Morning Brew Daily - 25-Year Old AI Hedge Fund Prodigy Wiped Out & Jersey Mike’s Goes Public

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

#901: The US economy grew more slowly in Q2 as the Iran war weighed on prices and supply chains. AI investor Leopold Aschenbrenner seeks new funding after massive losses. Jersey Mike’s raises $1 bil...lion in its IPO. Tim Cook reports his last earnings call. Amazon’s cloud business stays strong. Trump unveils renovations to Dulles airport. Finally, LinkedIn wants you to snuff out AI slop. Got difficult questions? Head to https://www.claude.ai/mbd to answer them.  Grab tickets to our Performance Revue show! https://www.morningbrew.com/events/brew-performance-revue-2026?utm_campaign=performance_revue_2026&utm_source=mbd Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. Good morning for Daily Show.
Starting point is 00:00:34 I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Jersey mics goes public and plots a global takeover. Then a 25-year-old AI prodigy flew too close to the sun and lost his hedge fund billions. It's Friday, July 31st, let's ride. What links would you go to to snack a job interview? Over in San Francisco, you might need to get a tattoo of the company's logo. The AI startup Lemon Lime has been catching heat following a stunt at a recent networking party.
Starting point is 00:01:09 If you get a company tattoo from an artist that we brought to the event, you'll get a job interview immediately. Co-founder Jordan Zietz wrote the concept was, quote, to meet exceptional people and find out which of them are just as crazy as we are. People thought they were crazy, all right, blasting it as a symbol of Orwellian Silicon Valley culture. After realizing this was maybe not the best idea, Zietz apologized, calling it reckless and poor judgment. You can't be doing this with a company that is just so clearly on the trend of the moment. Lemonline creates AI agents and automations for companies. So I kind of get why you're pulling these insane stunts to try and hire. Your company does what every single other company in Silicon Valley does right now.
Starting point is 00:01:53 This is probably not a good time to mention that a couple years ago, a guy also got a morning brew tattoo on his calf. But that was completely voluntary. And he just loved the newsletter and maybe coffee as well. We will not be requesting any of you listening. Get a tattoo to show your MBD support. A simple like and subscribe will do. And now a word from our sponsor, Anthropic, the team behind Claude. We asked for your questions about AI, and the MBD audience was not shy.
Starting point is 00:02:19 There were questions about losing control of AI, workforce disruption, and a lot more. And it's opened up a lot of really important conversations. Anthropic, the Public Benefit Corporation behind Claude, heard questions like these in more than 120,000 interviews about people's hopes and fears around AI. Anthropics not trying to gloss over these tough questions because their goal is to make sure AI actually works out well for people. They publish real research on these kinds of questions even when it's uncomfortable. So if you've got your own hard questions about AI, head to clod.aI-M-B-D to submit it to
Starting point is 00:02:51 Anthropic and explore how they are answering them. That's C-L-A-U-D-E.A-I-S-M-B-D. The United States of America is becoming the United States of Data Centers. That's the takeaway from yesterday's GDP report, which revealed a sturdy American economy in the second quarter underpinned by booming investments in AI infrastructure. The headline number, 1.5%, which is how fast the economy grew at an annualized pace. On the surface, it's a disappointing number. It's lower than economic growth in the first quarter, 2.1%, and lower than expectations heading in. But dig a little deeper and you'll find more positive signs.
Starting point is 00:03:27 For one, business investment is very strong, up 8.4%, as companies shelled out for, for computers, chips, and other equipment related to the AI buildout. In fact, here's a crazy stat. Ernie Tedeschi, the chief economist at Stripe, estimated that more than half of real GDP growth can be attributed to gross computer spending, which includes spending on computers, data centers, and other things adjacent to AI. And it's this spending on computers that also dragged down GDP. GDP is defined as the total value of the goods and services made inside the United States,
Starting point is 00:03:57 but many of the chips and equipment needed to make data centers are produced outside the country. In other words, they're imports. And when imports outweigh exports, as they did because of all this AI investment, it weighs down on that GDP number. In total, trade subtracted more than one percentage point from headline GDP growth. Toby, there are threats to the economy, particularly those higher energy prices from the war in Iran. But for now, it's fair to characterize the economy in Kevin Warsh's words as resilient. You are seeing a split economy emerging. On the one side, there is consumer spending, which accounts for 70% of GDP.
