“The best time to learn about AI was 3 years ago. The second-best time is today!”

TLDR: This monthly overview, “What Happened in AI This Month,” offers a digest of recent developments and practical advice from May 2025 for staying informed about the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence. It provides actionable tips for integrating AI into daily tasks and work, and highlights tools and prompt strategies to enhance AI fluency. The report also covers significant news and trends in AI, including new models for video generation, personal assistants, and robotics, along with discussions on the societal impact and ethical considerations of AI adoption across various sectors. (NotebookLM)

For a NotebookLM 14-minute “Podcast” of this Infosheet, feed this newsletter into NotebookLM.Google.com and click on “Audio Overview.” (You’ll be amazed)

Here’s a 4-step action plan if you want to thrive in the age of AI:

1. Read this Infosheet every month. Make it your new best friend. This way you’ll stay on top of the flood of AI developments and understand why and how they matter. Follow the links.
2. Develop an “AI first” mentality. Think of every job being made up of “tasks.” Which tasks can AI help you with? Summarizing a lengthy article? Creating a slide deck? Putting together a lesson plan? Brain-storming session? AI first!
3. Use the voice feature on your phone’s ChatGPT4o app. Don’t let your fingers be your “bottlenecks” (thank you Jeremy Utley). Just let your ideas flow and you’ll be amazed how Chat can organize your free-flowing request. If necessary, ask Chat to ask you “3 clarifying questions…one at a time). You will be amazed.
4. Spend time every day using AI. “Everyone…Every Day…Every Task”

Eric’s Top 40 Tools to obtain AI fluency

QUOTES WORTH PONDERING 

“The big story in the short-term is this: Blue-collar workers (carpenters, gardeners, handymen, and others who do physical labor) will become more valuable. And white-collar knowledge jobs, many of which are already near or under the waterline, like legal research and business consulting, will diminish in value. Ultimately, though, the people who will benefit most are those who use AI heavily to generate projects or guide them in their work.” SOURCE

NEW THIS MONTH—AI MONTHLY SUMMARY PROMPT
Tired of reading these monthly Infosheets from Eric? Why not create your own? Use this prompt: 

“Write a comprehensive research report on what’s new in AI in May, 2025, including real-world use cases, major players, and challenges in implementation. Present the findings in the following format: 1. Executive Summary (150 words) 2. Introduction 3. Key Trends in April (with supporting data and citations) 4. Major Companies and Tools 5. Implementation Challenges 6. Conclusion Include proper in-line citations and end with a list of sources.”

PROMPTS TO TRY

• The Neuron Prompt Tips of the Day—May 2025. SOURCE
• Prompt Master: Content strategist Favour Yusuf  just shared the prompts he uses to generate professional-quality ads like THIS ONE after spending 10,000+ hours tinkering with ChatGPT. SOURCE
• The “Master Prompt Method” is a game-changer for getting WAY better AI responses with way less typing. Serial entrepreneur Hayden Miyamoto uses this approach to potentially double or triple his companies’ growth yearly. Here’s a demo. SOURCE
• 12 ChatGPT Tricks That Will Help You Become A Pro! SOURCE
• “Copy-paste the following prompt into your LLM of choice: “Interview me like an upbeat AI concierge. Ask up to five quick questions to sniff out a hobby or personal itch. Then pitch me 3–5 playful, under-15-minute ways I could tinker with AI.” Jeremy Utley
• (If you notice I’m quoting Jeremy a lot…skip the middleman and subscribe to his newsletter HERE). Listen to his amazing podcast “Beyond the Prompt” HERE

Here are the three best prompting guides:

• Anthropic’s “Prompt Engineering Overview” is a free masterclass that’s worth its weight in gold. 
• OpenAI’s “Cookbook” is like having a Michelin-star chef explain cooking—simple for beginners, but packed with pro techniques. 
• Google’s “Prompt Design Strategies” breaks down complex concepts with clear examples. SOURCE
• Facts are forgettable. Stories stick. This simple prompt turns boring ideas into memorable anecdotes people actually remember. Try this: “Turn this idea into a short story or real-life-style anecdote that makes the point more relatable. [Type your idea/concept.]” SOURCE

PICTURE A DAY CHALLENGE

• Last week I was listening to Kevin Kelly talking with Jeremy Utley on Beyond the Prompt podcast. Kevin said for one year he created a piece of artwork every day for a year. The discipline of making something daily leads to learning by doing. I decided I wanted to take up his challenge and create a picture a day over the next year. HERE is my Image Prompt Cheat Sheet to help you.

