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- Mind-controlled gaming
Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
Neuralink just took gaming to a whole new level — inside the mind.
A live stream just revealed the incredible progress of the first human to receive a Neuralink brain-chip implant. Let’s get into it.
In today’s AI rundown:
Neuralink patient plays chess with mind
Sakana AI evolves new AI models
Turn simple Claude prompts into “mega” prompts
Stanford gives AI an inner monologue
6 new AI tools & 4 new AI jobs
More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
NEURALINK
Image source: Neuralink
The Rundown: Neuralink just live-streamed their first patient using a brain-chip implant to play online chess and other games by mind control alone, in a major milestone for the technology.
The details:
Noland Arbaugh, who is paralyzed from the shoulders down, demonstrated moving a cursor and playing chess using his the brain implant and his mind.
Arbaugh received the implant in January and reported no cognitive impairments, saying the surgery was "super easy."
Using the implant, he played online chess and the video game Civilization VI for 8 hours straight.
Elon Musk also revealed that Neuralink’s next product will be ‘Blindsight’, working to restore vision of people who were born blind.
Why it matters: Neuralink's patient demo is the latest evidence that brain-computer interfaces are rapidly progressing from science fiction to medical reality. While it’s easy to get caught up in dystopian narratives, this video grounds us in the very real impact this technology could have.
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Key features include:
Trained on over 1M songs, featuring 800+ instruments and 50+ languages
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SAKANA AI
Image source: Sakana AI
The Rundown: Tokyo-based startup Sakana AI just released three new Japanese-language AI models, created by “breeding“ existing open-source models to produce optimized “offspring”.
The three model releases include:
EvoLLM-JP: A language model with strong Japanese fluency and math capabilities
EvoSDXL-JP: A diffusion model for high-speed image generation
EvoVLM-JP: A vision language model for Japanese text and images
The details:
Sakana used a "model merging" technique combined with an evolutionary algorithm to create the new models.
The process involved breeding hundreds of model generations, with the most successful models becoming "parents" for the next.
Sakana is open-sourcing two of the models, with the 7B parameter LLM-JP outperforming 70B parameter models on benchmarks.
Why it matters: Sakana’s strong performance could suggest a new alternative training path for AI models. If scalable, it could also significantly democratize AI development — enabling high-quality, task-specific models to evolve quickly by mixing and matching the expanding universe of open-source AI.
AI TRAINING
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to get Claude to create a prompt template for any use case to help you write optimized prompts in the future.
Step-by-step:
Visit Claude’s website. You can use the Sonnet (free) or Opus (paid) models.
Go to this Google Doc with a long prompt we’ve prepared for you and and copy the content.
Paste the content into Claude and submit.
Claude will ask you to input any prompt, and it will generate an optimized prompt template for you.
Lastly, modify the given template by adding your own variables where you see curly braces, e.g., {target_market}.
AI RESEARCH
Image source: Midjourney
The Rundown: Stanford researchers just developed Quiet-STaR, a new training method that enables AI models to generate an inner monologue, or ‘think’ before responding.
The details:
Quiet-STaR trains the AI to generate parallel "thoughts" or rationales before answering prompts.
The model then outputs a mixture of predictions with and without these rationales, learning by discarding unhelpful thoughts.
When applied to the Mistral 7B language model, Quiet-STaR nearly doubled its scores on math and common sense reasoning benchmarks.
Why it matters: Just like humans — it appears thinking before you speak is a good lesson to also apply to AI models. Research like Quiet-STaR shows that giving AI the power to break down challenges, consider alternatives, and learn from mistakes is a strong path toward more adaptable systems.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
🔎 ThinkAny- AI search engine using RAG
📱Glowbom- Create apps with AI, no coding needed.
🌍 History Teacher GPT- Explore historical topics with this ChatGPT GPT
🔠 Taylor- API for text classification and categorization
🔒 ZeroTrusted AI- Protect your identity & data with an LLM firewall
🦾 Sanctuary AI - Buyer, Robotics
🤗 Hugging Face - Multimodal Research Engineer
📋 Cohere - Operations Associate
📦 OpenAI - IT Logistics Coordinator
QUICK HITS
Microsoft agreed to pay Inflection $650M in the form of a licensing deal that will make its models available for sale on the Azure Cloud service — coming on the heels of the hiring of Mustafa Suleyman and most of Inflection’s staff.
Google announced the start of API support for its Gemini 1.5 Pro model, available in the company’s AI Studio — allowing developers to leverage its 1M token context window.
Elon Musk said that Tesla’s Optimus could eventually be controlled as prosthetics via a Neuralink brain chip to replace human limbs.
Open Interpreter unveiled the 01 Light, a portable open-source voice interface that connects to a user’s computer, allowing the AI to control apps, learn skills, and observe screens.
The UN unanimously adopted a resolution endorsing global efforts to ensure the development and use of AI that is safe, secure, trustworthy, and beneficial for all nations while respecting human rights.
The University of South Florida announced plans to establish a college dedicated to artificial intelligence, aiming to position the Tampa area as a national leader in the sector.
Microsoft unveiled the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6, the first PCs to feature a dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard for quick access to the AI chatbot.
THAT’S A WRAP
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