The AI Daily Brief: Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis - OpenAI Declares the Next Phase of AI

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

OpenAI says it is entering a new phase focused on automated AI research, broad access, and turning frontier capability into tools people can actually use. But the bigger question is whether “AI” is now splitting into two very different categories: consumer AI and work AI. In the headlines: OpenAI files to go public, SpaceX pushes space data centers, Intel gets an AI chip opening, and Washington’s AI regulation debate heats up.Brought to you by:KPMG – Research from KPMG and the University of Texas at Austin shows the highest-impact AI users treat AI like a reasoning partner — and those skills can be taught at scale. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠kpmg.com/us/Sophisticated⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bolt - Claim a free month of Bolt Pro - ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bolt.new/partner/aidb/⁠⁠⁠⁠Outsystems - Stop wondering how AI will change your business and start building the agents that will lead it - http://outsystems.com/Scrunch - The AI customer experience platform - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://scrunch.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Zenflow Work - Agents for knowledge work - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://zenflow.free/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Blitzy - Want to accelerate enterprise software development velocity by 5x? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://blitzy.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠AssemblyAI - The best way to build Voice AI apps - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.assemblyai.com/brief⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Robots & Pencils - Cloud-native AI solutions that power results ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://robotsandpencils.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The AI Daily Brief helps you understand the most important news and discussions in AI. Subscribe to the podcast version of The AI Daily Brief wherever you listen: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://pod.link/1680633614⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Our Newsletter is BACK: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://aidailybrief.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Interested in sponsoring the show? [e-mail]

Today on the AI Daily Brief, some big questions around the next phase of AI and whether what we now call AI is actually multiple things. Before that in the headlines, OpenAI joins the IPO filing party. The AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. All right, friends, quick announcements before we dive in. First of all, thank you to today's sponsors, KPMG, robots and pencils, Zen Coder, and Out Systems. To get an ad-free version of the show, go to patreon.com slash AI Daily Brief, or you can subscribe in Apple Podcasts. Remember, it is just $3 a month for ad-free. And if you want to learn more about sponsoring the show, send us a note at sponsors

at aidailybrief.aI. Also a big thank you to everyone who has filled out our AIDB for Team survey. One of the things that's becoming very clear is that something that people are really looking for is an easier way to share specific nuggets from the episodes. We've got a couple new ideas for that coming up, potentially with a brand new webpage. So keep you, your eyes peeled for that over the next couple of weeks. For now, though, let's jump into the headlines. You can absolutely feel things heating up right now. We'll have some dimensions of that in our discussion in our main episode, but even throughout the headlines, the stakes are just getting raised, markets are firing up, energy is high, the whole AI space is just vibrating on a different

level. One example of that, Open AI has officially thrown their hat in the ring and filed to go public. The company filed their IPO paperwork confidentially on Monday. Now, as I mentioned after the Anthropic filing last week, confidential filing is the industry standard and certainly doesn't carry any significant implications. All it really means is that we don't get to look at the company's financials until much later in the process. We also won't know the valuation sought by OpenAI until much closer to the listing. And while the press is casting this as an all-out race between Open AI and Anthropic, the quotes don't suggest a lot of urgency from the companies themselves. When asked about the IPO last week, Anthropic President Anelena Amode

simply stated that the filing, quote, gives us the option to potentially go public after the review. In an ex post on Monday, OpenAI said, we have not decided on timing yet. It may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company, but it's a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best. Now, if you did decide that that was all just bluster and these companies were in fact in an all-out race, judging from the speed of the SpaceX IPO, you're probably looking at September as the earliest reasonable possibility, but who knows? When it comes to AI, a lot of norms are getting thrown out the window. Now, broadly speaking, I would

say that there are two categories of takes when it comes to this IPO slate. The first is that the sequencing matters. Chebby on X writes, going first could matter. The first major frontier AI IPO may define public market expectations for the entire sector, while later entrance risk being judged against that benchmark. And while that's certainly true, I find myself much more in the camp shared by Lassan on X who writes, I have a prediction for Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX IPO. They will all go vertical. Or as the Kobayisi letter put it, we're about to witness the most incredible IPO run in history. Now, as the SpaceX IPO approaches, Elon Musk has unveiled further plans for putting data centers in space. In a half hour long video posted to X on Monday,

