Welcome, AI enthusiasts.
The race to AGI just got a deadline, and it’s so much earlier than anyone expected.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman is now betting on 2025 for the massive milestone — but will rumors of scaling challenges force him to eat his words? Let’s get into it…
In today’s AI rundown:
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Altman predicts AGI in 2025
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The Beatles make AI history with Grammy noms
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Extract insights from any technical PDF
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MIT’s AI trains robot dogs in virtual worlds
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5 recent AI tools & 5 recent AI jobs
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More AI & tech news
Read time: 4 minutes
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LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
OPENAI
📈 Altman predicts AGI in 2025
Image source: Y Combinator
The Rundown: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman just predicted that artificial general intelligence will likely be achieved in 2025, coming alongside conflicting reports of slowing progress in LLM development and scaling across the industry.
The small print:
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In an interview with YC founder Gary Tan, Altman said the trail to AGI is ‘mainly clear’ and would require engineering, not recent scientific breakthroughs.
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A recent report revealed that the rumored ‘Orion’ model shows smaller improvement over GPT-4 than previous generations, especially in coding tasks.
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The corporate also reportedly formed a brand new “Foundations Team” to tackle fundamental challenges, similar to the scarcity of high-quality training data.
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OpenAI researchers Noam Brown and Clive Chan backed Altman’s AGI confidence, believing the o1 reasoning model offers recent scaling capabilities.
Why it matters: Altman’s prediction would mean a drastic leap in the corporate’s AGI scale (currently level 2 of 5) — however the CEO has remained consistent in his confidence. With OpenAI suddenly prioritizing o1 development, it is smart that the reasoning model may need shown recent potential to interrupt through any scaling limits.
TOGETHER WITH EIGHT SLEEP
🌡️ Your bed just got smarter

The Rundown: Eight Sleep’s Pod 4 Ultra is transforming the way in which we rest by combining cutting-edge technology with comfort — providing you with a private sleep coach, thermostat, and health tracker all seamlessly integrated into your bed.
With the Pod 4 Ultra, you’ll be able to:
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Personalize sleep temperature: Adjust both sides from 55°F to 110°F.
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Enjoy effortless biometric tracking: Monitor sleep stages, heart rate variability, and more—no wearables needed.
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Let AI enhance your sleep: The Pod learns your patterns to robotically adjust temperatures throughout the night.
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MUSIC & AI
🎵 The Beatles make AI history with Grammy noms
Image source: The Beatles
The Rundown: “Now and Then,” The Beatles’ AI-enhanced final song, released a 12 months ago, just became the primary AI-assisted track to receive Grammy nominations — marking a historical moment for AI’s role in music production.
The small print:
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The song earned nominations for Record of the 12 months and Best Rock Performance, competing against artists like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift.
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The track used AI “stem separation” technology to wash up and isolate John Lennon’s vocals from a 1978 unreleased demo.
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The AI technique mirrors noise-canceling technology utilized in video calls, training models to discover and separate specific sounds.
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The nomination follows the Grammy’s 2023 denial of consideration to viral AI creator Ghostwriter due to the unauthorized use of vocals.
Why it matters: The Beatles have been pioneers throughout music history, so it’s only fitting that they assist carry the baton into this recent era of AI-assisted production and creation. The approaching wave of song generation will likely be a fair greater shift, but this method shows how artists also can use AI as a tool for preservation and restoration.
AI TRAINING
🎯 Extract insights from any technical PDF

The Rundown: Claude’s recent visual document feature lets AI analyze and understand complex PDFs containing charts, diagrams, and graphics, transforming how we extract information from technical documents.
Step-by-step:
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Head over to Claude AI and enable “Visual PDFs” in your Feature Preview settings.
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Upload your PDF containing charts, diagrams, or technical illustrations.
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Ask specific questions on visual elements (e.g., “Explain the connection shown on this diagram”).
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Mix visual evaluation with text queries for comprehensive insights.
Pro tip: Frame your inquiries to specifically reference visual elements. This helps you get more precise and detailed answers about charts and diagrams.
PRESENTED BY SECTION SCHOOL
The Rundown: Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff is sitting down with Scott Galloway at Section’s free virtual conference on Nov. 14 to speak about his three big AI investments.
Marc is joined by AI leaders at Moderna, S&P Global, and ServiceNow to debate:
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Practical insights and advice based on their very own AI deployments
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Where they’re (or aren’t) getting ROI from their AI investments
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How you should utilize AI to remodel your personal organization
AI RESEARCH
🐶 MIT’s AI trains robot dogs in virtual worlds
Image source: MIT CSAIL
The Rundown: MIT researchers unveiled an AI system called LucidSim that trains four-legged robots using generated imagery — achieving unprecedented real-world performance without ever seeing actual environments during training.
The small print:
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LucidSim combines physics simulations with AI-generated scenes to create diverse training environments for robotic learning.
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Robots trained in LucidSim’s artificial environments accomplished complex tasks like obstacle navigation and ball chasing with as much as 88% accuracy.
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The platform uses ChatGPT to auto-generate hundreds of scene descriptions, creating varied training scenarios with different weather and lighting conditions.
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Traditional training methods relying solely on human demonstration achieved only 15% success rates on the identical tasks.
Why it matters: A paradigm shift is underway in how advanced robots are trained. By eliminating the necessity for extensive real-world training data, systems like LucidSim could dramatically speed up the event of more capable robots while also reducing the time and resources needed to deploy them in real-world settings.
NEW TOOLS & JOBS
Trending AI Tools
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🤳 Genbler – Photo and video AI SaaS solution for content creators
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⚙️ AI App Generator – Construct fully functional AI wrappers with backend API routes in seconds
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💡 Diaflow – Be the hero of your organization with powerful AI automation, apps, and internal workflows
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👨💻 FlowScraper – Automate web sites and extract data with no coding required
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🧠 Maibrain – Preserve the voice and experiences of your family members so you’ll be able to interact with them in the long run
Latest AI Job Opportunities
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🚀 The Rundown – Head of Growth
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☁️ Lambda – Engineering Manager, Cloud
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🛠️ Coreweave – Principal Engineer
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📊 Meta – Quality Data Analyst
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🎨 Grammarly – Principal Product Designer
QUICK HITS
AI music generation startup Suno showcased recent demos of its soon-to-be-released v4 model, with enhanced audio samples demonstrating improved naturalness and consistency.
The U.S. Commerce Department ordered chipmaker TSMC to halt the export of advanced chips for AI applications to Chinese customers starting this week.
Chinese tech giant Baidu will reportedly unveil AI-powered smart glasses equipped with voice and camera capabilities at its upcoming Baidu World event, positioning the product as a competitor to Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses at a cheaper price point.
A federal judge dismissed a Raw Story and AlterNet copyright lawsuit against OpenAI over AI training data, expressing skepticism in regards to the news outlets’ ability to prove harm.
The Washington Post launched “Ask The Post AI,” a brand new generative AI search tool that taps into the publication’s archives to offer direct answers and curated results to reader queries.
OpenAI VP of Research and Safety Lillian Weng announced she is departing the corporate after seven years, marking one other significant exit from the startup’s leadership.
xAI launched a free tier of its Grok chatbot in select regions, offering limited access to Grok 2, Grok 2 mini, and image evaluation capabilities.
THAT’S A WRAP
That is it for today!Before you go we’d like to know what you considered today’s newsletter to assist us improve The Rundown experience for you.
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See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, and Alvaro—aka The Rundown Team


