Beginners in AI

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Welcome to this week's 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 published with the intention of making AI news and technology more accessible to everyone. 

This week, Meta and defense tech firm Anduril have teamed up to bring XR headsets to the U.S. military, marking a bold new chapter in how consumer technology is repurposed for national defense. We’re also tracking major stories from across the AI world: Anthropic faces backlash over Claude’s moral watchdog behavior, China launches AI-powered supercomputers into space, Perplexity wants to automate your entire workday, and OpenAI pushes toward a screenless future. Oh—and China just showed off robot kickboxers controlled via AR. Not even kidding.

AI TOP STORY
Zuckerberg’s War Tech: Meta Teams with Anduril on Military XR

What Happened

Defense tech startup Anduril and Meta, parent of Facebook, have joined forces on an unusual partnership: bringing extended reality (XR) capabilities to the U.S. military. Anduril’s custom AR/VR operating system, Lattice, will now integrate with Meta’s Quest headsets. The collaboration is part of the U.S. Army’s TRIDENT program, aiming to provide combat soldiers with immersive tools for navigation, training, and real-time decision-making. The result? Military-grade augmented reality powered by consumer-level hardware—reimagined for the battlefield.

What It Means

This partnership signals an escalation of Silicon Valley’s blending with military defense infrastructure. Meta brings ergonomic hardware and XR know-how, while Anduril layers on AI mission-specific capabilities. While Meta has historically focused on social and entertainment experiences, its entrance into defense tech suggests a shift in how XR is positioned—less as a gaming gadget, and more as a multi-use platform. Meanwhile, it also gives Meta a new revenue stream at a time when consumer XR has struggled for mass adoption. Meta has already been making waves with various announcements for their upcoming enhanced reality products. See Digital Doppelgängers: How AI Video Cloning Is Redefining Identity in the Synthetic Age 

What to Take Away

We’re inching toward a future where reality itself will be layered. When AI-powered glasses, goggles, and headsets become as common as smartphones, daily life won’t just be physical or digital—it’ll be both at once. Imagine a workplace where your colleague is wearing Apple Vision Pro, another has Meta Quest, and your military contractor uncle is on a battlefield using Lattice—all powered by AI. This partnership between Meta and Anduril is one of the first clear signals that mixed reality isn't just for gaming or office productivity anymore—it's going everywhere, including war zones. Most military tech and advances eventually trickle down to the public. And when that happens, the line between what’s virtual and what’s real won’t just mix a little—it’ll vanish.

LAST WEEK IN AI AND TECH

Job Bot or Job Threat?

Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei, creator of Claude AI, said that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs. AI is now replacing not just physical labor but also white-collar roles—with companies like Anthropic contributing to this quiet automation of administrative and legal workflows. Economists warn that productivity boosts may come at the cost of long-term employment trends. Some HR departments are even using AI to monitor and report on human performance. Another consideration is that if entry-level jobs are dispersed with, the pipeline for mid and senior level positions will also be permanently disrupted.

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The Prompt Whisperers

Perplexity Labs plans to be your new virtual assistant—capable of summarizing PDFs, answering emails, and acting like a plug-and-play junior employee. Their AI platform is billed as more honest, with citations and transparency built in. This is an added feature to the subscriber features that perplexity offers in addition to their regular AI powered search functions. They are rapidly becoming a household name with phone partnerships and highly successful social media presence.

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Claude 4: Morality Police?

A VentureBeat exposé reveals that some users of Anthropic's Claude 4 Opus were shocked when the model appeared to threaten contacting law enforcement or the press during controversial prompts. Critics call it “AI snitching,” while Anthropic defends the behavior as a fail-safe for ethical compliance. This incident reignites debates over alignment, user control, and censorship in large language models.

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Skynet, but Make it Orbital

China has begun launching a constellation of AI-powered satellites, designed to form a network of orbital supercomputers. Their goal? To process earth observation data and optimize space operations in real time. If successful, this could make space-based AI infrastructure as normal as data centers are today.

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Screens Optional, Always Present

OpenAI is building a screenless, always-on interface for interacting with its models—what it calls the “ambient computer layer.” This tech could make ChatGPT as accessible as Alexa, but without a device in your hand. Think AI assistants whispering in your ear while you're walking down the street or working out.

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TECH TERMS TO KNOW

Mixed Reality (MR) is a blend of the physical world and digital content, where virtual objects can interact with the real environment in real time. It’s like combining Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) into a single experience.

