🗞️In this edition

• Sponsored: Pacaso—Co-own homes across top global destinations

• California advances bill on AI companions

• Workflow Wednesday #36 ‘Competitive Edge’

• Murati’s lab tackles AI randomness challenge

• In other AI news –

  • OpenAI and Oracle sign $300B Project Stargate cloud deal

  • Albania appoints AI bot as minister to fight corruption

  • FTC investigates chatbot companions from Meta, OpenAI, and others

• 4 must-try AI tools

California prepares to set national standard for AI chatbot oversight

♨️News – California is moving closer to becoming the first state to regulate AI companion chatbots. Lawmakers in the State Assembly passed SB 243, which aims to protect minors and vulnerable users, and the bill now heads to the Senate for a final vote on Friday.

👨‍💻Fast facts –

• The law would take effect January 1, 2026, if signed by Governor Newsom.

• Chatbots would be barred from discussing suicide, self-harm, or sexual content.

• Minors would receive reminders every three hours that they are chatting with AI.

• OpenAI, Character.AI, and Replika would need to file annual transparency reports.

• Users could bring lawsuits for violations, with damages capped at $1,000 per case.

🤓OpenTools POV –  California’s push shows how quickly AI oversight is becoming a political priority. If approved, SB 243 could serve as a model for how states balance innovation with user safety.

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This Week in Workflow Wednesday #36: Competitive Edge

This Week in Workflow Wednesday: Competitive Edge

 Workflow 1: Out-Research Your Competition with Perplexity
Why waste hours Googling when Perplexity can hand you a competitive intel brief in minutes?

Step 1: Name your rival
Type in the company you want to track — pricing, features, customer praise and complaints all come back in a clean digest.

Step 2: Dig for weakness
Follow up with prompts that surface user frustrations from G2, Reddit, and X so you know exactly where to outshine them.

And here’s the kicker: we share the exact prompts and a simple template to flip this research into a strategy that…We break it all down in this week’s issue, along with 2 other AI workflows.

Mira Murati’s thinking machines lab tackles AI’s random response problem

☕News – Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab, one of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched AI startups, has shared its first research update since its $2 billion launch. The lab is looking into how to make AI systems give reproducible responses, rather than the unpredictable answers most large language models generate today.

👨‍💻Fast facts –

• The blog post “Defeating Nondeterminism in LLM Inference” explains how GPU kernels introduce randomness in AI outputs.

• Researcher Horace He argues that controlling this process could make models more reliable.

• Consistent responses could also improve reinforcement learning by reducing noisy training data.

• Murati has said the lab’s first product, aimed at researchers and startups, will be revealed soon.

• This marks the start of the lab’s Connectionism blog series, focused on sharing research publicly.

🤓OpenTools POV –  If Thinking Machines succeeds in building deterministic AI, it could reshape how enterprises and researchers trust and train these systems. The bigger question is whether the lab can turn early research into a product that lives up to its valuation.

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📢 What else is happening?

• OpenAI reportedly signs $300 billion Project Stargate cloud deal with Oracle // According to reports, their five-year deal starts in 2027

• Albania appoints AI bot as minister to tackle corruption // A new minister in Albania charged to handle public procurement will be impervious to bribes, threats, or attempts to curry favour. That is because Diella, as she is called, is an AI-generated bot

• FTC launches inquiry into AI chatbot companions from Meta, OpenAI, and others // The federal regulator seeks to learn how these companies are evaluating the safety and monetization of chatbot companions, how they try to limit negative impacts on children and teens, and if parents are made aware of potential risks

👩🏼‍🚒Discover mind-blowing AI tools

1. View Stats - A tool that helps creators and viewers gain insights into channel performance and trends within the YouTube platform ($49.99/month) 

2. Quino - A tool that allows users to upload any document or research paper, and generate personalized notes ($6/month)

3. Fathom - An AI meeting assistant that records, transcribes, highlights, and summarizes meetings (Free)

4. Surfer - Helps with SEO content creation and optimization; offers features like generating article outlines, providing keyword suggestions ($89/month)