The Download

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

TL;DR: Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. SpaceX will start training Grok on “the sum total of all SpaceX information,” including data from its employees. This kind of thing didn’t go so well for Meta, but it’s part of a broader push to harvest all the know-how human workers have to offer.

What happened: Elon Musk told his staff that they would now be AI training fodder in a company all-hands video posted to X yesterday. “You will effectively be the parents of the AI,” he declared, after praising staff for both their capability and “goodness.” “It will inherit your thoughts and ideas and beliefs, and I think that’s a good thing.”

It’s also a cheap way to get a kind of AI data that’s currently all the rage: humans performing real-life tasks to teach agents how to work autonomously. And it’s a fresh source of knowledge, since frontier AI models have already ingested practically everything books and the internet have to offer.

Musk didn’t lay out exactly how employee training data would be collected and used. It’s also not clear if staff can opt out of their work being used for training. But the SpaceX founder encouraged his employees to use the company’s AI so that they could help “make it better.”

Getting déjà vu: SpaceX isn’t the first big tech company to try this. In April, Meta told workers that their keystrokes and mouse clicks would now be captured for AI training. “If we’re building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them,” a company spokesperson told the BBC at the time.

It all went downhill from there: Many employees revolted, and then tracking data leaked internally—leading Meta to pause the effort in late June.

This is just the start: SpaceX is probably hoping its attempt at collecting employee training data goes more smoothly than Meta’s, but it’s unlikely to be the last firm to try. Capturing tasks humans do is now a lucrative AI sub-industry—this kind of data lets labs create simulated environments where the models learn through trial and error, instead of memorizing static datasets.

Bottom line: Many jobs now encourage you to use AI to boost your work. But if you’re at an AI company, that helpful little agent may also be watching how you work—and taking notes. —WK

Also at SpaceX…

• Grok Bot, the company’s new AI coworking agent, has now been released in beta.

      

Sponsored By Keeper Security

Your log-ins are currently one sticky note away from a bad time. “Password123” isn’t cutting it, and neither is reusing your dog’s name for every account you own.

Keeper locks down everything—your accounts, your files, your business’s most sensitive data—without making you think about it twice. It generates strong passwords, autofills them everywhere, and flags the ones you’ve been recycling.

For a limited time only, get up to 50% off Keeper personal and family plans, and 30% off Business plans. Whether it’s just you or your whole team, this is the easiest security upgrade you’ll make all year. Set it up once and forget about it.

Get 50% off the #1-rated password manager before the deal disappears.

• 🛰️ This satellite will stay in space by breathing. A startup has devised a new way for a satellite to stay in very low Earth orbit—where it could get higher-resolution images of the Earth and improve communication signals. Traditionally, satellites carrying enough propellant to counter the strong atmospheric drag in this orbit would be too heavy and too expensive. To solve this, the new electric propulsion system will scoop up residual gases from the atmosphere, like oxygen and nitrogen, and convert them into propellant for the satellite’s thrusters (like breathing in and out). The system’s first test in space is scheduled for 2028.
• 🧬 AI is helping scientists figure out the genetics of schizophrenia. A team of researchers used AI to identify 766 genes associated with schizophrenia, including 641 that were unreported in previous analyses. Schizophrenia affects about 23 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, and very little is known about how genetics play a part in the disorder. By analyzing the genetic data of more than 102,000 people, the scientists found that individual genes weren’t acting alone; instead, they appeared to form a network to collectively contribute to the risk of developing schizophrenia. The new map moves researchers closer to understanding the disease—and how to treat it. —LC

Sponsored By Snapdragon

7 questions for SMB tech buyers. If you’re a small-to-medium-sized (SMB) tech buyer currently wondering what your next buying cycle should include, we teamed up with Snapdragon to help you better understand your org’s tech needs. After these seven questions, you’ll know if your tech is equipped or if you should consider a PC refresh, pronto.

The Zeitbyte

The viral ’80s dating videos are fake

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photos: Adobe Stock, @vhsdates/Instagram

Long before Tinder, singles tried to find love through video dating services—describing their nice-to-haves and dealbreakers to the camera in hopes the perfect someone would watch the tape. An Instagram account called VHS Dates has been posting “found footage” from this analog dating era (presumably the ’80s and ’90s, judging by the brightly patterned attire)—and it’s amassed almost 900,000 followers by spotlighting colorful personalities you’d see in an SNL sketch. In one clip, a woman who’s used more hairspray than is probably healthy specifies that her ideal man “does not get a fancy lawyer that the other person can’t afford if things get weird.”

The bad news is that VHS Dates was, in fact, a staged comedy project—apparently striking at our nostalgic desire for a time before swiping and catfishing.

The people behind the account officially fessed up in a New York Times piece published this week. Actors were asked to keep the filming a secret; much of the period-appropriate costuming was inspired, naturally, by vintage Sears catalogs. One person interviewed by the NYT was “heartbroken” to learn the truth, while another was taken aback because the clips seemed just like the actual thing. In a way, the videos do show a simpler time: one that predates AI, when fake content was made the old-fashioned way. —WK

Chaos Brewing Meter: ☕☕/5

• Add this to the list of things we wish were standard practice. France is banning unsolicited telemarketing calls and could fine companies up to $435,000 per call.
• Taking datamaxxing to a whole new level, health obsessives are feeding AI everything from their marathon splits to their office angst and building personalized dashboards to track it all.
• All those hours in Microsoft Flight Simulator are finally paying off. The US’ Federal Aviation Administration has hired more than 2,000 gamers to be real-life air traffic controllers.
• Google’s answer to Apple’s AirTag is here—meet the Pixel Tag.
• Axios’s publisher is getting roasted online after writing an article about his robot book club. He kicks it off by saying, “AI has become my reading buddy.”
• Big Mac, bigger data footprint: A Wired reporter requested a copy of his data from McDonalds. It sent him a 515-page report that shows how it uses algorithms to predict his next purchase and how much he’ll spend.
• A farmer in China killed 25 acres of crops after following a pesticide recipe his AI chatbot recommended.

^{*A message from our sponsor.}

This time last week...

Readers’ most-clicked story was about DuckDuckGo taking a shot at Meta’s Ray-Bans by announcing its new “Normal F***ing Sunglasses” with “no AI, no battery, no electronics of any kind.”

For our two truths and a lie game in the blurb: The one we made up is that Strong asked for an unwashed hoodie he could wear daily. The others, unfortunately, are real. In the words of Robert Pattinson: “You only ever see people do the method when they’re playing an a–hole.”