In 2021, during the height of the COVID 19 pandemic, I decided to leave a well-paying corporate job to start an accounting firm…

Why did I do something so crazy?

Before leaving my job, I learned that my dad who was working with his accountant of 5 years never filed his corporate tax returns. 

After doing some digging, we found out that although my dad paid his accountant every year, it was his accountant in fact who never submitted his tax returns. It wasn’t my dad’s fault – it was the accountant’s fault! 

Determined to fix this wrong, I helped my dad get his past-due tax returns filed. 

Soon after that, I learned that many of my friends who were business owners had a similar experience. Most accountants are smart but don’t take the time to (1) explain, (2) provide proactive advice, and (3) respond to their customers on time (in my dad’s case, nothing was done…)

We at Vertical CPA are determined to change this.

Most well-run corporations don’t accept mediocre service and it’s about time that small businesses are treated the same way

If you feel like you’re not getting the service you deserve from your accountant or bookkeeper, reach out to our team 

Get in touch today: info@verticalcpa.ca

Ali Ladha

Alex Banks

Building a better future with AI

Alex Banks is a founder, creator and investor. He reaches over 1 million people on social media each week with insights into the world of artificial intelligence (AI).

He is the founder and writer of The Signal, a weekly newsletter that cuts through the AI noise to over 55,000+ readers.

Alex is also an active early-stage investor and advisor to startups across the AI and technology landscape.

👉 All partnerships, enquiries and speaking engagements: contact@noisemedia.ai

Writer

Unitree's G1 humanoid undergoes brutal stress testing.

And I can't stop watching.

The robot in question is the Unitree G1 humanoid:

• 1.32m tall, 35kg build
• 23 degrees of freedom for human-like movement
• 2m/s walking speed
• Advanced 3D LiDAR and sensors
• 2-hour battery life
• $16,000 price tag

It’s even available to buy at Walmart.

G1 has now learned an "Anti-Gravity" mode.

This means that stability is greatly improved under any action sequence.

Even if it falls, it can quickly get back up in under 2 seconds.

The robot has essentially learned to “hack” physics.

You can see in the video that it uses the inertia from bouncing to perform some action.

Knock over the average human and we’ll be on the ground for at least a couple of minutes.

My takeaway:

Whilst “violence tests” are fun for attention.

I’m more interested in seeing real demos that people actually care about, like doing the dishes, vacuuming, laundry, etc.

Control for body mechanics is mostly solved right now.

But fine motor skills, specifically hand dexterity, are the real bottleneck.

When we achieve this and understand how to scale manufacturing, the future is unlocked.

Follow me Alex Banks for daily AI highlights and insights.

I cover the most important AI developments each week in my newsletter.

Subscribe here: https://lnkd.in/ePSZP6KF

P.S. He forgot to sweep the leg…

The gloves are off.

Anthropic just spent $8M to troll OpenAI. And it’s genius.

Their new Super Bowl ad announces one thing: Claude will remain ad-free.

They're using the most expensive ad platform on Earth to differentiate on being anti-ads.

None of the ads call out ChatGPT by name. But the target is obvious.

OpenAI confirmed last month that ads are coming to ChatGPT for free and lower-tier users.

Why this matters:

→ AI chatbots are becoming our most trusted advisors
→ We ask them about health, finances, relationships, career decisions
→ The moment ads enter that conversation, trust erodes
→ Your AI stops working for you and starts working for advertisers

My takeaway:

This is genuinely brilliant positioning.

Spending $8M on ads to say you don't do ads is the kind of irony that proves exactly why the ad model is so powerful.

It reminds me of Black Mirror's "Common People" where a brain surgery patient becomes a walking billboard due to a synthetic neural implant.

We laughed at that episode. Now we're watching the first chapter play out in real time.

First ads will make their way into AI chatbots.

When brain-computer interfaces roll out in the 2030’s and 2040’s where does humanity stand?

But perhaps the more immediate question:

Does 90% of Super Bowl spectators actually have a clue what these companies are fighting about?

I’ll be exploring this idea further in my newsletter this weekend.

Subscribe here: https://lnkd.in/ePSZP6KF

And follow me Alex Banks for daily AI highlights and insights.

Anthropic said no to the Pentagon.
OpenAI signed the deal hours later.
Here's what happened:

Anthropic drew two red lines with the Department of War:

1. No mass domestic surveillance
↳ AI can now analyse bulk data the government buys on Americans at scale
↳ Currently legal, but only because the law hasn't caught up

2. No fully autonomous weapons
↳ AI isn't reliable enough to automate selecting and engaging targets
↳ No oversight framework exists for removing humans from the loop

For context:

→ Anthropic was the first AI company on the classified cloud
→ Deployed across intelligence, cyber ops, and combat support
→ Forfeited hundreds of millions cutting off CCP-linked firms
→ These two red lines represent ~1% of use cases

The Pentagon gave Anthropic a 3-day ultimatum.

