Time to plan boredom

New AI tools launched or expanded this week that you can try right now. Plus the uncomfortable truth about what all this AI actually costs the planet, and why boredom might be the most underrated productivity tool you've quietly abandoned. And can we laugh at AI and not hurt its feelings? I say yes. Video at the bottom.

When you have thousands of unorganized photos, you write a prompt for Claude Code and go to sleep. Done by morning. It works if you give basic instructions on how you want them to be organized, and AI then reads the files’ GPS + timestamp data. Oh and Claude Code can visually reason about the image itself. The bigger idea: stop using AI as a search engine. Give it a job, hand it access (if you dare; I don’t, not yet), and get your beauty sleep.

And it can touch your files (topic of the day much?) — sort your Downloads folder, build a spreadsheet from invoices on your computer, connect to Canva, Dropbox, Instacart, OpenTable (rolling out this week). Eventually you'll be able to fire tasks from your phone and have Spark run them on your Mac while you're out. Similar to what Claude already does. Worth trying on something low-stakes before you give it access to anything that matters. Tell me I’m not the only one paranoid.

There's a part of your brain — the default mode network — that only fires when you're bored. Let that sink in. (I’m still processing this fact …) It's where you consolidate memory, solve stuck problems, and figure out what you actually want. Phones killed boredom. Americans check their phones ~186 times a day, roughly once every five minutes. Gulp. The fix is simple: pick one daily gap and don't fill it by picking up your phone. For example, during your daily commute, or while sipping your first coffee. Just let your brain do its thing. Depending on how addicted you are to your phone, you might find this exercise easy or hard to execute. Ready to find out?

Google's electricity use is up 250% since 2019. 37% of that jump was just last year. Emissions up 18%. All thanks to AI. They're calling it a "necessary reality to manage" while also saying AI will help solve climate change (uhm?). The tension is real. What can we do? Switch to older AI models that don’t use as much power. Or go as ‘commando’ as not using AI at all. Not using AI is the new ‘not traveling by plane’ statement.

Google is building a feature where you describe a craving and Maps places the food order. That smells like trouble to impulsive eating but, like most things, it’s down to our own discipline. AI that acts instead of just answers. Start a list of the repetitive decisions in your week you'd hand off immediately if you could. The tools are almost here.

Acti replaced the space bar on your iPhone/Android with an AI action layer. Type your intent anywhere, hold the bar, it executes. Restaurant reccomendations, location share, calendar drops - no app switching. You can also build your own key shortcuts wired to your specific apps. Free on iOS and Android today. I am testing it this week.

From robots delivering snacks and shaking hands to dancing uncontrollably at a restaurant and even kicking a child. The problem: old industrial robots follow fixed rules. AI-powered humanoids operate on probabilities - these are flexible, but harder to make safe when robots weigh up to 90 kg and can fall on you. Nvidia is building chip-level safety systems. ISO standards won't arrive until 2028. In the meantime - stay away from them, I’d say.

Wealthy families are pulling kids from perfectly fine schools and paying $24K–$75K/year for ones built around AI tutors and entrepreneurship. The premise: AI is absorbing routine thinking, so what's worth developing is judgment, creativity, and knowing how to navigate novel situations. No solid evidence yet these schools work better. But the underlying question is worth asking ourselves: what are we actively getting better at that AI makes more valuable, not less?

A video parody nailed it: asked to cut a sandwich in half, AI tries every interpretation except the obvious one. It's funny because it's true. AI has no "of course" instinct - it does what you said, not what you meant. It portrays the importance of monitoring AI and checking the results. The fix is being annoyingly specific. Or, as someone said, “I used to spend 1h on a task, now I spend 1h explaining to AI what the task is.”

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Till next time,

Jana