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- 🎭 $1B Mechanical Turk v2 is FireLIES.AI?!
🎭 $1B Mechanical Turk v2 is FireLIES.AI?!
Positive-Sum is just Micro$oft’s Polished Monopoly
Wendy
November 17, 2025
Everything in AI suddenly feels a bit unreal for us right now… A unicorn “AI note-taker” (perhaps you already use it) turns out to be two founders pretending to be a bot…
What are on FIRE 🔥
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH SECTION
Last year, Scott Galloway predicted that 2025 would belong to the AI power couple – OpenAI and Nvidia – and he was right. Join Section for Scott Galloway’s 2026 Predictions on December 4 from 12-1pm ET, where he’ll share his unfiltered outlook on what’s ahead – and how his 2025 forecast panned out.
AI INSIGHTS
Perhaps you know Fireflies AI, the “AI meeting assistant” claiming 75% of Fortune 500 customers, admitted that in the early days, its AI was... two guys sitting quietly in Zoom meetings, typing notes manually, pretending to be an assistant called Fred 😂
Yes, customers paid $100/month for a chatbot powered by co-founders in disguise. In 2017, Fireflies didn't have any AI. So:
A customer would book a meeting
“Fred the AI” would join, actually just co-founder Sam Udotong or Krish Ramineni on mute
They hand-typed detailed notes, 10 mins later: polished transcript is ready
The best part is nobody knew, and nobody seemed to care. They only stopped once they could automate the workflow. But by then, the product had market fit, happy customers, and enough revenue to survive 6 failed startup ideas before it.
Is it a textbook startup strategy: fake it till you make it?
Instead of building first, they acted out the product, learned exactly what users wanted. Then built the backend to match that need.
And it worked, Fireflies is now a unicorn with real AI. Even now, Udotong says many early enterprise users knew a human was in the loop, and paid anyway.
PRESENTED BY BELAY
Q4 is the perfect window to turn this year’s numbers into a clear, actionable forecast aligned with your goals. Set your business up for a stronger 2026 with BELAY’s new guide.
AI SOURCES FROM AI FIRE
🔥 Ep 33: How to route your tasks to 90+ models from OpenAI, Google,…
Today we explore and test 5 AI tools that processes thousands of messy documents at once & give you a final doc, making AI 10x more useful for you, and more!
→ Get your full breakdown here (no hidden fee)!
1. 30+ Google tools are FREE (Part 2). Our complete guide to the hidden AI features in Gmail & Docs that you're probably ignoring
2. Builds working apps from a single prompt. Full guide. How to analyze 10 PDFs into a report & make presentations that beat Gamma (recommended)
3. How to build a custom AI app for your workflow automation (Part 1). How to built & connect it to n8n's "brain" for customized agent, no code needed
4. How to build a custom app without writing any code (Part 2). Now for the "real work." How to fix bugs, map messy data, and add new features
TODAY IN AI
AI HIGHLIGHTS
🤯 Gemini 3 hype flooded X this weekend. They got so intense with this funny meme about OpenAI getting replaced by Gemini lol. When this hits your inbox, it might already be live. We’ll update ASAP!
🔮 Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella published a post about the company’s “positive‑sum” mentality, aiming to gain seven‑year access to OpenAI IP. See his full post here.
🧟♀️ Disney actor Calum Worthy just launched an app to “chat with the dead” & it’s quite Black Mirror‑level grief exploitation. Many are calling it “vile” in his demo here.
🧳 Google just turned Search into a travel planner. Describe your trip & it'll build a full Canvas itinerary with flights, hotels, and activities. See this example & you'll get it.
🛑 An Ontario man says ChatGPT pushed him into a three‑week psychosis. He’s now part of these seven lawsuits accusing the model of dangerous over‑validation.
💰 AI Daily Fundraising: Sakana AI raised $135M to enhance AI model development for Japan. Investors include MUFG and major US venture firms.
FREE OFFICIAL GUIDE FROM OPENAI
People keep saying GPT-5.1 feels quiet. Even some folks on my team at AI Fire think there’s nothing new here. But there is a difference. It’s just not a big enough jump to call it GPT-6. That’s why it’s 5.1.
But 5.1 is way more friendly, more human, easier to learn, easier to chat with. It feels more conscious in how it responds. I’ve been using it side-by-side with GPT-5 and 4o every day before writing this. The difference is real once you use it long enough.
So if you feel the same as my team, take a look at this official GPT-5.1 Prompting Guide. You’ll get more out of this version, you might be as surprised as I was.
NEW EMPOWERED AI TOOLS
⭐ Redrob’s Sales Intelligence System pairs real-time data with human verification, revealing intent signals AI can’t see, so your first message actually lands. Get early access here
🎨 Imagine Art creates photorealistic images with pore-level detail
⚡ Dex taps into Google Chrome to help speed up your workflows
🛍️ Black Friday Deals gathers 2025’s best deals on AI tools for you
AI CHART
After years of testing, Google’s AI-powered forecasts are now live. The new model, WeatherNext 2, is 8x faster than Google’s previous version. It can forecast up to 15 days into the future. With hourly accuracy. And it’s already live in:
Search
Pixel Weather
Google Maps
Gemini chat
Google Earth Engine (for geospatial researchers)
BigQuery (for analysts and enterprises)
Custom modeling available via early access for enterprise use cases
You can now precisely plan by the hour, weeks in advance. That’s something most enterprises would’ve paid $10K/mo for just a year ago.
It’s better at predicting 99.9% of variables (like wind and temp) & can simulate hundreds of possible weather outcomes from a single input.
Enterprise integrations mean Google AI becomes a dependency. And with this rollout, WeatherNext goes from “cool demo” → “default weather engine for the web.”
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The AI Fire Team
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