Image: made using DALL·E (Custom edited by me)
Hey everyone, Ritik here! Welcome back to RSN, where we break down the tech shifts redefining how we live, work, and play. This week we’ve got Apple rearranging its AI command structure, Sam Altman rolling his eye‑scanning Orbs into the US, Microsoft cozying up to Elon Musk’s Grok, and China literally building a supercomputer in space. Buckle up—each story shows a different slice of the fast‑moving, occasionally chaotic AI landscape.
"Cupertino’s AI tug‑of‑war moves robots to the hardware camp."
What’s Happening: Apple is relocating its hush‑hush robotics team from AI chief John Giannandrea’s organization to hardware SVP John Ternus later this month. That team—led by Apple Watch veteran Kevin Lynch—is prototyping everything from a tabletop telepresence robot with a moving display arm to more ambitious roaming assistants reminiscent of Amazon’s Astro. The move follows Apple’s decision in March to pull floundering Siri engineering away from Giannandrea and hand it to Vision Pro mastermind Mike Rockwell.
Why It Matters to You: If you’re an Apple loyalist, this could mean genuinely useful home robots that play nicely with iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro—rather than science‑fair demos that never ship.
Why It Matters to the World: With Tesla, Meta, and Amazon betting big on household robots, Apple’s entry raises the stakes—and could define privacy and UX expectations for AI‑powered machines in our homes.
"Worldcoin morphs into a ‘super‑app’—debit card and handheld Orb included."
What’s Happening: Tools for Humanity, Sam Altman’s identity‑verification startup, will bring its iris‑scanning Orb stations to six US cities starting May 1, add pop‑up scanners in Razer stores, and assemble devices in Texas. The company—now simply branded World—says 12 million people worldwide have already verified their humanity by staring into an Orb, creating blockchain‑secured IDs.
Why It Matters to You: If deepfake scams worry you, a portable way to prove you’re human could protect online accounts, dating profiles, and gig‑work payouts—provided you’re willing to share your iris.
Why It Matters to the World: World’s expansion tests whether people will trade biometrics for digital trust. Success could normalize biometric crypto IDs—or spark fresh backlash over surveillance and data misuse.
"Satya wants every buzzy model on Azure—even if it irks OpenAI."
What’s Happening: Microsoft engineers have been told to prep Azure infrastructure to host xAI’s Grok model, bringing Elon Musk’s irreverent chatbot to developers via Azure AI Foundry. CEO Satya Nadella reportedly pushed the move, eager for Azure to be seen as the neutral home for any high‑profile AI model.
Why It Matters to You: Developers could soon mix Grok’s high‑context humor with OpenAI’s precision or DeepSeek’s bargain pricing, picking the best model for each task from one cloud dashboard.
Why It Matters to the World: Cloud neutrality accelerates AI innovation—but it also concentrates model hosting in a handful of hyperscalers, raising questions about monopoly power in the AI supply chain.
"Cupertino’s voice assistant gets a ground‑up generative overhaul."
What’s Happening: Bloomberg reports Apple is rebuilding Siri atop a large‑language‑model architecture after earlier attempts to bolt generative AI onto the legacy code proved chaotic. Internal delays, scarce GPU budgets, and leadership reluctance left Apple Intelligence features lagging far behind ChatGPT and Gemini.
Why It Matters to You: A smarter Siri could finally match or exceed ChatGPT integration on iPhone—handling multi‑step tasks, nuanced questions, and proactive suggestions without privacy trade‑offs.
Why It Matters to the World: If Apple nails on‑device generative AI, it sets a high bar for privacy‑preserving assistants and pressures rivals to minimize cloud data collection.
"Meet the Star Compute constellation—5 POPS of space‑borne processing power."
What’s Happening: Chinese startup ADA Space has lofted 12 satellites—the first nodes of a planned 2,800‑satellite “Three‑Body Computing Constellation” envisioned as an orbital AI supercomputer. Each satellite carries an eight‑billion‑parameter model capable of 744 TOPS, interconnected by 100 Gbps laser links and sharing 30 TB of storage.
Why It Matters to You: Space‑based AI could mean faster disaster response imagery, more detailed climate models, and new consumer apps powered by real‑time satellite inference.
Why It Matters to the World: An orbital supercomputer shifts geopolitical tech competition literally above the atmosphere, raising fresh governance challenges over weaponization, debris management, and data sovereignty.
From tabletop Apple robots and portable iris scanners to constellation‑scale supercomputers, AI hardware is moving far beyond datacenter racks. Each story this week underscores a race to anchor intelligence in objects—phones, homes, orbit, even our wallets. But embedding AI everywhere also embeds new fault lines: privacy versus verification, proprietary clouds versus open models, orbital growth versus orbital junk. As we charge ahead, the real measure of progress won’t just be teraflops or user counts—it will be how wisely we balance power with responsibility. Stay curious, stay critical, and I’ll see you in the next edition.
— Ritik Sharma Founder, RSN (Ritik Sharma Newsletter)