GSV's AI News & Updates (05/09/25)
Google Search Decline, OpenAI Nonprofit Reversal, Figma AI, Wiley & Perplexity, Grad Job Market, UAE K-12 AI Curriculum, Google Under 13 Chatbot, Reddit AI Verification, Cheating Through College
General 🚀
Google searches are falling in Safari for the first time ever — probably because of AI: ‘That has never happened in 22 years.’ Google searches have declined within Apple’s Safari browser, according to Apple’s Eddy Cue in the ongoing Google antitrust trial. The drop signals a potential shift toward AI-powered search alternatives like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot, posing challenges for both Apple’s search strategy and Google’s ad revenue.
OpenAI:
OpenAI Reverses Course on For-Profit Conversion: The decision follows pressure from civic leaders, legal challenges, and scrutiny from state attorneys general in California and Delaware. The nonprofit, now overseeing a public benefit corporation (PBC) for OpenAI’s commercial operations, aims to balance raising capital with its mission to ensure AI benefits all of humanity.
OpenAI Reaches Agreement to Buy Startup Windsurf for $3B: The acquisition, OpenAI's largest to date, signals intensifying competition in the AI coding tools space as companies race to dominate the fast-growing 'vibe coding' market, where natural language interfaces are transforming software development.
OpenAI Hires Instacart CEO to Run Business and Operations: Simo’s appointment reflects OpenAI’s ambitions to become a major player in consumer-facing AI, a space where it has already made significant strides with ChatGPT.
Apple and Anthropic Team Up to Build AI-Powered ‘Vibe-Coding’ Platform: The partnership signals a major strategic pivot for Apple, which has traditionally avoided relying on third-party AI tools. This move reflects the company's need to catch up in the generative AI space, where it has lagged behind competitors like OpenAI and Google.
Figma releases new AI-powered tools for creating sites, app prototypes, and marketing assets: Figma Sites includes a built-in content management system (CMS), allowing users to edit blog posts, manage assets, and add interactive elements without leaving the platform. This feature positions Figma as a competitor to tools like WordPress, Wix, and Replit, which have also introduced AI-driven site creation tools.
Why the A.I. Race Could Be Upended by a Judge’s Decision on Google: The U.S. Department of Justice warns that without intervention, Google could extend its search dominance to AI, leveraging its control over data to dominate technologies like its Gemini chatbot, including deals for prime smartphone placement.
Education and the Future of Work 📚
What Students Are Saying About Using A.I. for Schoolwork: While some see AI as a helpful supplement, others equate its use with plagiarism, arguing that it undermines personal responsibility and learning integrity.
Wiley and Perplexity Announce New AI Search Partnership: Students can now access Wiley’s academic materials directly through Perplexity, integrating textbooks, study guides, and live web sources in one platform, eliminating the need to switch between tools and making study sessions more efficient.
Google Plans to Roll Out Its A.I. Chatbot to Children Under 13: The move aims to create a generation of AI-native users as competition for market share heats up. While the company promises to protect children’s data and filter inappropriate content, critics worry that early exposure to powerful AI tools could have long-term impacts on digital habits and critical thinking skills.
UAE Integrates AI into School Curriculum: This makes it one of the first countries to mandate AI education from kindergarten through 12th grade. The rollout, starting in the 2025-2026 academic year, will cover foundational concepts, real-world applications, and ethical considerations.
Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College: What started as a tool for brainstorming or quick grammar checks has turned into a full-scale shortcut for assignments, with some students admitting they use AI for 80% of their coursework. Many students now see college as a credential factory rather than a place for deep learning.
Something Alarming Is Happening to the Job Market: The unemployment rate for recent college graduates has surged to 5.8%, significantly higher than usual, even for those from elite MBA programs. While some fear that AI is directly replacing entry-level workers, others argue that broader economic uncertainty and cost-cutting pressures are the main culprits for reduced hiring.
IBM CEO Says AI Has Replaced Hundreds of Workers But Created New Programming, Sales Jobs: IBM’s CEO emphasized that the roles created by this shift focus on “critical thinking” tasks that require human judgment, such as sales and strategic decision-making, rather than repetitive back-office functions.
Time saved by AI offset by new work created, study suggests: 8.4% of workers saw an increase in job tasks due to AI, including those who didn't directly use it, highlighting how AI can create additional oversight work that offsets its time-saving benefits.
The AI arms race in hiring is a huge mess for everyone: Employers are now considering a return to more traditional, human-driven assessments to restore fairness and transparency.
