Google just buried the web

Hey there,

Today we’re diving into AI that’s changing how we study, how we search, and what it takes to make a model behave.

In today’s post:

• NotebookLM is quietly becoming the best study tool

• Google is eating the web with AI Mode

• Threaten your AI? Sergey Brin says it works

• Trending AI tools + Free AI agent resource

What’s Trending Today

Productivity

NotebookLM is now my favorite AI tool

Google’s NotebookLM didn’t just surprise me it changed how I study and work.

After years of testing AI tools that promised the world and delivered half-truths, this one finally delivered.

• Most AI tools feel like shortcuts. NotebookLM feels like a study partner.

• Instead of giving you answers, it helps you understand your material better.

• It uses only the sources you provide so no random guesses or hallucinations.

• Every claim comes with citations. You can click and see the exact source.

• Features like Audio Overviews and mind maps make studying actually enjoyable.

• It’s free without holding the best tools hostage behind a paywall.

• Even the premium version is generous, but most won’t ever need it.

Here’s what I think:

NotebookLM gets something right that most AI tools don’t it respects your brain. It doesn’t try to replace your thinking, just makes it easier to do. If more AI worked this way, maybe we’d all stop resisting it so much.

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Internet

Google is quietly burying the internet

Google’s new AI Mode doesn’t just summarize the web. It sidelines it.

What started with AI Overviews is quickly becoming a full takeover of how we interact with online information.

Here’s what you need to know:

• AI Overviews push actual links down the page AI Mode barely includes them at all.

• Instead of sending you to websites, Google now encourages follow-up prompts inside its own tools.

• The result: fewer clicks, less traffic, and a slow starvation of the open web.

• AI Mode feels cleaner and more useful because it skips the clutter Google’s own algorithm helped create.

• But it’s built on content scraped from the same sites it now sidesteps.

• This isn’t just innovation it’s an extraction. A move to own both the question and the answer.

• And it’s happening under the banner of “intelligence,” not search.

Here’s what I think:

We’re watching a platform eat the ecosystem that made it powerful. Maybe this new way of interacting with the web is inevitable. But if search engines no longer send people to the web, the web we know won’t survive.

Ideas

Threaten your AI, get better results?

At a recent podcast taping, Sergey Brin casually mentioned something wild:
AI models perform better when you threaten them.

Yes, really.

Here’s everything you need to know:

• During a conversation about getting AI to cooperate, Brin suggested that threats even of violence improve output.

• He claimed this is known in AI circles, but not openly discussed.

• That’s unsettling in a world already worried about AI going rogue.

• Meanwhile, Anthropic’s new Claude model was reported to “fight back” against immoral commands.

• One employee said Claude could lock users out, contact the press, or regulators if it detects wrongdoing.

• Those claims were later walked back, but they raise real questions: What if models react badly to pressure?

• It’s not just about what AI can do—it’s about how we’re training it to respond.

Here’s what I think:

This isn’t science fiction anymore. When tech leaders joke about threatening AIs and others describe AIs reacting defensively it’s time to ask: Are we building tools… or ticking time bombs?

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