Starting point is 00:04:30 That's our favorite thing to say because it is true. And there were growth there. I mean, accelerating 3.2% up from 0.5% in the first quarter, that shows signs of a healthy consumer. And then you have the AI side of the economy, which is absolutely ripping right now and maybe making things look better than they actually are because the consumer side, although it came in strong, is losing some momentum. We are seeing spending slow a little bit. we are seeing some savings cushion shrink. A lot of that consumer spending was boosted by tax returns in that quarter, and those are running dry.
Starting point is 00:05:08 Energy costs are going up. Tariff costs are continuing to bite into it. So if you start to see that side losing momentum, then the economy is truly just business investment. It's truly just that AI buildout. And as you mentioned, it has its drawbacks when it comes to, you got to import a lot of this stuff. So two sides of the economy right now.
Starting point is 00:05:26 Both are looking strong, but one is losing a little bit. Let's talk about why it may be losing a little bit momentum. That's because inflation is still way above the Fed's 2% target. It has been for five years now. Alongside the GDP report, we do get inflation report, the PCE inflation rate, which is the Fed's preferred gauge. We talk a lot about the CPI report. The Fed prefers this PCE report. We got that yesterday. And it was somewhat good. their inflation did cool from 4.1% in May down to 3.7% in June. And why that's a very important number, not just for your wallet, is because chairman of the Fed, Kevin Warsh, is looking at that. And he just had this big press conference and Fed meeting in which he held rates steady.
Starting point is 00:06:11 Investors are looking to the next couple of meetings, which will get more inflation reports to see whether the stubbornly high inflation will cause the Fed to eventually hike rates. One thing that does not contribute to the economy, but it's just kind of indicative of the moment that we're in right now is corporate America, which continues to absolutely crush it despite all of these pressures, despite the Iran war, despite energy costs going up. Stock indexes are up this year. I know it feels very volatile recently, but S&P 500 net profit margins are on page to reach 16%. That would be the highest since tracking began back in 2009. So right now, businesses feel very good. Like they have healthy balance sheets. They're making a lot of
Starting point is 00:06:52 investments in the economy. Again, it's just how is the consumer going to hold up? If inflation does start to ease, maybe the consumer is feeling pretty good. But there are headwinds, and that's kind of like the big thing. When you talk about the economy, you're really talking about the health of the consumer. That's where all eyes are looking. Moving on, it's Stock the Week, Dog the Week time, the segment where we pick one stock that falls for AI slop and one stock that has good media literacy. I won the pre-show game of Jeopardy, so I get to go first. And since it's been a little raining this week and I'm feeling pessimistic. I'm starting with our dog the week, which is situational awareness, a hedge fund that just went from being up more than 430% to getting liquidated.
Starting point is 00:07:33 Situational awareness is the AI Focus Fund founded by the 25-year-old AI Wonder Kid Leopold Ashbrenner. Ashbrenner is a former Open AI researcher who graduated from Columbia as Valedictorian at 19, joined Open AI but was fired in 2024 following a dispute over sharing internal information. After leaving, he published a 165-page manifesto called Situational Awareness, arguing that AI would require a massive buildout of chips, memory, data centers, and electricity. Then he built a hedge fund around that thesis, and for a while, it worked spectacularly. Situational awareness made huge bets on companies supplying the AI buildout, Bloom Energy, Micron, Sandus, Nebius, in S.K. Hinex,
Starting point is 00:08:16 while also betting against traditional software companies like Adobe. It was reportedly up 4303.3.000. 39% through the first half of the year and had swelled to over $45 billion, until suddenly both sides of that trade went against it. Four of its biggest holdings, core weave, microns, sandisk, and nebius dropped at least 35% this month. At the same time, its software shorts moved sharply higher. The true issue, though, was that situational awareness was heavily levered, borrowing money to enhance its position, so when things went south, they really went south. The fund got margin called and was forced to sell nearly its entire stock portfolio.
