AI Passes Turing Test & “An AI Atlantis”

WHAT’S INSIDE

• Tech In The News: Liquidation day, Recession Fear, Nvidia, Amazon TikTok

• Companies to watch: Retym, Replit, Agility, Sesame, Runway, Plaid

• Feature: AI Passes Turing Test & “An AI Atlantis”

• Buzzy Tools: Latest Buzzy tech, AI and financial tools

• Deep Tech: The latest in deep tech, biotech, futurism and more

• Space Tech: Latest news in the space race and aerospace tech

• Crypto: Blockchain and crypto policy and startups or protocols to watch

TECH IN THE NEWS

Recession Incoming? — U.S. stocks, USD and oil crashed, bond yields plunged Thursday, on tariff fears. Kalshi bets hit over $1M predicting a 51% chance of a US recession this year, up from 19% in Q1. Treasury Sec. Bessant warns of a public spending “detox period”.

Trade Tensions — Global responses to Trump's tariffs include countermeasures from the EU, China, Japan, and Canada. China restricts companies from investing in the US and Macron urges EU companies to do so too.

AI Passes Turing Test — UC San Diego researchers reveal that GPT-4.5 was mistaken for humans 73% of the time in Turing Test trials, highlights challenges in verification.

Nvidia's $16B Chip Rush — Chinese giants like ByteDance and Alibaba are swiftly ordering $16 billion in Nvidia's H20 AI chips to bypass potential U.S. export restrictions.

Amazon Enters TikTok Race — Amazon submitted a last-minute bid to acquire TikTok amid a looming U.S. ban, joining a long list.

OpenAI's GPU Crunch — Sam Altman reports that OpenAI is experiencing GPU shortages, as 700M+ images are created by 130M users since its Image tool launch, leading to product delays, degraded services.

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COMPANIES TO WATCH

Intel TSMC JV — Intel and TSMC agree tentatively on a joint venture to manage U.S.-based chip fabs, furthering the domestic semiconductor manufacturing push .

Retym — The California chipmaker secured a $75M Series D from Spark, Mayfield, and Kleiner Perkins to develop a programmable DSP chip for AI data centers.

Replit — The AI 'vibe coding' startup, based in San Francisco, is seeking $200M in funding for a $3B valuation. This highlights significant investor interest in AI-driven development tools as Replit continues to grow rapidly in the tech sector.

Agility Robotics — The humanoid robotics company, headquartered in Oregon, is poised to raise $400M, augmenting its previous $150M funding.

Sesame — Brendan Iribe's AI voice startup is negotiating $200M valuing the company at over $1B. The funds aim to expand into personal companions and AI wearables, with backing from Sequoia Capital and Spark Capital.

Runway — The AI media production startup raised $308M in a Series D led by General Atlantic. It aims to boost AI research and expand media capabilities and form Hollywood partnerships.

Plaid — The San Francisco-based fintech raised $575M at a $6.1B valuation, down from previous valuations. It is delaying IPO plans, but reports strong revenue growth and an expanding enterprise customer base, aiming for sustained profitability.

See our full list of the companies to watch for this week here

THE HOTTEST THING IN TECH
AI Passes Turing Test & “An AI Atlantis”

This week, the tech and economic landscapes both saw seismic shifts, with Trump’s tariffs creating chaos in the markets, AI passing the Turing Test, the rise of GenAI image fraud and deepfakes, and growing questions over societal and economic implications of all this. Industry leaders like Bill Gates and Dario Amodei are predicting a future where AI fundamentally reshapes the workforce, displacing many traditional jobs. All of this is happening against the backdrop of a US “detox period” as the US shifts from public spending to private investment. Global economic uncertainty is soaring, and shifting geopolitical tensions, presenting a complex web of challenges for the tech sector and society as a whole.

The Turing Test Breakthrough

For decades, passing the Turing Test—a measure proposed by Alan Turing in 1950 to evaluate a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from that of a human—has been the Holy Grail for AI developers. Researchers at UC San Diego demonstrated that AI systems, particularly OpenAI's GPT-4.5, can pass the Turing Test, being mistaken for humans 73% of the time in controlled trials. While many dismiss it as an arbitrary milestone, it's clear AI is fast becoming a tool for executing simple tasks; it's starting to plausibly replicate human-like conversations with astonishing accuracy. Interestingly another study this week found that so-called “reasoning” models fundamentally lack the human capability to make creative mental connections, meaning they aren’t really reasoning like we do at all. Seems a new test is needed. Is it time for the Voight-Kampff test yet?

The Rise of An AI Atlantis

Speaking of being unprepared, the explosion of AI agents in just the last week or two has been nothing short of revolutionary. These self-sustaining systems are already taking on roles traditionally held by humans across industries. A Paper titled An AI Atlantis says we are on the precipice of a digital realm populated by 100 Billion AI agents and a Billion robots poised to revolutionize every aspect of our lives.

Lenovo and Nvidia just showcased Agentic AI-powered manufacturing tools that promise to accelerate automation in heavy industries. Their research predicts that investment in AI for manufacturing could increase 106% over the next year alone. This isn’t just theory—it’s the future unfolding right now, with AI agents not only performing tasks but also improving and evolving through recursive self-improvement.

The adoption last week of Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) by OpenAI was a significant development for the ability of AI agents to interact seamlessly with various tools and environments. Emergence, a new startup, is pushing the boundaries of autonomous agents with a platform for AI agents to generate other AI agents, enabling recursive learning and multi-agent systems to transform sectors.

