What I Read This Week…

The U.S. Senate confirms RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, Chinese tech companies are integrating DeepSeek’s models into their products, and a new test detects Alzheimer's disease before symptoms appear

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Read our Deep Dive: The Current State of AI and Follow-Up Conversation with Sina Sojoodi

Caught My Eye…

• This week, the U.S. Senate confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services and Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. As Health and Human Services Secretary, Kennedy will oversee federal health programs including Medicare and Medicaid, along with agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Institutes of Health. Kennedy has pledged to combat processed foods and chemical additives in the food supply, reduce environmental toxins, and enhance safety reviews for medical products. As Director of National Intelligence, Gabbard will lead 18 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. She has pledged to restore Americans’ trust in the intelligence agencies, end the politicization and weaponization of the intelligence community, and protect constitutional rights while preserving national security tools.

• Chinese technology companies are in the process of integrating DeepSeek's AI models into their products. Tencent's Weixin is currently testing DeepSeek’s models to determine whether they will improve AI search on its social media platform. Tencent is also integrating DeepSeek’s models with Tencent Cloud AI Code Assistant and Tencent Yuanbao, an AI assistant application. Baidu, China's largest search engine, is integrating DeepSeek into its search engine alongside Baidu’s proprietary language model, Ernie. Other Chinese companies, such as automaker Great Wall Motor and Chinese telecom providers, are also incorporating DeepSeek into their products. AI competition between the U.S. and China will not only be about how quickly China catches up to the U.S. in developing foundational models but also about how rapidly the broader technology ecosystem in each country can integrate and deploy the latest AI innovations. Since breakthroughs can dramatically reshape the landscape and trigger paradigm shifts throughout the entire technology ecosystem, the speed and adaptability with which U.S. and Chinese companies orient themselves around these advancements will be a crucial factor in this competition.

• A new study in Nature Medicine has identified changes in the brain that could help detect Alzheimer's disease up to a decade before symptoms appear. Researchers found two specific sites on the tau protein, a molecule located primarily in the brain and central nervous system. These sites show distinct chemical modifications while the tau proteins are still in their soluble form, before they ultimately aggregate into harmful clumps that damage brain cells. Using specialized techniques that measure how proteins cluster together and detailed protein analysis methods, researchers discovered that these early chemical modifications are unique to Alzheimer's and do not occur similarly in other brain diseases. Using this finding, they also developed an experimental test that measures these modified tau proteins in cerebrospinal fluid. This test may offer a way to detect Alzheimer's pathology before neurodegeneration occurs, when treatments may be more effective. The test is still in clinical trials.
  
  

Other Reading…

• Consumer Price Index - January 2025 (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

• President Trump Picks Brian Quintenz to Be CFTC Chairman (WSJ)

• OpenAI in the Process of ‘Uncensoring' ChatGPT (TechCrunch)

• Guardian Signs Licensing Deal with OpenAI (PressGazette)

• Google Scraps Diversity-Based Hiring Targets (Yahoo Finance)

• Broadcom Weighs Possible Intel Deal (Wall Street Journal)

• Interview with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi About Aggregation and Autonomy (Stratechery)

• Match Uses AI to Nudge Men into Better Behaviour on Dating Apps (Financial Times)

• Ozempic Could Crush the Junk Food Industry, But It Is Fighting Back (NYTimes)

• Leaving Delaware (Elad Gil)

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