“Moon-shot” AI projects get headlines, but the silent winners are playing a much smaller game: basic fluency. View this email in your browser

The Weekly AI Briefing

🧑‍🏫 Latest AI thoughts, tools, and news from unburdn

Main Idea

“Moon-shot” AI projects get headlines, but the silent winners are playing a much smaller game: basic fluency. Teach everyday knowledge workers to prompt smarter, brainstorm faster, and spin up light bots, and the data says they ship 5–10 % more every month. Do the napkin math: for an $80K employee who brings in $300K a year, that 5% boost adds roughly $15K in new revenue and gifts back two paid‑for weeks. Roll it across a 10‑person team and you’ve unlocked $150K of capacity without new hires or burnout. Even after a one‑time $20K spend on training/coaching, your payback window is measured in weeks. Let it compound for a year and the edge blows past 60%. Bottom line: Spend a sliver of budget on AI fluency today—or cut a bigger check to your faster competitors every quarter.

Here’s the play:

Start small, scale often. Run prompt workshops before you even think “center of excellence.” Measure shipped work, not shiny demos. Track deliverables per employee per month—watch the curve bend. Reinvest the gains. Use recovered hours to pilot the next lightweight bot, then rinse and repeat. PS: Keep reading for hot-takes on headlines, AI tools, and a personal story + pic

📰 AI News Worth Knowing

🛒 Shopify’s AI Mandate Hits Every Desk – Inside how even non‑technical roles are now AI‑powered at Shopify. Feel “behind” yet? Read Here 🤖 OpenAI Launches Cross‑Platform “Operator” Agents – Early days, but it signals a future where your agent outlives the browser tab. Still hunting for a killer use case... Read Here 💰 Claude Targets Wall Street – For my finance friends! New financial‑analysis mode promises faster research—but it’s no plug‑and‑play silver bullet. (Yes, my team can help implement.) Read Here ⚠️ Grok 4 Ships Minus the Safety Rails – Researchers show it will happily walk bad actors through bioweapon recipes. Self‑policing isn’t working. Read Here 🎭 Grok Adds Gamified Avatars (Some NSFW 🫢) – Cartoons today, full‑blown virtual companions tomorrow. Buckle up. Read Here

🛠️ AI Tools You Need to Try

📊 Shortcut – Another one for my finance friends. Rapid‑fire tool for building and tweaking financial models. Could be the first step toward AI‑assisted FP&A. Check It Out 🗂️ NotebookLM “Featured Notebooks” – Google just handed you a 24/7 PhD on tap. Drop in curated notebooks and interrogate away. Check It Out 🧰 Unburdn.ai – “The Vault.” What it is: Our curated sandbox. Play Here

📢 Take Action

Small, compounding wins beat big, delayed promises—ask any investor or AI leader. Want the 5 % edge locked in before Q4? Hit reply or email nick@unburdn.ai before the calendar evaporates. July is fully booked August has just two Denver‑only dates left (Aug 22 & 25) September’s remaining slots (Sept 1 week, 8, 9, 15, 16, 22, 29, 30) are already going October is 50% claimed and filling fast. Subscribe

From the Field 🪂 5 % or Face‑Plant

What does a 5% edge look like IRL? Last weekend I hurled my 40‑year‑old midlife crisis self behind a wakesurf boat on Pewaukee Lake. After a few swallow‑the‑lake wipeouts, I finally carved a clean line—and my son Vincent nailed the action shot. Tiny tweaks (shift your weight 5%) beat heroic lunges every time. Same goes for AI: master micro‑moves, and you’ll ride a compounding wave while everyone else is still drinking lake water. Thanks for reading. 🙏 Copyright (C) 2025 AI for the Rest of Us LLC dba Unburdn. All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe