Reading, writing, & AI-rithmetic 📚️

Big Tech goes back to school

This week, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic launched a $23 million initiative with the American Federation of Teachers and the United Federation of Teachers to develop an AI training curriculum for teachers and make AI literacy a national priority in education. 

The breakdown: 

• Over the next five years, the program will train 400,000 K–12 teachers on using AI through a mix of in-person workshops and online modules.

• Worth noting: Some school districts have banned tools like ChatGPT, while others are already using AI for lesson planning, grading, and tutoring.

Breaking down a topsy turvy week for xAI’s Grok

On Wednesday night, xAI released Grok 4 alongside a new $300/month SuperGrok Heavy subscription. It’s now the most expensive AI plan from any major lab. 

What makes this different?

• Multi-agent architecture: According to xAI chief Elon Musk, the upgraded model deploys multiple agents to tackle a problem and synthesize answers “like a study group.” 

• xAI says it outperforms both Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro and OpenAI’s o3 on benchmarks like Humanity’s Last Exam and ARC-AGI-2, scoring up to twice as high with tools enabled.

But…there’s a big but: Even as it tries to get ahead of OpenAI’s upcoming GPT-5 release, Grok is still in choppy waters. Earlier this week, Grok’s official account on X posted a slew of troubling antisemitic content. Why? Fingers are pointing to an update last weekend that instructed Grok to “not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect, as long as they are well substantiated.”

Perplexity launches its own browser

On Wednesday, Perplexity released Comet, an AI-powered, Chromium-based browser that replaces Google search with its own model by default. It's rolling out now to $200/month Max subscribers, with broader access coming this summer.

The details: Comet includes a sidebar “Comet Assistant” that reads your tabs, summarizes emails, scans calendar events, and even handles tasks like booking or shopping. It maintains continuous understanding across pages, streamlining workflows many users currently splinter across multiple apps.

Comet is existential for Perplexity. This is a strategic move to break Google’s hold on search ➡️ 

• Perplexity processed 780 million queries in May (up 20% month-over-month) and sees Comet as the key to "infinite retention." By controlling the browser layer, it bypasses reliance on Chrome or Safari, directly owning both search and navigation. 

• But it faces steep adoption barriers: legacy browser loyalty, privacy concerns around permissions, and stiff competition from rival AI browsers like Dia and upcoming efforts from OpenAI—to name a few.

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