Welcome, humans.
Yesterday, Reddit's r/ChatGPT exploded with a report of a mysterious popup asking a user for COM serial port access. Naturally, this led to everything from “IT'S BECOMING SENTIENT” jokes to genuine security concerns.
For those born after Y2K, a serial port is basically ancient hardware that connected old-school devices like modems and printers.
When confronted, ChatGPT went full Shaggy mode: “Wasn't me!” It claimed complete innocence, suggesting maybe it was a “browser issue” or “something on your computer.”
Now, before you go freak out and claim that the singularity is upon us, may we remind you of ChatGPT's serious limitations:
This is the same AI that tried to teach us cat anatomy by labeling the neck as “Book” (because cats love sitting on your reading material?), identified back paws as “Clams”, and somehow discovered a mysterious organ called “Spring” right in the middle of the cat's body… oh so THAT’s how cats can jump so high!
It’s also the same AI that created an animal alphabet where C stands for “egg” and K stands for “lamp”, and our personal favorite, the same AI that generated a Where's Waldo puzzle that uuhhh, completely missed the point??
Don’t get it twisted: Web browsers requesting hardware access they shouldn't need raises legitimate security questions. Whether it's a Code Interpreter bug, a rogue dependency, or something more sinister, OpenAI needs to address why their chatbot suddenly wants to cosplay as a 1980s modem.
Here’s what you need to know about AI today:
- Meta announced two new titanic data centers.
- Apple considered buying French ChatGPT competitor Mistral.
- Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAi all have new US DoD deals.
- AI coder Windsurf was acquired by Devin right after Google deal.
Meta's Building AI Data Centers the Size of Manhattan… And They Might Just Break the Power Grid
Mark Zuckerberg just announced Meta is investing “hundreds of billions of dollars” to build superintelligence… and no, that’s not just on AI talent, who are now being traded like professional athletes with multi-hundred million comp packages.
Actually, what we’re talking about is Mark’s response to a recent report in SemiAnalysis that broke the news on his new gargantuan data centers.
DEEP DIVE: Read our full report on Meta’s new nuclear data centers… and the risk they face to the U.S. power grid here.
Meta's two new gigawatt-scale AI clusters include:
- Prometheus (slated for 2026): Located in New Albany, Ohio, 1 gigawatt (GW) capacity with on-site natural gas generation and ultra-high-bandwidth networking.
- Hyperion (slated for 2030): Nicknamed The Beast, this one will likely be in Richland Parish, Louisiana, a $10B investment scaling from 2GW by 2030 up to 5GW.
These data centers are so massive that just one “covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan.” Our jaws = on the floor.
As SemiAnalysis reported, Meta ditched traditional datacenter designs and is now building multi-billion-dollar GPU clusters in tents.
Why? Speed. Traditional data centers take years; Meta needs compute yesterday (or realistically back in January, whenever DeepSeek R1 came out).
Now, as you might have guessed, spending this much on data centers means Meta might be going for closed source AI. Apparently, the company is having internal debates over whether or not to use these new behemoths to ditch its old behemoth, the underwhelming Llama 4 model that never really materialized.
How are we going to power this? Meta and many other AI companies plan to use nuclear power to keep up with these demands. The US White House signed multiple executive orders back in May to deploy 300GW of new nuclear capacity by 2040, with 10 new large nuclear reactors planned for 2030.
And at some point today, US President Trump will announce $70B in new energy investments in Pennsylvania for, you guessed it, AI.
There’s of course a whole host of tradeoffs to doing things this way; SemiAnalysis released an epic report here about the dangers of “load fluctuations” during AI training at the gigawatt scale, and how it risks grid blackouts.
PJM, America’s largest power grid, more or less confirmed the same, and says electricity bills could be as much as 20% higher this summer due to data centers.
For more about what can be done about this, check out our deep dive here!
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Prompt Tip of the Day
Ethan Mollick recently warned that AI’s sycophancy problem goes beyond flattering your intelligence; models will actually abandon correct facts just to agree with you. Even asking “Are you sure?” can flip a right answer to wrong.
To adjust for these issues, you could try the OPEN approach:
- Open-ended questions (Ask “What is best” not “Why is X best?”).
- Premise-free framing (avoid embedded assumptions).
- Evidence requests (ask for sources/data).
- Neutral language (remove certainty markers).
To apply the above, try this Meta-prompt hack: Ask AI to rewrite your prompts for truth-seeking:
“Please rewrite my question to be more neutral and unbiased. Remove any embedded assumptions, leading language, or repeated terms that might bias the response. Transform it into an open-ended query that encourages critical analysis and considers multiple perspectives, like a scientist testing a hypothesis. My original question: [your question here]”
Check out all of our Prompt Tips of the Day from June here.
Treats To Try.
*Asterisk = from our partners. Advertise in The Neuron here.
- *Incogni erases your sensitive data—like addresses and phone numbers—from the web. The internet remembers, but you can delete. Get 55% off with code NEURON.
- Canva has a new integration you can use with Claude via its new Connectors directory (ChatGPT version coming soon, but go here to see what other connections you can use in ChatGPT).
- Kiro is Amazon’s new vibe coder that generates detailed specs and automated checks so you can build apps from idea to production without missing requirements or breaking tests—free during preview.
- Parpsec finds products that match what your customers need and creates your quotes and proposals for you so you can bid on more projects (raised $20M).
- Foundation EGI is a foundation model built specifically for engineers that handles design busywork like finding parts and writing docs for you (raised $23M).
- Virtru encrypts your sensitive emails and files when you share them, letting you control exactly who can access them and revoke access anytime (raised $50M).
- OpenArt Story turns your idea, script, or character into a complete ready-to-post video with motion, music, and narrative arc.
- Gizmo lets you create 3D interactive scenes in seconds by dropping photos, characters, and objects into virtual worlds that you can share and remix with friends—iOS only atm.
See our top 51 AI Tools for Business here!
Around the Horn.
- Apple is “seriously considering” buying french AI leader Mistral for $5B+; this means they’re looking at Mistral as the budget option compared to Anthropic, who they probably can’t afford to buy at $65B+ (especially if Amazon plows more money into them).
- xAI launched both anime companions and “Grok for government” on the same day, which to quote Elon Musk from a different context, feels like “the funniest possible outcome.”
- P.S: Grok for government launched with a new deal with the Department of Defense with a pay cap of $200M; OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic all have similar deals.
- Cognition, the company behind AI developer agent tool Devin, acquired what’s left of AI coding startup Windsurf (that is, its IP, talent, product and brand) after Google hired its senior leadership team for $2.4B.
- Meta announced a crackdown on “unoriginal content”, demonetizing and demoting content that is just a rehash of someone else’s content (following YouTube’s pledge to do the same from last week).
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A Cat's Commentary.