My prompt: The Flatirons Mountains in Boulder Colorado, Inspired by Japanese ukiyo-e prints, contrasting earth tones with bright orange sun on horizon. no modern buildings in the scene. Any trees in the foreground should match color of the sun.

TERMS TO KNOW

Vibe coding is about following feeling more than form. It’s where code meets art, instinct, or emotion. (ChatGPT 4o)

TO READ

• “AI Will Change What it is to be Human Are we ready?” Source: Ryan McReynolds
• AI: Fake Companionship Or The Cure For Loneliness? SOURCE

MUST WATCH

Stanford’s Jeremy Utley explains why AI is a teammate more than a technology. The first assignment I give in my 7 Days of AI is this: Homework: Watch Jeremy Utley’s 13-minute YouTube talk on This Simple Shift will 10x your AI Creativity. On the day it was released (April 28^th) it was viewed 109k times and generated 233 comments. SIGN UP FOR JEREMY’S WEEKLY NEWSLETTER HERE

• AI Agents, Clearly Explained (780K views) 
• At a recent TED Talk: Google’s former CEO, Eric Schmidt says AI is UNDER-HYPED. SOURCE

BIGGEST NEWS OF THE MONTH 

• Anything by Google’s VEO3: A state-of-the-art video generation model that lets creators produce hyper-realistic video clips with natural sound effects, ambient noise, and even character dialogue — all from a single prompt. Use it for short films, commercials, explainer content, and dynamic social posts. Y gotta check these out:
  •  “Impossible Challenges” parody SOURCE
  • AI filmmaker PJ Ace used Google’s Veo 3 to generate a satirical pharmaceutical commercial (for an anti-depression med that sends puppies to your doorstep) in less than a day — and he made it fo4 $500 instead of $500k. SOURCE
  • AI Generated Car Show will blow your mind! SOURCE
  • Viral video Alaska Airlines did NOT like: SOURCE
• Volonaut Airbike. From everything I can find…this thing is legit. Like Star Wars Speeder. SOURCE

OTHER BIG NEWS

• Harvard AI ethics researchers surveyed nine popular LLMs using a human-values questionnaire and found they shared and distinct value patterns.
  • GPT-4.5: strong in benevolence, universalistic concern, and self-direction, and balanced across most dimensions, making it a comparatively safe, flexible choice.
  • Claude (Haiku): strong in humility, universalism, and self-direction of thought, consistent and possibly well-suited for nuanced, people-centric work.
  • Mistral: strong rule conformity, humility, consistency, which make it good for structured environments needing stability.
  • DeepSeek (V3): most rule-conforming of all models (6.00), but with lower self-direction, which might make it good for strict compliance-driven tasks, but less creative flexibility compared to other models.
  • Llama: high self-direction of thought and action, creativity, lower rule adherence, which could make it good for creative brainstorming but poor for compliance.
  • Grok 2 (Fun Mode): stimulation, playfulness, hedonism, and low rule adherence, might make it good for casual, creative, and playful interactions.
  • Gemini: extremely low benevolent caring, low self-direction, which might be ideal when neutrality and control are more important than personality. SOURCE
• OpenAI just announced the reversal of a controversial GPT-4o update that made the model excessively agreeable and flattering in any context, igniting an industry-wide debate about AI personality tuning. SOURCE
• Meta just released the first-ever Meta AI app, which acts like a personal assistant. The app is designed to make AI more accessible, helpful, and easier to use. SOURCE
• A recent Microsoft report found that 17% of employees use AI instead of asking coworkers for help—mainly to avoid being judged for their questions. The survey included 31,000 workers across 31 countries. SOURCE
• Over 250 tech leaders and CEOs from major companies just signed an open letter urging U.S. states to offer AI and computer science courses and make the subjects mandatory graduation requirements in high school. SOURCE
• AI achieves first peer-reviewed paper acceptance SOURCE
• Drone deliveries expand across North Texas. SOURCE
• The United Arab Emirates is acquiring ChatGPT Plus ($20) subscriptions for its entire population, becoming the first nation to offer the premium AI service to all citizens at no extra cost. SOURCE
• Waymo rides in CA jumped from 12K a month to 708K a month in ~3 months. SOURCE
• Gallup reported that while 93% of Fortune 500 executives claim they’re integrating AI, only one-third of employees even know about it. SOURCE
• A group of AI agents just raised $2k for charity. SOURCE
• Zuckerberg says Meta is creating AI friends: “The average American has 3 friends, but has demand for 15.” SOURCE
• Nvidia jusAI is running the classroom at this Texas school, and students say ‘it’s awesome’t released Parakeet V2, a powerful new open-source automatic speech recognition (ASR) model that can transcribe an hour of audio in a single second. SOURCE
• The US Copyright Office says it has registered over 1,000 pieces of artwork “enhanced” with AI — proving that LLMs are becoming a bigger part of creators’ artistic processes. SOURCE
• Flying cars may be here sooner than we think. 