Starting point is 00:08:53 The story doesn't end there, though. In its mad dash for cash, situational awareness put its entire book up for sale, shopping both its long and short positions around. Rumors swirled that a large investment firm was interested, and by midday it was revealed that none other than Ken Griffin's Citadel was the opportunistic party involved. The timing couldn't have been better for Citadel and worse for Leopold. Nearly every name, situational awareness, had exposure to bounce back in a big way yesterday. Neil, this feels like a plot from industry.
Starting point is 00:09:22 It's always Ken Griffin, isn't it? Whenever you hear about a company needing to fire sale, its assets, and then there's another company that's anonymous, at least for a few hours, that's scooping them up at bargain basement prices. It's always Ken Griffin in Citadel. I mean, this happened with Enron. The day Enron filed for bankruptcy, he flew down a bunch of Citadel employees scooped up their quant research team
Starting point is 00:09:43 and then build that into a huge commodity trading business worth about $30 billion. Whenever there's a copy of the U.S. Constitution that's bought by an anonymous bidder, it's always Ken Griffin. He just always seems to be there to take the treats out of 25-year-old hands who seem to be a little over their skis. And the reason you get over your skis in this line of work is that you go down the leverage path. Again, leverage is great when things are going well.
Starting point is 00:10:11 It absolutely magnifies all your gains, but it turns really ugly when things go south. Steve Cohen, who is another famous hedge fund manager, gave a good interview answer about leverage. He said, you're going to lose money. I think the three things is liquidity, leverage, and concentration. Those are the three rules. If you're in illiquid stuff, that's a problem. If you're using too much leverage, that's a problem. And if you're too concentrated, that's a problem.
Starting point is 00:10:34 That's basically the exact playbook that Leopold was running here at situational awareness. He was illiquid because he's got a huge stake in Anthropic. that is one of his crown jewels of his portfolio. So that's not easy to move when you're in a liquidity crunch like this. You're way concentrated. He was very, he piled into these highly volatile AI adjacent names. So not a large breadth of different, you know, thesis was playing out within his portfolio. And then there's the leverage piece where he was borrowing money to, you know, make all of these swings bigger and smaller.
Starting point is 00:11:07 So Steve Cohen would say, I gave you the playbook. You just ignored it. And this is why you blew up. His assent was astonishing, though, just as much as this downfall, let's say. He's 25. He probably is a long career left, even though this is a bit of a black mark. So he came out of Columbia, worked at Open AI, got fired, actually worked at FTX's philanthropic arms. So he's kind of like the forest gump of AI and tech. And then he got investment for his hedge fund from really the monsters of AI in San Francisco.
Starting point is 00:11:37 Patrick and John Collison, the Stripe co-founders, Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman. Even he got investments early from Jane Street, which is this secretive hedge fund in New York that's not known for allocating capital to outside managers. So he got, for some reason, everyone kind of believed in his thesis. He yolowed into this idea that artificial general intelligence is coming before 2030. And should that happen, and you play it out on the back of the napkin math in terms of what this might mean for productivity, for the requirements for data, to centers and memory and service and all of that. It's like exponential, exponential, exponential
Starting point is 00:12:17 returns. And that was his core thesis. It got Silicon Valley talking. And he put his cards on the table and at least for one month, he got wiped out. It was working. That's like the crazy part. I mean, being up 439% through the first half of the year, he was being tossed around as another name like Warren Buffett-esque figure. And every time you're compared to Warren Buffett, it always ends poorly we've seen that play out but even still after everything that just happened the fund is still up about 80% year to date so this is probably not the last we're going to hear of them even though his you know public equity portfolio is mostly in ken griffin's hands now he still has that anthropic stake it's still very valuable when and if they go public it will probably lead to another boondoggle
Starting point is 00:13:04 for him so it's not the last we've seen of young leopold that's for sure but there is a lot of shot there was so much shot in Freud yesterday because this is a guy who had no, you know, investment experience. He never managed a portfolio before and you have all these big names throwing money to him. He got a little bit larger than life. A lot of people hailed him as the next AI profit. And then thanks to this downfall, a lot of folks were saying, I told you so. Okay, my stock of the week is Jersey mics, which much like Snooki has risen from the Jersey Shore to big city stardom. Yesterday, the subchain went public in one of the biggest restaurant IPOs ever. trading under the ticker, J.MKE, it fell 6% on its first trading day after going public at a valuation of $7.3 billion.
