Applied AI Weekly News

Justin Grammens

Welcome, Applied AI Weekly Readers, to the latest issue! I'm thrilled to once again share with you the most interesting articles on artificial intelligence that I've found this past week.

IMPORTANT NEWS

We are thrilled to announce that we have partnered with Healthcare.MN for our AI in Healthcare Forum on July 30th. This event is designed for everyone! Whether you are a patient, healthcare professional, entrepreneur, investor, policymaker, or just curious, you are welcome to join and will get value. The focus is on moving beyond buzzwords and seeing where AI is truly delivering value. Space is limited, so register today!

Stay tuned, we have a BIG conference coming up in November. More details soon!

Issue Highlights

This week, the AI world is abuzz with disruption - from Perplexity’s new intelligent browser, which challenges Google Chrome, to Elon Musk’s Grok 4, which claims Ph.D.-level reasoning. Schools across the U.S. are issuing guidance on AI use, while America’s power grid struggles to cope with the increasing demand from data centers. Developers will appreciate a hands-on guide to building code-editing agents. A new open-source robot, called Reachy Mini, makes AI robotics more accessible than ever, and there's much more!

Upcoming Events

Our next Applied AI event is AI in Product Management: Agentic AI Demystified. Agentic AI is the next leap beyond chatbots and RAG apps - autonomous, goal-seeking systems that loop through Perceive → Plan → Act → Learn. But when is that extra complexity worth it?

A Bit of Thanks

Thank you to everyone who attended my talk at Open Source North! The title of my talk was DeepSeek: The Open-Source AI That Changed the Game
Thank you to everyone who came out and supported me and the panel at the Future of Healthcare Conference at the University of Saint Thomas. Here's some photos of our panel at the event with Minnesota healthcare leaders.
I'm continuing to offer free consultations and workshops with many business leaders on how AI is changing the landscape of how you will run your business today and into the future. Connect today and book a meeting with me.

Now that we have that covered, please enjoy the articles I have spent time finding and curating for you this past week.

Finally, please do reach out if there is anything you feel I might have missed. Enjoy!

News

AI Startups Believe Google’s Chrome Is Vulnerable to a New Wave of Intelligent Browsers

AI startups are entering the web browser market, posing a threat to one of Google’s largest businesses. Perplexity, which this week launched its AI-enabled web browser, Comet, is leading the charge. Experts say Google’s relative slowness in AI has left an opening that could give AI startups a chance to grab market share.

More Than Half the States Have Issued AI Guidance for Schools

Despite efforts by the Trump administration to loosen federal and state AI rules in hopes of boosting innovation, teachers and students need a lot of state-level guidance for navigating the fast-moving technology, said Amanda Bickerstaff, the CEO and co-founder of AI for Education.

Elon Musk's New Grok 4 Takes on ‘Humanity’s Last Exam’ as the AI Race Heats Up

Elon Musk has launched xAI’s Grok 4 - calling it the “world’s smartest AI” and claiming it can ace Ph.D.-level exams and outpace rivals such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s o3 on strict benchmarks. The new version of Grok arrives at a time when xAI has been under criticism for responses given by previous versions of Grok that reference Hitler and antisemitism. (Since the release, some criticism has also arisen about Grok’s coding abilities and susceptibility to being jailbroken.)

Sponsor

Join the Applied AI Community!

AppliedAI is a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to developing the next generation of AI leaders in Minnesota. We do this through a conference, podcasts, weekly news, monthly newsletters, YouTube channel, and monthly meetups. Our events provide education, hands-on training, and real-world AI applications to help people of all ages learn how to use AI to solve real-life problems.

Business

America's Largest Power Grid Is Struggling to Meet Demand From AI

America's largest power grid is under strain as data centers and AI chatbots consume power at a rate faster than new plants can be built. Electricity bills are projected to surge by more than 20% this summer in some parts of PJM Interconnection's territory, which spans 13 states from Illinois to Tennessee, Virginia to New Jersey, serving 67 million customers in a region with the highest concentration of data centers in the world.

Is the Big AI Job Displacement Already Under Way?

AIB announced a new artificial intelligence rollout for staff in conjunction with Microsoft Ireland on Thursday. The bank said the new tools will reduce time spent on repetitive tasks, freeing up employees for higher-value work. The plan involves the widespread deployment of Microsoft 365 Copilot, embedding AI into everyday tools such as Outlook, Word, Excel, Teams, and PowerPoint.

Development

How To Build An Agent

It’s not that hard to build a fully functioning, code-editing agent.

It seems like it would be. When you look at an agent editing files, running commands, wriggling itself out of errors, retrying different strategies - it seems like there has to be a secret behind it.

There isn’t. It’s an LLM, a loop, and enough tokens. It’s what we’ve been saying on the podcast from the start. The rest, the stuff that makes Amp so addictive and impressive? Elbow grease.

Reachy Mini - The Open-Source Robot for Today's and Tomorrow's AI Builders

Reachy Mini is an expressive, open-source robot designed for human-robot interaction, creative coding, and AI experimentation. Fully programmable in Python (and soon JavaScript, Scratch) and priced from $299, it's your gateway into robotics AI: fun, customizable, and ready to be part of your next coding project.

From Vibe Coding To Vibe Engineering: It's Time To Stop Riffing With AI

The age of “vibe coding” is here, and it’s already breaking things in production. What began as playful experimentation with AI-assisted development has crept into critical workflows. In a hackathon, vibing your way through feature development is fine. However, once you’re pushing to production, prototyping your way through a sprint can invite regressions, brittle logic, and security gaps.

5 Ways to Transform Your Workflow Using GitHub Copilot and MCP

Traditional AI coding assistants typically operate in isolation, limited to the code in your current workspace. Now with the introduction of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), AI development workflows are further evolving to incorporate more tools and context.

MCP can enable AI assistants to interact with external systems like knowledge bases, data stores, and testing applications.

Cursor Launches a Web App to Manage AI Coding Agents

The launch marks Cursor’s next big step beyond its integrated development environment (IDE), the core product developers use to access its tools. While Anysphere, the company behind Cursor, initially offered only this AI-powered IDE, the company has made a concerted effort to put its products in more places and develop more agent-powered experiences for users.

DIY

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