😸 AI aces Math Olympics

PLUS: Apple's AI debut is getting delayed...

Welcome, humans.

Anyone watch the Olympics this weekend? We did, and we couldn’t help but notice quite a few AI ads, including this one from Google and multiple ads from Salesforce. It was like an AI extravaganza. If this reminds you of that one year crypto took over the Superbowl, that’s kinda how it feels to us, too.

Y’know those charts that show where we’re at in a technology hype cycle? You can throw all those out. All we need is an analysis of x number of “insert technology here” adverts per hour for whatever the year’s main major sporting event is, and you’ll know exactly where it’s at in the cycle.

Here’s what you need to know about AI today:

DeepMind's AI secured silver at the International Math Olympiad.
Video game performers announced a strike over AI concerns.
Morgan Stanley launched new AI tools for client meetings and research analysis.
Apple delayed its “Apple Intelligence” AI rollout to October.

DeepMind’s new AI just won a silver medal at the (math) Olympics.

While the world turned its eyes to the Paris Olympics this weekend, another medal-giving competition quietly made history. Two of Google DeepMind's new AI systems, AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2, achieved a silver medal performance at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO).

Here’s how the IMO works:

The IMO challenges pre-college mathematicians with six brain-busting problems over two 4.5-hour sessions. Think the hardest AP Calculus problem, but 10x harder.
DeepMind's AI nailed 4 out of 6 problems, scoring 28 out of 42 points—just one point shy of gold.
Notably, the AI solved the most difficult problem, which only five human contestants managed to crack.

Context is key: While the human contestants had ~9 hours, the AI solved one problem in under 19 seconds—but took up to 3 days to solve the others.

OK nerds, what’s the big deal?!

Well, 18 months ago, experts thought this level of math skills from an AI was 5-7 years away.

DeepMind’s AI can now solve 83% of historic IMO geometry problems from the past 25 years, up from 53% in its previous version.

Many of these problems require creativity, reasoning, and problem-solving—abilities once considered uniquely human. One judge (a medalist himself) was so impressed by the system’s solution, that he called it a “magic key.”

Some AI researchers see a gold win at the 2025 IMO competition as evidence that super-powerful AI is coming sooner than we thought. And after the silver medal news broke, predictions for this outcome surged from 25% to a 70%.

And if that happens, it could mean the main hurdle to transformative AI isn't new fundamental algorithmic breakthroughs, but good ol' fashioned engineering work.

What's next: DeepMind plans to bring AlphaProof/Geometry 2’s math wizardry to their Gemini models “very soon.” This means AI chatbots that are really good at math, an area in which they’ve previously struggled (it is called a “language” model, after all…).

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Around the Horn.

Video game performers announced a strike over concerns that they won’t be protected against AI from major game studios.
Morgan Stanley launched a second AI, Debrief, which transcribes and summarizes client meetings—and its “LLM Suite” for research analysts is now used by 50K employees.
Apple will roll out Apple Intelligence in October (instead of September), and also volunteered to join the White House’s AI Risk plan.

Treats To Try.

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Skipit summarizes YouTube videos up to 12 hours long so you can ask questions and get answers about videos you want to skim.
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Julius provides a clever UI to chat with your data, generate insights, create visualizations, and perform advanced analytics across various file formats.

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