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Anthropic Hits 19.5% Business Adoption as OpenAI Slips Below 36% Anthropic’s business adoption rate jumped from 16.7% to 19.5% in a single month — one of the largest gains since tracking began — while OpenAI dipped from 36.8% to 35.9%. The driver: Claude Cowork, which autonomously handles spreadsheets, file organization, and report drafting with minimal human oversight. For Valley businesses still treating AI as a “nice to have,” this is your wake-up call: 46.8% of U.S. businesses now use AI daily, and the gap between early adopters and laggards is widening fast. Local Performer Replaces $5,000 Freelance Writer With ChatGPT — And Gets Better Results At a Palm Desert event this week, a live performance producer revealed he ditched a local freelance writer (who also writes for Palm Springs Life) after ChatGPT delivered better article ideas and execution for his quarterly magazine. He still gets compliments on the AI-written pieces. The writer is down $5,000 this year. If half the room is making similar moves, what happens to the Valley’s freelance marketing, PR, and writing economy? No judgment — just math. Microsoft Warns 80% of Fortune 500 Companies Face Shadow AI Security Risks Only 47% of companies have implemented security measures for generative AI, according to a Microsoft survey of 1,700 security professionals. The gap: employees are already using ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude on personal devices and home laptops to complete work — uploading proprietary documents, client records, and financials without IT oversight. For Valley hospitality companies, real estate firms, and healthcare providers, this isn’t a future problem. It’s happening now, on your team’s phones, outside your firewall. Waymo to Double Weekly Rides to 1 Million, Expand to 20+ Cities Including London and Tokyo Waymo’s sixth-generation autonomous vehicles will ship from the U.S. this year, outfitted with 13 cameras, four LiDAR units, and six radars — fewer sensors than the previous generation but greater capability. The company just raised $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation (double last year’s number) and secured a $2.5 billion deal with Hyundai for 50,000 Ioniq 5 EVs by 2028. This isn’t just about robotaxis — it’s a signal that AI is moving from chat interfaces into physical infrastructure, and the Valley’s transportation, logistics, and hospitality sectors should be watching closely. Talkiatree Raises $210M to Scale AI-Assisted Telepsychiatry With 600 Full-Time Psychiatrists Talkiatree (yes, terrible name) just closed a $210 million Series D to expand its hybrid model: AI handles intake, triage, and continuity tracking while 600 W-2 employed psychiatrists deliver care. The company surpassed 2 million patient visits last year and is in-network with 60+ health plans. For the Coachella Valley, where mental health access is limited and the senior population is growing, this model — AI augmentation, not replacement — is worth studying. It’s also a preview of how healthcare jobs will evolve, not disappear. Google DeepMind CEO Predicts AI Will Solve Major Diseases and Energy Crisis Within 10 to 15 Years Nobel Prize-winning CEO Demis Hassabis says AI will usher in a “golden era of discovery” by 2036 to 2040, curing major diseases and potentially enabling humanity to venture beyond Earth. The techno-optimist vision is compelling — but it glosses over the “messy middle” between now and then. What do humans do for work, income, and purpose during the 5 to 10 years of chaos while AI figures out the big problems? That’s the question Valley leaders, educators, and workforce developers need to answer now, not in 2036. Wisdom Raises Pre-Seed Funding to Help Seniors Age in Place Using AI Sensors, No Cameras Wisdom, a Pittsburgh-based startup, is developing an AI-powered home monitoring system that uses ambient sensors and edge computing to detect falls and activity changes — without cameras or wearables. The system processes data locally and alerts caregivers when something appears wrong. California will need 3 million caregivers by 2030, and there are already 1.8 million job vacancies nationwide. For the Coachella Valley, with its large aging population and healthcare-dependent economy, this is a massive opportunity: if Wisdom can validate its model here, the Valley could become a testbed for AI-assisted aging infrastructure.

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Local Radar

AICV Boot Camps on Claude Cowork — Sat Singh’s fiscally sponsored nonprofit is running hands-on workshops on Claude Cowork and AI implementation for local businesses. If you’re a mid-size company (200+ employees) or hospitality operator, this is worth attending before your competitors do. DM Sunshine FM for details. Shadow AI Audit Challenge — Ask your team this week: Are you using AI for work? What tools? Are you uploading company data? Create a safe, non-judgmental space for the conversation. If you don’t know what’s happening on your employees’ personal devices, you don’t control your own security perimeter. Caregiver Shortage Hits 1.8 Million Vacancies Nationwide — With 10,000 Americans turning 65 daily and California needing 3 million caregivers by 2030, the Valley’s senior living and healthcare sectors should be piloting AI-assisted care models now. Wisdom’s sensor-based approach is one path. What’s yours? Local Freelancers and Marketing Agencies: Time to Pivot — If a live performance producer in Palm Desert can replace a $5,000 writer with ChatGPT and get better results, your clients are having the same conversation. The question isn’t whether AI will impact your business — it’s whether you’re positioning yourself as the expert who uses AI better than anyone else, or the one who gets replaced by it. Sunshine FM Records Has Four AI Artists — All original music, all AI-generated, all demo-ready. You can’t hear these tracks anywhere else. If you’re curious about what co-creation with AI actually sounds like, tune in. It’s an experiment in public, and it’s getting better every week.