- AI Pulse
- Posts
- ⚠️“Stop Hiring Humans” Ads Stun London and Spark National Outrage
⚠️“Stop Hiring Humans” Ads Stun London and Spark National Outrage
Rahul Iyer
July 01, 2025
Hello There!
Zuckerberg is done playing catch-up. Meta has launched a bold new lab to chase Artificial General Intelligence, systems that think like us. Musk, meanwhile, just raised $10 billion for xAI, aiming to build his own AI empire from scratch. In London, viral ads told companies to “stop hiring humans.” And OpenAI? Burnt out, broken, and taking a one-week pause. The AI race is no longer about innovation, it’s about survival.
In today’s AI Pulse
🧠 Zuckerberg’s Superintelligence Lab Launches – Meta goes all-in on AGI with a new elite division led by Scale AI’s Alexandr Wang. The goal: human-level thinking machines.
💰 Musk’s $10B AI War Chest – Elon raises $5B in equity and $5B in debt to fund xAI’s global scale-up, starting with chips, compute, and control over the full AI pipeline.
🚇 “Stop Hiring Humans” Ad Goes Viral – Londoners are stunned by AI job-replacement ads from Artisan AI. It sparked political debate and hit a nerve across industries.
🛑 OpenAI Shuts Down for a Week – After staff burnout and high-profile exits to Meta, OpenAI pauses operations and begins rethinking pay, hours, and retention.
🎯AI Tool of the Day: Fathom AI – records, transcribes, and summarizes your Zoom or Teams calls, sending key takeaways straight to your inbox.
⚡ Quick Hits – In AI Today
📈 Tool to Sharpen Your Skills: Value Stream Mapping (VSM)
🧠 Key Quote & Insight | Reid Hoffman, Co-founder, LinkedIn
Dive into today’s top stories and see how fast the future is moving.
TOP STORIES TODAY
🧠The Pulse
Mark Zuckerberg has made his boldest AI move yet, launching Meta Superintelligence Labs to chase a far more powerful kind of AI. This isn’t about improving chatbots. It’s about building machines that can think, reason, and act like humans. And the person leading it? A rising star with big ambitions.
📌The Download
The lab’s mission isn’t just about smarter software, it’s focused on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI), the kind of AI that can learn and apply knowledge across fields like a human. Unlike Meta’s earlier focus on social media AI and chat assistants, this new division aims to tackle planning, memory, and reasoning at a much deeper level.
Alexandr Wang, founder of Scale AI, is now leading the effort. His background is unique, he’s built AI systems for the U.S. defense sector, helped speed up data training pipelines, and is known for thinking in terms of national infrastructure. His appointment signals that Meta is looking beyond products and into foundational, long-term intelligence development.
Meta’s move comes as part of an escalating global race. Competitors like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic are already releasing frontier models. But Meta has an advantage: its scale, user data, and aggressive open-source history. This combination could give it the momentum to push AGI out of research labs and into real-world platforms.
💡What This Means for You
If major companies are investing this heavily in smarter AI, your job won’t stay the same for long. Whether you work in strategy, marketing, HR, or customer care, tools are getting smarter. Start learning how AI could impact your role. Because those who adapt early will lead the next wave.
Image Credit: ChatGPT
🧠The Pulse
Elon Musk’s AI company xAI just raised a massive $10 billion. That kind of money isn’t for tinkering, it’s for taking over. With half from loans and half from investors, Musk is moving fast to build something much bigger than a chatbot. And he’s not waiting for permission to do it.
📌The Download
xAI didn’t just take investor money, they also borrowed $5 billion. That means big banks are willing to loan Musk cash with interest, trusting he’ll move quickly and deliver results. This shows just how urgent and aggressive xAI’s next steps are: building data centers, buying chips, and speeding up development of their AI tool, Grok.
With this deal, xAI’s value now sits between $120 billion and $200 billion. To put that in perspective: that’s more than the value of many global brands you use every day. And the company hasn’t even released a mainstream product yet. That kind of scale suggests the tools xAI creates may soon show up in the apps, feeds, or platforms you already use.
Elon doesn’t want to just build an AI model, he wants full control. Unlike others who rely on outside partners, xAI is building its own systems from the ground up. That means faster updates, fewer filters, and total freedom to experiment. Musk is betting that owning every layer of AI, from data to delivery, will let xAI move faster than anyone else.
💡What This Means for You
The AI tools you use to write, brainstorm, analyze, or search might not come from Google or OpenAI next year. They might come from xAI. Musk is building fast and at full scale, and that could shift the platforms, content, and experiences you depend on. Stay alert, stay adaptable. Change is already on the way.
Image Credit: Original Billboards in the UK (Collage by ChatGPT)
🧠The Pulse
A bold ad in the London Underground told companies to “Stop hiring humans.” Within hours, it spread online like wildfire. People were shocked, angry, and anxious. It didn’t feel like a joke, it felt like a warning. This ad didn’t just sell a product. It hit a nerve about jobs, AI, and the future of work.
