Artificial Sweetener: Your Morning Dose of Real Life AI

Good morning. Abe here. I read the AI noise so you do not have to. Here is what actually matters for work, family life, and the systems you run.

1. OpenAI lines up GPT 5 for August

Reports point to a launch in August, and Sam Altman says the jump is in practical reasoning. Think language plus o3 style logic in one model, so less model switching. OpenAI is also said to be preparing its first open weight model since 2019 after a short delay.

Abe’s take: Plan for a reasoning upgrade, not a party trick. Set up a controlled pilot on day one. Track booked meeting rate, time to first reply, and error rate. Keep a rollback ready for the first week in case conversion dips. If you are counting on the open weight release for cost or control, keep a plan B because timing can move.

Try this: Build a small evaluation harness that mirrors your funnel tasks. One for quoting. One for support. One for research and drafting. Ship only when the harness clears.

2. AI designs cancer targeting proteins in weeks

Researchers in Denmark used a three model system with AlphaFold2 to design tiny proteins that guide T cells to cancer markers. Designs are screened virtually for safety before lab work, which compresses cycles from years to weeks.

Abe’s take: The medical part is huge, but the lesson for the rest of us is speed. When discovery cycles shrink, your testing cycles should too.

Try this: Move your creative and offer tests to a two week loop. Idea on Monday. Ship by Friday. Measure the next week. Kill what does not move the number.

3. Turn Perplexity Comet into a real assistant

Hook Comet to Calendar and Email. Ask for a weekly view, have it reschedule with a draft note, and use the meeting research feature to pull news and prep three sharp questions for each company on your calendar.

Abe’s take: The value is not the summary. It is the pre meeting brief plus suggested questions. That feels like an extra teammate.

Try this: Before every partner or prospect call, run a brief, paste it into your doc, and add three asks tied to next steps. Parents can use it the same way for school and travel planning.

4. Guardrails now affect conversion, not only safety

Fiddler’s new benchmark compares latency, cost, and accuracy for jailbreak resistance, toxicity control, and faithfulness across major providers.

Abe’s take: Treat guardrails like landing page QA. Cleaner answers mean fewer human reviews and faster replies, which lifts conversion in support and sales handoff.

Try this: Use different policies by stage. Strict for public chat. Lighter for sales assisted flows. Measure average handle time, escalation rate, and customer frustration flags.

5. How workers actually use AI today

A study of two hundred thousand Copilot chats shows people lean on AI for gathering info, writing, teaching, and advising. Highest exposure sits in computer science, office support, sales, and media. Hands on roles see much less impact.

Abe’s take: Start enablement where the tasks already fit AI. That is SDRs and content ops for most teams. Give them clear rules on when to trust and when to escalate.

Try this: Pick three tasks to delegate this week. Draft emails. First pass research. Meeting notes with action items.

Partner plug: SambaNova

If you need open models with fast inference, SambaNova’s cloud runs leading options like Llama and DeepSeek on SN40L and is available through AWS Marketplace.

When it helps: Spiky traffic on quote widgets or chat. Need lower latency without a rebuild. Procurement prefers AWS channels.

First step: A B test your current agent against an open model on SambaNova during a live campaign. Track response time and abandonment.

Tools to use this week

• Perplexity Comet: auto briefs for each meeting plus three custom questions

• Fiddler Guardrails Benchmarks: pick policies by funnel stage and measure reply time and escalation

• SambaNova Cloud on AWS: test an open model behind your site and watch latency and drop off

• Your own harness: task level checks for quoting, support, and research

Want to stay ahead of AI — not the hype, just the real tech quietly changing how we live, work, and parent? Join our free AI Advantage community here: The AI Advantage Community — Thanks for reading, Abe.