Cognitive warmup. Iβll be blunt. The really, really dark cloud of the geopolitical conflict unfolding in West Asia has the slimmest of silver linings (albeit a temporary one; though one would always pray war is also temporary, if it does have to happen)βthe AI bros have been mostly silent (except Huang, Iβll get to that in a moment). There is probably a realisation that the world doesnβt revolve around AI, irrespective of any bubble inflating assumptions that have been loudest in the past couple of years. Replacing humans with AI en masse, being one.
More to the point, thereβs a realisation every day this war has been on and every further day this war goes on: We can clearly see the fragility of the very foundations of AI. The current conflict has already pushed up energy risk (and therefore prices) through the Strait of Hormuz, which the International Energy Agency says handled nearly 15 million barrels a day of crude in 2025. There is also a direct hardware angle β tech supply chains beginning to slow down. Helium is not a minor issue either; it is used in semiconductor manufacturing processes, and any disruption there will have a ripple effect on servers and broader electronics supply.
There is a financing angle too. The Gulf had in the past year become one of the most important pools of capital for global AI infrastructure, compute, and βSovereign AIβ ambitions. You might want to revisit Elon Musk being confused between millions and billions of dollars, and generating βbazillion trillionβ. The World Economic Forum had noted GCC states were increasingly investing in AI as a strategic capability, while Nvidia and Musk had also spoken of massive infrastructure buildouts (Muskβs xAI had locked in a $3 billion investment from Saudi firm Humain earlier this year). If conflict persists, that money does not necessarily disappear, but the stream will slow down, investments will be more defensive. There will of course be a conversation about domestic reconstruction, prioritised over AI bets.
The reality of costs and slop
A few days ago, and chances are you missed this because, of course, the AI bros didnβt talk about this loudly on social media, OpenAI shut down the Sora video generation app. A rather pragmatic sounding post on their website seems to be pointing to a reality where the video-generating AI consumed massive amount of compute without financial returns to justify those costs.
{{/usCountry}}A few days ago, and chances are you missed this because, of course, the AI bros didnβt talk about this loudly on social media, OpenAI shut down the Sora video generation app. A rather pragmatic sounding post on their website seems to be pointing to a reality where the video-generating AI consumed massive amount of compute without financial returns to justify those costs.
{{/usCountry}}βThe creativity that emerged exceeded what we could have expected. Our focus now is on making this transition as clear and thoughtful as possible. Weβll share timelines and access details so you can plan accordingly, and weβre exploring ways to support export and preservation of your work,β the statement says.
OpenAIβs reality is simpleβit has to lose less money nowβso much so, the much talked about βadult modeβ erotic conversations in ChatGPT seems to have been shelved for now. The AI company hopes a more focused approach on productivity features, will allow it to compete better with Google and Anthropic. Iβd still say Sora leaves behind a legacyβone that played its part in giving us slop filled social media feeds, and absolute lack of trust in identifying between the generated and the real.
Vague mission, and victory
Getting back to the point of AI bros mostly not talking about things bordering on nonsense. Jensen Huang showed up on the Lex Friedman podcast (my views about podcasts, in general, is better kept to myself), and confidently proclaimed βI think weβve achieved AGIβ. Thatβs artificial general intelligence (if you didnβt know this already, trust me, youβve not missed anything in life).
All these calls of AGI keep cropping up from time to time, which Iβd say is a desperate cry for attention. It is even more impressive for Huang to say this, since no one so far has actually agreed on what AGI actually means or whether it is even the correct terminology. But well, Huang now has the chance to plant the flag in the terrain, claim victory in the AGI race, and define this obscure pursuit as it is convenient for Nvidiaβs business. To be fair, vagueness can often be a benchmarkβas AGI has been, all this while.
Switching chatbots
To be fair, for all the perceived intelligence of artificial intelligence, these chatbots have made it nigh impossible to shift from one to the other, with your complete conversation history and therefore the balance of memory plus context. Google has finally found a way around it, with new switching tools to bring that historical conversational context from other AI apps into Gemini.
If you wish to, hereβs largely the path to follow:
πΎπππ πππππππ π°πΈ πππππππ > πΆπ ππ βππππππππβ πππ ππππ πππ πππππππ ππππ ππ βπ³πππ π²πππππππβ ππ βπΏππππππ’β > ππππππ ππππππ ππ ππ‘ππππ π’πππ ππππ.
For now, Gemini will support imports up to 5 GB in size, in the .zip format. Google has added a βimport chatsβ and βimport memory into Geminiβ optionsβpoint the zip file to the former, and copy/paste a conversation response from another AI chatbot with the latter. Google says the ability to switch chats, is free for all Gemini users.
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