75% of Amazon Orders = Robot-Handled

Welcome back apprentices! 👋

Let’s play a quick game:

Now that you’ve picked a side — what if we told you Amazon just dropped a robot that can feel, lift, and potentially redefine what your job even is (without checking with HR first)?

It’s called Vulcan. And it’s not just a machine — it’s a message about where work is headed, what jobs may disappear, and which brand-new roles are being invented in real time.

Let's find out what it means for you — and why it might be less scary (and way weirder) than you think.

In today's email

• AI Testifies from Beyond the Grave

• Apple’s Safari Is Getting an AI Brain

• Microsoft & OpenAI: It’s Complicated

• So… is your job safe from AI?

• Even more AI magic

• Test the prompt

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Quick News 

⚖️ In a courtroom first, the family of Army veteran Christopher Pelkey — killed in a 2021 road rage shooting — used AI to recreate his voice, humor, and even an “aged” photo for his victim impact statement. The result? A deeply personal message delivered by an AI version of Pelkey himself, telling the court, and his killer, about forgiveness, life, and embracing wrinkles. The judge called it powerful and handed down the maximum 10.5-year sentence, while Arizona courts are now figuring out how to handle future AI guest speakers.

🍎 Apple is quietly turning Safari into a privacy-loving, AI-powered genius with plans to integrate conversational search, on-device summaries, and custom answers — no Google required. Powered by Apple’s own Ajax model (with rumored help from OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic), future versions of Safari may let users ask things like “what’s the best CRM for consultants?” and get tailored, secure answers before they even hit enter. With a potential $20B Google revenue deal on the line, it’s less “search bar” and more “smart barista with your browser history.”

💼 OpenAI and Microsoft — tech’s most talked-about couple  —are reportedly in a “tough negotiation,” and no, it’s not about who left the AGI running overnight. As OpenAI restructures into a for-profit public benefit corporation (while still keeping its nonprofit board in charge), Microsoft wants clarity on what its $13B gets it — especially after 2030, when its access to OpenAI’s tech is set to expire. Rumor has it Microsoft might trade some equity for long-term rights, but with OpenAI building out its own enterprise biz and mega-sized Stargate project, things are getting a little... tense.

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Amazon 
This Robot Has a Name. It Might Take Your Ladder, Not Your Job.

Amazon has just rolled out Vulcan, a next-gen warehouse robot equipped with a sense of touch — capable of picking items from hard-to-reach places and sparing human workers from physically taxing tasks. 

But this isn’t just another automation milestone. It’s a peek into a workplace evolution where bots do the heavy lifting and humans get retooled into roles like robotics tech, automation monitor, and systems reliability engineer — jobs that didn’t even exist five years ago.

Utopia, Myth, or Maintenance Shift?

We’ve all heard the two flavors of AI futurism: either bots take all our jobs and we live off universal basic income, or bots do the boring stuff while we pivot into higher-value work. Amazon seems to be betting on the latter — at least for now.

The World Economic Forum expects 92 million jobs to be displaced, but 170 million to be created globally. So yes, the pie is still growing — but the slices have changed shape. 

Vulcan’s debut is a reminder that AI doesn’t always delete roles; sometimes it just turns “picker” into “robot picker support engineer,” which sounds cooler but also demands a new skill set.

Amazon’s blog says these robots now support 75% of all customer orders, and that they’ve sparked hundreds of new job categories. But those jobs don’t scale 1:1 with displacement — and not everyone on the floor is eager (or equipped) to jump into tech-heavy roles. This isn’t about job loss. It’s about job shift, and the fact that retraining needs to catch up — fast.

What Vulcan Means for the Workforce

The robot itself is an ergonomic hero: it grabs items from top shelves, digs from the bottom bins, and gives humans a break from repetitive strain injuries — a leading cause of warehouse absenteeism, accounting for over 30% of workplace injuries, per OSHA. But Amazon isn’t just easing physical strain; it's introducing mental strain of transition — new workflows, retraining pressure, and evolving job identities.

The company is offering retraining programs for select workers, aiming to convert them into robotic maintenance staff or automation supervisors. But with over 1.5 million employees globally, the upskilling effort so far feels like dipping a thimble into a lake.

It also raises the bigger question: if Amazon — the richest logistics machine on the planet — is still figuring out how to scale workforce transformation alongside automation… what’s the roadmap for small and mid-sized businesses?

