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Welcome, humans. |
Spotify may have found the perfect defense against the AI takeover: nobody wants their favorite song summarized in three bullet points. In this week’s earnings update, co-CEO Gustav Söderström argued that AI agents will take over chores people want to avoid. Listening to music? That's one thing we're perfectly happy to do ourselves. |
His bet is that handing off the boring stuff leaves more time for entertainment. Finally, a productivity strategy that ends with Fleetwood Mac instead of another meeting that could've been an email. |
Here’s what happened in AI today: |
😺 Walmart plans spending limits for AI shopping agents. 📰 Meta approved stock without voting rights to fund AI. 📰 PPG expects data center paint sales to triple. 🍪 Loom turns screen walkthroughs into instructions for AI agents. 🎓 Review AI’s presentation outline before it generates slides.
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😺 Walmart and Amazon disagree on who should do your shopping |
You’re ready to let AI do your shopping. Now the stores want a say in which AI gets your money. Apparently, even your robot has to get past the bouncer. |
Walmart is making room for external agents, with separate profiles, purchase records, and spending limits for each agent. Taking the opposite approach, Amazon has pushed back against third-party agents while promoting its own shopping assistant, Alexa for Shopping. |
These outside shoppers include Meta’s Muse and Anthropic’s Claude Duet, who can make purchases without your approval. Perplexity’s Comet shows where this gets messy: Amazon asked it to stop offering Amazon shopping, citing problems with the shopping experience and customer service. |
Walmart’s Agent Profiles are due to launch within the next month. Here’s what handing your shopping list to an agent would actually look like: |
Make it ask before every purchase, or give it a spending limit so it can handle the small stuff. Even under budget, it may still need your OK. Walmart can require another approval. Let it buy without handing over your card details. It can’t change your payment methods, and you can delete its profile whenever you want.
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There are reasons to set those boundaries. Six banks, including Bank of America and NatWest, warned last month that shopping agents might enter card details directly into websites or steer customers toward payment methods with weaker protections. Customers could be unsure who to turn to if something goes wrong. |
Buying through an outside assistant is already possible in some places. Instacart’s ChatGPT integration turns a recipe request into a grocery cart you can edit and pay for inside the conversation. |
Why it matters: Your AI could soon shop around for the best deals, but retailers would rather keep it on a short leash. Walmart is opening the door to outside agents, while Amazon prefers its own. The big question: Will your AI work for you, or become the world's most sophisticated store greeter? |
I wanted AI to handle my shopping, not get caught in a corporate love triangle with Walmart, Amazon, and my credit card. |
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From healthcare and finance to sustainability and transportation, AI is reshaping how we work and make decisions. |
MIT Open Learning's Universal AI program helps you build the knowledge to understand and apply AI across industries. |
Developed by more than 30 MIT faculty and experts, this self-paced program combines five foundational courses with industry-specific learning and real-world case studies. |
No technical or coding background required. Gain practical AI knowledge that evolves with technology and earn MIT Open Learning certificates as you progress. |
Learn about Universal AI |
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🎓 AI Skill of the Day: Check the story before AI builds your slides |
You ask AI for a presentation. It gives you polished slides, then you realize the recommendation is buried on slide twelve. Lovely font. Wrong story. |
Gemini Notebook’s new review feature lets you inspect the outline and give written feedback before it generates the deck. That gives you a chance to fix the argument before getting distracted by the visuals. |
Try this: |
Add your sources, choose Slide Deck in the Studio panel, and turn on Review outline. Check whether the recommendation arrives early enough, whether the evidence supports it, and whether anything essential is missing. Give specific feedback before generating. For example, ask it to move the recommendation ahead of the background and put the supporting evidence immediately afterward.
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Making a video instead? Use Review producer notes for the same checkpoint. The feature is rolling out gradually, so it may not appear yet. |
Fix the story while it’s still an outline. The fonts can wait. |
Have a specific skill you want to learn? Request it here. |
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FROM OUR PARTNERS |
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AI agents are only as effective as the data powering them. In this episode of ZoomInfo’s Revenue Architects podcast, discover why clean data, connected systems, and smarter workflows are essential for AI success, and what it takes to build a truly AI-ready GTM stack. |
Listen now |
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🍪 Treats to Try |
What Is Data Management? A Guide to Systems, Processes, and Tools. Learn more. Loom Record for agent turns narrated screen walkthroughs into AI agent instructions with screenshots and links; in open beta for Business + AI and Enterprise. MOVO AI turns ideas and references into multi-scene videos through conversation, with a plan you can revise before generation. TwinMind transcribes meetings and conversations into searchable memories you can ask questions about. The Brains helps your AI assistant answer questions using founders’ public talks, essays, and posts, with citations. Flint runs coding AI on compatible local hardware, keeping your code on your own machine.
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📰 Around the Horn |
Meta approved a new type of stock that could help fund its AI expansion without giving buyers voting rights over company decisions. GM said it tested more than 300,000 battery designs through computer modeling before building a single physical prototype. PPG said it expected its data center paint sales to triple this year as AI construction fueled demand for coatings that resist fire, rust, and static electricity. Legora raised $550 million at an $8.8 billion valuation to expand its legal AI business in the U.S. and globally. Flapping Airplanes raised $1 billion to develop AI that learns with less data and computing power.
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UPCOMING EVENT: The Neuron IRL in San Francisco |
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The Neuron is going IRL on November 18 at 4:30 PM PT! Join us in San Francisco for drinks, bites, special guests, and a live recording of The Neuron podcast. Huge thanks to Slack and Alumni Ventures for making it happen. |
It’s free, but space is limited. Save your spot! |
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🌞 Sunday Special |
Top 5 Stories of the Week |
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Top 5 Tools of the Week |
DeepCell creates linked documents, spreadsheets, and slides, so one edit updates the related content across your work. ChatGPT Locked Chats hides selected conversations from regular history and search, with PIN protection and biometric unlocking on supported mobile devices. UseIt Studio turns ideas into editable designs for cards, stickers, packaging, and other physical products, with 3D previews and production files. Notion Auto chooses an AI model for each task, balancing quality, speed, and cost so you don’t have to pick one yourself. Skillsync searches your past coding-agent conversations and supplies relevant decisions and fixes to your current session, so you don’t have to explain everything again.
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🖼️ Thursday Trivia: The Reveal |
In Thursday’s challenge, A was AI-generated and B was real. |
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New from The Neuron: AI Explained |
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New episodes air every week on Wednesdays: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube |
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| That’s all for now. If you want to get featured above, fill out the poll below and tell us how we did today! | | What'd you think of today's email? | |
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Btw: We just launched a robotics newsletter! Sign up for it here. |
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