AI gives paralyzed patients robotic control

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. UCLA engineers just turned an ordinary EEG cap right into a mind-reading device powerful enough to regulate robotic limbs.

By pairing it with AI that interprets intent in real-time, they’ve given paralyzed users abilities that used to require brain surgery — and a window into the near way forward for non-invasive, assistive technology.

In today’s AI rundown:

• AI helps paralyzed patients control robots

• AI’s favorite buzzwords seep into on a regular basis speech

• Design and construct mobile apps with Figma AI

• MIT’s AI to predict flu vaccine success

• 4 latest AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

🦾 AI helps paralyzed patients control robots

The Rundown: UCLA engineers just created a wearable brain-computer interface that uses AI to interpret EEG signals, enabling paralyzed users to regulate robotic arms using their thoughts with none invasive surgery.

The small print:

• Researchers paired a custom EEG decoder with a camera-based AI to interpret a patient’s movement intent in real time.

• They tested the BCI with 4 users, including one paralyzed participant who accomplished robotic tasks in 6.5 minutes versus being unable to without it.

• Participants moved cursors to targets and directed robotic arms to relocate blocks, completing each tasks nearly 4x faster with AI assistance.

• The system used standard EEG caps, eliminating surgical risks while still achieving performance levels much like the invasive alternatives.

Why it matters: A long time after the primary brain implants, we’re finally seeing non-invasive BCIs that really work — with AI filling the gaps where brain signals fail. AI co-pilots will eventually help not only with robotic limbs but in wheelchairs, communication devices, and smart homes that anticipate needs before users even think them.

TOGETHER WITH VANTA

🛡️ Constructing trust within the AI boom

The Rundown: In today’s AI boom, shipping fast gets attention — but constructing trust gets results. Vanta and Mercury show how SOC 2, audit-ready financials, and risk controls have turn out to be day-one signals that fuel growth, not later-stage checkboxes.

On this virtual event, learn to:

• Pass investor diligence with confidence and fewer follow-ups

• Avoid security and procurement blockers before they stall deals

• Stay ahead of compliance without hiring full teams

Register now to construct enterprise-grade credibility without slowing down.

AI RESEARCH

🗣️ AI’s favorite buzzwords seep into on a regular basis speech

The Rundown: A brand new study from Florida State University researchers found that AI-favored buzzwords have seen massive surges in podcast conversations since ChatGPT’s 2022 launch, calling the linguistic changes a “seep-in effect.”

The small print:

• The study analyzed 22.1M words from unscripted content like podcasts, finding 75% of AI-associated terms showed increases post-ChatGPT release.

• The research tracked science and tech podcasts where hosts likely use ChatGPT commonly, making them early indicators of the linguistic changes.

• Words flagged included “boast”, “meticulous” and “delve”, with experts attributing them to AI training on large amounts of corporate and web content.

• A separate German study found similar results, with the identical words like “delve” and “meticulous” seeing upticks in YouTube and podcast content.

Why it matters: A number of years is all it took for AI to start out rewiring how humans check with one another. Today, it’s buzzwords creeping into podcasts, but tomorrow expect AI’s fingerprints in all places — from web designs taking similar AI-created patterns to developers largely writing code with agentic platforms.

AI TRAINING

📲 Design and construct mobile apps with Figma AI

The Rundown: On this tutorial, you’ll learn how you can use Figma AI to design a whole mobile app from easy text prompts, turning ideas into interactive prototypes with working buttons and states in seconds.

Step-by-step:

1. Go to Figma.com, sign up, and click on “Make” in the highest menu — you may see a chat box asking “What do you should make?”

