NEWS YOU CAN’T MISS

When AI Reviews AI

Perplexity just launched Model Council, a feature that runs your query across multiple AI assistants, specifically Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, simultaneously, then has a "chair" model (currently Claude Opus 4.6) review all three answers, flag disagreements, and synthesize a single response.

Think of it as a panel of experts who check each other's work before giving you an answer. The company says different models outperform each other on different questions - so relying on just one means you don't know what you don't know.

It's available now as part of the Perplexity Max subscription ($200/month), with a Pro-tier rollout expected soon.

Ayesha's Take: This is a quiet but significant shift. We've moved from "which AI is best?" to "how do we make AI collectively more reliable?" Model Council is essentially peer review for machines  and it points toward a future where the most trustworthy AI systems aren't single models, but orchestrated ensembles. The era of the solo-genius AI is giving way to the committee … as it should be.

Source: Perplexity Blog · Analytics Insight

One AI Tax Tool Wiped $30 Billion in a Day

Startup Altruist unveiled "Hazel," an AI tool that generates personalized tax strategies for financial advisors in minutes. 

Within hours, Raymond James dropped 8.8%, Charles Schwab sank 7.4%, and LPL Financial fell 8.3%. The selloff spread to Europe the next day: St. James's Place tumbled 13%. Wall Street's new pattern: the moment an AI tool targets your industry, your stock crashes first and asks questions later.

In plain English: A startup showed off an AI that can do in minutes what wealth managers charge thousands for. Investors panicked and sold off shares in the biggest financial advisory firms, wiping out $30 billion in a single day - before anyone even used the product.

Ayesha's Take: This is the most vivid example yet of AI's "announcement effect": markets don't wait for disruption to happen - they price it in the moment it becomes plausible. The tool may or may not replace financial advisors. But the stock market has already decided it could. Every industry should be watching: it's not the AI that disrupts you, it's the demo.

Source: Bloomberg · CNBC

Meet Chip Huyen - From Rice Fields in Vietnam to AI Bestselling Author

Chip Huyen grew up chasing grasshoppers in a rice-farming village in Vietnam. She didn't speak English. She had no connections. Stanford was a fantasy.

She applied anyway. Got rejected.

So she bought a backpack and traveled to 25 countries on $700. She wrote about the people she met to fund the trip - and those stories became bestselling books in Vietnamese. Three years, three continents, two published books, and one improved English accent later, she applied to Stanford again. This time, she got in.

At Stanford, she taught machine learning courses - terrified the whole time that no one would understand her accent. Those lectures became the foundation for Designing Machine Learning Systems, now an Amazon #1 bestseller translated into 10+ languages. Her follow-up, AI Engineering, has been the most-read book on O'Reilly's platform since launch - the industry standard for how to actually build AI products in the real world.

In between, she was a core developer at NVIDIA (building their GenAI framework NeMo), worked on ML tooling at Netflix and Snorkel AI, co-founded Claypot AI (a real-time ML platform), and founded and sold another AI infrastructure startup.

She's also writing a novel. Entanglements That Never End is scheduled for release later this year.

Her advice to young people: "When you do what everyone else is doing, you'll have to compete with everyone. When you do your own things, you'll only have to become better than your past self."

AI Around the World

🇳🇱 Amsterdam Bans Fossil Fuel and Meat Ads - Amsterdam became the first capital city in the world to legally ban advertising for fossil fuels and meat products in public spaces. Starting May 1, ads for flights, petrol cars, and meat will disappear from billboards, bus shelters, and metro stations. Fines range from €20,000 to €100,000. Outdoor advertising giant JCDecaux warned of "far-reaching consequences" hours before the vote. The council voted 27-17 to pass it anyway. Source: Euronews · Planetizen

🇯🇵 Japan: AI Deepfakes Flooding the Election - AI can now generate a convincing fake political video from a single photo in four hours, and Japan has seen a 243% spike in deepfake incidents. Bizarre fakes include candidates campaigning in tank tops in freezing weather and grandmas ranting in public - all fabricated. Workshops are now teaching Japanese teens how to spot them. Source: News On Japan

🇰🇪 Kenya: $10 Billion AI Plan to Create 45 Million African Jobs - The Nairobi AI Forum (Feb 9-10) brought 500+ participants from Africa, Europe, and the G7 to launch the "AI 10 Billion Initiative" - aiming to mobilize massive investment and create 45 million jobs across the continent by 2035. 130 African AI startups got compute access on the spot, and a Kenya-NASA-Microsoft satellite collaboration will use AI for food security. Source: Africa Science News