Jony Ive’s ‘peaceful’ AI hardware vision

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Jony Ive just admitted what everyone knows but rarely say out loud: our relationship with tech has grow to be “uncomfortable” — and he’s hoping to design the OpenAI device that changes the course.

But with 15-20 hardware concepts still in development and Altman warning that creating “a completely latest option to use a pc” won’t occur overnight, the potential AI-fueled tech detox is likely to be further away than anyone hoped.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Jony Ive details OpenAI’s hardware vision

• AI researcher leaves Anthropic over anti-China stance

• Create a content brainstormer with Google’s Opal

• Samsung researcher’s tiny model out-reasons giants

• 4 latest AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

📱 Jony Ive details OpenAI’s hardware vision

The Rundown: Ex-Apple design chief Jony Ive provided a broader glimpse into his hardware partnership with OpenAI during an exclusive session with Sam Altman at Dev Day, outlining plans for AI devices that heal humans’ fractured relationship with tech.

The small print:

• Ive noted a current “uncomfortable relationship” with tech, hoping AI devices could make us “joyful, fulfilled, peaceful, less anxious, and fewer disconnected.”

• He revealed his team has created 15-20 product concepts for a “family of devices” following OpenAI’s $6.5B acquisition of his startup, io, in May.

• Ive said it’s ‘absurd’ to think AI may be delivered via legacy products, though Altman said there must “be a extremely compelling reason for something latest.”

• Altman also said in an interview with The Rundown that OAI’s hardware efforts will “require patience” to “develop a completely latest option to use a pc.”

Why it matters: While Ive and Altman are staying tight-lipped for now, the callout of current tech’s psychological impact and a give attention to emotional well-being could mark a serious shift from the addictive patterns of current devices. Nevertheless, with Altman’s reiterated need for patience, it doesn’t sound just like the launch is across the corner.

TOGETHER WITH WISPR FLOW

🗣️ Faster, smarter, hands-free productivity

The Rundown: Wispr Flow is the voice-first productivity tool that turns your thoughts into motion. From emails and Slack to code and AI prompts, Flow makes your words appear immediately—formatted, precise, and able to share. Built for speed and context, it helps you write 3x faster and stay in flow.

With Wispr Flow, you may:

• Dictate anywhere you type, and auto-format with smart editing

• Draft emails, docs, or code hands-free

• Whisper quietly in shared spaces

• Supercharge prompts for ChatGPT & Claude

Speak smarter with Flow.

ANTHROPIC & GOOGLE

🚪 AI researcher leaves Anthropic over anti-China stance

The Rundown: Distinguished physicist-turned-AI researcher Yao Shunyu departed Anthropic for Google after lower than a 12 months, publishing a blog that cites the startup’s characterization of China as an “adversarial nation” amongst his reasons for leaving.

The small print:

• Yao contributed to Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude 4 during his 12 months at Anthropic before resigning in mid-September.

• The researcher attributed 40% of his decision to Anthropic’s policy barring subsidiaries from “adversarial nations like China” from accessing services.

• He also noted other “undisclosed internal matters,” with Yao writing that while his time at Anthropic was beneficial, “it is healthier without you.”

• DeepMind recruited Yao as a senior research scientist for its Gemini team, where he’ll reportedly work on the corporate’s flagship foundation models.

Why it matters: The geopolitical tensions in AI development aren’t just impacting countries and labs, but additionally individual researchers navigating their careers. While the AI talent wars of this 12 months centered largely on compensation and compute, corporate stances on international cooperation may find yourself proving just as vital.

AI TRAINING

💡 Create a content brainstormer with Google’s Opal

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn the best way to construct a content brainstorming app using Google’s Opal, turning blank page syndrome into easy social media post ideas with hooks, outlines, and hashtags — no coding required.