2. Type your app idea or start with a template: “Create an app for tennis players to search out community courts, track stats, and share activity, much like Strava but for tennis”

3. Refine with specific design directions: “Clean white background, deep green text, clay beige accents, small pops of neon yellow” — Figma adjusts spacing, padding, and corners mechanically

4. Add features by prompting: “Add calendar integration for booking courts via Cal.com” — Figma AI suggests Supabase for auth and creates logical button interactions

5. Preview in a brand new window, share with teammates, or export the design to Cursor for full-stack development

Pro tip: Consider Figma AI as your junior designer; the clearer your direction, the higher the result. Each refinement gets you closer to production-ready designs that have already got working interactions in-built.

PRESENTED BY FUEL iX

🔎 Demystifying shadow AI

The Rundown: 57% of employees enter sensitive data into public GenAI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini at work. Fuel iX’s latest report, Demystifying Shadow AI within the Workplace, uncovers how employees are using GenAI and the hidden risks this creates for enterprises.

On this report, you’ll discover how you can:

• Assess your organization’s exposure to Shadow AI

• Discover the important thing security risks of employees using public GenAI tools

• Apply expert strategies to administer AI adoption safely and responsibly

Download the total report.

AI RESEARCH

💉 MIT’s AI to predict flu vaccine success

The Rundown: MIT researchers created VaxSeer, an AI system that predicts which flu strains will dominate future seasons and identifies essentially the most protective vaccine candidates months upfront.

The small print:

• The system uses deep learning trained on many years of viral sequences and lab test data to forecast strain dominance and vaccine effectiveness.

• In testing against past flu seasons, VaxSeer beat the WHO’s vaccine picks 15 out of 20 times across two major flu types.

• The system also spotted a winning vaccine formula in 2016 that health officials didn’t select until the next 12 months.

• VaxSeer’s predictions matched up strongly with how well vaccines actually worked when given to real patients.

Why it matters: With vaccines needing to be created ahead of flu season, selecting the proper strain is a guessing game, which regularly ends in hit-or-miss effectiveness. With VaxSeer’s ability to read patterns humans miss to assist make higher predictions, targeting the proper bug could mean quite a bit fewer illnesses come flu season.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 💬 Hunyuan-MT – Tiny, open-source SOTA translation model

• 🍥 USO – ByteDance’s creative model for style and subject generations

• 🗣️ Higgsfield Speak 2.0 – Make avatars speak with lip-sync and motion

• 🔊 MAI-Voice-1 – Microsoft’s latest in-house voice generation model

📰 The whole lot else in AI today

Honeycomb Observability Day SF, Sep.11 – Join Charity Majors & Liz Fong-Jones to explore the longer term of observability within the age of AI. Save your spot.*

OpenAI is reportedly in talks to construct a 1GW minimum datacenter in India as a part of its Stagate project initiative, with CEO Sam Altman set to go to the country this month.

Tencent released Hunyuan-MT-7B and Hunyuan-MT-Chimera, an open-source joint AI translation system that outperforms rivals in its size category across 33 languages.

CEO Marc Benioff revealed that Salesforce has reduced its support headcount by 45% this 12 months, using AI agents to handle lead response and customer conversations.

Chinese president Xi Jinping spoke on AI on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, calling for global cooperation and rejecting the “Cold War mentality” across the tech.

*Sponsored Listing

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 Hunain A. in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia:

“I record videos for clients. tons of them. They have to be uploading consistently day-after-day, and it’s all personal branding, so scripting, lighting, filming, cutting, editing then publishing. This took a complete load of time for me and approval cycles from them. I made a decision to automate that and built a full custom N8N automation that does all of it for me. It has already freed up almost 35 hours per week AT LEAST. The automation comprises GPT for scripts, Heygen for Avatar, and coded stuff for auto-editing. All that happens any further is a few approval cycles, which I’ll hopefully automate, and publishing to platforms.”

How do you utilize AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: xAI sues ex-engineer for trade secret theft

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Netflix goes full-on theme park

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Nvidia’s palm-sized ‘robot brain’

• Today’s AI tool guide: Design and construct a mobile app with Figma AI

• Join our next live workshop: Constructing skilled AI automation workflows

See you soon,

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