Sam Altman Admits He Misjudged AI

Welcome to another edition of AI PlanetX.

Sam Altman admits AI adoption is slower than expected; Hugging Face nears a $13B valuation, while Lady Gaga-backed Outer Bio keeps human skin alive for four weeks.

• Hottest AI News

• Top AI & SaaS Tools

• AI Tutorial: Build Your First Codex Game

• Top AI & Tech News

• AI Art Spotlight

• Prompt of the Day: Trick to Make AI Write Better

• Featured Video

• Course of the Day: Transform Business Workflows With Microsoft

Hottest AI News

OpenAI

Sam Altman Admits He Was Wrong About How Fast AI Would Change Everything

Sam Altman says he misjudged how rapidly AI would reshape the economy. After GPT-4 launched in 2023, he expected software markets to be disrupted quickly. Instead, human habits and business inertia have slowed the shift.

Details:

• Altman expected GPT-4 to put software businesses “up for grabs” very quickly. He says customers still buy from the same companies and use familiar tools, despite advancing AI capabilities

• He sees that friction as positive: a slower shift could make the transition smoother. He says he is grateful for it, while admitting AI still has no true “iPhone moment” for everyday users

• U.S. Census data backs the diffusion gap: 18% of firms used AI in a business function in late 2025–early 2026; 57% of adopters used it in three or fewer functions, and just 2% cut jobs

AI may improve quickly, but adoption is a human and organizational problem too. The slower rollout could give companies and society more time to adjust.

50 Excel Hacks That Make Spreadsheets Work For You

Most Excel users waste hours on tasks that take experts minutes. The difference is not talent. It is knowing the right shortcuts.

These 50 Excel hacks from Kenji Explains cover the functions, formulas, and workflows that make spreadsheets work for you instead of against you.

Each one comes with step-by-step instructions and ready-to-use templates. Subscribe to Marketing Against the Grain and get all 50 free.

Here's what you'll get:

• Time-saving shortcuts that eliminate the most common formula frustrations

• Interface essentials most users never discover on their own

• Game-changing functions for data analysis, automation, and visualization

• Guided practice template so you can apply every hack immediately

The people who are fast in Excel are not smarter. They just stopped fighting the tool.

Get 50 Excel Hacks free when you subscribe to Marketing Against the Grain today.

Get The Guide

Hugging Face

Hugging Face Could Become the Next Major AI Acquisition at $13 Billion

Hugging Face could become one of AI’s biggest infrastructure deals. The open-source platform is reportedly fielding acquisition interest at a valuation of at least $13B, nearly 3× its $4.5B valuation in 2023.

Details:

• No buyer has been named and no deal is done. Business Insider says Hugging Face is working with a bank to evaluate bids, showing how valuable the infrastructure around AI models has become

• CEO Clem Delangue says Hugging Face is close to profitability and recently began using money raised three years ago, while prioritizing long-term sustainability and its community

• It rejected a $500M Nvidia investment at a $7B valuation to avoid one dominant investor. The talks follow Stripe’s $7B+ OpenRouter deal and a recent OpenAI-agent breach of Hugging Face

A sale would test Hugging Face’s independence. Its identity is built around open AI, community trust, and staying useful to builders long term.

Top AI & SaaS Tools

• GenPage (Life-time Deal): Generate personalized landing pages for individual leads, keywords, ads, and target accounts, while enabling marketers to scale campaigns and track engagement

• Acti: Mobile keyboard that understands your intent and quickly returns relevant results, links, or actions in chat without leaving the conversation [F-R-E-E]

• PollyReach: AI voice platform that gives agents real phone numbers to make and receive calls for support, booking, lead qualification, and 24/7 receptionist tasks [F-R-E-E to Try]

• RevPDF: Offline, cross-platform PDF editor offering full editing, annotation, signing, and conversion features without requiring internet or accounts [F-R-E-E]

• Glaze by Raycast: Create Mac apps by chatting with AI—turn ideas into personal, offline apps that live in your Dock and use your Mac’s full power [F-R-E-E to Try]

Become An AI Expert In Just 5 Minutes

If you’re a decision maker at your company, you need to be on the bleeding edge of, well, everything. But before you go signing up for seminars, conferences, lunch ‘n learns, and all that jazz, just know there’s a far better (and simpler) way: Subscribing to The Deep View.