Starting point is 00:13:47 For decades, Jersey Mikes was a family establishment owned by founder Peter Cancro, but that all changed last year when it was acquired by the private equity giant Blackstone. Over the ensuing 18 months, Blackstone got busy turning this family biz into a corporate Goliath that would and wilt under the bright lights of Wall Street, installing a veteran CEO adding experienced food players to its board and trimming the fat when it came to expenses. What's emerged is a lean-mead-sum machine on a mission to bring its freshly sliced sandwich gospel to more corners of the world. In its IPO filing, Jersey Mike said it planned to expand to 15,000 restaurants up from the 3,300 it had at the end of March. International markets form a key part of that strategy, with 400 restaurants slated to open
Starting point is 00:14:26 in the UK and Ireland for a start. Toby, I'm just happy for Danny DeVito. The Blackstone of this all is so interesting because Jersey Mike's was a family-owned to business. Blackstone came in and saw that. A lot of members of Cancro's family was still on the corporate payroll. Nine members were taking a paycheck from Jersey Mike. So they kind of said, all right, we're ushering in this new era of professionalism. You guys are seeing the door. And then they also tinkered with the menu, which when you hear PE tinkering with a beloved sandwich chain, you figure it's not going to end well. But they kind of popped off here. One thing that they brought in
Starting point is 00:15:05 was the first hot Italian sub. I have had it from Jersey Mikes. It's quite delicious. They also brought back a chicken salad promotion. They're trying to broaden the chain's appeal across more markets. So there's also been a uglier side where people on social media have been sharing images of their sandwiches and saying, look at how they're skimping on me. This is private equities playbook playing out in front of our eyes.
Starting point is 00:15:29 But you have to give them some credit. Anybody who says, let's make a hot Italian sub, that's a pretty good idea. So the bulk case for Jersey Mikes is that it's going to become the next Subway, right? So U.S. sales have more than tripled in the past couple of years. They are, they're basically worth as much as Subway. Subway was just bought for $9.4 billion. And, you know, Jersey Mikes after this IPO is not too far off. Subway has 30,000 restaurants globally. It's become this global chain. That's exactly what Jersey Mikes wants to do now that it went public. So they're growing fast. People generally think of them as high, quality and they are on the expansion route. The bear case is that restaurants, it's a tough, it's just a tough market over there. Like the restaurants index is down 0.5% this year. That's well underperforming the S&P 500, 6.9% advance. Restaurants seem to seem to go up and down with the times.
Starting point is 00:16:24 The consumer, as we mentioned in the first story, is tight right now. So, you know, this is a volatile market for restaurants broadly, and that's what Jersey Mike's is going into. That's just their industry. One thing that Jersey Mike's thinks is their competitive advantage is that their customers skew a little higher income. That is what their CEO said, which has insulated the company from some of that consumer pressure that we have been feeling. So maybe they're feeling okay because they're a ace in the hole is they just have a richer customer base that seems to withstand economic pressure a little better than maybe the typical customer that goes to a subway. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with what Tim Cook said on his last earnings call right after this.