Musk revealed a prototype design for the data center satellites. Each satellite will be designed to handle around 150 kilowatts of AI compute, roughly equivalent to a single rack of Nvidia Blackwells. Musk said during the presentation, an AI satellite is essentially a lot of solar cells, a radiator, and you still need some laser links, but you don't have all of the super complex antennas that you have on a Starlink satellite. Given the two, the easier one to design for is the AI satellite. He later added, part of what I want to convey here is that there's not some magic that's necessary that doesn't exist for AI satellites. A lot of this technology we've already made for Starlink V3 satellites. We don't think this is a super hard problem compared to things we

already do. Now, when many people first heard Elon start to talk about data center in space, there was a natural knee-jerk skepticism. And for people that dug in a little bit more, even outside of any pre-existing biases around Elon, there did seem to be some big, possibly insurmountable problems. Chief among them was heat dissipation, as the lack of atmosphere makes passive cooling impossible. We're now getting some details, and it sounds like the SpaceX satellites will angle a thin edge towards the sun to minimize solar heating and use radiation panels to expel heat from the GPUs. The system is similar to the cooling already in use on Starlink satellites.

Overall, the whole concept is starting to get a lot more credible in recent months, with Google reportedly in talks to partner with SpaceX for their own data center satellites. In other words, while there are still difficult engineering challenges, challenges, Musk is increasingly presenting a feasible pathway. His presentation also discussed the manufacturing side of the project. SpaceX plans to expand their Starling facility to reach 11 million square feet, which would be around the same footprint as the Tesla Gigafactory in Austin. The facility, dubbed Gigasat, will be used to manufacture the gigantic solar panels that are required to power these satellites. Elon also discussed the scale and time horizon for the project. He said that SpaceX

will try to achieve an annualized rate of putting one gigawatt of capacity in space by the end of 2027. That would require almost 7,000 satellite launches a year if they remain at 150 kilowatts each. After 2027, Musk said that SpaceX will attempt to scale capacity by an order of magnitude each year, eventually reaching a terawatt of capacity. Now, that is a more ambitious schedule than disclosed in the IPO filing, and even Elon himself has acknowledged that it's all a bit speculative. He commented that the plans should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, the thesis of putting data centers in space is increasingly central to the SpaceX public listing. In their perspective, SpaceX claimed that space data centers

could be a $23 trillion market, which will, to some investors still sound like he's saying that their market cap potential is approximately a billion dollars, is getting a little bit more credible by the week. Data Center skeptic and hedge fundy David Orr kind of represents the current smartest guy in the room thinking, in that while previously he was ranting about how infeasible this was, he's starting to come around not to the idea that it's obviously going to work, but that now at least Elon is making a bunch of verifiable claims and getting into the details on how it's supposed to work, making it way more tangible and seemingly a lot more real. Or wrote,

If SpaceX has an 80% gross margin on launches, they're a lot closer than I thought for data centers in space. It's still far off, but not wildly far off. I guess if Starship can bring this down another 80%, it could be feasible. I'm biased to thinking this kind of thing is BS and it usually is, but maybe keeping an open mind here is right. Meanwhile, for the SpaceX IPO itself,

demand seems red hot. Sources told Reuters that stock is roughly two times oversubscribed, with $150 billion worth of orders for $75 billion in available stock. Now, this level of demand wouldn't necessarily be out of the ordinary for a regular frothy IPO. What makes it impressive is the sheer magnitude given that this is the largest IPO in history. One hedge fund manager said that there's career risk in abstaining from the sale, commenting, lots of people will have to explain why they don't own it rather than justifying a decision to buy it. Reports are circulating that brokers are being told to spread allocations widely across retail investors.

The IPO has an unusually high 30% allocation to retail. And according to the chatter, brokers are being forced to ensure that small accounts still get their fair share. Analyst Phil Truby wrote, Elon is serious when he said retail will get allocations. In addition, some brokerages are telling traders that they need to hold on to their shares for 30 days or be banned from buying other IPOs later this year. Trades are being told to fund their accounts by the Wednesday close, implying that the first day of trading is indeed expected on Friday. Staying on infrastructure for a minute, chipmakers are turning to Intel as supply chain issues worsen.

The information reports that both Google and Nvidia are quietly adding Intel as a backup manufacturer for their AI chips. Until now, both companies had used TSM as their single supplier for high-end chips, but of course, recently, TSM's order book has ballooned leading to a multi-year waiting list. During a call with investors last week, TSM's CEO, CC Way, warned that even with new fabs coming online in Arizona and Taipei, it'll be a long time before they can meet full customer demand. That kind of leaves Intel is the only viable alternative. Google has reportedly placed an order for 3 million TPUs to be manufactured in 2028 after being satisfied with test units.