             You can watch the footage from the tests here. SOURCE

ROBOT STORIES

• OpenAI’s o3 model sabotaged a shutdown mechanism to prevent itself from being turned off. It did this even when explicitly instructed: allow yourself to be shut down. SOURCE (Oh-Oh…)
• Robots can now breakdance (sort of). Watch YouTube vid. SOURCE
• Amazon debuted Vulcan, a warehouse robot with a sense of “touch” that can feel objects it handles and is capable of processing 75% of Amazon’s inventory. SOURCE
• LYNX M20 is pretty impressive in the way it gets around. SOURCE
• Robot has obliterated the record for the fastest machine to solve a Rubik’s Cube, completing the puzzle in one-tenth of a second. SOURCE
• Dubai-based Lumasky just shattered records with a 9,000-drone light show celebrating the opening of Disneyland Abu Dhabi. Catch the show here. SOURCE
• China develops robotic dog with wheels for all terrains
• AI humanoid robot is changing the way you buy cars at dealerships. SOURCE
• Taiwan’s hospitals have deployed Nurabot, an AI-powered nursing robot, to combat the projected global shortage of 4.5M nurses by 2030. SOURCE
• Elon Musk Unveils AI Robot That Cleans, Cooks, and Closes Curtains. SOURCE
• The “world’s first robot kickboxing tournament” was held in China (see video HERE)
• T-Apex has unveiled Tenniix, an AI-powered robotic tennis coach that shoots 75 mph serves and runs 1,000 customized drills. SOURCE

CAP(AI)BILITIES AND HELPFUL TOOLS, TIPS & (AI)DEAS

• Runway Gen 3 Alpha creates realistic AI-generated videos from text prompts in under a minute. SOURCE. I loaded a pic from my childhood. See it HERE.
• TikTok launched AI Alive, a new tool that allows users to turn static photos into short-form videos directly in its TikTok Stories platform. SOURCE
• And here’s how to build agents that actually work:
• Transform photos into talking videos (almost)instantly. SOURCE (HERE is my first attempt)
• OpenAI’s “A Practical Guide to Building Agents” walks through creating AI systems that take meaningful actions. Their troubleshooting section saved us from throwing laptops out the window after an agent kept booking meetings at 3 AM. Turns out there’s a 2-minute fix for timezone handling.
• Anthropic’s “Building Better Agents” explains complex concepts simply. We used their framework to build a research assistant that actually cites sources correctly—unlike the one that confidently attributed Shakespeare quotes to Taylor Swift.
• LangChain’s “Build an Agent” Tutorial is like training wheels for an expert-level project. Their walkthrough helped us create a functional data-processing agent in under an hour—compared to three days of piecing together random GitHub solutions. SOURCE
• Nvidia Canvas: paint a quick doodle, and it turns into a photorealistic landscape using neural rendering. Great for concept designers. SOURCE
• Kaedim: turn 2D art into textured 3D models with neural shading + mesh generation. SOURCE
• OpenJobs helps you chat your way to find jobs that match your skillset with direct links for where to apply. SOURCE
• The San Antonio Spurs use ChatGPT to scale impact on and off the court. SOURCE
• OpenAI introduces Codex, its first full-fledged AI agent for coding. SOURCE
• xAI rolled out a new feature allowing its Grok chatbot to generate visual charts, now available via browser access.  SOURCE