Anthropic refused.

The response:

→ President Trump: "Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk"
→ Secretary of War Pete Hegseth: Anthropic is a "supply chain risk"
→ Trump ordered every federal agency to cease all use of Anthropic's technology

Then OpenAI entered.

On Friday morning, Altman publicly backed Anthropic's red lines.

By Friday evening, he'd signed the Pentagon deal himself:

→ OpenAI claims the same red lines as Anthropic, plus a third
→ OpenAI asked the Pentagon to offer identical terms to all AI labs
→ Multiple OpenAI employees signed an open letter supporting Anthropic
→ Altman admitted the deal was "definitely rushed" and "the optics don't look good"

The consumer backlash was immediate:

→ "Cancel ChatGPT" went viral across Reddit and X
→ Claude hit # 1 on the App Store, overtaking ChatGPT
→ Claude is now # 1 in Germany, Canada, and other markets

My takeaway:

Not only have I seen my workflows fully transition from ChatGPT to Claude over the last year, but the consumer mass-market is catching up.

I think it’s also important to point out that correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation here.

Claude didn’t just hit # 1 in the app store as a result of ChatGPT accepting the DOW deal.

Anthropic has simply built a better product where the timing of adoption happened to coincide with this viral uproar of the company denying use of their products for the surveillance of Americans and operation of autonomous weapons.

Ethical positioning now has direct commercial consequences.

Values are becoming a competitive moat.

I covered this idea yesterday in my newsletter.

Be the first to receive it by subscribing today.

Read it here: https://lnkd.in/e898z7SG

Use this system prompt in Claude to write humanised content.

Paste it directly into custom instructions.

1. Go to New chat
2. Add files, connectors, and more
3. Use style
4. Create & edit styles
5. Create custom style

This catches most issues before they happen.

But for text that's already written (or when you need to clean up existing AI content).

You’ll want to use the “master humaniser prompt”.

It walks the AI through a systematic humanisation process.

Access it here: https://lnkd.in/eE7ArSCx

The people building AI keep walking away from it.

And they're not leaving quietly.

In the past week alone:

1. Mrinank Sharma, Anthropic's Safeguards Research lead, resigned with an open letter declaring the world is facing "interconnected crises."
2. Zoë Hitzig, an OpenAI research scientis,t published a New York Times op-ed warning about user manipulation through ChatGPT's emerging ad strategy.
3. Two more xAI co-founders left (half the founding team is now gone)

Rewind further and the list grows:

→ Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's co-founder, left to start a safety-focused company (May 2024)
→ Jan Leike, co-lead of OpenAI's Superalignment team, resigned saying safety had taken a backseat (May 2024)
→ Miles Brundage, OpenAI's senior advisor for AGI readiness, warned that no lab is prepared for what's coming (October 2024)

Every industry has turnover.

But this isn't normal turnover.

These are researchers who spent years building the most advanced AI systems ever created.

And something about what they saw made them walk away.

If the people who understand this technology best can't reconcile building it with their own conscience, what does that tell the rest of us?

Or are they partnering with national publications to generate clicks while leaning into the "fear AI" angle to drive demand for their next venture?

Only time will tell.

Follow me Alex Banks for daily AI highlights and insights.

I explore ideas like this weekly in my newsletter The Signal.
Subscribe here: https://lnkd.in/ePSZP6KF

Everyone's focused on Google, Claude, and OpenAI. 

Amazon is AI's sleeping giant.

They just quietly dropped Nova Act. It builds browser agents for you.

→ Navigate websites autonomously
→ Fill forms and extract information
→ Handle bookings and purchases
→ Deploy to production with one command

How it works:

1. Prototype in their online playground (no setup needed)
2. Build in your favourite IDE (VS Code, Cursor, Kiro)
3. One CLI command deploys to AWS
4. Monitor performance through the console

Built-in human escalation means when the agent hits something it can't handle, it asks you, then continues.

My takeaway:

This reminds me of Google in early 2023.

Everyone counted them out after a few fumbled launches.

Now they're leading the AI race.

Amazon has something most AI companies don't:

→ Massive distribution (hundreds of millions of customers)
→ Unmatched logistics and data infrastructure
→ AWS already powers most of the internet
→ Deep pockets to play the long game

By the end of 2026, Amazon will be a very real contender in AI.

The quiet ones are often the most dangerous.

You can try Nova Act today at https://fandf.co/4p5DHrn

Big thanks to Amazon for partnering with me on this.

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