Welcome, humans.

Remember when Alexa was supposed to be our AI overlord? Well, Amazon's latest AI assistant is playing the world's most elaborate game of hide and seek.

Six weeks after a splashy launch event, Alexa+ has pulled off the ultimate disappearing act. Amazon claims “hundreds of thousands” of users are testing it, but independent investigators found exactly zero public evidence. It's kinda like the corporate version of that friend who swears they're on their way for hours but never shows up.

The billion-dollar question: Is Alexa+ a revolutionary breakthrough in AI UX, or just another tech promise that vanished into thin air like “Apple Intelligence”?

On a completely different topic: If Adobe had a secret AI lab run by a wizard with a Wacom tablet, that wizard would be @icreatelife (Kris Kashtanova). Their latest creation on X is a mesmerizing blend of digital artistry and AI. We had a blast with this killer tip they shared this week!

In fact, their entire X feed (also on BlueSky) is full of AI image tips and fun AI art challenges. We particularly liked this one, and we think you’ll see why…

Here’s what you need to know about AI today:

• Self-improving AI from Google?!

• MIT rejects student's AI research paper.

• OpenAI unveiled a public Safety Evaluations Hub.

• FDA plans rapid generative AI deployment.

AI Just Learned to Invent Its Own Solutions

Imagine an AI that doesn't just follow your prompts as instructions, but actually invents new ways to solve complex problems.

Well, Google just unveiled AlphaEvolve, an AI that's essentially a super-smart problem solver capable of creating solutions humans might never think of.

Think of AlphaEvolve like having a genius intern who comes back with even better ideas than you expected when tasked to accomplish something.

Here’s how it works: You can think of it like natural selection for code, where only the fittest (and most efficient) algorithms survive.

• AlphaEvolve cleverly pairs the broad idea generation of Gemini Flash with the deep, insightful suggestions of Gemini Pro.

• These models propose solutions as computer programs.

• Then, automated evaluators rigorously test these programs for accuracy and quality.

• The best ones are fed back into an evolutionary loop, constantly refining and improving.

The most mind-blowing part? In tests across 50 different complex problems, AlphaEvolve:

• Solved existing challenges perfectly 75% of the time.

• Actually improved solutions in 20% of cases.

• Oh, and it made breakthrough progress on a 300-year-old mathematical puzzle that's been driving mathematicians crazy. But no big deal, right?

So, what has this brainy lil’ AI been up to? Quite a bit, actually:

• Google's Data Centers Got an AI Tune-Up: AlphaEvolve recovered 0.7% of Google's worldwide compute power—which might sound tiny until you realize it's like finding an extra data center without building one. The code is actually readable by humans too, not just machines!

• AI Designing Better AI Chips: AlphaEvolve redesigned a crucial circuit in Google's next generation of its TPU AI chip.

• Gemini Got a Speed Boost: AlphaEvolve made Gemini's training 1% faster by supercharging a key component by 23%. That's like shaving days off a month-long project—and engineers can now implement similar tweaks in days instead of weeks.

• Found Hidden Performance in GPUs: It discovered optimizations in the GPU code that even expert engineers missed, delivering a whopping 32.5% speedup.

Why this matters: This could massively accelerate research and development across countless fields. Instead of just asking an AI to write some code, we can now ask it to discover the best way to write that code, and via the AlphaEvolve system, there’s a cookie cutter process the AI can follow to find that answer.

What’s next? Google is planning an Early Access Program for AlphaEvolve for selected academic users and is exploring how to make it more widely available (so register your interest here!)

Google believes AlphaEvolve’s ability to describe and verify solutions as algorithms could be transformative in areas like material science, drug discovery, and sustainability. So whether you work in healthcare, finance, or run a small business, these faster and smarter technology impacts everyone.

While OpenAI’s o4-mini-high is the smartest AI you can use atm, Gemini 2.5 Pro is pretty darn close… and you can use it for free on AI Studio.

For the super curious, you can dive into the white paper or check out its mathematical results in this Google Colab. This is one AI evolution you’ll want to keep an eye on…

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Prompt Tip of the Day

Need a custom icon for your business (or just for fun)? This Reddit user shared the prompt they used to generate custom icons for their Windows 11 display; just copy the prompt in the thread, and use this Icon Converter to convert the icon to the proper file type / size for your needs.

If you like this tip, here’s a thread of 8 more tutorials from X that teach you how to create all sorts of stylized iconography and images.

Need to catch up on our recent tips? Check out our Prompt Tips of the Day May Digest to see them all in one place!

Treats To Try.

1. *Incogni removes your personal data from the open internet so scammers and identity thieves can’t access it. Protect yourself online with Incogni—get 55% off with code NEURON.

2. Codex is OpenAI’s new coding agent that handles your coding tasks in parallel by writing features, fixing bugs, and making pull requests while you focus on other work—available rn for ChatGPT Pro, Team, and Enterprise users.

3. Pipedream lists 10K+ tools available for your AI agent to use and 2.5K+ MCP servers which integrate your AI with existing software, though it doesn’t have everything…

4. Magic UI provides 150+ free and open-source animated components and effects to make your landing pages stunning that you can use via V0 (an AI app vibe coding tool)—free to try.

5. Inkr turns your meeting and lecture recordings into searchable transcripts and AI-generated notes that you can instantly query for answers — free to try. There’s also Granola, that organizes your team’s meetings into shared folders you can chat with for source-cited insights.

6. Speaking of icons, Lineicons provides 30,000+ handcrafted icons (SVG) in multiple styles for your design and development projects—free version available.

7. DeckSpeed creates professional, personalized slides from your conversations without templates and VisionStory gives your presentation an avatar narrator.

8. Probo gets your startup SOC2, ISO27001, or HIPAA certified in a week while you focus on your business—its open source w/ add-on services, so free to try.

See our top 51 AI Tools for Business here!

*This is sponsored content. Advertise in The Neuron here.

Around the Horn.

• FDA plans rapid generative AI deployment across medical product review offices to revolutionize drug development.

• Harvard’s Galileo Project has brought high-end academic research to a once-fringe pursuit, and the Pentagon is watching.

• MIT disavowed a graduate student's AI research paper on technological discoveries in a materials-science lab, withdrawing its support without providing specific details.

• Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn predicted schools will transform into childcare centers, with AI handling most educational tasks and providing personalized learning for students.

• Check fraud explodes as criminals exploit AI and mail theft, causing nearly $700 million in losses.

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