🎓 MIT drops a free course on AI agents, theory and real-world practice

The folks at MIT have released a free, comprehensive course on AI agents, covering both fundamentals and applied use cases.

🔸 AI agents, what they are, how they differ from chatbots, and where they actually make sense.

🔸 Planning, task decomposition, decision-making loops, and agent control logic.

🔸 RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), grounding agents in external knowledge and tools.

🔸 MCP (Model Context Protocol), structuring context, memory, and tool access for scalable agents.

🔸 Examples & case studies, real implementations, not just academic theory.

🔸 Designed as a practical base for anyone building agentic systems in production.

MIT isn’t just teaching how to talk to models, it’s teaching how to make AI act, which is quickly becoming the most valuable skill in applied AI.

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Happy New Year!

Thanks for reading and staying curious.

See you in 2026.

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The money talk every parent should give their kids.

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🔥 These robots have moved a building!

A team of 432 walking robots is carefully moving a 7,500-ton historic building in Shanghai. Instead of traditional machinery, these robots gently lift and “walk” the building about 10 meters per day.

The area is densely packed with narrow alleys and old structures, making cranes and large machines unusable. These robots were chosen because they can operate in tight spaces and move precisely without damaging nearby buildings.

In China robots are even moving existing buildings! 🤯

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Ai is mysteriously learning things it was never programmed to know.

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Google's CEO gets asked, "Does Google track you through your phone?"

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✅ A BlackBerry-style phone makes a surprising comeback

Clicks. known for physical keyboard phone cases has just unveiled its first standalone smartphone built around a full QWERTY keyboard and minimalist communication focus.

🔸 Physical keyboard at the center: The Communicator features a full QWERTY keyboard with larger keys and touch-sensitive functionality that can also act as a trackpad aiming to make typing and navigation faster and more tactile than on a typical touchscreen.

🔸 Standalone 5G Android device: It isn’t just an accessory, the Communicator has its own cellular connection, runs Android 16 with a stripped-back launcher to reduce distraction, and supports essential apps like Gmail, WhatsApp, Slack, and Telegram.

🔸 Retro-modern hardware: The phone packs a 4.03-inch OLED screen, front and rear cameras, a 4,000 mAh battery, a headphone jack, expandable microSD storage, and interchangeable back plates for personalization.

🔸 Design with everyday features: Clicks has included a physical mute switch and a customizable side LED key for notifications or shortcuts, little touches that mainstream phones have dropped.

🔸 Price and preorder: The Communicator is priced at about $499, but early reservations (with a $199 deposit) drop it to $399 ahead of general availability later this year.

🔸 Focus on communication, not consumption: With a minimalist interface and hardware built for typing and messaging, the phone targets users who want a less distracting alternative to traditional smartphones.

Clicks is betting that tactile control and focus-oriented design still matter in a world dominated by large, distraction-driven touchscreen devices.

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🗣️Sam Altman: “Most people don’t take enough risk”

“I think people have terrible risk calculus in general… almost always A) you’re wrong about what is risky and what is not risky, and B) most people don’t take enough risk especially early in your career. Being young, unknown, and poor, is actually a great gift in terms of the amount of risk you can take.”

Sam continues:

“I think what risk actually looks like is not doing something that you will spend the rest of your life regretting… So if you really believe in something if there’s an idea you’re super passionate about and you take a calculated risk to start a company realizing you may forego a couple of years of steady income and maybe people call you a failure, that’s a great risk to take. And if you don’t take that risk, I think you have a very high chance that you end up regretting that.”

Sam believes most people overrate the risk of reputation damage and embarrassment from trying and failing. It’s worse to not even try:

“One really important thing to strive for in your career is to be a doer, not a talker. And the reason that people don’t do stuff is 1) it’s hard, and 2) it’s risky. And so you have these people that want to dabble in a bunch of different projects, but never be all-in on one… I think that’s really bad. I think history belongs to the doers, and I think you should take a risk and actually do something.”

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🎥 Missed DeepMind’s The Thinking Game?

The documentary tracing DeepMind’s journey is now available to watch at no cost.

It premiered back in 2024, but the full version was released publicly in late November 2025 and quickly went viral, racking up 200M views on YouTube in just four weeks.

👉 Watch here 👈

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🔔 Wild tweet by Elon Musk

For anyone not deep in AI lore, the singularity means a point where AI improves itself faster than humans can understand or control.

Systems start designing better versions of themselves. That’s when progress stops checking who’s in the room.

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🔥 An AI streamer just beat every human on Twitch

Neuro-sama, an AI VTuber created by programmer Vedal, is now the most subscribed streamer on the platform. Around 162,000 active subs. Second place isn’t even close.

Neuro-sama runs near 24/7, chats with viewers, sings, plays games, reacts to videos, and is powered by multiple custom AI systems, not a single prompt. At standard Twitch splits, subnoscriptions alone likely bring in over $400,000 per month.
Ads, donations, and sponsorships are on top.