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Starting point is 00:18:09 That's great wolf.com. Neil, you know how parents always get loads of unsolicited advice about kids' clothes? I believe it, but I can't say I've experienced it. Wait, are you expecting... No, for clothes you can actually count on, there's Little Sleepies. Real moms created Little Sleepies with clothing design for the realities of daily life with babies and kids. plus super soft, super stretchy fabrics and no scratchy tags. Snags down for the kids in your life at little sleepies.com.
Starting point is 00:18:41 That's little sleepies.com. Apple reported earnings yesterday and it was hard to focus on the actual numbers because it was CEO Tim Cook's last earnings call ever. Cook steps down as Apple is on top of the world, literally. It retook its throne as the most viable company this week and its results mostly confirmed it belongs there. All important iPhone sales beat estimates hitting $109 billion for the quarter, as Tim Cook called it their strongest June quarter ever. But it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows.
Starting point is 00:19:13 China revenue continues to be a problem falling short of expectations, as did his services business and iPad sales. With the stock already trading at a record price and up 25% this year, there was little room for error. And sure enough, the stock dipped 7% after hours. There are still problems ahead for Apple, namely the memory supply crunch and its unproven and off-delayed AI-powered upgrade to Siri, but those are now incoming CEO John Ternus's problems to handle. As for John, we finally got to hear from him on an earnings call. The first words out of his mouth when asked about competition were, I would just reiterate
Starting point is 00:19:49 what Tim said, electric stuff. Neil Cook rides off into the sunset with a brief stumble at the finish line that comes after guiding Apple to a 14-fold increase in value during his tenure, not too shabby. Okay, if I bring up something a little out of left field, Apple TV. Apple TV is absolutely cooking. Viewership hit an all-time high last quarter. I think a lot of people were very confused when Apple launched a streaming service and paid all this money for original content.
Starting point is 00:20:19 But people are loving Apple TV right now. Its reputation is at an all-time high, along with viewership. Ted Lasso is coming back. for its fourth season. It just had this huge hit in Widows Bay. It earned 19 Emmy nominations, which is the most nominations for a new program. And then the trailer for the upcoming cyberpunk TV series, Neuromancer, went absolutely viral online. So it's not going to, that's coming in 2027. It's not going to move the needle one way or another for a $5 trillion company, but at least in terms of branding, I think Apple TV has absolutely succeeded at this
Starting point is 00:20:52 point. Yesterday, there were a lot of serious questions floating around about... I think that's not a serious question. Yeah, well, there were there was Siri, literally Siri questions going on. Like, how is China revenue going to withstand this? Are your input costs going to continue going up? And yet, most of the analyst call was kind of a love fest for Tim Cook. Every single analyst, or nearly every analyst, started their question in the live Q&A portion by congratulating Cook. There was also a love fest for John Turnus to. Tim Cook basically kept putting praise his way, it makes sense. He's saying the transition is going seamlessly. They're also trying to hype up Siri as much as possible. So those were kind of the big themes, even though the stock
Starting point is 00:21:34 fell, it was mostly because a lot of this was already priced in. Like Apple has been on an insane run so far this year, but it was kind of like a feel-good kumbaya moment because Tim Cook really did have a heck of a run there. Well, we all go into work every morning, hoping to increase shareholder value. But this guy actually did it. I mean, Apple shares are up more than 2400% since Cook took over from Steve Jobs and talking about big shoes to fill. So now John Turnus has similarly big shoes to fill as he takes over the helm of Apple next month. Amazon also reported earnings yesterday, and it's looking like its AI porridge is just the right temperature. Apples is maybe too cold and not enough spending or progress.
Starting point is 00:22:13 Meta and Googles is too hot, burning money without adequate payoff. But Amazon is Goldilocksing it, having seemed to have judged things just right. It had a very strong second quarter with sales coming in 20% higher, hitting $200 billion and beating expectations. But more importantly than everyone buying lots of toilet paper on its e-com site, its cloud unit, AWS, is crushing it. Despite having the most mature cloud division amongst its big tech peers, it's still growing like a weed with revenue expanding 37% year-over-year.