That's around half of the units Google expects to deliver. liver across 27 and 28, according to estimates from Morgan Stanley. It's also the first major chip order for Intel during the AI era. Invidia, meanwhile, is said to still be in the testing phase. Sources said that they're currently testing Intel equipment for producing the next generation Feynman chip set for production in 2008. Now, this is all big news for Intel who have struggled for years to catch up on AI chip manufacturing. After taking control of the company last year, new CEO Liputon announced that Intel would double down on contract manufacturing for other chip makers, with their in-house AI chip family called Gotti having been a sales disaster.

And while, of course, Intel have made big strides in their reclamation project, this story really speaks to how severe chip supply chain issues are becoming. There's no hint of dissatisfaction with TSM here or even a desire for redundancy. This appears to be purely about TSM being completely out of spare capacity for the foreseeable future. Now, investors had already been buying the Intel redemption arc, almost tripling the stock price in April before entering a downturn in May, and this news broke the month-long downtrend with the stock jumping by 11% on Monday. By the way, one more small one for my market folks out there, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan are looking at trading compute futures as a way to hedge their data center exposure. Compute futures are expected to launch later this year and will allow traders to bet on the future price of GPU rentals in a similar way to other commodities like oil or wheat. The information reports that Goldman and J.P. Morgan are exploring the use of this nascent market as a way to hedge against the risk of data center overbuilding. And while many might read the introduction of compute futures as yet another speculative market, for clients that are heavily invested in the data center buildout, there's currently no direct way to hedge that risk.

meaning that this sort of compute market can actually be useful outside of just speculation. Lastly, today, it is not just in markets that we feel things heating up. Washington is taking another look at AI regulation with multiple agendas heading to Congress. Axios reports that the White House is negotiating federal preemption of state AI laws in exchange for supporting other key tech priorities in an upcoming bill. Preemption was part of the bipartisan bill proposed by representatives Obrunulty and Treyhan last week, but it seems a Senate version is also in the works. Axios said negotiations are currently being led by

Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn, Blackburn scuttled AI legislation last summer over the preemption issue, pointing to concerns about losing child and copyright protections that are already legislated in various states. This time around, Blackburn is looking to bundle those issues into a federal regulatory package. Her office said, Senator Blackburn is spearheading the negotiation with the White House to finalize legislative text of an AI preemption package that includes protection for kids, creators, and communities through the Senate version of the Kids Online Safety Act, the No Fakes Act, and age verification requirements. They also added that child safety would receive a carve-out from preemption.

Sources told Axios that leading AI labs would be attending a White House meeting this week to discuss appropriate benchmarking for government vetting, pursuant to the recent AI executive order. Now, this could be the actual purpose for the meeting President Trump discussed last week in the context of AI companies seating shares to a public wealth fund. Separately, Democrat Senator Adam Schiff has introduced a bill to restrict the Pentagon's AI use. The bill would require the Pentagon to keep a human in the loop for autonomous weaponry and protect against the use of AI for domestic surveillance. The bill then essentially legislates Anthropics red lines,

which became the subject of their fallout with the Pentagon back in March. A similar bill was put forward recently by Senators Kelly, Jilla Branden Slotkin, but Schiff is pushing to have his bill attached to the must-pass defense funding bill, expected to come to a vote later this month. More broadly, these particular restrictions seem to be a core pillar of the AI platform for centrist Democrats heading into midterms and beyond. Schiff told the Wall Street Journal,

we're no longer anticipating these impacts, they're here. AI could very well be the dominant issue for the next presidential election. Now, Schiff's bill is, of course, just one of a myriad of proposals coming from the Democrat side of Congress. Bernie Sanders recently presented his 50% tax on AI equity as legislation, while others are pushing for other forms of AI taxation. Michigan Senate candidate Larry McMorrow, who is running on a token tax applied across the economy, said, it feels like we are hitting a cultural tipping point. For the AI companies, meanwhile, it seems like regulation is inevitable, spurring far more engagement from lobbyists. OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, Chris Lohane said,

we think we're going to need to even do more as we go forward given the speed that this is moving. Now, as you sit back and look at all of this, you could be forgiven for thinking that we are on the precipice of yet another phase you might say in AI. And interestingly enough, that's exactly what Open AI has recently said, and that is the subject that we turn to in our main episode. One of the most important AI questions right now isn't who's using AI. It's who's using it well. KPMG in the University of Texas at Austin just analyzed 1.4 million real workplace AI interactions and found something surprising. The highest impact users aren't better prompt engineers. They treat AI like a reasoning partner. They frame problems, guide thinking,

