Claude Makes Everyone Makers; Robots Looking for Work? Clanker Firedogs
Today's AI Outlook: 🌤️
Claude Code Sparks The ‘Selfware’ Era
Anthropic's Claude Code is having its ChatGPT moment. What started as a developer tool has spilled into the mainstream, with CEOs, hobbyists, and non technical builders using Claude to spin up full blown apps in days or hours. The hype has gone fully financial. Investors are now openly questioning whether traditional SaaS models can survive when anyone can build custom software on demand.
The excitement isn't theoretical. One startup CEO ditched plans to hire more engineers after Claude made him 5x more productive. Vercel’s CTO reportedly wrapped a year long project in a single week. On social media, people are building everything from custom MRI viewers to self sustaining tomato growth systems, all with Claude Code as the backbone.
Why it matters
For decades, software stocks thrived on predictable recurring revenue. That logic breaks fast if AI can generate bespoke tools whenever you need them. Investors seem to be betting that we are heading into a “selfware” era, where software is less about subscriptions and more about on demand creation. Whether this is durable disruption or a hype cycle, the market reaction is already real.
The Deets
- A Morgan Stanley SaaS index is down 15% YTD
- Stocks like Intuit, Adobe, and Salesforce are down double digits
- Analysts say software stocks are being dumped “regardless of valuation” amid AI existential fears
Key takeaway
Claude Code is not just a tool. It is a threat to the business model of software itself.
🧩 Jargon Buster - Selfware: Software built by individuals for themselves, often generated by AI, instead of bought as a subscription product.
⚡ Power Plays
Ex OpenAI Policy Lead Launches New AI Safety Nonprofit
Former OpenAI policy lead Miles Brundage has launched AVERI, a nonprofit pushing for independent third-party audits of frontier AI models. The goal is simple but radical for AI. Stop letting labs grade their own homework.
Brundage left OpenAI in October 2024 after the company cut its AGI Readiness team. His view is blunt: Frontier labs are not ready, and self reported safety testing is not enough.
Why it matters
Most AI safety today runs on trust. AVERI is an attempt to replace trust with verification. If successful, it could reshape how governments, enterprises, and the public evaluate AI risk.
The Deets
- AVERI will define audit standards, not run audits itself
- Funded in part by employees at leading AI labs
- Introduced “AI Assurance Levels,” from Level 1 self testing to Level 4 treaty grade verification
Key takeaway
AI safety is slowly moving from promises to accountability infrastructure.
🧩 Jargon Buster - Third party audits: Independent evaluations conducted by organizations with no stake in the model being tested.
🧠 Research & Models
More Analysis: Anthropic 2026 Economic Index
Anthropic published its latest Economic Index, analyzing over 2M Claude chats. The headline is calmer than the panic. AI is boosting productivity fast, but it is still augmenting humans, not replacing them wholesale.
Why it matters
The data undercuts the loudest job apocalypse narratives. The real risk is subtler. Junior workers may lose the grunt work that once trained them, reshaping career ladders before jobs disappear.
The Deets
- AI handles about 25% of tasks in nearly 50% of jobs
- Full role replacement is under 10% of firms
- High school level tasks are 9x faster with AI
- College level tasks are 12x faster
- Claude can now complete tasks lasting up to 19 hours with a 50% success rate
Key takeaway
AI is changing work faster than jobs, but the training pipeline is quietly breaking.
🧩 Jargon Buster - Task augmentation: Using AI to speed up or improve parts of a job rather than replacing the job entirely.
🛠️ Tools & Products
Optimize Prompting With This Markdown Strategy
A practical workflow is gaining traction allowing you to turn successful AI tasks into reusable Markdown instructions that work across tools. Think of it as prompt compounding.
Why it matters
This moves AI from clever chats to repeatable systems. Less tinkering. More leverage.
The Deets
- Complete a task in NotebookLM with clear rules and constraints
- Ask the AI to extract the task into Markdown instructions
- Reuse those instructions in new projects with fresh variables
- Save templates in tools like Notion
Key takeaway
The best prompts are actually portable playbooks.
🧩 Jargon Buster - Markdown: A lightweight formatting language used to structure text clearly for humans and machines.
💰 Funding & Startups
Humanoid Robots Are Shipping Before They Have Jobs
A new Omdia report shows 13,000 humanoid robots shipped globally in 2025. China dominates volume, led by AgiBot, Unitree, and UBTech. U.S. players like Tesla and Figure AI remain mostly in pilot mode.
Why it matters
This is hardware momentum without workflow fit. Robots are being built faster than real economic use cases emerge.
The Deets
- China shipped over 75% of global volume
- Prices range from $6,000 to $14,000 per unit
- Most deployments remain demos or lab experiments
Key takeaway
In humanoids, application fit matters more than factory output.
🧩 Jargon Buster - ROI: Return on investment. If it does not save or make money, it does not ship at scale.
🔥 One More Thing
Robodogs Are Now Fighting Fires
DEEP Robotics has built a full robotic firefighting squad. Scout dogs map smoke filled buildings with thermal imaging and LiDAR. Firefighting units spray water or foam up to 60 meters. Logistics bots haul gear. One robot even talks to trapped survivors to keep them calm.
Key takeaway
This is one of AI’s cleanest wins. Dangerous jobs first. Humans stay alive.
⚡ Quick Hits
- GLM 4.7 Flash leads its size class as a fast, efficient open source model.
- TranslateGemma expands Google’s open source translation lineup.
- Claude Code continues to dominate AI coding conversations.
- Scribe V2 raises the bar for transcription accuracy.
🧰 Tools Of The Day
- Anam builds photorealistic video agents with real time multilingual speech.
- Remio records your screen and turns Excel into conversation.
- RewarxStudio creates studio quality product photos and 4K videos from snapshots.
- Quaestor Ledger extracts and categorizes spending from receipt photos.
- Phot.AI offers 40 plus tools for ad and product image creation.
Today’s Sources: The Rundown AI, There’s An AI For That, Robotics Herald