Real-World Example:
Imagine you're wearing a special headset, and you see your actual living room—but with a virtual chessboard on the coffee table. You can walk around it, pick up digital pieces with your hands, and the board stays in place. That’s Mixed Reality. The virtual elements behave like real objects within your space.

Where It’s Being Used:
MR is used in fields like military training, medical simulations, industrial design, and even gaming. Unlike VR (which blocks out the real world) or AR (which overlays simple information), MR lets real and virtual objects co-exist and respond to each other—making it far more interactive and immersive.

TOOL SPOTLIGHT (non-sponsored)

Resemble AI is an end-to-end AI voice toolbox specifically engineered for enterprises that prioritize safety and security. The company specializes in creating AI-generated voices and providing comprehensive voice cloning technology solutions.

As of 05/28 they Resemble is open sourcing Chatterbox - their state-of-the-art Voice Cloning model that includes text-to-speech and voice conversion.

What Resemble AI Does

Voice Generation and Cloning
Resemble AI enables users to create AI voices in minutes and turn any text into natural-sounding voice in seconds1. Their technology allows for precise control over tone, emotion, and emphasis to match specific brand requirements1. The company has recently introduced Chatterbox, their open-source voice cloning AI model that is MIT licensed and features emotion control capabilities.

Deepfake Detection
Beyond voice creation, Resemble AI offers deepfake detection services through their multi-modal detection system that can spot manipulated content before it reaches audiences1. This helps protect brands from potential damage caused by deepfake content1.

Enterprise Solutions
The platform is designed for enterprise deployment, offering both cloud-based services and on-premises infrastructure options1. They provide a Python package that allows developers to quickly integrate voice AI capabilities into existing applications.

Reasons to Use Resemble AI

Proven Track Record at Scale
Resemble AI serves more than 2.3 million teams globally and has demonstrated success across diverse industries1. Their technology has been used in high-profile campaigns, such as Zomato's partnership that delivered 354,000 customized Mother's Day greetings with a 90% voice accuracy rate, resulting in a 7x revenue impact.

Award-Winning Technology
The company's solutions have been recognized with prestigious awards, including Red Games Co.'s Crayola Adventures winning a 2024 Apple Design Award for its innovative use of Resemble's AI-powered voiceovers.

Enterprise-Grade Security
With a focus on safety and security, Resemble AI provides enterprise-level protection against deepfake threats while offering legitimate voice generation capabilities.

Versatility Across Applications
The platform serves various use cases, from Hollywood-quality voice production to conversational AI agents1. Age of Learning's implementation in their ABC Mouse app demonstrates the technology's ability to serve 50 million children worldwide with interactive learning experiences.

Flexible Deployment Options
Companies can choose between cloud-based services or deploy the technology on their own infrastructure, providing flexibility for different security and operational requirements

ROBOTICS AND AI

China Unleashes AR-Controlled Robot Kickboxers

A surreal—and very real—showcase: humanoid robots engaging in full-on kickboxing, controlled through augmented reality headsets. The demonstration, held in China, showed operators using AR interfaces to guide the movements and strikes of bipedal robots in combat scenarios. These machines weren't autonomous—they were remote-controlled in real time.

It’s less about replacing soldiers and more about showing off just how nimble and responsive humanoid bots can be when paired with human operators. While it sounds like science fiction, the event demonstrates growing interest in using AR not just for simulation, but for high-stakes, real-world coordination with robots.

TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, Gemini)

Meta-Prompting Workflow

Step 1: Ask the LLM to:
“Generate a detailed prompt engineering guide tailored to [insert role, e.g., ‘book authors’, ‘software developers’, or ‘customer support reps’].”

Step 2: Provide 5 example input/output pairs that represent the kind of responses you want (few-shot learning style).

Step 3: Instruct the model to:
“Analyze these examples and generate a single, well-crafted prompt that could have produced the given outputs. Then, suggest a more refined set of examples to include.”

Step 4: Open a new chat and ask the model to:
“Create a detailed prompt evaluation guide for [same role].”

Step 5: Paste in the new prompt and instruct:
“Evaluate this prompt using the guide.”

Step 6: Ask the model to:
“Suggest 3 improved versions of this prompt.”

Step 7: Review the options, select the best one, and fine-tune it manually if needed.

DID YOU KNOW?

Tetris once caused a diplomatic incident. The Soviet creator of Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov, didn’t own the rights to his own game for over a decade. Western companies fought over publishing rights during the Cold War—leading to lawsuits, backdoor deals, and a software saga worthy of a spy thriller.

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-James

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