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One major reason AI adoption stalls? Training.
AI implementation often goes sideways due to unclear goals and a lack of a clear framework. This AI Training Checklist from You.com pinpoints common pitfalls and guides you to build a capable, confident team that can make the most out of your AI investment.
What you'll get:
Key steps for building a successful AI training program
Guidance on overcoming employee resistance and fostering adoption
A structured worksheet to monitor progress and share across your organization
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
Waymo's 'Dirty Secret' The Car Isn't Driving Alone
TLDR: Waymo admits its robotaxis rely on remote humans for help, while Tesla bets on cars that think entirely for themselves.
The Story: Waymo's robotaxis are logging millions of miles, but they aren't alone. A recent report confirms Waymo says robotaxis help remote intervention is a core part of their operations. When a Waymo gets confused by construction or erratic police signals, it stops and "phones home" to a human agent for guidance.
This is the exact opposite of Tesla's approach. Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" (FSD) has no remote command center. It relies entirely on the car's local "brain" to figure it out, with the driver (you) acting as the backup. Waymo bets on a "remote supervisor"; Tesla bets on a "local supervisor" (until the software is perfect).
Its Significance: This reveals a massive divide in how we build safe robots: do we trust the network or the car itself? While Waymo’s method fixes confusion in the short term, it creates a scary long-term vulnerability where a hacker could target that remote signal to control the fleet, or a dropped connection could leave a car helpless in fast-moving traffic. Tesla’s gamble is that a car must be a self-contained survival machine that never needs to "phone home" to save your life, avoiding the latency and security risks that come with relying on a human halfway across the world.
QUICK TAKES
Mistral Releases Voxtral Transcribe 2
The story: Mistral has dropped its latest speech-to-text model, claiming significant accuracy gains over OpenAI's Whisper, specifically in multi-speaker environments.
Your takeaway: Transcription is becoming a commodity, but "smart" transcription (knowing who said what) is the new battleground for meetings and medical records.
GPT-5 Lowers Protein Synthesis Costs
The story: OpenAI's newest model demonstrates an ability to predict protein structures and folding pathways that reduces lab synthesis costs by orders of magnitude.
Your takeaway: This moves AI from "writing emails" to "curing diseases." The physical impact of LLMs is starting to catch up to the digital hype.
Microsoft Lists Jobs Most Exposed to AI
The story: A new visual breakdown ranks the 40 jobs with the highest overlap with Generative AI capabilities, placing interpreters, historians, and telemarketers at the top.
Your takeaway: "Exposure" doesn't mean "eliminated." It means these roles will change the fastest. If you're on the list, your new skill is managing AI, not doing the rote work.
TOOLS ON OUR RADAR
🎨 *OpenArt Freemium: All-in-one AI image generation platform that allows you to create consistent characters, train custom models, and edit visuals with advanced inpainting and upscaling tools.
🐧 AppFlowy Free and Open Source: Privacy first open source alternative to Notion that allows you to manage tasks and databases while keeping 100% of your data on your local machine. (Alternative to Notion)
📅 Vimcal Paid: The world's fastest calendar designed specifically for remote teams, featuring integrated time zone conversion and instant scheduling links.
✍️ Lex Freemium: Modern word processor with an integrated AI that helps you overcome writer's block by suggesting the next sentence or refining your tone in real-time.
TRENDING
Claude Opus 4.6: The Finance Update - Anthropic releases a specialized model fine-tuned for complex accounting and regulatory logic.
Big Tech Set to Spend $650 Billion in 2026 - The infrastructure arms race is accelerating, not slowing down.
Super Bowl AI Ads Pour in Big Money - Expect Sunday's game to be dominated by AI companies trying to become household names.
Gemini Ads Find a New Home - Google is aggressively integrating AI-driven ad placements directly into conversational results.
Harvard 3D Prints Shape-Morphing Soft Robots - New fabrication tech allows robots to be printed with flexibility built right in.
AI Cannot Automate Science - A philosopher argues AI can crunch data but lacks the social judgment required for true scientific discovery.
TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
Sketch & Draw Coach: Learn to draw by hand with daily prompts, technique tutorials, and a progress portfolio
Build a fully functional Sketch & Draw Coach as an interactive React app. Render the working application immediately - no code display.
**My current level**: [Never drawn / Beginner / Some experience / Returning after years]
**What I want to draw**: [Portraits, landscapes, characters, animals, etc.]
Create these sections:
1. **Daily Drawing Prompt**
• Today's challenge:
🎨 Subject (what to draw)
⏱️ Time limit (5/15/30 min options)
🎯 Focus skill (lines, shading, proportion)
• "New Prompt" shuffle button
• Difficulty: Easy / Medium / Hard
• "I drew this" completion checkbox
• Streak counter for daily practice
2. **Fundamentals Tracker**
• Core skills checklist:
✏️ Line control
✏️ Basic shapes
✏️ Proportion & measurement
✏️ Light & shadow
✏️ Perspective
✏️ Texture
• Self-rate each: Learning / Developing / Confident
• "Search [Skill] Tutorial" button
• Suggested focus based on weaknesses
3. **Exercise Library**
• Drills sorted by skill:
- Continuous line drawing
- Gesture sketches (30-second poses)
- Negative space practice
- Shading spheres and cubes
- Blind contour drawing
• Time and difficulty for each
• "Start Exercise" with timer
• Mark complete when done
4. **Progress Portfolio**
• Log your drawings:
- Date
- What you drew
- Time spent
- Skill practiced
- Notes/observations
• "First attempt vs. now" comparison prompts
• Monthly progress review
• Celebrate improvement
5. **Plateau Breakers**
• Stuck? Try these:
- Draw with your non-dominant hand
- Set a 2-minute time limit
- Draw without looking at paper
- Copy a master's work
- Draw the same thing 10 times
• "Search Drawing Exercises" button
• "Why am I not improving?" troubleshooter
6. **Weekly Challenge**
• Bigger project each week:
- Theme announced
- 7 days to complete
- Suggested approach
• Past challenges archive
• "I finished!" submission
• Build a body of work
Design specs:
- Artist's sketchbook aesthetic
- Pencil, charcoal, paper textures
- Cream/off-white backgrounds
- Sketch marks and eraser smudges
- Drawing tool icons (pencils, erasers)
- Warm, creative studio lighting
- Easel and drafting table vibes
- Hand-drawn UI elements
- Progress shown as filled sketchbook pages
- Encouraging art teacher energy
When "Search [Skill] Tutorial" is clicked, use web search to find drawing tutorials and technique breakdowns.What this does: Turns "I wish I could draw" into daily practice. Gives you structured prompts, tracks your fundamental skills, provides exercises for specific techniques, and builds a progress portfolio so you can see how far you've come.
What this looks like:
WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s news)
✅ AI Can Now: 3D print shape-morphing soft robots
❌ Still Can't: Automate the social/creative aspects of scientific research
✅ AI Can Now: Predict protein structures to lower synthesis costs
❌ Still Can't: Generate video without consistent physical limitations
FROM THE WEB
RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING
Douglas Adams' original radio version, which predates the books. Deep Thought and Marvin the Paranoid Android remain two of fiction's best AI characters because Adams understood that intelligence doesn't guarantee happiness or purpose. Funny and quietly profound.
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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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