Welcome to today's AI edition. It’s remarkable to think that only a few years have passed since ChatGPT first came onto the scene.

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What began for many people as a search engine or a simple question-and-answer tool is now advancing at an extraordinary pace with the rise of Agentic AI. AI agents are being integrated into everyday workflows, with users embedding them into desktops to automate tasks, and increasingly empowering them to take action on their behalf by managing files, responding to emails, building presentations, and carrying out complex processes from start to finish.

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The bigger story is that we are no longer simply watching AI develop from the sidelines. We are living through an AI revolution that is changing the trajectory of how individuals and organizations operate.

Those who embrace AI, experiment with the tools and push boundaries on what's possible are setting themselves up for a bright future.  

I started this weekly AI edition to help people navigate this incredibly fast-moving world of AI. And here are some stories worth reading:

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Beyond the Keyboard: Managing AI Agents by Text and Voice (New York Times)

A.I. agents are essentially pieces of technology that perform tasks ranging from managing your email to managing big work projects. You can build them quickly because new A.I. tools do the painstaking work of line-by-line computer coding for you.

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The agent craze took off last month with the popularity of OpenClaw, an open-source project that allows people to create a network of A.I. agents that can live and work on your computer.

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One of OpenClaw’s major draws is that engineers don’t have to type code into a desktop computer. Many users connect it to iMessage or other messaging apps so they can send coding prompts to A.I. agents from a text message.

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No longer chained to a computer screen, Quinn Leng, a co-founder of Coral, a cloud computing start-up, finds himself compulsively texting or sending voice notes to his A.I. agents multiple hours a day, he said. Whether at the gym or on a walk with his girlfriend, he just tells his ideas to his agent.

He is among the engineers who have moved from typing commands to agents to using voice-to-text applications.

Leng's co-founder Ashton Teng started talking so much in the office that he became self-conscious of disturbing his co-workers. So he considered buying a special microphone — like one used by racecar drivers — to whisper commands to his A.I. agent. 

Say Goodbye to Clicking: Claude Learns to Navigate Your Mac with Mobile Tasks and Desktop Execution (RundownAI)

Anthropic just released a research preview that hands Claude direct control of your desktop — letting it click, type, and navigate across any app on your Mac while you step away, with phone-based task assignment through Dispatch.
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The newly released Dispatch turns the combo into a remote setup, allowing users to fire off a task from mobile and letting Claude handle it on the computer.
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The system is built to avoid screen control when possible, checking for direct app integrations and browser access before resorting to clicking.

Anthropic’s Alex Albert puts it well, saying, “the future where I never have to open my laptop to get work done is becoming real very fast.” While losing OpenClaw to OAI was considered by many to be a miss, the recent flurry of features has shown the building blocks forming to turn Claude into its own remote agent.

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Data Crisis in the US

Mike Bloomberg: In Washington's War on Data, the Economy and Public Will Lose (Bloomberg - Opinion)

We have a saying here at Bloomberg, and it’s one we brought with us to New York City Hall: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” The federal government is now in danger of proving just how much truth those words hold, Mike Bloomberg writes in an op-ed. 

The categories of data collection are endless — inflation, employment, jobs, wages, trade, housing, crime, population, pollution, disease, investment, consumer spending, food production and so many others — because they are invaluable.

Government officials rely on this data as they make decisions about allocating resources to tackle problems, and as they try to determine whether policies and programs are working. If you think government is inefficient and ineffective now, wait until you see it operate without good data, Mike writes. 

Nevertheless, the administration has been undermining the integrity of the country’s statistical system by playing politics with it. When, for example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered a downbeat jobs report last year, the president abruptly fired its commissioner. After introducing deep cuts in food stamps for the poor, officials canceled a survey measuring how many people were going hungry. Data on inflation, education, farm wages, police misconduct and federal employee morale have also suffered or disappeared amid staff and budget reductions.
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The potential harm goes well beyond transparency. Making matters worse, the attack on the integrity of federal data is undermining the private sector’s confidence in it — and that uncertainty can also be a drag on the economy. Otherwise obscure technical changes now inevitably raise questions about political motivation and data reliability.
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There’s another saying that I’ve long lived by in business and government: “In God we trust. Everyone else: Bring data.” But if the federal government makes it so that data can’t be trusted, God help us, Mike writes. 

