Welcome, humans.

We hope you had a terrific 4th of July filled with Patriotic debates on whether hot dogs are sandwiches or tacos (correct answer: tacos) and Hamilton singalongs.

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

• We’re showcasing some creative ways people are using AI

• Two buzzy startups are looking to raise at a $1.5B valuation.

• Big Tech is turning to nuclear energy to power its data center.

• Suno now has an iOS app you can use to generate songs.

The AI playground you never knew you needed.

I was procrastinating on writing this newsletter (shocking) when I stumbled across a Kevin Rose podcast where his guests dropped a truth bomb: it's crucial to "play" with AI.

Think about it.

AI tools are like those Christmas presents you unwrap—you don't really know what they can do until you start messing around with them. It takes some tinkering, experimenting, and plain old playtime to figure out how to make the most of these tools.

AI is in its blank canvas era—you need to use it, a lot, to see where it can actually be useful or helpful.

In that spirit, we found a Reddit thread compiling creative ways people are using ChatGPT.

Here are some use cases worth sharing (find prompts for a bunch of them here):

• Asking AI to summarize and organize jumbled thoughts.

• Uploading books to create AI mentors.

• Having AI turn daily work notes into weekly summaries.

• Making custom coloring books based on kids' ideas.

• Getting creative "quests" for household chores from AI.

• Having AI create menus based on sale items in grocery receipts.

• Getting AI to craft meditations based on mood and goals.

• Scoring step-by-step instructions for home repairs.

• Having AI create personalized budget plans.

• Getting AI to create and host custom trivia games.

And that's just scratching the surface. The list goes on and on—read the rest here.

So, we're curious: how are you using AI creatively in your day-to-day life? We’ll share some of the best answers next week!

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Around the Horn.

• Magic, an AI coding copilot, hopes to raise $200M at a valuation of $1.5B; Harvey, an AI tool for lawyers, is also expected to raise at a $1.5B valuation.

• AI startups raised $27.1B in Q2, nearly half of all startup funding in the quarter.

• Big Tech is talking with nearly a third of nuclear power plants about buying electricity to power the data centers it needs for AI.

• Google will start disclosing political ads that use AI.

• A hacker broke into OpenAI’s internal messaging system early last year and stole details about its tech’s design.

Treats To Try.

1. *AI Ideas from AE Studio asks 3 quick questions about your top business problem and delivers custom AI solutions. Try AI Ideas by AE Studio here for free.

2. Eightify is a Chrome extension that extracts the key points from YouTube videos.

3. Pinokio is a browser that lets you install and run all the best open-source models on your computer with 1 click.

4. Suno, a popular AI music generator that turns text prompts into songs, now has an iOS app.

5. Kyutai released an open-source competitor to ChatGPT-4o that can listen and talk (they raised $300M in November).

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

Intelligent Insights.

• AI Work Assistants Need a Lot of Handholding (link).

• Communicate with animals, win millions: Inside the wild new world of AI prizes (link).

• Character, a Chatbot Pioneer, Mulls Deals With Rivals Google and Meta (link).

• Nick Bostrom Made the World Fear AI. Now He Asks: What if It Fixes Everything? (link).

• AI’s $600B Question (link).

A Cat's Commentary.