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- 🤯 Jensen Huang Left Off TIME100 AI
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Plus: This OpenRouter Trick Literally Lets Anyone Run Claude Code for Free or Nearly Free (Full Guide)
TIME just named Paris Hilton and Bernie Sanders among AI’s most influential people in 2026 AI100 list, but somehow left out Jensen Huang. Yeah, NVIDIA’s CEO. Why?
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AI INSIGHTS
TIME’s 2026 TIME100 AI list is getting pushback because several obvious AI heavyweights are missing, while names like Paris Hilton, Bernie Sanders, Ben Affleck, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt made the cut.
The 100 people are split across Leaders, Innovators, Shapers, and Thinkers.
Major names included: Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Mira Murati, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Fei-Fei Li, Jeff Bezos, and Larry Ellison.
High-profile omissions include NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Mark Zuckerberg, and Demis Hassabis. Huang appeared on TIME100 AI in 2023, 2024, and 2025 though?
Paris Hilton was recognized largely for her work around deepfake and non-consensual AI imagery legislation, while Bernie Sanders was included for his growing role in the political debate around AI risks and superintelligence. Sanders told TIME that development of superintelligence should be stopped.
TIME says the list is meant to represent the people driving the year’s biggest AI storylines, rather than ranking the 100 technically most important people in the industry.
That distinction explains some of the unusual choices, but the Jensen omission still attracted criticism because NVIDIA remains the infrastructure backbone behind much of the current AI boom. NVIDIA itself was also named one of TIME’s most influential companies of 2026.
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AI SOURCES FROM AI FIRE
1. I Built a Reusable Website Builder Using Claude Code. It Blew My Mind (Steal This). Honestly, this skill can become a powerful website-building system. It even stores your design rules, coding process, so Claude can handle future projects faster.
2. The New Way to Make Money with AI: Selling Custom Claude Workflows Without Any Agency. Don't rush to build AI agencies, this is your new opportunity. You’ll see the idea behind this model and how creators are turning workflows into income, I mean real money!
3. Free Video: 7 Proven Ways to Make Money With AI Avatars. AI avatars are getting attention everywhere, BUT can you actually make money with one? I’ll break down the most practical paths for beginners, with real examples, estimated success rates, and how long it could take to earn your first $100.
NEARLY FREE CLAUDE CODE!?
I bet you've seen Claude Code everywhere. It's powerful. It's great. But the credits run out... fast. 😅
So when I saw people running Claude Code with completely free models, I had to try it. FYI, I'm using another model through OpenRouter, but still inside the Claude Code harness.
At first, one of the most popular options was Stealth Ox Alpha. But that's changed. It was revealed to be GLM-5.3-Flash, and the hosted route is no longer free.
But luckily, the model itself is open, and there are still other free routes you can use right now. So in this guide, I'll show you:
How to run free or nearly free models inside Claude Code
Which free models you can use now
And most importantly... whether this actually works?
Because running a free model inside Claude Code sounds absolutely great!
TODAY IN AI
AI HIGHLIGHTS
🦞 After nearly 2 months of work and 16,000+ pull requests, OpenClaw 2.0 is finally live! Setup is much easier now if you already use ChatGPT or Claude. Check it out.
😅 Claude limits will be permanently increased by 25% starting from Sept. 14. But today’s temporary 50% boost ends then. So, your available usage will drop about 17%.
🛠 Modiqo opened registration for Rote Playoffs, a free online hackathon running Sept. 1-6. Rote lets AI agents save successful task steps. Take your chances.
🔍 So far, researchers still can’t fully explain why LLMs produce certain answers. This new tool now lets them inspect what’s happening inside the model’s “black box.”
📝 I keep seeing Dan Koe’s polymath argument everywhere & it’s getting harder to ignore. His viral essay explains the mindset needed to win in this digital renaissance.
⚡ Google researchers introduced SKILL.state, helping agents keep structured state instead of replaying full history. Long workflows could get dramatically cheaper.
🚨 Wild. Hackers reportedly got an AI coding agent to help breach companies simply by insisting, “this is just a test.” Just don’t underestimate prompt-based jailbreaks.
💰 Big AI Fundraising: Lambda raised $1B in short-term debt to buy Nvidia AI chips for Microsoft. It also secured $926M this week, as global AI-related debt tops $400B in 2026.
NEW EMPOWERED AI TOOLS
🎬 Topview Motion Studio turns your brief into polished product launch videos without After Effects, motion designers, or hours of editing.
🎯 Hyperfocus turns big goals into focused daily plans, helping you prioritize what matters, and make consistent progress.
🌐 Olostep helps AI teams search, scrape, crawl, and structure web data at scale with a fast, reliable API built for automation.
🎥 Prequel turns Mac screen recordings into cinematic videos with smart zooms, camera frames, backgrounds, and exports up to 4K.
AI BREAKTHROUGH
UK surgeons completed the world’s first live AI-assisted brain surgery, using an AI system from UCL to watch the operation in real time and highlight critical structures the surgeon should avoid. Main details:
Patient Rhys Hibbert had an 11mm pituitary tumour threatening his vision.
Surgeons removed it through the nose while AI analyzed the live camera feed.
The system highlighted nearby blood vessels and nerves controlling vision.
It was trained on hundreds of annotated videos from previous pituitary surgeries.
Hibbert’s vision improved dramatically after surgery, and within a week he could walk independently without glasses or sticks.
The team is now testing the system in a wider clinical trial.
The AI does not control the surgical instruments. It acts as a real-time second set of eyes while the human surgeon remains in control.
Key takeaway: AI is starting to move from analyzing medical scans before surgery to actively supporting surgeons while an operation is happening.
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