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We have no shortage of complex and difficult problems in America. Trying to solve them without high-quality, nonpartisan and trustworthy data is sure to make them worse.

Read Mike's full piece here. 

AI Tool of the Week

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Step-by-Step Guide: How to Free Up Space On Your Computer with Claude (RundownAI)

Here's a simple way to use Claude as a storage-cleanup copilot. If you use AI to code, you’re likely eating up a ton of storage space without even knowing it.
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1) Start Claude/Claude Code and prompt: “I need to free up Mac storage, but I don’t want to delete anything important. Ask me about my tools, find storage culprits, and help me investigate before suggesting any cleanup commands.”
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2) Answer the questions and ask Claude to rank the culprits by size and risk. It should give you terminal commands to check the size of the top storage-eaters.

3) Work through each category. Have Claude explain what the files are, why they get large, what is safe to remove, and what should be reviewed manually.
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4) Once identified, prompt: “Start with the lowest-risk cleanup wins first. For each one, explain what would be removed, how much space it might save, and anything I should double-check before deleting it.”

Ask Claude to turn this into a reusable skill file that you can feed into any AI agent. 

What I'm Reading

War Reality Gap: Tehran Denies Claims of Progress in Peace Talks, as Trump Declares War ‘Won’ (Washington Post)

President Trump yesterday said the war in Iran has already been won and regime change achieved as more than three weeks of US and Israeli airstrikes have killed many of Iran’s senior leaders and destroyed much of its military capability.

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“We’re talking to the right leaders, and they want to make a deal so badly,” Trump said of nascent US-Iranian talks that were happening “right now,” he said in the Oval Office.

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Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey have moved to broker a ceasefire amid a new wave of Iranian attacks on Persian Gulf countries and Israel, Iran’s continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz and reports that the US is mobilizing additional ground troops to send to the region.

Deal Doubts: Iran Suspects Trump's Peace Talk Push is Another Trick (Axios)

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Iranian officials have told the countries trying to mediate peace talks with the US that they have now been tricked twice by President Trump and “we don’t want to be fooled again,” according to a source with direct knowledge of those discussions.

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The US is pushing for in-person peace talks as soon as Thursday in Islamabad, Pakistan. But during the two previous rounds of US-Iran talks, Trump green lit crippling surprise attacks while still claiming to be seeking a deal, Axios reports. 

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Iranian officials have told the mediators — Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey — that US military movements and Trump’s decision to deploy major troop reinforcements have increased their suspicion that his proposal for peace talks is just a ruse. 

Economic Shockwaves: War Knocks Global Economy With Dual Shock to Growth, Prices (Bloomberg)

The world economy’s first signs of a synchronized shock emerged in business surveys revealing how the Iran war’s fallout is crippling growth momentum and stoking prices.
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Multiple purchasing manager indexes compiled by S&P Global for March showed declines. Among the releases on Tuesday, composite measures for the US and the euro zone were lower than economists predicted. Australia’s equivalent gauge slumped to indicate a sudden contraction, and Indian factory activity  slowed to the weakest since 2021.
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Every composite index of activity published on Tuesday, combining both manufacturing and services, showed declines. The list in chronological order encompassed Australia, Japan, India, France, Germany, the overall euro zone, the UK and then finally the US.

Stamped Hypocrisy: Trump, Who Calls Mail-in Voting ‘Cheating,’ Just Voted by Mail (New York Times)
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President Trump, who has long railed against mail-in voting — including on Monday, when he called it “mail-in-cheating” — used the method himself in a Florida special election scheduled to take place on Tuesday.
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According to voter records on the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections website, Trump voted by mail in Palm Beach County, home to his Mar-a-Lago Club. Records show he has been registered to vote there since 2019 — and that he mailed his ballot at least one other time, in 2020.