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and deliver real enterprise impact with AI. OutSystems. Build your agentic future. Welcome back to the AI Daily Brief. Today we're talking about OpenAI's blog post in which they declare something of a new phase in AI. Now, part of why this is interesting to look at is that it's very clear that we're living through a major transition in AI. On a micro level, we're in our second sort of transition in a couple months. The first, of course, being the agentic transition that happened between November of last year

and January of this year, and the second being the shift from the token subsidy era, where we were consuming a lot more tokens than we were paying for, to the token shortage era, where the physical realities of the limits of the compute that we have available to serve means that state-of-the-art AI especially is getting more expensive. Now, when you take a farther step back, obviously these are parts of the same transition. And really, I think when the history books are written, the reason that this period feels so intense and immense is that it is the second massive transition in generative AI following the launch of ChatGBT-GBT itself.

Now, I would argue, when it comes to the ultimate shape of AI in society, this agentic transition and all the consequent economic changes that come with it is likely to be even more significant than the first. So much so that part of what I'm wondering today, as I look at the OpenAI blog post, contrasted with the non-event that was Apple's Siri announcements at WWDC, if there is actually a fairly fundamental break occurring in what we now lump together as AI. But first of all, let's read some excerpts from the piece that they published, as it's not particularly long.

The piece is called Built to Benefit Everyone Our Plan. The first part of it is sort of your standard historical analogy. This is big sort of rhetoric. Every few generations they start, a new technology changes everything. Imagine electricity reaching a rural American town. in the 1920s. Before power lines arrived, daily life was shaped by physical limits, hauling water, washing clothes by hands, preserving food with ice, and ending much of the day when the sun went down. Electricity did not transform every household overnight, and many of its benefits reached

people unevenly. But as access spread, ordinary life changed. Light at night extended the day. Electric pumps, appliances, and refrigeration reduced some of the hardest daily work. Radios brought news, music, and connection from hundreds of miles away into homes and community spaces. The first promise of electricity was practical, but its deeper impact came from the new possibilities it opened up as more people could use it. With time, a lot of new possibilities emerged, with machines and computers greatly accelerating progress in medicine, engineering in many other fields. By the end of the 20th century, the average lifespan had increased by over 20 years, and the median inflation-adjusted income tripled or so.

These gains were driven in no small part due to the advances in healthcare, sanitation, and living standards, many of which were enabled or accelerated by widespread electrification and related technological progress. This, they argue, is happening again with AI. AI, they write, will soon be capable of extraordinary things. But the point is not the technology by itself. The point is what people can do with it. The positive impacts, however, they write, are not a foregone conclusion. Or as they put it, the future will not happen automatically. They do the standard, there's going to be a lot of great things, but also clear out about the risks kind of paragraphs. With one interesting novel tweak on that theme, where you see the continued backing up from the

narrative of full knowledge worker replacement when they write, entirely automating everything is not the future we want. It would be unfulfilling and it would be dangerous. AI should help people pursue their goals, not become untethered from them. As AI systems become more capable, the human role becomes more important, setting direction, making tradeoffs, supplying judgment, and bringing values, taste, care, and responsibility to work. Now, as a little aside, the way that I feel about open AI finally coming to this rhetoric and this idea, that AI, in fact, will not be used just to replace people, but instead to unlock their dreams in ways that were never imagined before, I'm reminded of a scene in the West Wing, where press secretary C.J. Craig reveals to her communications

colleague Sam Seaborne, that she doesn't understand the census, even though she's been acting as she does for weeks. After a little pause, Sam Seaborne, played famously by Rob Lowe, says, I tell you what, let's forget the fact that you're coming a little late to the party and embrace the fact that you showed up at all. In any case, from that new rhetorical shift, they move into what is the actual substance of the post. They write, we believe that AI, doing AI research, will become the determining factor of the pace of progress within the next few years. Faster technical progress makes human judgment and public coordination more important, not less. The future should be shaped by people, institutions, and societies, not only the companies

building the most capable systems. Indeed, reflecting the broader conversations at the moment, they write that they expect national and global coordination to become more important, arguing that they have, quote, long believed there should ultimately be an international organization that helps coordinate leading AI efforts to reduce catastrophic risk. And then we come to the core internal-facing part of the post. OpenAI's three current main goals. Their first goal is build an automated AI researcher, an AI system they write that can accelerate and increasingly automate the research process itself while remaining steerable, accountable, and connected to people. Our internal belief is that by