An AI personality outperformed the biggest human creators. Streaming just crossed a line.

📊 @tech

🤖 UBTECH showed Walker S2 playing tennis

It’s a highlight-style demo, but still notable. The humanoid tracks the ball, adjusts its footwork, and returns shots in real time.

Walker S2 is expected to enter mass production this year.

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🖼 AI-generated art moves to the wall

At CES 2026, Fraimic unveiled Smart Canvas, an E-ink display in a picture frame that replaces traditional wall art with AI-generated images you can change by voice.

🔸 The Smart Canvas uses E-ink Spectra 6, designed to mimic the texture of real canvas and paint rather than a glossy screen, making it look closer to physical art than a digital display.

🔸 Images can be generated via voice commands, with a built-in AI powered by OpenAI, or uploaded manually through a web interface if you want full control over the visuals.

🔸 Power consumption is minimal: the battery is rated to last several years, since E-ink only draws power when the image changes.

🔸 The panel can be placed into any standard frame and mounted in any orientation, making it feel more like a modular art object than a gadget.

🔸 Two versions are available: a standard size for $400 and a large version for $1,000. Pre-orders are live, with shipping expected to start in June.

🔸 The concept works best for abstracts, patterns, and generative art, though there’s a real risk that day-to-day use exposes familiar AI flaws: warped lines, odd artifacts, and “same-y” compositions.

Smart frames won’t replace real art, but they hint at a new category where walls become programmable and this market is only just beginning to take shape.

📊 @tech

🔔 An EV startup thinks it can sell a $25k truck by doing the opposite of Tesla

Slate Auto plans to ship a $25,000 electric truck in the US by end of 2026, without tax credits.

The core idea:
• 1 model, 1 configuration
• 600 parts instead of 2,500
• Composite body panels, no paint shop or stamping
• No built-in infotainment, phone or tablet instead
• Manual windows, AC included

Everything else follows from that. Simplicity keeps costs down, while customization and accessories provide margin. Slate isn’t chasing Tesla buyers. It’s targeting people choosing between a $27k used car and a new vehicle with a warranty.

The bet is simple: Reduce complexity, lower capital costs, and reach profitability earlier by building less.

📊 @tech

🗣️Geoffrey Hinton on why cancer could stop being a death sentence

Most deaths happen because tumors are found too late, not because medicine lacks treatments. Full-body MRI can catch changes early. The issue is scale.

Humans can’t read that much data consistently, AI can.

📊 @tech

✅ Boston Dynamics unveils Atlas, now built for real factory work

This isn’t a flashy lab demo anymore. Atlas has crossed the line from stunt videos to industrial hardware meant to replace manual labor on the factory floor.

What makes it different:
• Atlas recharges itself: it walks to the station, removes a depleted battery, inserts a fresh one, and keeps going. No downtime, no breaks, 24/7 operation.
• AI inside: Boston Dynamics is working with Google DeepMind, bringing neural networks into Atlas so it can reason, adapt, and learn new tasks instead of following rigid noscripts.

Key specs:
• Lifts up to 50 kg
• Height: 2.3 meters
• 56 degrees of freedom, enabling human-like (and sometimes inhuman) movement
• Resistant to water and cold, ready for harsh industrial environments

Production plans:
• Serial assembly has already started in Boston
• All 2026 deliveries are booked, first units go to Hyundai factories and Google DeepMind
• Wider availability pushed to 2027
• A dedicated factory is planned with capacity for 30,000 units per year

This isn’t a robot for demos, it’s a shift in how factories are staffed. And no, Atlas won’t work for $300 a month… even robots have standards now.

📊 @tech

🧱 LEGO teaches bricks to respond to play

At CES 2026, LEGO introduced SMART Play, a new system the company calls its biggest leap since the minifigure era, physical blocks that react to what kids actually do with them, without screens or apps.

🔸 A responsive building system: SMART Play is made up of connected bricks, tags, and figures that give traditional LEGO builds awareness and feedback.

🔸 Electronics hidden in plastic: A regular-looking 2×4 brick contains a custom chip, motion sensors, LEDs, a speaker, and wireless charging components.

🔸 Meaning, not noscripts: Small ID tiles and minifigures tell the system what a build represents, allowing behavior and sound to change as the story evolves.

🔸 Local intelligence: Using a Bluetooth-based network, bricks understand position, movement, and orientation relative to each other in real time.

🔸 Unlimited sound design: Audio is generated on the fly rather than stored, so the same brick can convincingly sound like engines, animals, or something far less heroic.

🔸 Long-term bet: The platform took around a decade to develop and is protected by dozens of patents.

🔸 First release: The system launches with Star Wars sets priced from $70 to $160, with pre-orders opening January 9 and shipping starting March 1.

SMART Play doesn’t pull LEGO into screens, it quietly adds intelligence to the bricks themselves, keeping play tactile while making it adaptive.

📊 @tech