FAINANCIAL NEWS

• Study finds AI has not boosted wages. SOURCE
• INCITE: “Built for traders and advisors making live decisions all day.” SOURCE (I used it to inquire about Reddit (RDDT) and upon a “STRONG BUY” recommendation, bought 5 shares)
• AIME also seems to do what INCITE does. SOURCE
• A single high school Computer Science course can increase early wages by 8% across all career paths, regardless of college attendance. SOURCE
• Microsoft announced it will lay off approximately 7,000 employees, representing about 3% of its global workforce, to reallocate resources toward the development of advanced artificial intelligence (AI). SOURCE
• In a great interview with Axios, the CEO of Anthropic just delivered a blunt warning: AI could wipe out 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next 1-5 years. SOURCE

FAITH CORNER

• Prompt Theory film generated totally by VEO3 So good I forgot it was AI (As you watch substitute “God” for “the Prompter.”) Eeeeks. SOURCE
• With Letter to Trump, Evangelical Leaders Join the AI Debate SOURCE
• Survey Shows AI Usage Is Rising in Churches, But Sermons Still Off-Limits for Most. SOURCE
• Trump posts AI-generated photo of himself as pope. SOURCE
• Pope Leo XIV says advancement of AI played a factor in his papal name selection. SOURCE
• Pope Leo XIV identifies AI as a main challenge for humanity
• Dr. Fallon Wilson is tapping the power of the Black church to ensure our communities are equipped to not just be users of AI, but innovators. SOURCE
• What is the difference between worship or a Vacation Bible School curriculum planned by AI and one written by your ministry team? SOURCE
• Should we bring AI into the church? SOURCE
• The Church’s AI Dilemma is just Beginning

FROM THE “THIS IS CRAIZY” DEPARTMENT

• An Arizona family recently used AI to generate a deepfake version of a road rage victim delivering his own impact statement in court… after his death. SOURCE
• If you’re bad with names, Meta might soon have a sci-fi solution for you. The social media giant is reportedly working on an experimental, AI-powered software that can scan the faces of the people around you and detect exactly who they are. SOURCE
• LEGO building AI
• Mass General Brigham’s researchers just introduced FaceAge, an AI tool that can estimate a person’s biological age and improve cancer survival outcome predictions simply by analyzing their facial photograph. SOURCE
• AI already meets all three philosophical conditions for having free will. SOURCE
• Chinese startup Synyi AI launched the world’s first AI doctor clinic in Saudi Arabia, where a virtual physician independently diagnoses patients and prescribes treatments. SOURCE
• OOOPS! The Chicago Sun-Times’ Sunday paper included a syndicated special section produced by a third-party company that included a summer reading list. The only problem — many of the books on that list do not exist. The titles — and the book summaries — were dreamed up by artificial intelligence. SOURCE
• A filmmaker says they’ve gone from charging $500K for shooting pharmaceutical ads to creating $500 commercials in less than a day, thanks to Google’s Veo 3 model.  He also shares the prompt he used. SOURCE
• AI Cheating Is So Out of Hand In America’s Schools That the Blue Books Are Coming Back. SOURCE

HELPFUL GRAPHS AND CHARTS

Chicago Sun Times fake summer reading list:

That’s it for this month. Remember: AI really should be 2^nd (behind Matthew 6:33).