So… What’s the Deal?

• Vulcan is not replacing humans — but it is reshuffling their roles.
  

• 75% of Amazon orders now pass through automated systems.
  

• Ergonomic injuries (which cost U.S. employers ~$20B annually) may drop, but skill gaps could widen.
  

• Amazon's retraining program is real but selective, and doesn’t address the full scale of worker transition.
  

• Vulcan is a sign of things to come: AI won’t be visible on job boards — it’ll be embedded in job requirements.
  

For you, this moment is probably less about robots than readiness. 

AI is entering the workspace through the side door: task automation, smart interfaces, predictive analytics. And it’s not waiting until your team is “ready.”

Don't “fight” AI — but to collaborate with it. That means investing in basic automation literacy, building comfort with AI tools, and identifying the “repeatable” tasks that a smart script could offload.

Vulcan is more than a warehouse bot. It’s a cultural signal. It tells us automation isn't just about efficiency — it’s about identity, retraining, and how companies of all sizes rethink the human-machine relationship. 

Whether you're running a 5-person agency or a national logistics chain, the takeaway is the same: AI won't take your job... but someone who knows how to work with it might.

Help Your Friends Level Up! 🔥

Hey, you didn’t get all this info for nothing — share it! If you know someone who’s diving into AI, help them stay in the loop with this week’s updates.

Sharing is a win-win! Send this to a friend who’s all about tech, and you’ll win a little surprise 👀

Even Quicker News 

🌐 Anthropic just gave Claude internet powers, so now your AI can stop pretending 2023 never ended and actually cite its sources like a responsible grown-up. It’s like giving your chatbot a search engine — minus the conspiracy theories. 

🌍 OpenAI is now offering countries a plug-and-play AI starter pack — complete with data centers, local ChatGPTs, and a sprinkle of democratic ideals. Think "freedom, not firewalls," and yes, every citizen might soon get their own GPT sidekick.

✍️ Wikipedia’s adding generative AI to help editors with boring stuff like translations and research — because even volunteers deserve a break. Just don’t expect AI to write the entries; it’s there to fetch coffee, not become the professor.

Today’s Toolbox

🕺 Avatar IV turns a single photo and voice script into a full-blown performance — complete with facial twitches, hand waves, and enough charm to rival your top sales rep. It even works on pets and anime characters, so yes, your cat can now host your podcast.

⚙️ Medium 3 — a zippy, cost-cutting LLM that punches like Claude but eats like a salad, running at just $0.40 per million tokens. It crushes LLaMA 4, sips GPU juice, and is basically the AI equivalent of a luxury sedan with a moped’s fuel bill.

⚡ LTXV-13B cranks out high-quality videos 30x faster than its rivals—and it runs on regular GPUs, not a NASA supercomputer. It’s open source, startup-friendly, and officially makes your intern’s editing skills obsolete.

🧪 Test the Prompt

A playground for your imagination (and low-key prompt skills).

Each send, we give you a customizable DALL·E prompt inspired by a real-world use case — something that could help you in your business or job if you wanted to use it that way. But it’s also just a fun creative experiment.

You tweak it, run it, and send us your favorite. We pick one winner to feature in the next issue.

Bonus: you’re secretly getting better at prompt design. 🤫

👑 The winner is…

Last week, we challenged you to test GPT-4o’s visual generation skills with this prompt.

Here’s the WINNER:

Congrats to Chris from Richmond!🥳

Want to be featured next? Keep those generations coming!

🎨 Prompt: The Archive of Future Inventions

“Create a sprawling, multi-level archive suspended in zero gravity, where future inventions are preserved before they’re created. Each chamber is built from [high-tech or mythical material], and invention capsules float in magnetic containment fields shaped like [abstract geometry]. Robotic archivists glide silently between levels, cataloging possibility.
Style: ultra-wide sci-fi concept art, glowing volumes, intricate architecture, layered lighting.”

We’ll be featuring the best generations in our next edition!

📊 Poll Results:  AI Approves Your Meds

💊 A few of you were fully onboard — faster access, fewer bottlenecks, let’s go.
🧐 But the clear majority landed in the “yes… but verify” camp. You’re cautiously optimistic, as long as a human's still watching the cockpit.
😬 And interestingly, no one flat-out rejected the idea. Not a single “hard no.”

You’re not blindly trusting the bots, but definitely not stopping the future either!

_FEEDBACK