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AI's fertility breakthrough arrives
PLUS: Epoch shows what a real 'AI manhattan project' could look like
Zach Mink & Rowan Cheung
July 04, 2025
Good morning, AI enthusiasts. After 18 years and 15 failed IVF cycles, one couple's journey to parenthood seemed impossible — until AI looked where humans couldn't.
Columbia University’s AI system just achieved its first pregnancy, using astrophysics algorithms designed for space to create a cost-effective method that could transform fertility treatment for couples worldwide.
Reminder: Our next workshop is today at 4 PM EST — join and learn how to wire MCP into both conversational AI and your favorite coding IDEs. RSVP here.
In today’s AI rundown:
AI helps a couple conceive after 18 years
Meta chatbots to message users first
Build your own AI app with Claude Artifacts
What a real 'AI Manhattan Project' could look like
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
AI & MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGHS
Image source: o3 / The Rundown
The Rundown: Columbia University doctors achieved the first pregnancy using an AI system called STAR, which helped a couple conceive after an 18-year struggle by discovering viable sperm in a man with severe infertility.
The details:
STAR uses AI to scan semen samples from men with azoospermia, a condition with nearly zero measurable sperm, instead of the typical 200-300M cells.
The system scanned 8M microscopic images in under an hour, locating 44 cells, whereas human technicians found zero after two days of searching.
Columbia's team developed the approach over five years, adapting astrophysics algorithms for new stars to detect microscopic reproductive cells.
STAR is only used at the Columbia University Fertility Center for now, with an estimated $3K cost compared to as high as $15-30K for a single IVF cycle.
Why it matters: Fertility rates are plunging across the globe — and for many, the costs for expensive cycles of IVF treatments (which don’t guarantee success) are an insurmountable barrier. With STAR and new AI-driven systems, doctors can hopefully provide solutions to infertility at a more accessible price to hopeful parents.
TOGETHER WITH INNOVATING WITH AI
The Rundown: Innovating with AI has trained 1,000+ AI consultants, and now they’re launching their new directory of IWAI Certified AI experts, with exclusive early access for readers of The Rundown.
With this free directory, you can:
Connect instantly with dozens of professional AI experts
Get help with AI training, strategy, and implementation of workflows and agents
Implement modern AI solutions with no fees, commission, or lock-in
META
Image source: …
The Rundown: Meta is training customizable AI chatbots that send unprompted messages within its messaging apps, according to a new report from Business Insider, hoping to increase engagement and user retention with the proactive companions.
The details:
Data labeling firm Aligner is helping develop the bots, which can remember past chats and maintain consistent personas like movie critics and chefs.
Chatbots created through Meta's AI Studio can initiate conversations within 14 days of user contact, requiring five prior messages to activate the feature.
Meta confirmed testing shows bots won't continue messaging without user responses, limiting outreach to one follow-up per conversation thread.
Court documents revealed Meta projects generative AI products will generate $2-3B in revenue by 2025, potentially reaching $1.4T by 2035.
Why it matters: It was only a matter of time before AI started being more proactive with messaging, but it’s an area that needs to be tread very lightly. While on the surface, it may seem more “human” to have a bot message first, it could quickly become cringey and spammy if not implemented correctly.
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Claude Artifacts' new API integration to create custom AI-powered tools directly inside Claude.
Step-by-step:
Click the artifacts button on Claude's left sidebar and then “New artifact”
Use a prompt that requests AI tool capabilities, e.g., "Create a grammar AI checker with two text areas (Original vs Fixed text) and a 'Fix Grammar' button."
Customize with additional features: "Add word count and change highlighting"
Test with sample text and save to your artifacts library for future use.
Pro tip: Your custom AI tool uses Claude via API, without you needing to set it all up.
PRESENTED BY WARP
The Rundown: Warp just launched the first Agentic Development Environment, and it’s already surpassed Claude Code by over +20% on Terminal-Bench — also scoring 71% on SWE-bench Verified to make it the best performing AI coding agent on the market.
Warp pulled ahead using:
Long-running commands — something no other tool can support
Agent multi-threading, running multiple agents in parallel, all under your control
Deployment across the entire development lifecycle
Try Warp's state-of-the-art coding agent for yourself — download for free.
AI RESEARCH
Image source: Midjourney
The Rundown: Research Lab Epoch AI just published an analysis of what a U.S.-led AI Manhattan Project could look like, believing the initiative could significantly accelerate progress and achieve a 10,000x increase in AI training scale over GPT-4 by 2027.
The details:
Researchers modeled a national AI project after historical efforts like the Apollo program, involving government leadership and private-sector resources.
An investment level similar to the Apollo program's peak would fund an estimated 27M GPUs and train a model 10,000x larger than GPT-4 by late 2027.
The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission recommended a Manhattan Project AI program, calling it a top priority for achieving AGI.
Epoch estimated massive power needed, suggesting leveraging the Defense Production Act and other national efforts to speed power plant construction.
Why it matters: The AGI/ASI race is no longer just a corporate competition, but a global sprint to mobilize resources for energy and AI infrastructure. Just like major national efforts of the past (Apollo, Manhattan Project), being the first country to achieve this technological milestone will hold humanity-altering implications.
QUICK HITS
OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever formally announced that he will be taking on the role of CEO for SSI, following the departure of Daniel Gross to Meta.
Together AI open-sourced DeepSWE, a coding agent that achieves SOTA results for open-weight agents on SWE-Bench-Verified for software tasks.
Higgsfield introduced Soul Inpaint, a new image editing tool allowing users to make granular changes to then combine them with video and motion control.
Replit released Dynamic Intelligence, new features for its agentic coding tool that enhance context awareness, reasoning, and autonomous behavior.
xAI’s Grok updates will reportedly include a “Games” option to build and create games, with Grok-4 expected to be released next week.
ByteDance researchers released X-UniMotion, a new framework that animates still images with extremely realistic whole-body, hand, and facial motion.
COMMUNITY
Join our next workshop today at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently wire MCP into both conversational AI and your favorite coding IDEs.
RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.
That's it for today!Before you go we’d love to know what you thought of today's newsletter to help us improve The Rundown experience for you. |
See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team
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