📌 The Download
The ad campaign launched right in the middle of London Tech Week, one of the biggest tech events in the UK. Just hours after it appeared, UK Labour leader Keir Starmer responded. He warned businesses to be careful with how they use AI. His quick reaction showed how seriously people took the message, and how fast it turned political.
The company behind the ad is Artisan AI, a startup that makes an AI-powered sales agent called “Ava.” The founder admitted they wanted the ad to go viral, even if it made people upset. And it worked. The campaign got more than a billion views online in just a few days. Their goal was to get attention. And they did.
At first, many commuters didn’t even know who made the ad. Some thought it was a government warning. The message was scary and clear. Later, the company said they just wanted to talk about automating boring tasks, not replacing humans completely. But by then, the ad had already made people feel threatened, and that feeling stuck.
💡What This Means for You
Imagine you’re on your way to work. You look up, and every screen around you says, “Stop hiring humans.” That would shake anyone. This kind of message might become more common as AI gets smarter. So the real question is: what part of your work could AI take over? And what can you do that AI can’t? Now’s the time to build skills that help you stand out, not get replaced.
Image Credit: ChatGPT
🧠The Pulse
OpenAI has decided to shut down for one full week to give employees a break. Why? After months of working 60–80 hours a week, and losing several team members to Meta, the pressure finally snapped. A leaked memo shows that the leadership knows the team is tired, and they need time to recover.
📌 The Download
Last week, Meta hired away a group of OpenAI employees to join its new AI division, Meta Superintelligence Labs. The move hit hard. OpenAI’s Mark Chen described it emotionally, saying it felt like “someone breaking into our home.” It exposed just how vulnerable OpenAI feels about losing its people.
OpenAI has always pushed for fast results, and that came with long hours. Many team members regularly work late nights and weekends. But now, after seeing top talent leave and burnout rise, leaders decided to stop everything for a week. This break isn’t about vacation. It’s about survival.
Along with the time off, OpenAI is now reviewing how it pays its staff and how to keep them from leaving. This moment isn’t just about one company, it shows how intense the race in AI has become. Big players like Meta, Google, and OpenAI are not just building AI. They’re fighting to keep the people who build it.
💡What This Means for You
If even OpenAI, the most talked-about AI lab in the world, needs to hit pause, it says a lot. Imagine working your hardest, and then watching others leave for better pay or balance. It’s a reminder: burning out isn’t a badge of honor. Take care of yourself, because no job is worth your health or peace.
AI TOOL OF THE DAY
Image Credit: Fathom AI Logo
💡 What It Is?
Fathom AI is a smart meeting assistant that automatically records, transcribes, and summarizes your Zoom or Microsoft Teams meetings. It captures action items, key decisions, and highlights, then emails clean notes to your team. No typing, no note-taking, just full focus on the conversation.
🚀 Why Is It Trending?
Remote teams are tired of juggling note-taking with active discussion. Fathom is gaining attention because it removes that friction. Professionals love its ability to instantly generate accurate, structured meeting notes, saving time and reducing confusion. It’s especially useful for fast-moving teams in sales, product, and client services.
✅ What You Can Do With It?
Use Fathom to auto-record and transcribe meetings, highlight key points in real-time, and instantly share takeaways with your team. Track follow-ups without extra effort. Perfect for people who want fewer meetings, and more results. It’s like having a reliable assistant who never forgets, never interrupts, and always delivers.
IN AI TODAY - QUICK HITS
⚡Quick Hits (60‑Second News Sprint)
Short, sharp updates to keep your finger on the AI pulse.
⚖️ Protesters Accuse Google of Breaking AI Safety Promises: Activists set up a fake courtroom outside Google DeepMind’s London office, claiming the company is ignoring safety rules it agreed to at the recent global AI summit.
✍️ Authors Push Back Against AI-Generated Books: Over 1,100 writers signed a petition warning that AI-written books could flood the market and make it harder for human authors to get published.
💼 Thinking Machines Lab Offers $500K Salaries to Win AI Talent: A start‑up founded by ex‑OpenAI CTO Mira Murati is offering huge pay, $450–500K, to lure top researchers, highlighting how desperate companies are to grab experts in the fierce AI talent war.
TOOL TO SHARPEN YOUR SKILLS
📈Improve Processes. Drive Results. Get Certified.
AIGPE™ Certified Value Stream Mapping (VSM) Course
Master the art of mapping and improving business processes using Value Stream Mapping (VSM), your first step toward true operational excellence. Enroll now.
KEY QUOTES AND STRATEGIC INSIGHTS
"The automation of thought doesn’t mean the end of thinking. It means the beginning of thinking differently.”
- Reid Hoffman, Co-founder of LinkedIn and AI investor
That’s it for today’s AI Pulse!We’d love your feedback, what did you think of today’s issue? Your thoughts help us shape better, sharper updates every week. |
🙌 About Us
AI Pulse is the official newsletter by AIGPE™. Our mission: help professionals master Lean, Six Sigma, Project Management, and now AI, so you can deliver breakthroughs that stick.
Love this edition? Share it with one colleague and multiply the impact.
Have feedback? Hit reply, we read every note.
See you next week,
Team AIGPETM