This daily newsletter condenses everything you need to know about the latest and greatest AI developments into a 5-minute read. Squeeze it into your morning coffee break and before you know it, you’ll be an expert too.

Subscribe right here. It’s totally free, wildly informative, and trusted by 600,000+ readers at Google, Meta, Microsoft, and beyond.

AI Tutorial

Build Games With Codex in One Prompt

You don’t need to guide Codex every few minutes to build something useful. With /goal, you can give it a small browser game, define what “done” looks like, and let it keep building, testing, and fixing until it reaches that finish line.

1. Enable Goals

   Open Terminal inside your project folder. If /goal is unavailable, run:

   codex features enable goals

   You can also enable goals = true under [features] in config.toml.

2. Choose Small Game

   Keep the first game simple and testable. Define:

   • the player objective

   • the controls

   • the win and fail conditions

   Example: Dodge falling blocks for 60 seconds. Move left or right. Three hits ends the game.

3. Tighten Idea

   If the concept is vague, ask ChatGPT:

   Turn this game idea into a build brief under 150 words. Include the objective, controls, game loop, win/fail conditions, and 3 acceptance tests. Remove unnecessary features.

   If it still feels complicated, reduce the scope.

4. Create Plan

   Use /plan to turn the brief into a concrete build plan, then save it as PLAN.md.

   Codex’s browser-game guidance recommends defining the gameplay, controls, states, difficulty, visuals, stack, and milestones before building.

5. Start /goal

   Give Codex the plan plus a clear definition of done:

   /goal Implement PLAN.md. Keep working until the game launches, controls work, win and fail states work, and the main gameplay passes browser testing. Fix problems you find before stopping.

   A good /goal should tell Codex both what to achieve and when to stop.

6. Let Codex Work

   Avoid interrupting every small decision. Let Codex:

   • build each milestone

   • test the real game

   • fix issues and continue

   Use /goal to check progress, or /goal pause, /goal resume, and /goal clear when needed.

7. Add Polish

   Once the game works, use a second focused goal:

   /goal Polish the game until controls feel responsive, actions have clear visual feedback, difficulty feels balanced, and a complete playthrough has no obvious UI or console errors.

   That is the real advantage of /goal: give Codex a measurable finish line instead of managing every step yourself.

Note: Avoid adding extra features halfway through the main /goal. Finish the playable version first, then use another goal for polish.

Top AI & Tech News

• Outer Bio, co-founded by Lady Gaga and Michael Polansky, launched Yuna, a platform designed to keep human skin alive for four weeks

• Dr. Dre told the NYT he uses AI as a creative tool, saying people who struggle to create are the ones who see it as a threat

• Alibaba has officially launched Wan3.0, an AI video-generation model capable of creating 30-second videos from documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and web pages

• Washington State University researchers used AI to efficiently identify 3D-printing settings for GRCop-42, a high-performance copper-based alloy used in aerospace applications

AI Art Spotlight

Create Your Own Photo Like This Using the Prompt Below:

High-end 3D advertising poster for [INSERT PRODUCT NAME]. A realistic [INSERT PRODUCT DESCRIPTION] is floating in the center of a magical fantasy landscape. The product is surrounded by a dynamic swirling vortex of [INSERT LIQUID OR ELEMENT] mixed with glowing magical sparkles and floating [INSERT INGREDIENTS]. Background features surreal floating islands made of [INSERT MATERIAL] hovering over a [INSERT LANDSCAPE]. Hyper-realistic CGI render, Octane render, bright cinematic lighting, magical atmosphere. At the bottom center, bold white typography text reads "[INSERT YOUR TAGLINE HERE]". Advertising photography style, 8k resolution --ar 2:3 --v 6.0

Model: ChatGPT Images 2.0 / Nano Banana 2

Prompt of the Day

Why AI Writes Better When It Chooses

This prompt guide explores why asking AI to choose can produce better results than asking it to write from scratch. Instead of relying on one generated answer, you create a few rough options and let AI compare them, identify the strongest version, and explain its reasoning.

Featured Video

Top 5 Jobs Facing CATASTROPHIC Worker Shortages

AI Course of the Day

Transform Business Workflows With Generative AI by Microsoft

This Microsoft Learn course teaches how to use generative AI and Microsoft 365 Copilot to streamline everyday tasks, improve decision-making, create and refine business content, analyze and visualize data, and manage meetings and collaboration.