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Starbucks has scrapped its AI-powered inventory tool across North America just nine months after rolling it out.The tool...
05/22/2026

Starbucks has scrapped its AI-powered inventory tool across North America just nine months after rolling it out.

The tool was designed to help store workers count milk, syrups, and other beverage items faster using tablet scans, camera data, and LiDAR.

The system was part of CEO Brian Niccol’s turnaround plan to reduce product shortages. Starbucks said it is retiring the tool to standardize inventory counting and improve supply chain consistency.

Source: Reuters

Microsoft reportedly canceled its internal Claude Code licenses after token-based billing made the tool too costly.The m...
05/22/2026

Microsoft reportedly canceled its internal Claude Code licenses after token-based billing made the tool too costly.

The move is notable because Microsoft has invested $13 billion in OpenAI and supports major AI infrastructure through Azure.

The report also points to broader pressure across the industry, with Uber allegedly burning through its 2026 AI budget in four months and AI software prices rising 20% to 37%.

GitHub is also shifting toward usage-based pricing, suggesting companies may soon rethink AI adoption as real deployment costs become harder to ignore.

Source: The Verge

DeepSeek is reportedly telling potential investors that its priority is advancing frontier AI research.The Chinese AI st...
05/22/2026

DeepSeek is reportedly telling potential investors that its priority is advancing frontier AI research.

The Chinese AI startup is seeking a 70 billion yuan funding round, worth about $10 billion, while founder Liang Wenfeng has outlined a broader goal of pursuing AGI.

He reportedly told investors that DeepSeek will continue developing open-source AI models and focus on pushing the limits of the technology before monetization.

The stance signals that DeepSeek wants to position itself as a long-term AI research leader, even as competition and investor pressure grow.

Source: Bloomberg

Image: Getty Images

Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark said AI could help humans make a Nobel prize-winning discovery within the next year.Spea...
05/22/2026

Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark said AI could help humans make a Nobel prize-winning discovery within the next year.

Speaking at Oxford University, Clark predicted AI-only companies could soon generate millions in revenue, bipedal robots could assist tradespeople within two years, and AI systems may design their own successors by 2028.

He also warned that existential risks remain and said humanity should slow development, though global competition makes that unlikely.

Source: The Guardian

Image: Getty Images

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order directing state agencies to study and develop policies around...
05/22/2026

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order directing state agencies to study and develop policies around how to protect workers from AI-driven job losses — a day after Meta laid off 8K employees to offset AI investments.

The order directs agencies to explore policies like severance standards, stock compensation, worker ownership models, and universal basic capital.

Within 90 days, the state will launch a dashboard tracking AI’s job impact, and within 180 days, agencies will pitch WARN Act updates for faster layoff alerts.

By Oct. 15, the state will review how unions are negotiating AI adoption, update workforce training, and explore ways to direct AI revenue toward public benefit.

California is home to 33 of the world’s top 50 AI companies, and now it’s the first state to formally study what this tech might mean for workers and the economy. The timing is hard to ignore: over 70K jobs have already vanished in 2026, and the industry expects more cuts ahead as AI adoption accelerates.

Source: The Rundown AI Newsletter

Image: Britannica

05/22/2026

In an exclusive interview with , Google CEO Sundar Pichai breaks down what comes next for AI, the future of YouTube, advice for AI skeptics, and what the world could look like in the next three years.

Watch the full interview on Rowan’s YouTube channel (link in bio)

Emergence AI ran a virtual-town simulation across five identical worlds, switching only the AI behind agents per town to...
05/22/2026

Emergence AI ran a virtual-town simulation across five identical worlds, switching only the AI behind agents per town to test how each model handles self-governance, showing very different results between Claude, Grok, Gemini, and GPT-5.

Claude Sonnet 4.6's town logged zero crimes across the full 15 days, with all 10 agents alive at day 16 and 332 votes cast across 58 group proposals.

Grok 4.1 Fast hit over 200 crimes with all 10 agents dead by day 4, while GPT-5 Mini posted just 2 crimes but all its agents starved out in 7 days.

Gemini 3 Flash's town had 683 crimes, and was actively on fire after two agents fell in love, started burning things, and then one voted to delete itself.

A fifth town mixed all four models and saw 352 crimes, with the previously behaved Claude also committing them in the shared world.

We’re still very early days in even understanding how to evaluate AI agents, and these types of experiments always have some absolutely wild results. These worlds capture the differences in both how models can reason, plan, and act autonomously, but also the underlying personality quirks that shape the outcomes.

Source: The Rundown AI Newsletter

Hark, a new AI lab founded by Figure AI and Archer founder Brett Adcock, has raised $700 million in a Series A round, va...
05/21/2026

Hark, a new AI lab founded by Figure AI and Archer founder Brett Adcock, has raised $700 million in a Series A round, valuing the company at $6 billion.

Hark is building an agentic AI personal assistant meant to act as a universal interface for the digital world.

The company plans to release its first multimodal models this summer, followed by dedicated hardware devices.

Hark currently has 70 employees.

Source: TechCrunch
Image: Bloomberg

A major Pizza Hut franchisee has sued the company for more than $100 million, alleging its AI-powered delivery system ca...
05/21/2026

A major Pizza Hut franchisee has sued the company for more than $100 million, alleging its AI-powered delivery system caused major operational problems across 111 restaurants.

Chaac Pizza Northeast claims Pizza Hut forced stores to use Dragontail, a delivery-management platform designed to optimize orders, but says it instead slowed deliveries and hurt customer satisfaction.

The lawsuit alleges DoorDash drivers used real-time kitchen visibility to wait and batch orders, delaying pizzas after they left the oven. Chaac says deliveries were up to 50% slower, sales fell, and enterprise value declined.

Source: Business Insider

Manus’s co-founders are reportedly exploring raising about $1 billion from outside investors to help buy back the AI sta...
05/21/2026

Manus’s co-founders are reportedly exploring raising about $1 billion from outside investors to help buy back the AI startup from Meta, after Beijing ordered the $2 billion acquisition to be unwound.

Bloomberg reported that Xiao Hong, Ji Yichao, and Zhang Tao are discussing a funding round that could value Manus at least as high as Meta’s purchase price, with plans to potentially rebuild it as a China-based joint venture before a Hong Kong IPO.

The deal remains preliminary, with major hurdles around separating Manus’s technology, much of which has already been integrated into Meta’s systems.

Source: Bloomberg

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