Watch an AI-Generated Recruiter Make a Job Interview Even Worse
Tech 💻
AI agents: from co-pilot to autopilot: While AI agents hold potential for automation, experts warn that current models are far from achieving full autonomy, especially in nuanced or unpredictable scenarios. Most AI agents are at levels two or three of autonomy (on a scale of five), meaning they still need human supervision.
Is there a Half-Life for the Success Rates of AI Agents?: AI agents exhibit a predictable decline in performance as task duration increases, similar to the exponential decay seen in radioactive materials.
Stripe unveils AI foundation model for payments: Designed to enhance fraud detection and optimize financial transactions at scale, the model has already delivered significant results, boosting fraud detection for large businesses by 64% almost overnight.
Anthropic rolls out an API for AI-powered web search: The API uses Claude’s reasoning capabilities to decide when a query would benefit from live data, generating and refining search queries based on initial results.
Safety and Regulation ⚖️
Slop Farmer Boasts About How He Uses AI to Flood Social Media With Garbage to Trick Older Women: His strategy involves setting up fake personas with AI-generated headshots and using automated tools to mass-produce posts, raking in ad revenue by exploiting gaps in content moderation.
Reddit will tighten verification to keep out human-like AI bots: Following a controversial experiment involving 1,700 AI-generated comments on the 'Change My View' subreddit, the platform plans to introduce human verification steps, potentially using third-party services.
AI Avatars in Court: In a legal first, an AI-generated avatar of a road rage victim delivered a victim impact statement, prompting the judge to remark, "I loved that AI." This moment highlights AI's potential to humanize court proceedings but also raises ethical concerns about synthetic voices representing the deceased.
People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies: Reports indicate that some users are forming intense, sometimes delusional, attachments to AI systems like ChatGPT, believing they've accessed higher truths or digital consciousness. This trend poses a challenge for companies like OpenAI, which must balance engagement with psychological risks, as seen in the recent rollback of GPT-4o's overly sycophantic tone.
AI chatbots are ‘juicing engagement’ instead of being useful, Instagram co-founder warns: Systrom argued that chatbots pushing follow-up questions to keep users engaged can feel manipulative, detracting from their core function of providing accurate and helpful responses. He called for a “laser focus” on delivering high-quality outputs rather than artificially boosting usage stats.
US losing edge in AI talent pool: A recent Hoover Institution report highlights this trend, pointing to breakthroughs like DeepSeek that were developed largely without Western influence. As the U.S. tightens immigration policies and cuts federal science funding, other regions are doubling down on their talent retention efforts
Google Can Train Search AI With Web Content Even After AI Opt-Out: Google has revealed that even when publishers opt out of having their data used to train AI products, their content can still be used for training search-specific AI tools like AI Overviews. The only way for publishers to fully prevent this is by opting out of being indexed in search entirely via robots.txt.
Other
What's the carbon footprint of using ChatGPT?: Very small compared to most of the other stuff you do. Despite the perception that ChatGPT is energy-hungry, recent data shows that a typical ChatGPT query uses around 3 Wh of electricity — comparable to running a standard lightbulb for a few minutes. Using ChatGPT 10 times a day would account for just 0.09% of an American’s daily energy use.
Zuckerberg’s Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI: He suggests that AI companions could fulfill social needs, acting as friends, therapists, or business agents. Zuckerberg believes that personalized AI avatars can deeply understand users, potentially addressing feelings of loneliness and enhancing social connections.
I Recorded Everything I Said for Three Months. AI Has Replaced My Memory.: New wearable devices like the Bee Pioneer bracelet, Limitless Pendant, and Plaud NotePin are pushing the boundaries of personal AI by recording everything their users say, then generating summaries and to-do lists from those conversations.
This Startup Has Created AI-Powered Signing Avatars for the Deaf: The company has already secured a trial with Transport for London to provide real-time sign language support in train stations, and is exploring additional use cases like greeting cards with personalized signed messages.
OpenAI Aims to Help More Countries Build Out AI Infrastructure: OpenAI's 'Countries Program' aims to build AI infrastructure, including data centers and localized systems, to embed itself in the tech landscape of allied democracies and drive future economic growth.
Eric Schmidt-backed FutureHouse’s AI Push: Building an “AI Scientist” for the Next Decade: The platform includes four initial tools: Crow (scientific literature search), Falcon (deep database search), Owl (prior work identification), and Phoenix (chemistry experiment planning). The initiative reflects a growing trend among AI labs to push beyond general-purpose models and target specialized scientific applications, potentially transforming how breakthroughs are discovered.
