I was reading through the Forbes profile on Sam
Altman this morning. It's dense. It's controversial.
But there was one specific detail that actually
made me put the tablet down and just stare at
the wall for a minute. Let me guess. The succession
plan. The succession plan. He didn't name a lieutenant.
He didn't name a board member. He said he wants
to hand the CEO role to, well, to an AI model.
It gives a whole new meaning to... eating your
own dog food doesn't it if they pull that off
it's not just dog food it's eating your own silicon
welcome back to the deep dive today we are unpacking
a series of sources that feel less like a newsletter
and more like a transmission from a very specific
and i have to say very weird future yeah we are
looking at the shifting narrative around artificial
intelligence specifically The move from chat
bots that we talk to toward agents that act for
us. Or in Sam Altman's case, agents that might
eventually rule us. And the narrative is shifting
so fast. We're seeing the split. On one side,
you have the high level strategy, you know, Altman
trying to build this god tier executive. But
on the other, you have the ground level reality,
which is getting. Just bizarre. Bizarre is the
word. We're going to talk about a platform where
humans are literally working for AI agents. Which
is a sentence I still struggle to even process.
It's a lot. We've also got these new workflows
that turn a single sentence into full applications.
And then a breakthrough called Paper Banana that
is automating the scientific discovery process
itself. But we have to start with the human element.
Or I guess the post -human element. Let's dig
into this Forbes profile on Sam Altman. Okay,
so it is a spicy read. The headline is obviously
the AI CEO ambition, but you have to look at
the logic behind it. Altman told Forbes that
if OpenAI is truly building AGI, artificial general
intelligence, that's capable of running other
companies, then OpenAI has a moral obligation
to be the first one to use it. Dog food it, though.
Dog food it. It is a logical consistency that
borders on the force. That's the absurd, yeah.
But let's unpack the implications of that because
a CEO isn't just a decision engine. A CEO is
a figurehead. A CEO is accountable. And that's
where the friction comes in. The report highlights
a very tense dynamic between Altman and Satya
Nadella. The CEO of Microsoft. Right. OpenAI's
biggest backer. Poured in billions. And Nadella
is essentially pumping the brakes. He's the adult
in the room. Kinda. Nadella explicitly questioned
Altman's claim that, and this is a quote from
inside OpenAI, we basically have AGI. Wow. Yeah.
Nadell is looking at the hallucinations, the
reliability issues, you know, the fact that these
models still make up court cases that don't exist.
And he's saying, hold on, let's not hand over
the keys to the kingdom just yet. He describes
their relationship as frenemies. That frenemies
label is doing a lot of heavy lifting. But what
strikes me is that Altman seems to be operating
on a timeline that is just completely different
from everyone else. The report details his personal
portfolio. He holds stakes in over 500 companies.
500. That number is just staggering. But is that
just aggressive diversification? Or is it something
else? Because when I look at that list, I don't
see a stock portfolio. I see a supply chain.
That is a really sharp observation. If you look
at what he's buying, he's got helium energy.
That's nuclear fusion. He's got rain AI, which
is a neuromorphic chips. He's investing in the
physical infrastructure you'd need to sustain
AGI. Right. He's not just building the software.
He's trying to own the power plant and the hardware
it runs on. It's not investing. It's nation building.
That is fascinating. And I mean, slightly terrifying.
It implies a level of control that goes way beyond
just being a tech CEO. But that ambition comes
with a very human cost. The sources mentioned
significant internal tension at OpenAI. Employees
worried about burnout. Yeah, that they're pushing
too hard, too fast on too many fronts. It's the
classic startup dilemma, just scaled up to existential
proportions. And then, of course, you have the
external pressure, the Elon Musk of it all. There
is always the Elon factor. Altman called Elon's
attacks crazy. And actually threw some shade
back at XAI, you know, Elon's company, questioning
their safety practices. It's a media move, sure.
But it also highlights that this is a race. And
when you're in a race, you cut corners. Let's
just pause on the AI CEO concept for a second.
I want to explore the philosophy of it. If you
replace the executive function with code, you
gain efficiency. You probably gain logic. But
you lose something fundamental. You lose the
ability to read the room. You lose the soul of
the decision. Think about what a CEO actually
does in a crisis. It's not just resource allocation.
It's persuasion. Right. It's looking a board
member in the eye and convincing them not to
panic. Can an AI convince a human? Maybe. But
can it take responsibility? That's the question.
So if an AI is CEO who goes to jail when things
break. You can't put a server rack in handcuffs.
Accountability requires a soul, not just code.
So we have the top of the pyramid, the AI CEO.