Others like Manus, Deepseek, Amazon, Google, DeepSeek, Zhipu and more have all released major Agentic AI updates in just the past week or two. Already, tasks like shopping, travel bookings, food orders, Uber orders and more are possible to complete via some of these services. We will be featuring a roundup of the latest agentic AI updates in tomorrow’s Beyond Tech edition so look out for that.

A Future Without Jobs?

Many experts, including Bill Gates and Dario Amodei, warn that the implications for the workforce are far-reaching. Gates predicts that as AI continues to evolve, human labor—especially in lower-skill sectors—may become increasingly redundant. The impact will be felt across industries such as retail, customer service, and even transportation. This could lead to widespread job displacement, leaving workers with few immediate options as AI takes over roles previously filled by humans.

Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, highlights the potential societal challenges that come with AI’s rise, particularly its implications for employment. In a world where AI systems can perform complex tasks autonomously, the demand for human labor could shrink rapidly. Without sufficient retraining and adaptation, large swathes of the workforce may struggle to find new roles in the emerging AI-driven economy. He predicts that AI will do almost 100% of coding tasks within 12 months.

AI Hits Its Skynet Moment

Concerns also grow about AI’s potential for misuse. OpenAI's image-generation feature has seen over 700 million images created by 130 million users since its launch on March 25. The feature's popularity has strained company resources, leading to product delays and degraded services, while India emerges as the fastest-growing market for ChatGPT.

This has also led to a rise in fears of (and likely cases of) sophisticated fraud and social engineering attacks. The ability of AI to convincingly mimic human behavior, fake evidence like receipts, documents or even deepfake audio and videos raises all sorts of scope for creative forms of fraud and other crime that we’re just beginning to grapple with. Some AI systems are already outperforming human "red teams" in cybersecurity tasks, such as detecting phishing attempts—an early sign of how AI might outstrip human capability in various ways.

AI Safety Precautions

Yesterday New Jersey became the first state yesterday to make the creation and sharing of deceptive deepfake media a crime, with penalties of up to five years in prison, following legislation signed by Governor Phil Murphy. And Google’s DeepMind published a research article that outlined an exploratory technical approach to mitigate these severe risks as AGI develops. Despite such moves, in general we are woefully unprepared for what comes next.

Tariffs, Trade, and Global Tensions

All this is not happening in a vacuum. The global economy is facing new challenges, including rising tariffs and economic instability. For the tech sector, this poses a double-edged sword. On one hand, AI has the potential to drive productivity and innovation, creating new opportunities for growth. And the massive uptick in private investment in re-shoring manufacturing and AI data center construction, as well as the emergence of entire new verticals and industries in the AI field may help offset some of the damage. On the other hand, trade restrictions could hinder the free flow of technology and resources crucial for AI development. As countries look to retaliate against US tariffs and China, France and others consider blocking investments in the US and flows of crucial supply chains get disrupted, the global economy could be going through a heavy “detox period” indeed.

An AI Future

As we move toward a future where AI agents play a larger role in daily life, the question remains: is society ready? The answer is no. Yes, AI offers the promise of greater efficiency, reduced costs, and a shift away from mundane tasks, freeing up humans for more creative and strategic pursuits. On the flip side, all this job displacement, and the potential for misuse could lead to some pretty massive disruption and suffering. We need to get serious about prioritizing AI’s alignment with human values and ensure the technology works for everyone, not just a select few. Without some form of redistributive economics like a UBI or a new social contract on the scale of the post-war New Deal it’s hard to see how a simultaneous redundancy of a large part of the human workforce could work out well for anyone.

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BUZZY TOOLS

Buzzy Tech Tools To Watch & Use

Microsoft Fabric — New AI data agents & OneLake for data mgmt, security.

Meta — Premium smart glasses with screen, over $1,000, gesture control wristband.

Adobe Premiere Pro AI Update — AI features enhance video editing, discovery.

Emergence — Autonomous agents software agents generate other agents .

Fellow — AI meeting assistant for note-taking, summaries, and CRM data syncing.

m-FINANCE — m-FINANCE launches the DeepSeek AI tool for financial services ops.

BUZZY TECH

The Latest Deep Technology & Trends To Watch

Lenovo x Nvidia — agentic AI-powered manufacturing tools in heavy industries.

Lightmatter — Optical tech uses light for enhanced AI chip connectivity.

Therabot AI Therapy bot — Reduces depression by 51% and anxiety by 31%.

Injectable Pacemaker — Injectable, Dissolvable device uses light to regulate heart.

Tinder's The Game Game — AI helps users practice flirting, real-time feedback.

CRYPTO WATCH

Crypto Crash — Bitcoin fell 5% to $81,000 after President Trump announced new tariffs, impacting the stock market. Eth and Solana and other major coins also declined, with the macro trend.

Stablecoin Bill Advances — The U.S. government moves closer to regulating stablecoins, with crypto leaders lobbying for the right to offer interest on them, sparking debate.

Galaxy Digital Settles with NY AG — Galaxy Digital settled with the New York Attorney General for $200M over allegations of manipulating the Terra Luna market.

BNY Mellon Accounting Platform — BNY Mellon debuts a blockchain accounting system for mutual funds, marking a significant step in integrating blockchain.

SPACE_RACE

Amazon _Kuiper project readies for its first launch to deploy 27 satellites

NASA's_NASA's SPHEREx telescope captures its first images from ice planet

Aetherflux_Space solar energy startup by Baiju Bhatt lands $50M

MEMETICS

We can probably update this Venn to add a few more countries after Liberation Day

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