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Dear Readers,
Sometimes small side notes reveal the biggest cracks: Elon Musk loudly criticizes OpenAI for putting profit before the common good – yet his own company, xAI, has quietly relinquished its status as a “public benefit corporation.” An inconspicuous move on paper, but one with a clear signal: in the midst of an unprecedented race for AI, the balance between economic interests and social responsibility is becoming more fragile than ever.
In this issue, we therefore look not only at the question of credibility, but also at technological leaps that are shaking up the field. ByteDance is moving dangerously close to GPT-5 and Gemini with InternVL3.5, while Boston Dynamics and NVIDIA are showing how quickly robotics is becoming part of everyday industrial life. Added to this are quantum methods that could revolutionize the fine control of humanoid movements. If you want to understand how power, technology, and responsibility are shifting in the AI age, you'll find plenty to think about in the following articles.
In Today’s Issue:
Elon Musk's xAI quietly ditches its social mission to focus on profits
Boston Dynamics' Atlas robot just got a major upgrade for complex industrial tasks
NVIDIA's new robot brain is powering the next generation of physical AI
Quantum computing is about to make robots move more like us
And more AI goodness…
All the best,
xAI reveals its true colors – profits soar, social purpose falls by the wayside
The Takeaway
👉 xAI quietly relinquished its public benefit status in 2024 without any public announcement.
👉 The move contrasts with Musk's accusations that OpenAI is prioritizing profit over the common good.
👉 The change shows how closely profit interests and corporate structure are linked in the AI industry.
👉 For the AI community, the move is a sign of how quickly promises of responsibility can be relativized.
xAI, Elon Musk's AI company, was originally registered as a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) – a legal form that focuses on social benefits as well as profits. However, according to official documents, this status was abandoned in May 2024. The change took place quietly and without much public communication.
It illustrates how difficult the balancing act between profit interests and social responsibility has become. While Musk publicly criticizes OpenAI for putting profits above the common good, xAI has now itself abandoned the legal basis for a social commitment. Especially in times when AI models are becoming increasingly powerful and regulatory debates are intensifying, this move shows how important transparency and clear structures are for trust.
This change therefore leaves a bitter aftertaste, especially when there are increasing reports that artificial intelligence is such a transformative force.
Why it matters: The xAI case illustrates that credibility depends not only on technology, but also on organizational structure. It shows how quickly companies can change their priorities – and why critical observation remains necessary.
Sources:
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In The News
if you are a power user, please send us feature requests!
(i asked in reply to this message and they were interesting, so would like more)
— #Sam Altman (#@sama)
4:01 PM • Aug 22, 2025
NVIDIA Unveils Brain for Humanoid Robots
NVIDIA has launched Jetson Thor, a powerful new robotics computer designed to power the next generation of humanoid and general-purpose robots, with major companies like Amazon, Boston Dynamics, and Meta already signed on as early adopters.
NotebookLM Goes Global
NotebookLM is rolling out a major update for multilingual users, enabling its new "Video Overviews" feature in all 80 supported languages and adding length controls for non-English audio summaries.
Graph of the Day
ByteDance's InternVL3.5 redefines open-source multimodal AI, achieving state-of-the-art performance and narrowing the gap with leading commercial models like GPT-5 and Gemini-2.5 Pro.
Boston Dynamics in Bestform
Boston Dynamics has released a new video of its Atlas robot in an industrial setting :”We are excited to share some of our progress on developing Large Behavior Models (LBMs) for Atlas. This work is part of a collaboration between AI research teams at Toyota Research Institute (TRI) and Boston Dynamics. We have been building end-to-end language-conditioned policies that enable Atlas to accomplish long-horizon manipulation tasks.”
NVIDIA is shaping the future of robotics with the Jetson ecosystem
Need an extra hand at the hospital? 🏥 Meet Moxi, the #HumanoidRobot from @DiligentRobots.
Powered by #NVIDIARobotics, it has already saved clinicians half a million hours.
Learn more 👉 nvda.ws/4fOsfx4
— #NVIDIA Robotics (#@NVIDIARobotics)
4:44 PM • Aug 23, 2025
NVIDIA has surpassed two million robotics developers using its Jetson platform to advance physical AI in industries such as manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, and delivery. The latest Jetson Thor system, compatible with leading AI frameworks and generative models, as well as NVIDIA tools such as Isaac, GR00T, Metropolis, and Holoscan, opens the door to humanoid robotics and real-time sensor processing—a significant signal that robotics is now taking root in physical reality.
Quantum leap in motion: quantum computing optimizes robot kinematics
Researchers at Shibaura Institute of Technology, Waseda University, and Fujitsu have developed a quantum-based method that makes inverse kinematics—the joint control for precise robot movements—up to 43% more accurate and less computationally intensive. By representing joint positions as qubits and using entanglement of joint relationships, motion control is more efficient. This means humanoid robots that move more realistically and react faster—a milestone for real-time robot control.
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Question of the Day
Video of the Day
Autodiscovery introduces the new Revo 2 dexterous hand for humanoid robots compatible with Unitree G1 humanoid robot.
This enables much more delicate work to be carried out.
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Rumours, Leaks, and Dustups
happy monday, wishing everyone a very a-peel-ing week ahead!
— #Patrick Loeber (#@patloeber)
9:43 AM • Aug 25, 2025
A Google employee says that the nano-banana, which has already been extensively tested and loved by the community, is coming this week.