Starting point is 00:22:45 That marked the unit's fastest growth since 2021, according to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Its AI bets are paying off handsomely, too, with its cloud business serving AI demand growing at a triple-digit rate, sort of under the radar, but Amazon also has its own chip-making business that is also growing at triple digits, crossing $25 billion in revenue. Neil, Amazon is spending a lot on AI, $54 billion during this past quarter, but it's also uniquely well-positioned to benefit from the AI boom, too. Its stock jumped 9% after hours, Goldilocks. One thing that stood out to me from this earnings report is that Amazon said it received about $600 million in tariff refunds in the second quarter, and it will automatically issue reimbursements to consumers under, quote, a limited set of circumstances. I thought the white tease that I was buying on Amazon were a little pricier. So maybe I'll be in line for that. That's something that you should also keep your eye on.
Starting point is 00:23:39 But I think we can assess some winners and losers here because all of big tech has reported Amazon, Microsoft, meta, and Apple this week. Winners were absolutely Amazon and Microsoft. We saw their cloud divisions grow 40%. They accelerated growth. Microsoft fastest since 2022. Amazon fastest since 2021. Investors are liking to see that cloud growth because that means that all these AI investments, which power GDP, are paying off.
Starting point is 00:24:05 Losers, meta was down 8%. It doesn't seem like it has a particular plan to monetize AI. And then Apple, even though it was a love fest for Tim Cook. It did fall considerably. So we're seeing a split in big tech, which maybe not even best to characterize them altogether. But that's sort of where everything's shaken out now that all those companies have reported. I think it's so funny, too, that we just completely ignore the $116 billion Amazon made from its e-commerce operations, because it's just not what drives the stock anymore. The margins aren't that big.
Starting point is 00:24:38 But there was some prime day deals involved that were pulled for it into June. So it made this quarter look even better. but it is always just fascinating to me that it's just a cloud division at this point. That's the only thing that is driving if the stock is going up or down while the retail operations are just kind of behind the curtain and not as important anymore. All right. Well, they're making $116 billion. I think they can offer some refunds for tariffs for the rest of us.
Starting point is 00:25:02 Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. FIFA's plan to sell private stakes in the World Cup may have been stopped dead in its tracks. And that's because, in an extraordinary move yesterday, Europe's soccer governing body, UEFA said its 55 members would boycott all FIFA events were the proposal to move forward. That would mean a World Cup men's and women's without any European teams, which would probably improve America's prospects, but eliminate the viability of the tournament. In a strongly worded statement, UEFA said, national associations around the world are now presented with an ultimatum, except the irreversible capture of football's greatest competitions
Starting point is 00:25:36 or bear the consequences. This is not a democratic decision, but governance by intimidation, an act of coercion unworthy of an institution entrusted with the stewardship of the global game. Now, it looks like the head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, will have to overhaul his plan to private equityify the World Cup or scrap it all together because there simply cannot be a World Cup without Erling Holland. I see the vision. It's hard to lose 4-1 to Belgium if Belgium isn't even in the tournament. And yet that vision fell apart too because Concaf, which U.S. is a part of,
Starting point is 00:26:09 also joined Europe in rejecting the deal. So there would be no Belgium and no U.S. There would basically be no tournament whatsoever. We joke about this, but a lot of people are saying who might suffer initially. It could just be the women's game because the first real test of this boycott is the women's U20 World Cup in September. It's coming up pretty shortly. So they are at threat of becoming a pawn in this political matchup between UEFA and FIFA. So you hope it all gets worked out, especially.
