AI News - September 2025

An overview of interesting AI News for the Yate and Sodbury U3A's monthly AI News meeting held on September 11th 2025 (meetings are second Thursday of month, 1400-1500, St John's Church Centre, Wickwar Road, Chipping Sodbury, UK - all welcome). Note that this is a summary to act as background as the topics are discussed in detail at the meeting itself. We also 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.

Tesla, SpaceX and xAI this month are moving very fast to change how the world works.

[1.1] Tesla Megablock - solving rapid deployment of energy storage

AI datacentres will need vast amounts of energy but building new power sources takes years. Tesla's idea is to expand their already huge production capability with products that can be installed very quickly. They can then reschedule surplus out of hours production. The numbers involved are huge.

[1.2] SpaceX buy Echostar spectrum for USD 17 billion

Potentially this allows the vast SpaceX array of satellites to be used for direct to phone communication, adding to the powerful existing Starlink network. It is possible that Elon Musk may decide to develop his own phone or similar device.

[1.3] Tesla Master Plan Part IV

Every few years Tesla publish a Master Plan. It is always very ambitious, and people usually suggest it is impossible. So far Elon Musk has nevertheless succeeded. This plan is amazing in its ambition. For example:

[1] Sustainable abundance. "combining our manufacturing capabilities with our autonomous prowess to deliver new products and services that will accelerate global prosperity and human thriving driven by economic growth shared by all"
[2] The elimination of scarcity. "some will perceive it as impossible. And plenty of others will laud every obstacle and setback we inevitably encounter along the way. But once we overcome this challenge, our critics will come to see that what they once thought was impossible is indeed possible."

[1.4] Elon Musk's 1 Trillion Dollar Incentive Plan

The Tesla Board set out the milestones that Elon Musk would have to achieve over the next five years to earn shares with the huge value above. This includes manufacturing and selling one million Optimus Humanoid Robots, putting one million self-driving Robotaxis into operation. Also selling ten million Full Self Driving subscriptions onto Tesla cars.

[1.5] Teslas drive themselves off the line

The production of Tesla cars is increasingly automated.

[1.5b] A Robotaxi on the road

[1.5c] Tesla's Supervised Full Self Driving continues to improve

This user reports an 800 mile trip with no interventions

[1.6] Sentient Teslas

Elon Musk talked about the forthcoming update for Tesla Full Self Driving which would make the cars 'feel sentient'

[1.7] Robotaxi Expansion Plans

Tesla would like to be able to drop off and pick up at three San Francisco area airports.

[1.8] The latest Optimus Humanoid Robot is not yet on view

This rather awkward demo showed the early integration of the AI 'Grok' with the internal AI that powers the movements of Optimus. Elon Musk says that this is v 2.5 with v 3.0 being the one that will go to production.

[1.9] Elon Musk suggests Optimus Humanoid Robot production cost about USD 20,000

An interesting insight into the implications of making one million robots a year

[1.10] The size of the market for the Optimus Humanoid Robot

Jensen Huang from Nvidia talks about thow this will likely be the first robot opportunity that can scale - possibly to trillions of dollars

[1.11] Elon Musk's Neuralink Blindsight plans to restore sight to the blind

This is an implant linked to glasses with a camera - first operation on humans 2026 - coming to the UK"


[2] Apple Airpods 3 provide instant language translations

They give instant translation in your ear, with a translation of your words on your phone to show to the other person. Or with a pair of Airpods each, instant translation.

[3] Sam Altman of OpenAI predicts free AGI for billions

The leader of OpenAI talks about the kinds of things people might do once they have free Artificial General Intelligence level AI on their phone for free

[4] Google's NotebookLM adds Flashcards and Quizzes

Simply give it your source material and it will produce these useful resources as well as its standard analyses and podcasts

[5] Google AI produces expert-level scientific software

Behind the scenes Google is building AI systems to speed up scientific progress.

AI Safety

[6.1] Dr. Roman Yampolskiy worries about AI Safety

Discussion of how progress in AI Safety is making progress much more slowly than AI is progressing

[6.2] Google Deepmind and a discussion of whether we can probe into AI minds

Neel Nanda talks about difficulties of understanding an Artificial General Intelligence and one method that is useful

[6.3] Can AI signal its own uncertainty?

Hallucinations are output that turn out to be invented or guessed rather than based on more solid sources. This suggest that it may be possible sometimes to have the AI identify when it is doing this.

[7] Replit says their 'Agent 3' codes for up to 3 hours without needing intervention

Replit is a successful online system that tries to make coding available to everybody. This is the advertising launch so we must wait for the feedback from users. The direction of travel is interesting though.

[8.1] Google Gemini's Nano Banana is instantly popular

[8.2] Google Gemini's Nano Banana image editing tool is inspiring many

Nano Banana makes it easy to keep a consistent character across multiple image creations. Combine that with the many image to video AI tools, and some AI voice lip synching, and anyone can create a movie at minimal cost.

[9.1] Chinese factories gear up their robot production lines

Deep Robotics show off their impressive quadruped robot production line output.

[9.2] Chinese UniXAI humanoid robot designed for hotel tasks

Hotel room tidying and cleaning is a huge market. This is not fully humanoid but most hotels have no need for stair climbing.

[10] AI contributing to Longevity Escape Velocity

News of AI discoveries that may help prolong human life

[11] DumDave Music video shows how good AI Video is getting

See more videos on YouTube etc linked at dumdave.com.