THINGS GOT WEIRD by Johan Ronnestam. Week 45

Things Got Weird is a weekly newsletter that helps you stay ahead of the future. Weird news. Real consequences. Every Monday.

Me? Golf season is winding down. Next stop, surf in Indonesia. Outdoor surfpaddle to get ready.

The Future? Same thing. One season ending, another starting. And what a week to change seasons. It stopped arriving as a white paper. This week it turned up as objects, places and prices. Things you can actually point a camera at.

Let’s get weird.

1. Google Genie. One sentence. One world.

Pure magic. Kids will grow up thinking this is normal.

Type a sentence. A rainy harbour at night, say. Genie 4 builds it around you, live. Walk around. Hear the rain. Type again and the world changes while you stand in it.

For now? A waitlist.

No camera. No crew. No render farm.

When anyone can build a place by typing, making stuff stops being the hard part. Knowing what’s worth making becomes the job.

Same week, Google also launched Gemini 4 Carbon, its strongest AI yet. Also closed. Only cyber defenders get in.

Google’s best this week? Look, don’t touch.

Best week ever? On closed innovation, yes. On results, no. The share fell nearly 13 per cent in a day. Worst day since going public in 2004.

Early? Very. Ignorable? Not for a second.

2. Amazon Echo Time. The clock that hears you breathe.

Creepy or genius? I keep landing on genius.

Echo Time has no camera. It listens to your breathing with ultrasound, waits until you’re in light sleep, and wakes you then. Somewhere within an hour of your alarm. 199 dollars.

No wristband. No watch. Just a clock that knows how you sleep.

I’ve said it on stage: the next step for AI is proactivity. AI that acts before you ask. Here it is, on a bedside table. Your alarm no longer waits for the time you set. It decides. That’s how AI really changes technology. Not new gadgets. The old ones start thinking.

Creepy? A little. Clever? Very.

3. Apple. Touch on the Mac. Finally.

Did not see this one coming.

But yes. I want one!

The new MacBook Pro has a touchscreen. A first for the Mac. From 2,899 dollars. Same week: a cheaper MacBook Pro on the new M6 chip, a new iMac in seven colours and an iPad mini with an OLED screen.

Newest chip in the cheapest laptop. Touch in the dearest.

Steve once argued that touch on a laptop was wrong. Apple repeated it for years. Now they just shipped it. No apology. No speech. That’s how a strong brand changes its mind.

One catch. Siri AI learned five new languages. Swedish isn’t one of them. And on iPhone it still doesn’t work in the EU.

Late? Very. Right? Obviously.

4. Canva Brush. Change one word. Not the whole design.

Here’s one for everyone who makes a slide, a poster or a post. So, everyone.

Ask AI for a small change and you often get a whole new design. Canva’s new Brush doesn’t do that. Fix one headline, and one headline gets fixed. 69 per cent faster, says Canva. Pro only, for now.

One word. Not a redesign.

This is what the future looks like up close. Not robots. A sales rep making a deck that looks like an agency did it. A shop owner making a poster in five minutes. Skills that took years, now in the tool.

And that’s the thought worth keeping. AI can do this now. It doesn’t have to do all of it. Plenty of people love the making. What you hand over and what you keep? That’s about to be our choice. A good one to make on purpose.

Can AI do it? Yes. Should it do all of it? Your call now.

PS. If you think making AI images is just a short prompt. Think again. It’s more like handling clay. You’ve gotta work it, and work it, and work it. Below are just a few of the iterations it took to make the image above happen.

5. A lorry with no driver. Full of IKEA.

Of course the first load is flat pack.

A month ago, Kodiak said it would soon run IKEA freight between Dallas and Houston with nobody in the cab. Four years of practice. 1,300 loads. Always someone in the seat, just in case. This week they put a number on how close they are: 99 per cent ready, and ahead of schedule. Before the year is out, that seat goes empty.

Empty seat. Full truck. Swedish furniture.

Now look at the mirrors. They aren’t mirrors. They’re pods packed with laser, radar and cameras, seeing 360 degrees. And here’s the clever bit. A pod breaks, you swap it. Faster than changing a tyre. No specialist needed.

That’s the real innovation. Not a truck that drives itself. A driver you can unclip at a truck stop.

We talk about AI as something on a screen. This is AI with wheels. And 75 more lorries just got signed by a haulier that doesn’t buy a single robot. It pays per mile for a driver made of software. Switch it on. Pay as you go.

Scary? For some. Inevitable? Yes.

BONUS. Elon’s Terafab. Next stop, the Moon.

Not a week 45 thing. But boy is Elon thinking ahead.

I spent a little time reading through terafab.ai. One factory, ten times the Texas Gigafactory. A billion Optimus robots to run it. Ten million tons to orbit. Every year. Because, they say, space is the only place big enough for the AI we’re about to want.

Then the last chapter. The next step: lunar mass drivers. An electromagnetic catapult on the Moon. No rockets. Watch the film and all you can think is SHIT. This is completely bananas.

He isn’t building a company. He’s climbing the Kardashev scale. Planet. Star. Galaxy.

Bananas? Completely. Impossible? He’s heard that before.

POD TIP OF THE WEEK

Lex Fridman 503. Three mathematicians on what they call an incredible moment in the history of mathematics: AI cracking some of its hardest problems. Nearly four hours. Perfect for a long drive.

THINGS NOT TOO WEIRD, BUT STILL WORTH READING

• Reddit lost a million search visits a week and is locking most of the site behind a login. Revenue still up 53 per cent.
• On GitHub, AI agents now start more than 40 per cent of all code changes. In March it was 17.
• A brand new telescope found a possible dwarf planet beyond Pluto, hiding in pictures it had already taken.
• Equinor and others start getting a robot dog built for refineries where one spark could cause an explosion.

Five ways to supercharge your Monday

• Join the Genie waitlist. Then write one sentence describing the place you’d want customers to step into.
• List the data you’d collect if customers trusted you completely. Pick the one feature you’d remove to earn it.
• Find the thing your company says it will never do. Ask when that was last true.
• Write two lists. What you want AI to do. What you want to keep doing yourself. Start with design.
• Pick one thing you sell by the hour or by the unit. Price it per result instead.

This week the future was something you could photograph. Next week it probably wants a desk.

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With love

Johan

Johan Ronnestam is a Swedish futurist, entrepreneur and keynote speaker. He helps leaders and brands grow in an AI-shaped world. ronnestam.com