AI News - July 2025

A quick overview of interesting AI News for the Yate and Sodbury U3A's monthly AI News meeting held on July 10th 2025 (meetings are second Thursday of month, 1400-1545, St John's Church Centre, Wickwar Road, Chipping Sodbury, UK - all welcome). Note that this is very much a summary to act as background as the topics are discussed in detail at the meeting itself. We also discuss and demonstrate other AI products and services and much more.

From now on the 'Introduction to AI' course we run in Chipping Sodbury uses these News sessions to replace classes 5 and 6 as the topics in them (humanoid robots, self driving cars, ethics, futures) are now relevant to each month's discussions.

[1.1] AI Video advances fast

This month the News meeting will contain lots of demonstrations of Midjourney Video, but there are many parallel products and the pace of advance is very fast.


[1.2] Google's VEO 3 gives talking video from an image and a prompt

This means that users can create full character consistent talking movies.


[1.3] Access to AI Video is becoming affordable

Midjourney provide a subscription at about £50 per month that allows '30 fast hours' of video creation and unlimited access to a slow form of generation.Midjourney does not yet offer talking characters.


[2.1] Humanoid robot sports will be huge


[2.2] Entrepreneurial opportunities abound


[2.3] In China humanoids becoming commonplace in public spaces


[3.1] Tesla continues progress amid political disruptions


[3.2] Tesla car drives from factory to customer doorstep


[3.3] Tesla Robotaxi service started 21st June 2025 in Austen Texas


[4] Google DeepMind close to releasing AI discovered drugs


[5.1] The release of Grok 4 from xAI (Twitter)

This happened in the early hours of the 10th July 2025 (UK time) but the run up to it has been eventful already. See later section for more on Grok 4. This section just deals with the 'day before' and 'MechaHitler'.


[5.2] Grok 3 responds to its replacement


[5.3] Grok at 24 hours before Grok 4 release was making news ...

The problem seems to have been caused by the system prompt which allowed 'political incorrectness' if backed up by strong evidence. That prompt was quickly removed but of course, users found other ways to ask questions.


[6] An analysis of the groundbreaking Alpha School approach


[7.1] Mark Zuckerberg betting on a Smart Glasses Future

Note that USD 3.5 billion buys you only about a 3% Ray Ban ownership stake (of EssilorLuxottica) ...


[7.2] Mark Zuckerberg spends big money to catch up on AI

Or perhaps simply to sabotage the rapid progress of other AI companies, particularly OpenAI.


[7.3] Xiaomi and others launch AI glasses


[8.1] Concerns about the dangers of AI Misalignment grow

Evidence that AI alignment issues will be near impossible to spot in advance


[8.2] Carl Feynman (son of famous scientist Richard) thinks P(doom) is high - the P stands for Probability.

This is just the teaser clip, but the general area of discussion is now commonplace.


End of July 2025 part 1. Link to July 2025 part 2

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