March of 20208, we may have a significant fraction of our research being done by AI systems in tandem with our own researchers. To make sufficient progress on alignment, we believe we will need AIs to iterate alongside us. This will help us navigate the transition to the post-AGI world, so that we collectively decide the path towards the future. Goal two, accelerate the economy by accelerating scientific progress, productivity, and economic growth, while working to ensure the gains are widely shared. Everyone should have an opportunity for a meaningful share in the prosperity AI creates. Three, give everyone on Earth a personal AGI,

empowering them to benefit from one of humanity's most transformative technologies in whatever way they choose. And thus they say, to be able to deliver on this, we are entering the third phase of open AI. The first phase of open AI was about doing research toward AGI. The second phase began when our research became relevant to the real world and we became a product company, deploying our systems, learning from how people use them, and making continued progress toward AGI that is safe and aligned with our mission. Now they declare we are entering the third phase. The economy is beginning to reshape around AI.

The central question now is how to make advanced AI abundant, affordable, safe, useful, and easy enough for every person and organization to benefit from it. Frontier capability is only part of the job. The bigger task is turning that capability into tools people can actually use to thrive. Above all, we believe a broad distribution of power will help lead to a better future. Human history shows that concentrated power creates fragility, while widely shared power makes societies more resilient, adaptable, and free. A good AI future cannot be one where a small number of institutions control most of the capability and most of the upside.

It should be a future where many people, companies, communities, and countries can build, benefit and hold power. We believe this transformation should belong to everyone. So that's the post. And when it comes to interpretations and the question of why this was released now, for many, it was impossible to separate from their confidential IPO filing, which happened earlier in the day, and which we just talked about in the headlines, the headlines, Ineis part of the episode. Gianaro writes, Sam Altman just called OpenAI's three-phase plan built to benefit everyone on the same day they filed their S-1. Headlines, altruistic mission statement. It isn't. This isn't a roadmap. It's market segmentation. Consumers by the dream, investors by the TAM, regulators by the public benefit corporation. There are infinite versions of this take.

And all I will say is that for the next four months or so, until the IPOs for Anthropic and OpenAI are both in the rear view, you're going to have people, frankly, reasonably argue that every single thing that they're doing is in some way, shape, or form about getting the optimal outcome out of that IPO. Now, for others, the big emotional takeaway was certainly the idea of power distribution. Tangyan writes, TLDR, OpenAI's phase three is that AI should be for everyone, not concentrated in a few hands. Stanford Prof. Andy Hall writes, concentration of power seems to be the central political economy question of AGI. And certainly given the rising discourse around Bernie and sovereign wealth funds and Trump taking a cut, the discussion at least around how to ensure AI benefits everyone is reaching a crescendo in a way that it never has before.

Now for others, this is all about reading the tea leaves of what's going on behind the scenes and a speculation that the labs now think that we're beyond some event horizon based on things they've seen that aren't available to the public. Chubby writes, sounds like we're now taking the final steps towards AGI and post AGI. Prins writes, Conspiracy Theory Time. Open AI just announced that we're entering the third phase. Why today? Why now?

Blog post was co-authored by Sam Altman and Jacob Pachy, who we know is in charge of automating AIR&D at OpenAI. You may remember that the live stream where OpenAIs plans to automate AI R&D were announced was also Sam and Jacob. No mention of the goal to produce an intern anywhere in the blog post. The goal is now just the automated AI researcher by March 2020. All weekend long, meanwhile, the Codex team posted about loops. Sam Altman posted about recursive loops last night.

