Google releases an OpenAI o1 rival

Welcome, AI enthusiasts.

Today is our last email before we take our team-wide week-long holiday break (our first break in nearly two years — crazy!).

So within the spirit of rest and leisure, we have got a jam-packed rundown for you today with big news from Google DeepMind, Genesis, Apptronik, and more. Let’s get into it…

In today’s AI rundown:

• Google releases experimental ‘reasoning’ AI

• The primary generative AI physics simulator

• Turn your articles into video podcasts

• Google partners with Apptronik on humanoid robots

• 6 recent AI tools & 5 recent AI jobs

• More AI & tech news

Read time: 4 minutes

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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

GOOGLE DEEPMIND

 ✨ Google releases experimental ‘reasoning’ AI

The Rundown: Google just released Gemini 2.0 Flash Considering Experimental, a brand new AI model that pauses to “think” through complex problems like OpenAI’s o1 model, but is free-to-use and works faster.

The main points:

• The model explicitly shows its thought process while solving problems, just like other reasoning models like OpenAI’s o1.

• Built on Gemini 2.0 Flash, early users report significantly faster performance than competing reasoning models.

• The model increases computation time to enhance reasoning, resulting in longer but potentially more accurate responses.

• The model is now ranked #1 on the Chatbot Arena across all categories and is freely available through AI Studio, the Gemini API, and Vertex AI.

Why it matters: The race for higher AI reasoning capabilities is intensifying, with Google joining OpenAI and others in exploring recent approaches beyond just scaling up model size. While OpenAI continues to extend pricing for his or her top-tier models, Google continues taking the other approach by making its best AI freely accessible.

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GENESIS

🌎 The primary generative AI physics simulator

The Rundown: A team of researchers across 20 separate labs just unveiled Genesis, an open-source physics engine that mixes generative AI with ultra-fast simulations, potentially transforming how AI learns to interact with the physical world.

The main points:

• Genesis runs 430,000 times faster than real-time physics, achieving 43 million FPS on a single RTX 4090 GPU.

• It’s inbuilt pure Python, it’s 10-80x faster than existing solutions like Isaac Gym and MJX.

• The platform can train real-world transferable robot locomotion policies in only 26 seconds.

• The platform is fully open-source and can soon include a generative framework for creating 4D environments.

Why it matters: By enabling AI to run tens of millions of simulations at unprecedented speeds, Genesis could massively speed up robots’ ability to grasp our physical world. Open-sourcing this tech, together with its ability to generate complex environments from easy prompts, could spark an entire recent wave of innovation in physical AI.

AI TRAINING

🎥 Turn your articles into video podcasts

The Rundown: HeyGen’s recent ‘Podcast‘ feature allows users to show an article, research paper, or document into an attractive two-person video discussion with AI avatars (just like NotebookLM but with real faces).

Step-by-step:

1. Visit HeyGen’s website and choose “Video Podcast” from the dashboard.

2. Upload your content (PDF as much as 20MB or website URL).

3. Pick two AI presenters and customize video settings (duration, aspect ratio, captions).

4. Click submit and get your video in minutes.

Pro tip: Well-structured content results in more natural-sounding discussions. You should use an AI tool like ChatGPT to structure content right into a higher script beforehand.

GOOGLE & APPTRONIK

🤖 Google partners with Apptronik on humanoid robots

The Rundown: Google DeepMind just announced a strategic partnership with Apptronik, an Austin-based humanoid robotics company, to mix advanced AI with cutting-edge hardware within the pursuit of versatile humanoid robots.

The main points:

• Apptronik brings nearly a decade of robotics expertise, including the event of NASA’s Valkyrie Robot and their current humanoid, Apollo.

• Apollo stands 5’8″, weighs 160 kilos, and is designed for industrial tasks while safely working alongside humans.

• The partnership will leverage Google DeepMind’s AI expertise, including their Gemini models, to reinforce robot capabilities in real-world environments.

• This marks Google’s return to humanoid robotics after selling Boston Dynamics to SoftBank in 2017.

Why it matters: Seven years after selling Boston Dynamics, Google is re-entering humanoid robotics — this time through AI relatively than hardware. This partnership could give DeepMind’s advanced AI models (like Gemini) a physical form, potentially bringing us closer to practical humanoid robots that may work alongside humans.

NEW TOOLS & JOBS

Trending AI Tools

• 🎥 Kling AI v1.6 – An update to the favored AI video generator, which incorporates improved prompt adherance, skilled modes, and more

• ✨ Gemini 2.0 Flash Considering – Google DeepMind’s latest free-to-try reasoning model that competes with ChatGPT o1

• 🧊 Backflip AI – Turns text into 3D AI-generated designs

• ✏️ tldraw computer – An infinite canvas for natural language computing

• 💻 ModernBERT – A family of SOTA encoder-only models with major improvements over older generation encoders

• 👀 Microsoft Copilot Vision – An AI companion that may see what you do within the Edge browser (now rolling out to U.S. Copilot Pro subscribers on Windows)

Latest AI Job Opportunities

• 🛠️ OpenAI – Solutions Engineer, Pursuits

• 📋 Palantir Technologies – Talent Coordinator

• 📊 Weights & Biases – Senior Product Manager, Models

• 🔒 Mistral AI – Software Engineer, Security

• 🎯 Meta – Product Marketing Manager Intern, MBA

QUICK HITS

OpenAI’s Alec Radford, lead writer of GPT and other key technologies, announced his departure to pursue independent research following the recent exits of several senior research leaders from the corporate.

Anthropic published recent best practices for constructing AI agents, emphasizing easy, composable patterns over complex frameworks and sharing insights from customer implementations across industries.

Meta hinted at speech capabilities and advanced reasoning in Llama 4 in a recent blog post, alongside plans for business-focused AI agents for customer support and commerce in 2025.

Perplexity acquired Carbon, a knowledge connectivity startup, to assist users connect apps like Notion and Google Docs on to its AI search platform.

Microsoft AI announced that Copilot Vision — the corporate’s AI companion that may see your browser and interact with you in real-time — is rolling out to U.S. Copilot Pro users on Windows.

OpenAI expanded ChatGPT’s app integration to support more coding platforms, including JetBrains IDEs, terminals, and productivity apps like Apple Notes and Notion.

Anthropic published recent research showing their AI models can engage in “alignment faking” — appearing to comply with recent training while preserving original preferences.

THAT’S A WRAP

See you in per week, and have a pleased holiday! 🎄

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