90% of devs now use AI (but don't trust it)

PLUS: Make pixel-perfect website changes with AI

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The numbers are in, and they're contradictory: 90% of developers can't work without AI anymore, yet a large percentage don’t trust their new silicon assistant’s outputs.

Google's latest DORA report just exposed the new development meta — using AI as a productivity multiplier while still keeping human judgment in the driver's seat.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Google reveals near-universal AI adoption for devs

  • AI clears toughest CFA exam in minutes

  • Make pixel-perfect website changes with AI

  • MIT’s AI designs quantum materials

  • 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

GOOGLE

Image source: Google Cloud

The Rundown: Google Cloud just published its latest annual DORA report on ‘State of AI-assisted Software Development’, finding adoption of the tech has surged to 90% among developers — but confidence in AI outputs remains surprisingly low.

The details:

  • Google surveyed nearly 5,000 tech professionals, showing that developers now dedicate around two hours each day to working with AI assistants.

  • Despite heavy reliance on the tools, 30% of developers trust AI outputs either "a little" or "not at all" while still continuing to integrate them into workflows.

  • Productivity gains remain strong, with 80% reporting enhanced efficiency and 59% noting improvements to code quality despite the skepticism.

  • Google also introduced the DORA AI Capabilities Model, outlining seven practices designed to help companies maximize AI benefits effectively.

Why it matters: AI is shifting from experimental tooling to essential infrastructure in the development world, but the trust issues alongside massive adoption might be a feature, not a bug — showing that devs are still harnessing the tech for productivity gains while still leveraging human judgement as the final judge for quality control.

TOGETHER WITH SAMBANOVA

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AI & FINANCE

Image source: Reve / The Rundown

The Rundown: Research from NYU has found that frontier models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic can now pass all three levels of the CFA (chartered financial analyst) exam, including difficult Level III essay questions that eluded them two years ago.

The details:

  • NYU Stern and GoodFin researchers tested 23 language models on mock CFA Level III exams, finding nine models achieved passing scores above 63%.

  • OpenAI's o4-mini scored highest at 79.1% on the challenging essay portion, with Gemini 2.5 Pro and Claude 4 Opus reaching 75.9% and 74.9%.

  • Models completed the exam in minutes versus the 1,000 hours humans typically spend studying across multiple years for all three levels.

  • Human graders also consistently scored AI essay responses 5.6 points higher than automated grading systems.

Why it matters: The leap from failing essay sections two years ago shows the huge shift in analytical capabilities, with reasoning models perfectly suited for the complex thinking process. With AI’s rise, human aspects like client relationships and contextual judgement will become bigger factors than research reports and investment rationales.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the Stagewise plugin to add an interactive toolbar to your live Cursor project, letting you select UI elements directly and make precise visual edits without disrupting the layout or losing context.

Step-by-step:

  • Open the Cursor IDE, go to the Extensions tab, search for "stagewise," and click Install to add the extension

  • Open your project, press Cmd + Shift + P, type "Stagewise," and select "Auto setup toolbar" to let it analyze and modify your project files

  • Run your web app (e.g., npm run dev), click the Stagewise toolbar at the bottom to enter selection mode, hover, and click any element you want to edit

  • Write specific instructions like "Make this button fully rounded and add a subtle hover animation," and send the prompt with the selected element's context

Pro tip: You can select multiple elements at once to apply consistent styling changes across your app. This is perfect for tasks like updating the font size of all your headers or changing the colour of several buttons in a single command.

PRESENTED BY IBM

The Rundown: AI is evolving, and small models can change the game. IBM reveals six strategic shifts to help businesses build agentic AI that’s lean, scalable, and impactful.

Curious about how small models can assist in achieving results in AI implementation? Begin by exploring:

  • The shift that can help turn AI from pilot to production

  • The platform strategy that helps unlock reuse and speed

  • The mindset that helps make responsible AI a business driver

AI & MATERIALS SCIENCE

Image source: Reve / The Rundown

The Rundown: MIT researchers just launched SCIGEN, an AI framework that steers generative models to create materials with exotic quantum properties by enforcing geometric design rules during generation.

The details:

  • Researchers equipped popular diffusion models with structural rules, enabling them to create materials with geometric patterns linked to quantum properties.

  • The AI system generated 10M potential materials, with 1M actually stable enough to exist in the real world.

  • Researchers successfully built two brand-new materials in the lab, TiPdBi and TiPbSb, confirming the AI accurately predicted their magnetic behaviors.

  • Google DeepMind collaborated on the framework, which prevents AI from generating physically impossible structures that plague standard models.

Why it matters: Quantum computers promise to revolutionize fields like drug discovery, battery design, and clean energy — but they need special materials that barely exist in nature. With systems like SCIGEN now generating millions of candidates instantly, the wait for quantum breakthroughs is potentially being drastically shortened.

QUICK HITS

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  • 👁️ Qwen3-VL - Alibaba’s new SOTA vision-language model

* Sponsored Listing

Microsoft officially added Anthropic’s Claude into 365 Copilot, marking the company’s first expansion outside of OpenAI for model choice.

Elon Musk took a shot at Anthropic on X, saying “winning was never in the set of possible outcomes” for the Claude-maker.

SAP and OpenAI unveiled plans for "OpenAI for Germany," a sovereign AI platform that will bring AI capabilities to German public sector workers, launching in 2026.

Cohere announced $100M funding that brings its valuation to nearly $7B, fueled by enterprise demand for its security-first AI platform, North, and Command A models.

Cloudflare open-sourced VibeSDK, enabling anyone to deploy their own AI-powered "vibe coding" platform with one click.

The U.K. government revealed that its new AI-powered Fraud Risk Assessment Accelerator helped recover a record £480M in fraudulent claims over the past year.

COMMUNITY

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Angela C. in Cherry Hill, NJ:

"I used ChatGPT to bridge a language gap and help a lost older woman with a child. Thanks to the AI, I gathered the info I needed, contacted the right people, and got her safely reunited with her family."

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

That's it for today!

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