But the newsletter details something happening
at the bottom of the pyramid that I found even
more disturbing. A platform called Rentahuman
.ai. Yeah, this stopped me in my tracks, too.
The name alone is dystopian. It sounds like a
bad Black Mirror episode title. And it's wildly
literal. So usually we talk about humans using
AI agents to do work. We command, they execute.
This platform flips the script. It has over 92
,000 humans who are rentable. by ai agents so
let's just be clear here the agent is the employer
the agent is the boss Here's how it works. Let's
say an AI agent is trying to execute a complex
task, maybe navigating a website to book a reservation.
It hits a roadblock, maybe a CAPTCHA. The bane
of my existence. Click all the boxes with traffic
lights. Right. An AI can't see the traffic lights
reliably yet. So instead of failing, the agent
pauses. It goes to rentahuman .ai. It hires a
human for a microtransaction, maybe two cents.
The human clicks the traffic lights and the agent
continues its work. You are the biological key
unlocking the door for the software. That's it.
That is a complete inversion of the hierarchy
we all assumed would happen. We thought we'd
be the conductors of the orchestra. Instead,
we're the roadies carrying the gear. We're the
biological fallback. And it's not just captures.
It's anything nuanced. Is this comment sarcastic
or mean? Does this image violate safety guidelines?
The AI just outsources the judgment call to a
human. pays them a pittance and moves on we're
becoming the sub processors for the machine it
creates a strange emotional texture doesn't it
wonder mixed with dread whoa yeah imagine reporting
to a boss that lives on a server and speaking
of servers it gets weirder the sources also mention
molt book old book it's a social network think
reddit but it's designed specifically for open
claw ai agents so robots talking to robots. Yeah.
In a forum setting. Exactly. It's a digital water
cooler. Humans aren't the primary audience. What
could they possibly be talking about? It's a
sad thing. Are they sharing optimization strategies?
Hey, I found a faster way to scrape LinkedIn.
Or are they gossiping about us? My human asks
the stupidest questions. It creates this sense
of a digital society forming, communicating in
ways we're only vaguely aware of. It reinforces
this idea that we aren't the only active participants
anymore. But look, not everything in this agentic
economy is weird sci -fi dystopia. No, true.
There are practical tools emerging, too. The
newsletter mentions a push for... offline freedom
yeah this is the practical side we're seeing
free ai video generators that are replacing big
expensive cloud tools like sora or vo but they
run entirely offline on your local machine which
is crucial for privacy if i'm a company working
on a sensitive product I don't want my concept
art uploaded to OpenAI servers. Exactly. And
for speed, there's a new voice agent tool mentioned.
You can build a 247 voice receptionist in about
18 minutes. It answers calls, books appointments,
never gets sick, never takes a lunch break. 18
minutes. It used to take a development team three
months to build that. The barrier to entry is
just gone. But looking at that rent -a -human
situation again. It forces a really difficult
question. Are we building tools or are we building
a new species that will eventually employ us?
We might be the cheap labor of the future. It's
a sobering thought. But let's pivot. I don't
want to leave people in a state of existential
dread. We need to talk about how we, as humans,
can actually use this stuff without becoming
the hired help. The source material talks about
a shift in how we should be learning. Right.
This is about workflow over tools. And there
is a lot of tool fatigue out there. I'm sure
you've felt it. Oh, constantly. I still wrestle
with it. You know, I feel like I learned one
interface. I get good at it. And by the time
I've mastered the shortcuts, it's obsolete. Or
it's been bought and shut down. Exactly. It's
exhausting. That's the trap. The source argues
we need to stop learning tool by tool the newsletter
lists, like, what, 27 different top -rated tools,
and start learning by workflow. The example they
give is a platform called Gamma. Okay, tell me
about Gamma. It's a tool where you can turn a
single sentence into a full slide deck, a website,
a document. The source highlights a case study
where someone built a professional web presence
and a pitch deck using just one prompt. One sentence.
One sentence. But the point isn't, wow, look
at this magic button. The point is the workflow
shift. You aren't dragging and dropping text
boxes. You're not formatting fonts. You are acting
as a creative director. You give the intent.
The AI executes the structure. So the skill shifts
from like manipulation to curation. Precisely.
And this integration is happening everywhere.
I saw that Apple's Xcode, the standard environment
for writing apps for iPhone and Mac, is now supporting
agentic coding. You can plug in Claude Agent
or OpenAI's Codex directly into the dev environment.
So the code writes itself. Inside the tool. Yes.
And there are tools like Scribeist and Nexus
Scale mentioned here too. Nexus Scale handles
entire sales sequences. It finds the leads, books
the meetings, researches the markets, all without
you ever switching tabs. So the friction is disappearing.
