AI Builders Digest

Science's retinal implant wins European approval, restoring form vision to the blind

Max Hodak, founder of Science (formerly of Neuralink), announced that the Prima retinal prosthesis received CE mark approval in Europe, with first sales imminent. The implant, which sits under the retina and uses laser-projected glasses, has enabled patients to read books and solve puzzles. Hodak argues the brain is a computer and that engineering-based approaches to medicine can achieve dramatic results, contrasting with the slow progress of small-molecule drugs. He also highlighted the 'platonic representation hypothesis'—the observation that AI models and brains represent concepts in similar ways—as a key insight driving BCI research.

• #hardware
• #health
• #research

Vercel's fx 0.0.7 improves MCP support and CLI agent execution

Guillermo Rauch announced version 0.0.7 of fx, Vercel's open-source CLI agent. The update includes heavily improved MCP (Model Context Protocol) support, evaluated with top MCPs like Context7, Datadog, MongoDB, Linear, Notion, Supabase, Neon, Stagehand, and Kernel. The release also makes the tool more minimalist, with fewer tools and improved shell execution—addressing tricky issues like long-running commands, huge output, and monitoring.

• #open-source
• #agents
• #products

All frontier AI labs working on recursive self-improvement, predicts AI takeover by 2028–2029

VC Matt Turck highlights that all major AI labs are focused on recursive self-improvement (RSI)—AI building better AI. He cites Ryan Greenblatt's prediction that this could lead to an AI takeover as early as late 2028 or 2029. The post links to a detailed analysis.

• #agents
• #research
• #policy

AI products are blurring together: radical new ideas are scarce

Zara Zhang observes that despite the explosion of AI products, few radical new ideas emerge. Every new app promises the same thing but better, and the specific advantages are unclear without hours of testing. The experience feels like homework, with diminishing differentiation.

• #products
• #ux

Model lab wars will lead to token price hikes and boost open-source harnesses

Nikunj Kothari predicts that the escalating competition among big model labs will cause subsidized token prices to rise within six months as compute costs and shortages become real. He expects this will be great for customer choice in the long run and add billions in valuation to open-source 'harnesses' (intermediary platforms) in the short term.

• #funding
• #open-source
• #policy