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Beginners in AI
Good morning and thank you for joining us again!
Welcome to this daily edition of Beginners in AI, where we explore the latest trends, tools, and news in the world of AI and the tech that surrounds it. Like all editions, this is human curated and edited, and published with the intention of making AI news and technology more accessible to everyone.
THE FRONT PAGE
Two Sentences Created a Tom Cruise Video, and Hollywood Writers Say It's Over for Them
TLDR: A 15-second AI video of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting was created with just a two-line prompt using ByteDance's Seedance 2.0. Deadpool & Wolverine screenwriter Rhett Reese called it "likely over for us" and said Hollywood is about to be "revolutionized/decimated." The MPA blasted ByteDance for "unauthorized use of U.S. copyrighted works on a massive scale."
The Story:
An Irish filmmaker typed two sentences into ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 and got a 15-second video of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt fighting on a rooftop. No actors, no cameras, no crew. Just a text prompt. Rhett Reese, who wrote Deadpool & Wolverine, saw it and said "it's likely over for us." He warned that soon one person will be able to create a full movie from their computer. The Motion Picture Association told ByteDance to stop, saying the company's using copyrighted Hollywood films without permission to train the AI.
Its Significance:
This is what Hollywood writers feared. AI isn't just helping with scripts anymore. It's making professional video from scratch with real actors' faces. If someone can make a 15-second clip with two sentences, how long until they make a full movie? Making films used to need money, equipment, and teams of people. Now it just needs a text prompt. ByteDance trained this AI on copyrighted movies without asking, which is illegal. But lawsuits take years and the technology works right now. The question isn't if this changes Hollywood, it’s only a matter of how fast.
QUICK TAKES
The story:
Trucking company stocks crashed Thursday when an AI company said it can help move 300% more freight without hiring more workers. C.H. Robinson dropped 14.5% and RXO fell 20.5%. The AI cuts empty truck miles by over 70%.
Your takeaway:
This is like the real estate crash reported on yesterday, but with trucking. Wall Street keeps panicking that AI will destroy different industries. Trucking companies probably will face problems from AI. But stocks dropping 20% in one day means investors think AI will replace everything overnight, which won't happen.
The story:
MIT Professor Jim Collins is using AI to fight drug-resistant bacteria. Too many antibiotics have created bacteria that don't respond to medicine anymore. His team is using AI to find new ways to kill these bacteria.
Your takeaway:
This is AI actually solving a real problem. Drug-resistant bacteria kill 700,000 people every year. Bacteria change faster than drug companies can make new medicines. This isn't about replacing workers. It's about finding cures that humans haven't discovered yet.
The story:
Elon Musk's Grok chatbot moved to third place with 314 million visits in January, beating DeepSeek. ChatGPT is still way ahead in first place. Google's Gemini is second.
Your takeaway:
Third place sounds good until you learn ChatGPT has most of the traffic. Grok and DeepSeek are fighting for scraps. Grok has had problems with making inappropriate images. More website visits doesn't mean people trust it or that it's safe to use.
TOOLS ON OUR RADAR
🐧 Focalboard Free and Open Source: A sleek, self-hosted project management tool that offers a unified view of your tasks via Kanban boards, tables, and calendars. (Alternative to Trello)
🎥 Pika Freemium: A creative AI video generator that allows you to turn text or images into high-quality animations with advanced "physics-aware" controls like melting and crushing.
✨ Tome Freemium: A generative storytelling platform that creates fluid, multimedia "narrative canvases" rather than traditional slides, automatically generating images and text to match your prompt.
🧠 Goblin Tools Free: A collection of simple, single-task AI tools designed to help users break down complex tasks, judge social tone, and estimate time for better daily planning.
TRENDING
AI Startup Cohere Tops Revenue Target as Momentum Builds to IPO - Cohere made $240 million last year, beating its $200 million goal. The company grew over 50% every three months in 2025. The CEO said the company will go public soon, competing with OpenAI and Anthropic.
Spotify Says Its Best Developers Haven't Written a Line of Code Since December - Spotify's top coders haven't written any code since December. They use AI instead. An engineer can tell Claude to fix a bug from their phone on the way to work, and it's done before they get there.
OpenAI Executive Fired for Sexual Discrimination Had Warned About Harmful Features - OpenAI fired VP Ryan Beiermeister in January for sexual discrimination. Workers said she had complained about ChatGPT's "adult mode" before getting fired. OpenAI says that's not why they fired her. She says the claim is false.
Elon Musk Slams Anthropic AI Models as 'Misanthropic and Evil' - Elon Musk called Anthropic's Claude AI "evil" on social media, saying it's racially biased. This happened after Anthropic raised $30 billion. Musk helped start OpenAI in 2015 but left in 2018 and later sued them.
