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Instagram’s Mosseri says synthetic content will empower new voices (sure, if you like deepfakes), while Meta forces 75,000 employees to “embed AI” into everything. Google’s under UK watch, Apple’s paying $5M for bug bounties, and Nvidia’s chips are slipping past export bans.
Video pick: Inside the AI that keeps you unemployed
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Catch the stand-up comment of today’s issue here:
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Eight bullets of updates
🤖 AI will help new creators thrive online, but society must adapt as synthetic content surges, says Instagram’s Mosseri.
🤖 Nearly a third of companies now consider AI adoption before hiring as they prioritize automation over new roles, shifting the future of entry-level work.
🕵️♂️ Apple ups its bug bounty, offering up to $5M for critical iPhone exploits as spyware threats keep rising.
🤖 US officials are investigating potential shipments of Nvidia chips worth $60M to China, despite export curbs.
🔍 UK regulators give Google’s search and ads business "strategic market status", paving the way for new rules on its 90%+ market share.
🏝️ Google is capping "work from anywhere" at 4 weeks a year, tightening a once-flexible policy for remote workers.
🧑💻 Meta execs push teams to embed AI into every workflow, speeding up a major internal shift for 75,000 employees.
🎬 AI tools can automate up to 80% of video editing, but human editors still deliver the creative edge.
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Investor skepticism over humanoid robot startup valuations and readiness
Photo by julien Tromeur on Unsplash
Rodney Brooks has seen this movie before. The robotics pioneer is warning that humanoid hype is running ahead of reality. Despite billions in venture funding, robots still struggle with the basics—dexterous hands remain an open problem, and most demos are more choreography than capability.
Investors and AI leaders are starting to echo his skepticism, drawing parallels to the early days of self-driving cars: dazzling prototypes, lofty promises, and a long road to real deployment.
The stakes are familiar too. Timelines that outlast fund cycles. Safety and unit economics that don’t scale. Tesla’s bot still leans on teleoperation, and Figure’s $39B valuation is colliding with questions about readiness. For now, the smarter bet may not be humanoids themselves but the tools that enable them—better manipulation, sharper sensors, and practical, wheeled robots built for structured spaces. The future is coming—but it’s still not quite ready.
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Inside the AI that keeps you unemployed
Companies are handing life-changing decisions—jobs, loans, healthcare—to “black box” AI systems no one fully understands. Trained on biased data, they don’t just mirror inequality—they scale it. This video unpacks how that happens, the scandals that proved it, and the fight to make AI fair—or at least accountable.
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Software sprawl? That’s SaaD.
Software was supposed to make work easier. Instead, most teams are buried under it.
That’s SaaD – Software as a Disservice. Dozens of disconnected tools waste time, duplicate work, and inflate costs.
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Companies like Cursor, Clay, and Sierra have already left outdated ways of working behind – gaining clarity, speed, and control.
Don’t get SaaD. Get Rippling.
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🔄 After a sale, expect first‑year layoffs and months of busywork, plus culture shifts under new owners.
🛂 Your passport beats product: UAE pulled $23B FDI in 2023—time to use jurisdictional arbitrage for growth.
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Tech billionaires build remote compounds to prepare for catastrophe
Photo by Ben Collins on Unsplash
Billionaires are buying remote land and building bunkers—mainly as insurance against “tail risks” like runaway AI. The trend ties “prepper chic” to AGI fears: some tech leaders are preparing for collapse, while skeptics note that AI timelines are still uncertain and today’s models remain brittle.
For startups, the takeaway is clear: resilience tech—off-grid power, backup comms, autonomous food, filtration—now carries an AGI panic premium. If fear is high enough to justify bunkers, expect investors to tighten evaluations, raise safety expectations, and factor liability into deals. In this climate, compliance becomes a moat.
The shift: capital moves toward “resilience-as-a-service,” remote-first perks emphasize continuity, and regulators weigh speed against risk.
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Startup Events and Deadlines
Today! 500 Startups Flagship Accelerator l Deadline: Oct 11 l USA
Crash Course on Startup Fundraising with Caya (Slidebean CEO) l Oct 15 l Webinar
Crash Course in Financial Modeling l Oct 16 l Webinar
Mental Health Tech Summit 2025 l October 15 l NYC