Trump’s most recent vote, reported earlier by The Washington Post, comes as the president torpedoed negotiations to end the partial government shutdown to demand Republican lawmakers pass legislation called the SAVE Act that would stiffen voter identification requirements and make mail-in voting significantly more difficult.

Terminal Gridlock: Snaking Airport TSA Lines Are Angering Flyers From NYC to Houston (Bloomberg)

Mobile Travel Hack: Flighty’s New Update Gives You Real-Time Alerts About Airport and Flight Disturbances (TechCrunch)
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As airport chaos becomes the new norm, popular flight-tracking app Flighty released a new “Airport Intelligence” feature that gives users real-time alerts about airport disruptions with reasons across 14,000 airports around the world.

This release is timely, given that tensions in the Middle East have caused multiple flight delays, cancellations, and airport shutdowns, while the US has been facing a shortage of Transportation Security Administration agents, leading to closed security checkpoints and extra-long lines.

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The startup is releasing the feature as a web dashboard, as well, so all users can track disruptions for free.

Today in Denmark: Danish Premier Seeks to Cling to Power as Tough Talks Await (Bloomberg)

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A Royal First: King Charles to Make First US State Visit, Address Congress Next Month (Politico)
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Britain’s King Charles III will make his first state visit to Washington next month. As part of his visit, the king will address Congress in a joint meeting the week of April 27.

It will be the first time a British royal has addressed Congress since 1991, when Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, became the first British monarch to speak before a packed House chamber.

Hype to Halt: OpenAI Plans to Discontinue Support for Sora AI Video Generator (Bloomberg)

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Big Apple Build: Uber Expands NYC Office Following CEO Move, In-Office Mandate (Bloomberg)

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Uber is expanding its New York offices, now the biggest outside its San Francisco headquarters, a reflection of the city’s growing importance to the company’s operations since Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi moved there in recent years.

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To accommodate its local workforce, which has grown to more than 2,000 employees from 800 before the pandemic, the ride-hailing giant is increasing its footprint in 3 World Trade Center.

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“New York is one of the best places in the world to build and grow a team,” said the spokesperson. “The talent pool is deep, and the pace of opportunity here pushes us to move faster and think bigger.”  

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AI Makeover: Apple Plans AI Reboot With Siri App, New Look and ‘Ask Siri’ Button in iOS 27 (Bloomberg)

Apple is testing a standalone app for its Siri voice assistant alongside a new “Ask Siri” feature that will work across the company’s software, part of a broader artificial intelligence overhaul.
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Apple also is modernizing Siri by giving it a fresh look and chatbot-like experience. The new Siri is slated to be unveiled June 8 at the iPhone maker’s Worldwide Developers Conference as part of the iOS 27 and macOS 27 operating systems.

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After struggling to gain traction with Apple Intelligence, the company has been working to rebuild the AI platform around the new version of Siri. The goal is to transform the technology from a traditional voice assistant into a systemwide AI agent with deep integration across applications.

Best of Late Night

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On President Trump deploying ICE agents to help with long security lines at 14 major US airports:

“Oh no, we are sending in ICE agents to calm the situation. It makes perfect sense. It’s kind of like the way we calm our dogs during thunderstorms with a blanket of fireworks.” 
-- Jon Stewart

“When do you think was the last time he was even on a commercial flight? Or in an airport? 1989?"
-- Jimmy Kimmel

“Somehow, Trump has found a way to make the airport even worse than it was."
-- Jimmy Kimmel

And from The Daily Show: Trump’s eventful weekend of golfing, sightseeing, and ignoring the imploding effects of the war in Iran has Jon Stewart wondering who the president has been claiming to negotiate with overseas, and whether this "top person" even exists. Plus, airport chaos amid a government shutdown has ICE filling in for the TSA as part of Trump's escalating chaos rampage. Click the photo below to watch. 
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