Welcome to Monday’s Newsletter

In today’s scoop 🍨 

• 🏛️ Paris AI Action Summit: Where Tech Meets Politics

• 🔮 Sam Altman’s AI Crystal Ball

• 🎭 Christie’s AI Art Auction: Innovation or Exploitation?

• 🔧 3 Trending AI Tools

🏛️ Paris AI Action Summit: Where Tech Meets Politics

The world’s top minds in AI have descended upon Paris for a two-day summit that’s part diplomatic showdown, part tech flex, and part existential debate about whether AI will save humanity—or replace us all.

With over 100 countries represented, the summit is hosting a veritable who’s who of global power players, including U.S. Vice President JD Vance, Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Oh, and let’s not forget OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Microsoft’s Brad Smith, and Google’s Sundar Pichai, because what’s an AI summit without the very people building it?

📅 What’s On the Agenda?

The summit is tackling some of the biggest questions in AI:

• 📈 Investment & Competition – France is going all in with a €109 billion ($113B) AI investment plan, hoping to put Europe on the AI map alongside the U.S. and China.

• 🔧 Regulation vs. Innovation – Leaders are trying to walk the tightrope between enforcing AI safeguards and ensuring Europe isn’t left behind in the tech race.

• 🌍 Global AI Governance – A new initiative called “Current AI” is launching, aiming to raise $2.5 billion to support open-source AI development and public-interest AI.

• 💡 Ethics & Accessibility – India’s PM Modi, co-hosting with Macron, is pushing for AI that reduces the digital divide rather than widening it.

🧑‍💻 Big Names, Big Moves

• Macron is using this summit as a launchpad for his AI ambitions in Europe, positioning France as a key player.

• Trump’s administration, meanwhile, is doubling down on AI dominance, pushing an aggressive strategy while rejecting global AI guardrails.

• China is flexing with its DeepSeek AI model, which has caught the world’s attention for its high-quality performance at a fraction of the cost of Western counterparts.

🔑 Takeaway

The Paris AI Summit is more than just a tech event—it’s a defining moment for the future of AI. Will Europe step up as a major player, or will the usual powerhouses dictate the rules? With billions in investments and high-stakes policy decisions, the impact of this summit will ripple far beyond Paris.

One thing is clear: the AI revolution is moving fast, and the world is scrambling to keep up. 

🔮 Sam Altman’s AI Crystal Ball

Sam Altman has just dropped some spicy takes on the future of AI, and spoiler alert: it’s going to be dirt cheap, but not necessarily fair.

🔄 AI’s Price Freefall

According to Altman’s latest blog post, the cost of using AI is set to nosedive—plummeting 10x every year. Yep, if this trend continues, today’s expensive AI models could be practically free in just a few years.

💡 Case in point: The price per token for GPT-4o in mid-2024 was 150x cheaper than GPT-4 in early 2023. Compare that to Moore’s Law, which doubled computing power every 18 months—this is on an entirely different level.

🔎 What does this mean?

• 📲 AI will be everywhere—from personal assistants to AI-generated video games.

• 🧹 Expect businesses to lean into automation even harder.

• 🏦 Companies investing big in AI (cough, OpenAI, cough) will make eye-watering sums as AI adoption explodes.

🏛️ The AI Wealth Gap: A Feature, Not a Bug?

While AI costs may be tanking, Altman warns that its benefits won’t be evenly spread.

💰 Wealth will likely concentrate among those who control AI models and infrastructure—i.e., big tech and elite institutions.

🏢 The power dynamic between capital and labor could get, well... messy. If companies can replace jobs with AI at a fraction of the cost, where does that leave workers?

Altman floated some radical ideas to distribute AI’s benefits, including a “compute budget”—basically, giving everyone access to high-powered AI tools. Sounds great, but executing that idea is another beast entirely.

🌐 The AI Future: Utopia or Monopoly?

If AI keeps getting cheaper, it could become as invisible as transistors—powering everything without us even noticing. But whether this future is a utopia of limitless intelligence or a monopoly-run dystopia depends on how things shake out.

🤔 What do you think? Will cheap AI bring prosperity for all, or just make the rich richer?

🎭 Christie’s AI Art Auction: Innovation or Exploitation?

Fine art and artificial intelligence just collided in the biggest way possible, and, predictably, the internet has feelings. Christie’s is hosting its first-ever auction dedicated exclusively to AI-generated art, dubbed “Augmented Intelligence” and while some are praising the move as futuristic, others are calling for its immediate cancellation.

🔥 The Backlash is Real

• ✍️ Over 3,400 people have signed an open letter demanding Christie’s shut the auction down.

• 🚨 Critics argue that many AI models used in generative art were trained on copyrighted works without permission, effectively profiting off artists' stolen labor.

• 💬 Social media is ablaze with artists and activists calling the auction a celebration of unethical AI practices.

🔍 What’s Actually Being Sold?

• 🎨 Works from AI art pioneers like Refik Anadol, who used AI to transform MoMA’s collection into mind-bending visuals.

• 🤖 A live-painting robot that adds to a canvas with every bid.

• 📜 Sasha Stiles’ “AI poem sculpture,” blending algorithmic poetry with LED neon.

• 💰 Price tags range from a modest $100 to a jaw-dropping $1.7 million.

🎨 The Creative Partner or the Artistic Villain?

Christie’s is adamant that AI is merely a tool, not a replacement. “AI enhances creativity rather than replaces it,” says Nicole Sales Giles, Christie’s director of digital art. Many AI artists argue that their works require just as much skill, vision, and effort as traditional methods. However, for struggling artists, the concern isn’t AI as a tool—it’s AI as a system that exploits their work for profit without credit or compensation.

🖼️ The Bigger Picture

This debate is only getting started. AI is rewriting the rules in creative fields, and as tools like Midjourney and DALL-E become more advanced, the fight over who gets to profit from art is only going to heat up. Whether Christie’s AI art sale is a glimpse into the future or a problematic cash grab, one thing is clear: AI art isn’t going anywhere.

🔧3 Trending AI Tools

• 🐱 Le Chat - AI assistant that blends real-time internet search, document analysis, and natural conversations to help you explore and navigate the world effortlessly.

• 🛍️ Muse - Build websites and sell products effortlessly with simple AI-powered building blocks, inspired by Bento & Gumroad.

• 🎨 Pikadditions - New Pika feature that seamlessly integrates any image into your videos—just upload, add a prompt, and let AI handle blending, sizing, and movement for stunning visuals.

📩 That’s it for today!

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Until tomorrow—stay curious! 👋