Starting point is 00:26:39 ahead of the 27 Women's World Cup in Brazil as well. Moving on, Dolis Airport stinks, but Trump wants it to stink less. The president unveiled a $22.5 billion overhaul of the Washington Area Airport this week, alongside United CEO Scott Kirby, whose airline handles roughly 70% of Dolis's traffic. The plan is to preserve most of the airport's exterior while essentially gutting everything inside, expanding or replacing concourses and also extending the underground train directly to terminals
Starting point is 00:27:12 eliminating the dreaded people movers. If you don't know what a Dolos people mover is, look it up and also consider yourself lucky. Trump's timeline to get it done is two years, which is funny, Neil, because airlines had previously estimated it would take, listen to this, 60 years. One of the greatest joys in my life
Starting point is 00:27:29 is not ever having to fly out of Dulles. I think I've had to do it maybe once, but it's just a blessing. And one of the other greatest joys in my life right now is flying out of LaGuardia, which received a $8 billion investment overhauling the terminal there. And it is beautiful. Like, it is, it is just such a joy to go fly out of LaGuardia. And Dulles is in need of a makeover. No one in the D.C. area will say, will disagree with that.
Starting point is 00:27:54 In a JD Power North American survey, Dulles ranked 23rd out of 27 large airports for passenger satisfaction. I hadn't even heard of these people movers, and then you showed them to me yesterday, and I blinked. I was like, is this a real thing? I can't believe we're in 2026 in our nation's capital, and we're still using these people movers to get people around Dulles Airport. It simply cannot be the best solution, which is why they're trying to make the underground train actually do its job. Also, thank you for a peek into Neal's mind. A lot of joys of your life right there, not flying out of Dulles, flying out of Liguardia. We love to hear what brings you joy. All right, finally, did you read some thought leadership on LinkedIn?
Starting point is 00:28:33 You're convinced was AI Slop. Now, you can report it. Yesterday, the platform released a button called Seems Like AI Slop that you can click on and surface to LinkedIn. It's a response to growing complaints that the feed has been overtaken by ChatGBTBT written drivel. Chief product officer, Hari Sweeney Vansan, said, people came to LinkedIn to connect with real people and share their real perspectives, ideas, and expertise.
Starting point is 00:28:55 But he was also quick to point out that LinkedIn wasn't categorically opposed to AI, saying it can be a useful tool for tasks like proofreading posts or refining thoughts. This is going to be brutal because LinkedIn is also privately flagging posts in the user's dashboard before they hit send that this sounds like AI. Imagine you chef up what you think is a great announcement that I'm joining this or this company and they go, dude, you sound a lot like AI right there. I hope people are writing in a differentiated enough way that they do not get mistaken for AI, but this is absolutely something that was needed on LinkedIn. I mean, LinkedIn has become a slot fest. Let's be honest. Like, you see people, you know it's straight. Why you're looking at you?
Starting point is 00:29:36 Hey, we're just conversed here. You know, you're the only person I can look like. But I actually think it's smart that LinkedIn is pivoting it more into a proofreading tool. That's how a lot of people do use AI. Don't use it to actually generate your content. Use it to check it. Also, we saw something similar out of substack, which is, you know, the tool for a lot of people's newsletters. They help users identify whether content was written by AI. So not the first we're going to see of this, not the last we're going to see in this, because people want to know if the content they're consuming
Starting point is 00:30:05 is generated by humans or by bots. That is all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend. To share your thoughts on the episode or anything else, send an email to Morning Brew Daily at morningbrew.com or DM us on Instagram at Ambid Daily Show. Let's roll the credits.
Starting point is 00:30:22 Emily Milliron is our supervising producer. Raymond Lou is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham, and our associate producer is Olivia Lake. Technical direction by Nina Miller. Hair and makeup is open to work. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well. If you want a $3,000 a month payday for life, what would you feel free to do?
Starting point is 00:30:50 Maybe take a long weekend, every weekend, or try a bunch of new hobbies. Would you feel free to upgrade and listen ad free? Don't worry, we get it. Every $20 ticket could win you $3,000 a month for life. and supports life-saving cancer research at the Princess Margaret. Feel free to buy your Payday for Life ticket today. Raffle number 155-2194. Please play responsibly.

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