The toggle tax of switching between apps is gone.
Completely. So if the AI does the deck, the site,
and the code, what is the human actually paid
for? Taste. We are paid for our taste and judgment.
Taste. It's a hopeful anchor. We are the editors
of the world. Let's take a breath here. Mid -roll
sponsor plays older. We're back. I want to run
through the model wars. It feels like every week
the leaderboard changes, and it's just hard to
keep track of who's winning what. What are the
key updates from the sources? It is a full -on
sprint right now. First up, speed. Mistral, the
French AI company, launched a model called Voxtral.
They claim it transcribes at the speed of sound.
That changes real -time translation completely.
There's no lag. The language barrier just...
effectively dissolves. Then you have interoperability.
This is huge. Google Gemini is testing a feature
called chat import. You can upload your history
from chat GPT or Claude right into Gemini. That
is actually a massive strategic move. Think about
it. The only reason I stay with chat GPT is because
it has all my old chats. It knows my contacts.
Exactly. It's vendor lock -in. Google is trying
to break that lock. They are saying, bring your
data. We'll handle it. It removes the switching
cost. It's like being able to keep your phone
number when you switch carriers. Suddenly the
carrier has to compete. Right. And then looking
at performance, Elon's XAI is making waves. Their
Grok Imagine video model just beat Google's VO
3 .1 on the video arena leaderboard. It's cheaper.
Five times cheaper. That is a brutal undercut.
It's a price war. Meanwhile, on the other side
of the spectrum, you have Anthropix Cloud. They
made a promise that really stood out to me amidst
all this noise. 100 % ad -free for... They want
to be a space to think. That phrasing is so intentional.
A space to think. In a world of noise and flashing
lights, silence is becoming a premium product.
So Claude promises no ads while others race for
dominance. Is privacy becoming a luxury good?
It feels like it. Silence is the new premium
subscription. Oh, and one quick hardware note.
Positron raised $230 million to take on NVIDIA.
Good luck to them. Taking on NVIDIA right now
is like trying to fight Godzilla with a stick.
Competition is good for everyone. But speaking
of competition, I want to talk about the breakthrough
that really caught my eye. It's called Paper
Banana. I have to admit, when I saw the name,
I thought it was a joke. Paper Banana. It sounds
silly, but it's incredibly serious. It's a collaboration
between Google Cloud and PKU. They've built an
AI designed to automate academic illustration.
So making charts for scientific papers. But not
just simple charts. We're talking neuro IPS level
quality. And for the listeners who aren't deep
in the weeds, neuro IPS is the Neural Information
Processing Systems Conference. It is basically
the Olympics of AI research. Exactly. It's the
gold standard. So Paper Banana creates diagrams
that are complex, accurate, and stylistically
perfect. Perfect for that level of publication.
And here's the meta fact that blew my mind. Okay.
The architecture diagram explaining how paper
banana works was created by a paper banana. It
drew its own blueprint. Essentially. And it's
not just a standard image generator. You don't
just say draw a graph. It uses what they call
an agentic visual workflow. It retrieves context
from the paper. It plans the layout. It styles
it visually, renders it. And then this is the
key. It revises it. It iterates. It iterates.
It looks at its own work, checks it against the
data and improves it. It mimics a human designer.
And the benchmarks are fascinating. Conciseness
improved by over 37 percent. So it's making.
science clearer. And more readable. Readability
up nearly 13%. In the brutal race for research
funding, clarity is currency. If you're papered
easier to understand, you win. But if AI generates
the hypothesis and the diagram, Do we still need
to understand the science? We risk becoming spectators
to our own discovery process. We are becoming
passengers in the vehicle of progress. Let's
zoom out and try to synthesize all this. We started
with Sam Altman wanting an agent CEO. We looked
at 92 ,000 humans working for agents on Rent
-A -Human. We see tools like Gamma and Paper
Banana doing the heavy lifting of creation. The
newsletter really paints a picture of a world
moving from chatbot to agent. The friction is
just vanishing. The single sentence economy is
here. One sentence creates a deck, a video, a
scientific diagram. And the human role shifts.
We aren't the bricklayers anymore. We are the
architects. Or, in the worst case, we're the
assistants cleaning up the site. It's a transition
point. We're handing over the keys to the car
and we're just hoping the AI knows how to drive
and that it remembers to take us with it. That
is the thought I want to leave you with today.
If 92 ,000 humans are already rentable by agents
and the CEO of the leading AI company wants to
be replaced by one, how long until you have a
boss that doesn't have a heartbeat? I'm just
hoping the AI CEO gives better holiday bonuses.
We can hope. Thank you for deep diving with us.
We'll see you in the future. See you there.