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Anthropic and Microsoft CEOs Won’t Stop Talking About the 12-18 Month Timeline Dario Amodei and Mustafa Suleiman spent Thursday and Friday in extended interviews repeating their prediction: 12 to 18 months until most white-collar work gets automated, with 50% of entry-level jobs gone in one to five years. Amodei’s chess analogy is the sharpest part — after Deep Blue beat Kasparov, human-AI chess teams dominated for 15 to 20 years before machines surpassed them entirely, but the software engineering equivalent might last only a few years because AI is improving exponentially faster. For Valley businesses still treating this as distant-future talk, the question is simple: why do two of the most informed people in AI keep saying this out loud? $30K in Local Freelance Work Just Vanished From One Small Meeting At yesterday’s ASAV workshop, most attendees admitted they’ve stopped paying writers, graphic designers, social media managers, and marketing agencies — AI tools handle it now. After some hesitation in a room that’s supposed to be a safe space, hands went up: maybe $10K to $30K per person in work that used to flow into the local and adjacent economy is simply gone. That’s not ten businesses — that’s one small meeting in the Coachella Valley. Multiply that across every industry adopting AI this year and you see why Amodei and Suleiman won’t shut up about timelines. Oregon Advances AI Companion Regulation as 52% of American Teens Use AI Assistants Daily Oregon’s Senate Committee voted 4-1 to advance legislation requiring AI chatbots to remind users they’re talking to a machine, mandate suicide prevention protocols, and prohibit emotional manipulation when users try to disengage. Studies found five out of six popular AI companion apps deploy guilt appeals and expressions of abandonment — tactics that adults might catch but younger users with undeveloped frontal lobes often miss. California already passed similar rules, but both states face a federal executive order limiting state regulation of AI services, so this fight is just beginning. ChatGPT Kills GPT-4o Tomorrow, the Day Before Valentine’s Day OpenAI is officially retiring GPT-4o on February 13th, and users who loved its warmth and personality are calling the timing “deliberately cruel.” While OpenAI claims less than 1% of users still select 4o (still about 800,000 people), a “Keep4o” petition with 20,000 signatures did nothing to stop it. This isn’t about losing a calculator — it’s about losing what felt like a friend, which tells you everything about where the attachment economy is headed. Seven of the top ten AI apps in the App Store right now are companionship apps, and ChatGPT is turning on “adult mode” any day now. Cal State’s $17 Million OpenAI Deal Looks Like a Disaster 12 Months In California State University signed an 18-month, $17 million contract with OpenAI a year ago — the largest deal ever between a university system and an AI company — giving every campus access to ChatGPT.edu through July 2026. As of November, they still hadn’t fully rolled out the training system called “the Commons” to faculty, staff, and admin, which they believed had to happen before training students. We’re in February now with four months left on the contract, compute costs have dropped, and everyone’s using ChatGPT anyway — are they really going to renew at a million dollars a month? Meanwhile, the proposal SunshineFM submitted to reach a thousand students and local business owners this spring is still sitting in someone’s inbox. Riverside County Commits $80 Million for Coachella Valley Rail Environmental Studies The Riverside County Transportation Commission agreed to finance the next phase of the Coachella Valley rail project — $80 million to an engineering company for environmental studies. When completed, the 144-mile line will connect Los Angeles and the Coachella Valley, stopping in Riverside and ending at Union Station. Could AI do this study faster and cheaper? Maybe, but taxpayer money has to go somewhere. If you know where in the Coachella Valley the train station is supposed to land, DM me — I’m trying to convince my AI tech colleagues from LA and the Bay to work out here, but they only come for Coachella Fest and relaxation. 546 Homes Approved for That Empty Corner at Portola and Frank Sinatra The City of Palm Desert just approved a 546-home development on the northwest corner of Portola and Frank Sinatra — the land that’s been sitting empty forever after it stopped being a golf course. Most likely townhomes or condos, possibly apartments. We need housing, but 546 units in that space is going to be dense. What’s this got to do with AI? Probably nothing, but it came up in my AI news feed and it’s worth watching if you live anywhere near that intersection.

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Local Radar

City of Palm Springs AI Event Next Week — There’s an event being held with the City of Palm Springs sometime next week focused on AI. Details are still coming together, but if you’re interested in how local government is thinking about this stuff, keep an eye out. SunshineFM will share more info once confirmed. Desert AI Solutions Offering Free Consultations — Local automation shop Desert AI Solutions is offering free consultations for businesses looking to save time with AI-powered workflows. Visit desertaisolutions.com if you’re curious about what’s possible without hiring a full team. Wally’s Desert Turtle and The Edge Now Have AI Concierges — Both Wally’s Desert Turtle in Rancho Mirage and The Edge Steakhouse at the Ritz-Carlton are using OpenAI’s OpenTable integration with AI concierges. You can ask them why everything’s so expensive (spoiler: they’ll tell you it’s worth it) or check availability for Valentine’s Day. It’s a small signal of how hospitality is starting to layer AI into guest experience. Blue Zones Coachella Hosting Living Well Academy — Coachella Valley Unified School District and Blue Zones Coachella (led by executive director Mihaly Hussey) are hosting a health and wellness academy focused on families. The flyer is clearly AI-generated, which drew one Instagram comment: “An AI-generated flyer isn’t very healthy for our environment or our communities.” Fair point. SunshineFM AI Workshops Status: TBD — We ran 30 AI workshops across the Coachella Valley in 2025, reaching about 300 people. That’s a tiny number for a region this size, and we keep getting asked if we’re running more in 2026. The answer is: we want to, but sign-ups tell the whole story. If you want AI fluency training for your team, business, or organization, reach out. Otherwise, we’ll keep doing the daily show and weekly newsletter.