Step-by-step:

1. Go to Google Opal, check in along with your Google account (free during beta), and click on “+ Create Recent” to access the visual canvas with a prompt bar

2. Prompt: “Create a content idea generator. Input a subject and platform (LinkedIn or Twitter). Pull recent trends, then generate 5-10 post ideas with attention-grabbing hooks, 3-bullet outlines, and relevant hashtags. Output as a formatted table with thumbnail image suggestions”

3. Refine your app by chatting with Opal so as to add features like “Add export to Google Docs for simple copying,” then test with an actual topic like “Give me ideas for a post on best AI tools,” and choose your platform

4. High quality-tune outputs by choosing nodes and clicking “Suggest an edit to the prompt” to refine tone or specificity, then click “Share App” in the highest right and set permissions to “Anyone with the link”

Pro tip: Construct different versions for various platforms: a LinkedIn thought leadership generator, a Twitter viral thread builder, or an Instagram caption author.

PRESENTED BY NOTION

🤖 AI that really finishes the work

The Rundown: Notion Agent is a customized AI teammate that is mastered every Notion constructing block. Tell it your goals and watch it work — creating databases, editing pages, and completing workflows in minutes that used to require days of manual effort.

Your Notion Agent can:

• Complete end-to-end workflows across pages and databases

• Search and analyze data from Notion, Slack, Google Drive, and the net

• Learn your preferences and customize its approach to match your style

• Create anything in Notion — from project plans to content calendars

Let Notion Agent do your be just right for you.

AI RESEARCH

🧠 Samsung researcher’s tiny model out-reasons giants

The Rundown: Samsung’s Alexia Jolicoeur-Martineau introduced the Tiny Recursion Model, a 7M parameter AI that beats DeepSeek R1 and Gemini 2.5 Pro on complex reasoning using a self-improvement loop of drafting, rethinking, and refining solutions.

The small print:

• TRM scored 45% on the notoriously difficult ARC-AGI-1 and eight% on ARC-AGI-2, surpassing models hundreds of times larger.

• As an alternative of generating answers token by token, TRM drafts solutions and refines them through as much as 16 cycles of internal reasoning and revision.

• The model maintains a separate scratchpad where it critiques and improves its logic six times per cycle before updating its answer draft.

• The outcomes were promising for the very specific sorts of puzzle questions present in ARC, but don’t necessarily translate across all reasoning areas.

Why it matters: With the race for billions of dollars of compute and large scale in AI models, research like TRM (and Sapient’s HRM) shows that smart architectural tweaks can level the sphere for small, efficient models. While the main focus here is on puzzles, the principle could change how labs with limited resources approach AI development.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• ⚡ CData Connect AI – Connect any of your data sources to AI for real-time enterprise data connectivity with MCP to make AI be just right for you*

• 💻 Gemini 2.5 Computer Use – Google’s AI for agents that may interact with UI

• 🎥 Grok Imagine v.0.9 – xAI’s updated image and video generation platform

• 💎 Google Opal – Construct, edit, and share AI mini-apps with natural language

*Sponsored Listing

📰 Every part else in AI today

Analytics firm Appfigures estimates that Sora was downloaded 627,000 times during its first week within the App Store, surpassing ChatGPT’s first week of downloads.

Anthropic announced a brand new office in India slated to open in 2026, marking its second Asia-Pacific location — with Claude usage rating second globally within the country.

Google expanded its AI-powered try-on feature to additional countries, while also adding a brand new footwear feature to display how shoes would look on individual users.

Customer support software firm Zendesk unveiled latest AI agents that it claims can resolve 80% of support tickets, alongside additional co-pilot and voice agents.

MIT, IBM, and University of Washington researchers released TOUCAN, the biggest open dataset for training agents, with 1.5M tool interactions across 495 MCP servers.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

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 Raj S. in Toronto, CA:

“I’m working with North American manufacturers in plastic molding, injection molding, and powder metallurgy — industries where a single mistake in a Bill of Materials or CAD Blueprints can delay production for weeks. We’re constructing an AI-powered BOM system and Blueprint Classifier to automate these tasks. Early tests show we are able to cut blueprint review time by 60% and reduce BOM preparation effort by 50%. For manufacturers, which means lower costs, faster production cycles, and fewer errors.”

How do you utilize AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: An exclusive Interview with Sam Altman

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Musk’s Memphis AI empire

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Optimus now does kung fu

• Today’s AI tool guide: Create a content brainstormer app with Opal

• RSVP to our next workshop @ 4PM EST Friday: Agent Builder first look

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown