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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
DeepSeek V4 Could Top ChatGPT at Coding And China's Giving It Away for Free
TLDR: China's DeepSeek is reportedly weeks away from releasing an AI model that could beat ChatGPT and Claude at coding and they're giving it away for free, cementing China's unlikely position as the world's open-source AI leader.
The Story: DeepSeek is targeting a mid-February release for V4, a model insiders claim outperforms both Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT on long-context coding tasks. The Hangzhou-based startup's previous release, R1, triggered a $1 trillion global market selloff after matching OpenAI's o1 on reasoning benchmarks , despite reportedly costing just $6 million to train, roughly 68 times cheaper than competitors. DeepSeek publishes its research openly, including a January paper on "Manifold-Constrained Hyper-Connections" co-authored by founder Liang Wenfeng that could enable more stable scaling of large models. The company already commands 89% market share in China and growing adoption across Asia.
Its Significance: The strategic logic behind China's open-source AI push remains genuinely unclear. DeepSeek could monetize these models but chooses not to, while American companies charge premium prices for comparable or inferior capabilities. Some analysts suggest it's about undermining Western AI business models; others see ecosystem dominance as the goal. Developer communities increasingly view DeepSeek as embodying what OpenAI used to represent before its pivot to closed models. Whatever the motivation, the pattern is becoming undeniable: China is shipping competitive AI models for free while Silicon Valley debates pricing tiers and stock market debuts.
QUICK TAKES
The story: University of Haifa researchers built an AI system that uses drone images to automatically detect and count ancient building stones. The task previously took trained archaeologists days or weeks of manual work. The system hit 84% accuracy.
Your takeaway: Archaeology is painstaking work where details matter more than speed. AI won't replace the experts, but it can handle the tedious counting so researchers focus on interpretation instead.
The story: Anthropic, the company behind Claude, has grown revenue 10x annually for three straight years, with 85% coming from business customers. Daniela and Dario Amodei left OpenAI five years ago to build a company that moves slower, ships later, and optimizes for trust.
Your takeaway: While OpenAI chases consumers and headlines, Anthropic quietly locked in enterprise contracts. If AI's real money is in business tools, not chatbot toys, the Amodeis made the right bet early.
The story: Wharton's Peter Cappelli studied companies that actually made AI work. One insurance processor spent a year and $500,000 in consulting fees just to get started, and their AI initially cost three times more than human workers. They cut just 5 jobs out of 44.
Your takeaway: The "AI will replace everyone" narrative doesn't match what's happening on the ground. Real AI adoption is expensive, slow, and messy. Companies may be using AI announcements to impress investors more than to transform operations.
TOOLS ON OUR RADAR
🦁 Brave Browser Free and Open Source: Browse the web with built-in ad blocking and tracker protection—faster loading and more privacy without installing extensions.
✍️ LanguageTool Freemium: Check grammar and style in 30+ languages with AI that catches mistakes beyond basic spell-check.
🔗 Beacons AI Freemium: Build a customizable link-in-bio page with built-in email marketing, digital product sales, and AI-powered media kits for brand deals.
🔍 SEO.ai Freemium: Automate keyword research and content creation with AI that plans, writes, and publishes SEO-optimized articles for your website.
TRENDING
Amazon Layoffs Hit This Month - Between 1,000 and 2,500 Amazon employees will lose jobs by late January across Washington, California, Virginia, and New Jersey. The company framed cuts as AI-driven efficiency.
SoundHound Stock Jumps 7% After CES Demos - The voice AI company showed off "agentic" tech that can book restaurant reservations and pay for parking through voice commands. Analysts kept bullish ratings despite cutting price targets.
Radio Tech Could Make AI Chips Use Far Less Energy - Researchers developed a way to use radio waves for AI processing that could dramatically cut power consumption in data centers.
AI Automates Rare Disease Diagnosis - Tokyo researchers created an algorithm that counts chromosome abnormalities to diagnose Bloom syndrome, a cancer-linked genetic disorder. The AI matched human expert accuracy at 84%.
TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
Brand Voice Generator: Define your unique voice with personality profiling, tone samples, and a complete style guide
Build a fully functional Brand Voice Generator as an interactive React app. Render the working application immediately - no code display.
**My brand/business**: [What you do and who you serve]
**Current voice struggle**: [What's inconsistent or unclear about your voice now]
Create these sections:
1. **Voice Discovery Quiz**
• Personality trait sliders (Friendly↔Formal, Playful↔Serious, Bold↔Subtle, Warm↔Cool)
• Audience selector: Who are you talking to?
• Relationship dynamic: mentor, friend, guide, or peer?
• Top 3 values picker
• "Generate Voice Profile" button
2. **Voice Personality Profile**
• Archetype result: "You are THE [TYPE]" with description
• Radar chart: Formality, Energy, Warmth, Humor, Authority (1-10 each)
• 3 core voice words that define you
• Similar brand examples for reference
3. **Tone Spectrum by Context**
• Visual slider: CASUAL ←→ FORMAL
• Platform-specific tone cards:
- Social media tone
- Website copy tone
- Email tone
- Sales page tone
• When to dial up/down guidelines
4. **Voice Samples Library**
• Generate samples IN YOUR VOICE for:
- Welcome message
- Announcement post
- Call-to-action
- Handling a complaint
• Side-by-side: Generic vs. Your Voice
• Copy button for each
5. **Do's and Don'ts Cards**
• ✅ Always: phrases and approaches to use
• ❌ Never: words and tones to avoid
• ⚠️ Sparingly: occasional elements
6. **Vocabulary Toolkit**
• Your power words (20 words)
• Signature phrases
• Words to avoid
• "Search Brand Voice Examples" button
7. **One-Page Style Guide**
• Printable summary card
• Quick reference for team
• Export button
Design specs:
- Personality profile aesthetic (dating app meets brand guide)
- Radar charts for attributes
- Warm creative palette (coral, teal, gold)
- Voice sample cards with subtle wave graphics
- Clean card-based layout
- Sliding scales and spectrum bars
- Typography that showcases voice
When "Search Brand Voice Examples" is clicked, use web search to find strong brand voice examples and copywriting techniques.What this does: Transforms vague ideas about "how you sound" into a concrete brand voice system. Includes personality profiling, tone variations for different platforms, sample content written in your voice, and a shareable style guide your whole team can follow.
That this looks like:
WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s Quick Takes and Trending news)
✅ AI Can Now: Map thousands of ancient building stones in hours using drone footage, a task that previously required weeks of expert manual work
❌ Still Can't: Replace archaeologists' interpretive judgment. The system still needs humans to correct errors and decide what the patterns actually mean
✅ AI Can Now: Run entire insurance claims workflows, handling document processing that once required dozens of employees
❌ Still Can't: Pay for itself quickly. One company spent a year and over $500K just to get AI running, and monthly AI fees still exceed what they paid workers
FROM THE WEB
RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING
Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI, argues that we're facing a wave of transformative technologies—AI, synthetic biology, quantum computing—that will reshape everything. He asks whether we can contain these technologies or whether they'll inevitably escape our control.
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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