The Amped Journal

Anthropic, the AI safety company behind Claude, said July 14 it is committing $10 million CAD and partnering with leading AI institutions in Canada to help fund new AI research. The company did not detail which institutions or research areas the funding will support.

Demis Hassabis, the founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, told founder and investor Greg Isenberg that personalized medicine with minimal side effects is coming "in 10 years or less." Isenberg relayed the conversation on X, saying he was speaking with a friend who is part of a group living with autoimmune disorders. Hassabis reportedly called ending suffering for billions of people the most exciting use case for artificial general intelligence.

An account called AI Edge shared a GitHub repository with 46 Claude Skills aimed at founders and product managers, covering tasks like SEO, marketing, email outreach and content strategy. The skills work with both Claude Code and Codex, OpenAI's coding agent.

Simon Willison, a developer and frequent AI commentator, pushed back on the idea that programmers who already know how to write code gain nothing from coding agents. "If you know how to write it, you gain nothing from doing the typing yourself, outsource that to a coding agent," he wrote July 14.

George Sivulka, CEO of enterprise AI company Hebbia, said in comments shared by venture firm a16z that "wasted tokens are the new headcount bloat," with only about 10% of AI agent token usage shipping useful output and 90% wasted on unproductive loops. He said the median firm's agent costs run near $80 an hour, comparable to a software engineer, but can range from $4 to $7,000 an hour depending on how well the agent is managed. Sivulka added that, contrary to expectations, "humans are cheaper than software" for the first time in history, and that AI is creating more jobs than it eliminates.

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of venture firm a16z, said he's seeing a "three-way Mexican standoff" between coders, product managers and designers resolve into a single new job title informally called "builder" at leading-edge Silicon Valley companies. He discussed the shift on a16z's Uncapped podcast.

Personal finance YouTuber Graham Stephan pushed back on a viral claim that New York lost $11 billion from millionaires leaving the state, saying the figure is actually an estimate of additional personal income tax revenue New York would have collected in tax year 2022 had it kept its 2010 share of the country's millionaires, not a measured actual loss.

China's economy expanded at a 4.3% annualized pace in the second quarter of 2026, the government said, a slowdown for the world's second-largest economy, the Associated Press reported July 14.

New Russian sanctions legislation, spearheaded by the late Senator Lindsey Graham and backed by President Trump, would target the top five purchasers of Russian crude oil and natural gas, including China and India, Bloomberg reported.

A man running from an encounter with US immigration agents in Florida was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer, police said, according to the Associated Press. Few additional details were released.

Security camera footage captured a fatal shooting Monday during a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Biddeford, Maine, the Associated Press reported. It was the second time in a week that ICE used deadly force and at least the ninth death since President Trump's immigration enforcement crackdown began.

The Department of Homeland Security has ordered immigration agents to temporarily halt most vehicle stops during deportation operations, Bloomberg reported, following protests in Biddeford demanding answers.

Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, omitted the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from his annual charitable donations this year following disclosures about Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates' ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the Associated Press reported.

European troops and warplanes joined the annual Bastille Day parade in Paris in a show of unity for Ukraine, the Associated Press reported. The event marked President Emmanuel Macron's last Bastille Day as president; he hosted around 30 other world leaders for the occasion.

Confirmed Ebola cases in Congo have reached 2,011, including 754 deaths, in what authorities describe as the fastest-growing outbreak on record, the Associated Press reported. Contact tracing remains a challenge, with only 67% coverage of those exposed to the virus.

New Hanover County commissioners voted unanimously Monday to invest $2 million in Cape Fear Development's Proximity Blue Clay Road project, a 236-unit townhome community, and created a separate $2 million investment fund to support other workforce housing projects, the Greater Wilmington Business Journal reported.

The county's investment functions as a loan, not a grant: CFO Eric Credle said the county will earn a 5% annual interest rate and get all principal back after 10 years. In exchange, the private-capital replacement lets Cape Fear Development offer units at 60% to 90% of area median income for a decade.

New Hanover County commissioners unanimously approved a $6.5 million infrastructure construction contract for Holly Shelter Business Park, along with a renaming, the Greater Wilmington Business Journal reported. Carolina Civilworks won the contract with the lowest responsive bid.

The roughly 300-acre master-planned industrial park, once developed, is expected to accommodate more than 2 million square feet of industrial space. The first phase includes about 2,750 linear feet of roadway, a water main and fire hydrants, a sanitary sewer pump station, and a right-turn lane on Holly Shelter Road.

Three two-story office buildings at 428, 430 and 432 Eastwood Road in Wilmington changed hands for a combined $4.9 million in two separate transactions, according to deeds recorded Monday and reported by the Greater Wilmington Business Journal. Bowman Jones Properties LLC, tied to Tribute Companies executives Robert Hollis and Mark Maynard Sr., had owned the 1.26-acre site since 2001.

State Farm agent Rob Cutting bought the roughly 8,000-square-foot building at 432 Eastwood Road for $2.25 million. Broker Steve Hall of Blue Coast Commercial said the sellers opted to "condo" the property so multiple owner-occupiers could each purchase their own space.

Cutter Ridge Plantation, a 350-acre turnkey property in Winnabow near Orton Plantation, hit the market in May for $9.75 million, the Greater Wilmington Business Journal reported. The estate includes a quail preserve, eight stocked fishing ponds, a five-bedroom house with guest cottage, and a helicopter with hangar and landing pad.

Listing agent Cailein Campbell of National Land Realty said most serious inquiries have come from out-of-state, high-net-worth buyers looking for a recreational getaway; such large hunting and fishing estates are more common elsewhere in the South than in southeastern North Carolina. Current owner Kyle McIntyre is selling the property, located about 20 minutes from downtown Wilmington.