🧪 Microsoft’s AI Report Dunked on America

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Plus: Top Productivity Hacks to Achieve Anything You Want & Make Your Hard Work Look Stupid

You won’t believe what new Neo humanoid robots learned to do, it watches video, imagines what happens next, then acts. Just like video diffusion for motion planning.

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What’s on FIRE 🔥

• 📡 Neo Robots with Brain That “Imagines” the Future

• 📚 AI Sources From AI Fire

• 🛒Google Workspace, CapCut Pro, Descript, Brevo Private Deal

• ⭐ Today’s AI Highlights

• 🏅 AI Tools

• 📊 AI Breakthrough

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH SECTION

TOMORROW: Building AI Champions in 2026 – January 15, 3-4 PM ET | Free Virtual Event

On 1/15, join Section and Manulife’s AVP of AI Adoption for a conversation about how to activate AI champions within your organization.

Find out how to turn power users into enterprise change agents – including how to identify them and drive real business outcomes.

AI INSIGHTS

📡 1X Gave Neo Robots a Brain That “Imagines” the Future Before Acting

You want your home robot to learn new things just by watching videos like a human? That’s what 1X is trying to unlock with its new 1X World Model. Instead of predicting robot actions directly, it does something more human-like:

• It takes a text prompt (like “pull a tissue”) and the robot’s camera frame

• Then it generates a 5-second imagined video of what might happen

• From multiple options, it chooses the best future, and another model converts that imagined motion into actual joint commands

So Neo truly imagines outcomes, then figures out how to move to make that future real. It’s a lot like video diffusion for motion planning, a trick from the image AI world, now applied to robotics. The result is surprisingly solid for early days:

• Pulling tissue went from 30% to 45% success just by sampling 8 imagined rollouts and choosing the best one

• Current latency: 11 seconds for planning + 1 second for action

• Works on both in-distribution and novel tasks

But Neo still can’t drive your car. But it’s a real step toward robots teaching themselves new tasks without step-by-step training.

And now that 1X is shipping soon, the race isn’t just ChatGPT or Gemini vs Claude anymore. It’s virtual agents vs physical ones!

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AI SOURCES FROM AI FIRE

1. Top productivity hacks to achieve anything you want & make your hard work look stupid. Learn how to ditch 95% boring tasks and actually get the real money

2. How I built a Free AI voice agent that answers sales valls 24/7 (So easy). Stop losing leads while you sleep. I’ll show you exactly how I tested this only with free tools

3. Build any beautiful working site FREE with a SINGLE AI prompt (Live, Editable & No Code). Let’s own a high end business site without monthly fees

4. 6 high-income AI skills every modern users ACTUALLY needs. If you still use ChatGPT like autocomplete, you’re leaving real systems on the table

PREMIUM DEALS #2 FOR DIAMOND CLUB

🛒 Google Workspace, CapCut Pro, Descript, Brevo Private Deal

Every Wednesday, PRO, Annual, and Lifetime members get a private drop, with real deals you can actually use. These are not all public offers. Some you won’t find on Google. We only share the ones that are worth your time.

Some of these are startup perks. Some are hidden lifetime pages. Some are upgrades for tools you’re already using but paying full price for.

That’s it for today. If you’re in DIAMOND club, you already see the deals. Grab what you need before they expire. If you’re still on the free tier, please join DIAMOND club to see all.

If you’ve got tools you’ve been eyeing, or stuff you’re already paying for but wish you had a better deal on, just tell me inside the deal page.

TODAY IN AI

AI HIGHLIGHTS

🤯 Shopify’s CEO went viral for using Claude to build a custom tool that analyzes his own X-ray. Not surprising, but is it still kind of wild? Absolutely. Here’s how he did it.

🤖 If you want to learn how to use this powerful Claude Code, just watch this best beginner-friendly video we’ve found so far. In case you’re busy, save to watch later.

🧪 Google researchers found a surprisingly dumb trick to boost accuracy by 76% on non-reasoning tasks, even on top models like Gemini, GPT, Claude or DeepSeek.

🍎 Google’s Gemini will power Siri and other Apple AI features in a ~$1B/year deal. Yet Elon criticized this as an “unreasonable concentration of power” on a viral post.

🏗️ Microsoft unveiled new AI data center plans with a “community-first” pledge: no electricity bill hikes, more jobs. Yet, here’s why locals across 24 states are protesting.

💰 Big AI Fundraising: Etched, a bold AI chip startup, raised $500M to take on giant Nvidia. Backed by top investors, they’re set to shake up the AI hardware scene!

NEW EMPOWERED AI TOOLS

1. 🤝 Claude Cowork brings Claude Code into a friendly UI for non-tech users who don’t want to touch the command line

2. 🔖 Bookmarkify collects websites, images, and videos into visual boards you can share with others

3. 🚀 Atoms is the first vibe business team. It researches market, designs product, builds frontend & backend, ships a live app you can make profit

4. 🧱 Pixel Canvas turns your rough sketches into polished pixel art assets instantly, using Opus 4.5

AI BREAKTHROUGH

🌍 Microsoft’s AI Adoption Report: U.S. Fell to 24th?!

Microsoft’s AI Economy Institute dropped a new global report. Despite leading in models and infrastructure, the U.S. ranks just 24th in actual AI adoption. This stat says it all: The UAE is at 64%. The U.S. is at 24%.

Global AI adoption hits 16.3% but the gap is widening. Developed countries are adopting AI at nearly 2x the rate of developing ones.

While most headlines focus on GPT-4o, Gemini, and Claude, DeepSeek is taking over underserved markets, especially across Africa and Southeast Asia. How? Simple:

• Free + open-source

• 2–4× higher usage in African markets

• Huawei partnerships driving infra rollouts

It’s the Android playbook, good enough, everywhere, and most importantly, accessible. The world doesn’t need another closed model. It needs tools that actually work for everyone.

Our take: AI adoption in 2026 is no longer just a tech stat, it’s a development stat. If you’re not designing for the next billion users, someone else is.

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The AI Fire Team