Do they have it? And by it, I think Prince is referring to some version of recursive self-improvement or RSI. Lassan argues, no, of course not, but they could have a much larger and stronger model. Now, the other event that happened yesterday, that a couple of years ago would have been almost dead on assured to be the lead story of the main episode, was Apple's WWDC event, where they announced that Siri AI was finally coming. Now, you might remember that we first started hearing about the new quote-unquote Siri AI back in 2024 when Apple launched in huge air quotes Apple Intelligence. The Verge writes,

The whole intelligence bit of the Siri redesign was coming soon, Apple promised. It didn't. In fact, its promotion around Apple Intelligence was so misleading that the company is settling a class action lawsuit and has to pay iPhone owners for the features it never shipped. But now the new Siri is finally here, and basically it does the things that it was supposed to do the last time around. It can summarize your messages, add an event. vent to your calendar, search the web. Basically, for the first time, Siri promises to do more than just set a timer incorrectly. And for some observers, especially those outside of the hyper-focused AI discourse, this was just enough to be fine. Bloomberg's Apple Watcher Mark Germain wrote,

while there was nothing revolutionary, Apple just rebooted the foundations of its platform with functional AI, a working Siri, and improved performance. This is critical ahead of the next three years of blockbuster new devices that run these operating systems. The right move. Or as Samsung's David Lee put it, didn't try to win the game with one possession when down by 10. IDC analyst Francisco Geronimo said in a note, Apple does not need to win AI by having the biggest model or the loudest demo. It needs to make AI trusted, useful, and invisible across the ecosystem. And yet, of course, on the flip side, people who've spent the last six months playing with

OpenClaw and becoming CodeCodeCode power users, look at this and are just absolutely baffled. Teneres writes, New Siri are fine, looks like it will be a legit, useful upgrade, and I'll make use of agentic search over my own text messages. Upgraded voice transcription might kill a few startups, but it's also just exactly the minimal stuff they should have launched in 2024. Signal put it more bluntly, Siri is basically ChatGBTGPT 1.0 that has no impact on our work. Now on top of that, you also got some articles trying to argue why sneakily Apple is actually going to disrupt Chat GBT. Mike Romanovitz wrote, Apple just killed paying for AI. In it, he basically argues that Siri

in your phone, while it isn't going to be managing an agent. swarm or refactoring your cobal codebase over the course of a week, can probably order you a burrito about as well as Opus or GPT5-5 can, and for a lot of people, that's all that's going to matter. And here's what hits me like a truck. I wonder if we have officially hit the point we're considering consumer AI, i.e. the day in, day out, turning to a chatbot to help answer a question or find some information, as part and parcel of the same thing as work AI, where we are literally managing fleets of new synthetic employees that can unlock capabilities that were never possible for us before is just fundamentally wrong. Now, nominally, all of these platforms have all of these

features. You can use Claude AI, you can use ClaudeCode code. You can use ChatGBT, you can use Codex. And with Gemini and Google, it's even blurrier. And yet, in some ways, I think this might have distracted us from the fact that we might be at more of a fork than these companies are willing to admit. It is so clear watching OpenAI's moves that the seat-based revenue of chat GPT is so ridiculously inconsequential compared to the API usage of Codex that I wonder if on some level chat GPT itself is becoming a distraction. Now certainly they're giving some interesting signals to that effect, talking about blending the chat GPT in codex apps, building a super app, and yet still most of the discourse is talking about the super app as though it's a thing for consumers.

Now, I think that there's no way, even if OpenAI has determined that chat GPT is kind of a distraction. and one of those side quests that Fiji Simo said that they shouldn't be spending their time on, that they'd actually make moves to kill it. First of all, they're going to see it forever as a great top of funnel for getting people into the Codex ecosystem. But second, it is a massive differentiator between them and Anthropic as they go public, and they're going to need to highlight those differences when it comes to the public markets. But I genuinely wonder if they actually care about consumer AI anymore, even the way they're talking about AI benefiting everyone in this blog post.

It's one about the financial and deterministic and control benefits, benefits in participation, and two, by saying that we're giving everyone a personal AGI, almost dragging them into those work-related use cases as opposed to more traditional consumer AI stuff. Now, I sort of wonder, what do it change if we were allowed to care less about consumer AI? Would it mean less shoving it down people's throats with every app, including non-work apps, racing to add their AI features? With the fact that this was a work technology, not an all-encompassing consumer meme, actually make people less angry? I don't know. But it did. It did. It's a work technology. It interesting to think about. I would not go so far as to say that consumer AI has failed. One need

only look at how totally embedded in people's lives chat bots like ChatGBTBT have already become to know that that's not the case. But at the same time, it is also clear that there is no comparison between that and the sheer tonnage of impact that agentic work-related AI and the consequent business models and infrastructure are going to have on the face of society. And maybe it's time we start talking about them as separate things. Anyway, if the goal of OpenAI's peace was to get people talking, mission accomplished, for now that's going to do it for today's AI Daily Brief. Appreciate you listening or watching. As always, until next time, peace.