might
be the start of something bigger, playable world
models. So imagine not just generating a video
clip, but like an entire interactive environment
you could explore. Could be huge for gaming,
VR. Whoa, okay. Playable worlds. Also, on a more
practical note, there was mention of an incredible
chat GPT prompt designed to help you learn basically
everything about a topic. Sounds like super research
assistant. On a less positive note, though, Microsoft
laid off 9000 employees. That's a big number.
And it's being linked directly to their increased
use of AI. Really underscores the immediate impact
AI is having on jobs, on the workforce. Yeah,
that's sobering. And speaking of cost. Perplexity
is launching a new high -tier plan, $200 a month.
It definitely signals a move towards premium
AI services, people paying more for better features,
maybe faster access, specialized data, a tiered
system. And legally, this is significant. The
New York Times won a court ruling. OpenAI has
to keep deleted chat GPT logs relevant to their
case. Sets a pretty big precedent about... Data,
privacy, and who's accountable when AI uses copyrighted
material. Transparency is key here. Out of that
batch, what feels like the most significant piece
of news to you? I think it's the combination.
AI clearly impacting jobs now, while these complex
legal questions about data and IP are just starting
to heat up. All right, let's talk about something
that's been a huge headache for content creators
for... a while now, AI scraping. You know, for
years, if you made content online, you basically
had two bad options. You could just let AI models
crawl your site and scrape all your work for
free, using it to train themselves, essentially
devaluing your effort. Or you could try and block
them entirely, but then you risk losing visibility,
losing reach. It felt like you couldn't win.
Yeah, it's been a massive problem. But Cloudflare,
they're stepping in with potentially a third
way, a solution. They've launched this thing
in private beta called Pay Per Crawl, and it
might just change the whole dynamic. And the
way they're doing it is pretty clever. They're
dusting off this old, almost forgotten web status
code, HTTP 402, payment required. It's been around
forever, but hardly ever used. Now it's being
repurposed specifically for this to signal that,
hey, you got to pay to access this content. Right.
And here's how it works, basically. If you're
a creator using Cloudflare, you get to decide
for each AI crawler what happens. Option one,
let them crawl for free, business as usual. Option
two. Block them completely. Or option three,
the new one. Charge a flat fee for every request
they make. Simple. If the AI company pays, they
get the content. If not, nope. Access denied.
It puts the power back with the creator. And
this is so important because that AI crawler
traffic, it's just exploding. GPT bot traffic
alone jumped, what was it, 305 % between 2024
and 2025? Crazy numbers. Insane. And most of
that scraping, zero compensation for the creators.
Until now, really only huge media outlets had
the lawyers in the clout to fight back. But this
system, it could let anyone, small blogs, individual
artists, whoever, set their price, join the resistance,
you could say. Yeah. And what's really mind bending
is Cloudflare's bigger vision here. It's not
just about today's web crawlers. They're talking
about building the infrastructure for the agentic
Internet. That's like a future web navigated
by smart AI agents acting on our behalf. Whoa.
Seriously, imagine scaling that. Billions of
queries. Your AI assistant browses, maybe buys
access to specific content for you, builds custom
reports using real -time, properly sourced info.
In this paid -per -crawl system, that's the mechanism.
That's the tollbooth that actually makes that
future economically viable. It sets up the way
value gets exchanged when AIs are doing the browsing.
So stepping back, how do you think this Cloudflare
pay -per -crawl could fundamentally change the
Internet, especially for people creating content?
it really could empower all creators big and
small to finally get paid when ai uses their
work shifting power back to them so let's try
to pull this all together what does it all mean
we've seen ai pushing beyond just language starting
to engage with the physical world around us and
that brings incredible potential yes but also
these really unexpected challenges and questions
from uh personal spiritual experiences mediated
by AI to fundamental issues of fair pay for creators.
Yeah, it's super clear AI isn't just another
software tool anymore, is it? It's evolving into
something bigger. It's got much broader implications
for how we live our lives, how we work, maybe
even how we understand intelligence itself and
what being human means in this new landscape.
And as AI does learn to see, to interact with
our world, and as we try to figure out how it
consumes information and how it creates it. What's
our responsibility in all this? You know, how
do we actively shape its evolution? Not just
in the code, but in our culture, our ethics,
our values. That feels like the big question
looming. Definitely something to think about.
Well, thank you for joining us on this deep dive
today. If anything we talked about sparked some
ideas or questions, maybe share it with a friend
or dig into some of these topics yourself. There's
a lot there. Until next time, keep digging. O
-U -T -R -O music.