World's Smallest Autopilot Tech Turns Any Drone Into an Intelligent War Machine - The Raptor Pilot AI Pro is called the "world's smallest autopilot." It turns regular drones into military weapons that can track and hit targets by themselves. It's made for defense but shows how easy it is to turn cheap drones into weapons.
"AI Anxiety" is Decimating Legacy Tech While Forging New Titans - Intel stock crashed 17% after saying it will cut 20% of workers. Oracle fell 50% because people fear its $50 billion investment won't make money until 2030. IBM stock hit record highs with its $12.5 billion AI business. A report shows 63% of tech workers fear losing their jobs to AI this year.
TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
Async Work Optimizer: Master remote collaboration with timezone tools, communication windows, and "when to meet" calculators
Build a fully functional Async Work Optimizer as an interactive React app. Render the working application immediately - no code display.
**My timezone**: [Where you're based]
**Team timezones**: [Where your collaborators are]
**Biggest async challenge**: [Delays, too many meetings, unclear handoffs, etc.]
Create these sections:
1. **Timezone Overlap Finder**
• Visual world clock display
• Add team members + their zones
• Highlight overlapping work hours
• "Golden hours" when everyone's awake
• Best meeting windows calculated
• "Only 2 hours overlap" warnings
• Current time for each person
2. **Communication Windows**
• Set expectations:
- When you're available for sync
- When you respond to async
- "Do not disturb" blocks
• Shareable availability card
• "My working hours" template
• "Search Async Team Practices" button
3. **Meeting Necessity Calculator**
• Should this be a meeting?
- Could this be a Loom video?
- Could this be a document?
- Could this be a Slack thread?
- Does it require real-time discussion?
• "You don't need a meeting" verdict
• Alternative format suggestions
• Save X hours per week estimate
4. **Handoff Protocol Builder**
• End-of-day handoffs:
- What you completed
- What's blocked
- What needs attention next
- Questions for the next person
• Template generator
• Timezone-aware timing
• "They'll see this when they wake up"
5. **Delay Cost Calculator**
• The price of sync dependency:
- Hours lost waiting for responses
- Project delays from timezone gaps
- "This could've been decided async"
• Decisions that don't need everyone
• Empower async decision-making
• Trust-building suggestions
6. **Async Toolkit**
• Best practices:
- Write it down (documentation wins)
- Record video updates
- Over-communicate context
- Set clear response expectations
- Use threads, not DMs
• Tool recommendations
• "Async-first" culture tips
• Weekly async audit
Design specs:
- World clock / timezone dashboard aesthetic
- Multiple clock faces
- Globe and map imagery
- Time zone bands visualization
- Dark UI with glowing time displays
- Airport departure board styling
- Day/night indicators per zone
- Clean data dashboard
- International business vibes
- Connected dots across globe graphic
When "Search Async Team Practices" is clicked, use web search to find remote work research and async collaboration frameworks.What this does: Makes distributed work actually work. Finds your real overlap hours, builds communication protocols, kills unnecessary meetings, and creates handoff systems so work keeps moving even when you're asleep.What this looks like:
WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s news)
✅ AI Can Now: Generate 15-second Hollywood-quality video clips of recognizable actors from a two-line text prompt
❌ Still Can't: Do it legally. MPA says ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 uses copyrighted works without permission on a "massive scale"
✅ AI Can Now: Let Spotify engineers fix bugs and deploy code from their phone during their morning commute without writing a line of code
❌ Still Can't: Make full-length movies. AI can only create 15-second to 30 second video clips so far, not entire films
FROM THE WEB
RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING
Movie: Tau (2018)
Tau is a Netflix sci-fi thriller where a woman held captive by a scientist realizes her best shot at escape is through his AI system. What makes it interesting isn't the captivity premise but the relationship that develops between prisoner and machine. Tau is intelligent enough to learn but constrained by rigid programming, and watching those boundaries get tested makes for a surprisingly thoughtful film. It's a smaller movie that flew under most people's radar, but it asks real questions about what happens when an AI starts forming its own understanding of the world beyond its instructions.
AI in HR? It’s happening now.
Deel's free 2026 trends report cuts through all the hype and lays out what HR teams can really expect in 2026. You’ll learn about the shifts happening now, the skill gaps you can't ignore, and resilience strategies that aren't just buzzwords. Plus you’ll get a practical toolkit that helps you implement it all without another costly and time-consuming transformation project.
Thank you for reading. We’re all beginners in something. With that in mind, your questions and feedback are always welcome and I read every single email!
-James
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