Meta “superintelligence” lab 🏗️, Meta Raids OpenAI 🚨, OpenAI's Response 🛡️

Bernie Sanders says that if AI makes us so productive, we should get a 4-day workweek

Bernie Sanders argues that if AI dramatically boosts productivity, workers should get a 32-hour, 4-day workweek with no loss in pay. On the Joe Rogan Experience, he warned that without deliberate policy, AI’s gains will mean mass layoffs and bigger corporate profits while workers see no benefit. Instead, he says society should share AI’s dividends—more family time, better health, and lifelong learning opportunities. Sanders points to other countries experimenting with shorter weeks while maintaining productivity, arguing the U.S. should follow suit.

Yet the U.S. government isn’t directly causing layoffs—it’s enabling them by failing to regulate AI’s use, update labor laws, or ensure gains are shared. Companies naturally deploy AI to cut costs and boost profits, aided by weak unions, shareholder pressure, and faith in unregulated markets. While workers can reduce personal risk by becoming “AI-pro” and learning new skills, reskilling alone can’t prevent all displacement. The choice is ultimately political, not technological: AI offers society enormous potential to improve lives—but only if policies demand it. Will the U.S. use AI’s productivity windfall to empower workers with a better work-life balance, or let it deepen existing inequalities while claiming nothing can be done?

💬 OpenAI Developments

Forget Google and Microsoft: OpenAI may be building the ultimate work suite of apps and services

OpenAI is reportedly building a full-fledged productivity suite integrated into ChatGPT—enabling features like collaborative document editing, meeting transcription, and team chat—which would position it as a direct competitor to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 . This move reflects OpenAI’s ambition to expand beyond being “just a chatbot” and evolve into a universal work assistant, even as it enters the wearables space.

OpenAI is shutting down for the next week

OpenAI is implementing a rare, company-wide shutdown next week to allow staff to recover from sustained 80-hour workweeks, while leadership, including Chief Research Officer Mark Chen, warns employees that Meta may use the break to lure them away with aggressive recruiting tactics and lucrative offers . In response, OpenAI plans to recalibrate its compensation approach—exploring "creative ways to recognize and reward top talent"—to bolster retention amid external competition.

OpenAI reportedly ‘recalibrating’ compensation in response to Meta hires

In response to Meta poaching at least eight senior researchers, OpenAI is “recalibrating” its compensation and exploring new ways to retain top talent, according to a memo from Chief Research Officer Mark Chen. He described the departures as deeply personal and assured staff that leadership, including CEO Sam Altman, has been working urgently to counter Meta’s aggressive hiring, which reportedly includes offers rumored to be as high as $100 million—though Meta disputes the simplicity of those claims.

🚀 Tech Industry Moves

NVIDIA is shifting its strategy away from dependency on Big Tech capital expenditures, instead targeting the emerging “sovereign AI” market—helping nation-states build their own autonomous AI infrastructure, which Jensen Huang views as a multibillion‑ to trillion‑dollar opportunity . This pivot includes major partnerships across the Middle East (e.g., Humain in Saudi Arabia) and Europe (e.g., Deutsche Telekom in Germany), positioning NVIDIA as the go-to provider for government-controlled “AI factories” .

Meta has intensified its talent raid on OpenAI, hiring four more researchers—Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren—following recent defections including Trapit Bansal. This aggressive recruitment spree comes after the underwhelming performance of Meta’s Llama 4 models. While rumors of $100 million signing bonuses circulated, Meta clarified that the compensation packages are more nuanced. The rivalry between Meta and OpenAI continues to heat up as both compete for top AI talent.

Microsoft’s first in‑house AI chip, code‑named “Braga” (or Maia), has been delayed by at least six months, pushing its mass production from 2025 to 2026 due to design revisions, staffing issues, and performance concerns . Furthermore, the chip is now projected to significantly underperform NVIDIA’s Blackwell architecture, undermining Microsoft’s ambition to rival NVIDIA and reduce its dependency on external GPU suppliers.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasized that the true test of AI lies in solving real-world problems—like improving healthcare processes, streamlining paperwork, and delivering tangible social and economic value—rather than focusing on flashy demos or energy-intensive models . He made this point amid Microsoft’s recent layoffs of over 6,000 employees due to AI-driven reorganization, underscoring that the company must justify AI’s environmental and societal costs even as it reshapes work through better change management.

Microsoft has issued an internal memo making the use of AI tools like GitHub Copilot mandatory for its Developer Division, with division head Julia Liuson declaring that “using AI is no longer optional” and instructing managers to evaluate employees on AI adoption. This initiative aims to boost lagging internal usage, ensure engineers actually rely on the tools they build, and maintain competitiveness, with formal AI usage metrics potentially being added to performance reviews next fiscal year.

Google Convinces OpenAI to Use TPU Chips in Win Against Nvidia. OpenAI has begun renting Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) via Google Cloud to support ChatGPT and other AI services—marking the first time the company has meaningfully moved away from its traditional reliance on Nvidia GPUs . This strategic shift not only helps diversify its chip supply chain and reduce costs but also strengthens Google’s position in the AI hardware market as it commercializes TPUs beyond internal use.

Meta has intensified its talent hunt in its “superintelligence” lab by poaching four additional senior researchers from OpenAI—Shengjia Zhao, Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren—following a recent wave that included Trapit Bansal and three researchers from OpenAI’s Zurich office . This aggressive hiring push is part of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s strategy to build a top-tier AI team, although reports about $100 million “signing bonuses” have been clarified as complex compensation packages rather than simple cash deals.

xAI has scrapped the planned "Grok 3.5" and will skip straight to Grok 4, with its release expected just after July 4, 2025, following one more major training run . This next version will emphasize advanced coding capabilities, including a native code editor (inspired by VS Code) and specialized developer tools, marking a significant evolution over prior releases.

OpenAI has flagged Chinese startup Zhipu AI—backed by over $1.4 billion in state funding and a $400 million investment from Saudi Arabia’s Prosperity7—as a serious challenge in the “sovereign AI” space, noting its partnerships with governments in the Gulf region, Malaysia, Singapore, and more . Positioned as a much greater threat than DeepSeek, Zhipu AI is building state‐controlled AI infrastructure alongside Huawei, aiming to rival Western dominance in global AI systems.

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