Explosive OpenAI, Musk emails revealed

PLUS: Microsoft's AI with 'near-infinite' memory

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

New court documents just unearthed a trove of emails between OpenAI and Elon Musk, giving us a fly-on-the-wall look at the early days of the world’s most explosive AI drama.

From AGI dictatorship worries to million-dollar talent wars, the seeds of today's AI power struggles were planted deeper than anyone knew. Let’s get into it…

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Early emails between OpenAI, Musk revealed

  • Suleyman: AI with ‘near-infinite’ memory achieved

  • Transform blog posts into infographics

  • Arc Institute releases ‘ChatGPT for DNA’

  • 5 new AI tools & 5 new AI jobs

  • More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI & ELON MUSK

Image source: Midjourney / The Rundown

The Rundown: New court filings from Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI have exposed internal emails from the company's formative years — revealing intense early tensions around control, talent acquisition, and concerns about AI dominance.

The details:

  • The newly released emails are dated between 2015 and 2018, covering OpenAI’s initial formation to Musk’s eventual departure from the company.

  • Leadership worried about control over AGI, with Ilya Sutskever warning of concerns about potential "dictatorship" scenarios from Google or internally.

  • Early salary battles erupted when DeepMind attempted to poach OpenAI's founding team, forcing rapid compensation increases of $100-200K per person.

  • Internal debates around Microsoft collaboration surfaced, with Musk stating he'd pay "$50M not to seem like Microsoft's marketing b*tch.”

  • Altman's role also sparked concerns, with Sutskever questioning his ‘cost function’ and whether AGI was his primary motivation.

Why it matters: Whenever both Elon and Sama are involved, you know the drama will be juicy. These email exchanges are incredible artifacts from the early days of OpenAI’s formation and shed additional light on Musk’s vendetta against Altman and the undercurrents that may have contributed to the board ouster chaos in Nov. 2023.

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MICROSOFT

Image source: Times Techies (@timestechies on YouTube)

The Rundown: Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman just revealed the company has created prototypes with "near-infinite memory" capabilities in a new interview with Times Techies, calling it the ‘critical piece’ of AI development.

The details:

  • Microsoft's prototypes can allegedly maintain persistent memory across unlimited sessions, breaking through current limitations.

  • Suleyman expects this technology to be available by 2025, enabling AI systems that "just don't forget" with ongoing, evolving dialogues.

  • Suleyman also said that memory is an ‘inflection point’ that makes it worth investing time in chats, changing the current frustrating and shallow experience.

  • The Microsoft AI CEO also noted a coming shift from AI understanding and seeing context to a true proactive companion over a reactive chatbot.

Why it matters: While we’ve seen memory efforts from systems like ChatGPT, Suleyman’s ‘hollow’ description accurately portrays those early iterations. Unlocking the ability for limitless memory can lead to models that can form lasting, evolving relationships with users and better understand their needs and goals.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: Infography uses AI to automatically turn any blog post or text content into professionally designed infographics.

Step-by-step:

  1. Create a free account at Infography (you get 5 credits to start).

  2. Choose your content source (URL, topic, or direct text).

  3. Select your preferred format (vertical, square, or presentation).

  4. Edit and customize your design with brand colors and fonts.

Pro tip: Use the Brand section to save your style preferences for consistent designs across all your infographics.

PRESENTED BY CODEIUM

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AI RESEARCH

Image source: ScienceAdvisor

The Rundown: Scientists at the Arc Research Institute just introduced Evo, an AI model trained on 2.7M microbial genomes that can both interpret and generate genetic sequences with unprecedented accuracy.

The details:

  • Unlike traditional language models trained on text, Evo simultaneously learns from DNA, RNA, and protein sequences.

  • In early tests, Evo already designed working genetic editing tools and accurately predicted how DNA changes would affect bacteria.

  • Evo can generate entirely new genome-length sequences over 1M base pairs long, though they aren’t capable of forming fully viable organisms yet.

  • The researchers deliberately excluded human-affecting viral genomes from training for safety reasons.

Why it matters: Having a ‘ChatGPT for DNA’ is a mind-blowing unlock, with the potential to drastically accelerate research, design new proteins for drug development, predict disease-causing mutations, and more. However, it also raises questions about how society will responsibly handle tools that can write genetic code as easily as we write emails.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

  • ⚙️ Momen - Full-stack, no-code web app builder with an integrated AI agent development framework

  • 🔉 Mikrotakt - AI-powered tool to extract vocals, instruments, drums, and more from any song

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  • 💨 Sre.AI - AI DevOps agents for enterprise teams tailored to any workflow

  • 🎲 AI Game Master - Fully immersive DnD-inspired experience powered by AI

  • 📱 The Rundown - Social Media Manager

  • 🏗️ Curai - Senior Implementation Manager

  • 🎨 Grammarly - Staff Growth Designer, Monetization

  • 📊 Databricks - Director of Product Operations

  • 💻 Snorkel - Senior IT Specialist (Contract)

QUICK HITS

Stanford researchers unveiled SEQUOIA, an AI system that can predict gene expression patterns in cancer cells by analyzing standard biopsy images, potentially eliminating the need for expensive testing.

Kai-Fu Lee’s 01.ai revealed a breakthrough in efficient AI training, achieving competitive results compared to OpenAI’s reported $1B investment into training GPT-5.

The MIT Jameel Clinic released Boltz-1, an open-source biomolecular model that matches Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold3's accuracy in predicting 3D structures.

Nvidia's upcoming Blackwell AI chips reportedly suffer overheating issues, prompting design revisions and raising concerns about data center deployment timelines.

Google's Gemini AI chatbot sparked concerns after delivering a threatening message telling a Michigan student to ‘die’ during a routine homework help conversation, prompting the company to acknowledge a safety filter failure.

U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping reached new landmark agreements on AI nuclear controls in the pair’s final meeting before the administration change, ensuring that only humans will make decisions with nuclear weapons.

Coca-Cola released a new AI-generated Christmas advertisement, partnering with Silverside AI to reimagine its original “Holidays Are Coming” spot.

THAT’S A WRAP

That's it for today!

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See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team

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