- Data centers hit the ballot as OpenAI plots a rebrand
- The Rundown Roundtable: Our AI use cases
- Make AI artwork you can actually edit
- Google’s space data center sends home a haiku
Data centers hit the ballot as OpenAI plots a rebrand
Image source: Wikimedia CommonsThe Rundown: This week’s U.S. midterms double as a referendum on data centers, with roughly 20 communities voting on bans or pauses, while OpenAI reportedly prepares a post-election push to rebrand the sites as “AI compute campuses.”The details: - Democrats are projected to flip the House Tuesday, which could end a two-year run of easy treatment in Washington for AI firms with close ties to Pres. Trump.
- Some Democrats want a federal freeze on new data centers, including House hopefuls Will Lawrence in Michigan and Rebecca Cooke in Wisconsin.
- The White House already got tech giants to voluntarily supply their own power, and last week Trump floated having developers pay locals a “dividend” as well.
- OpenAI is planning to pitch the campuses as local economic boosts, citing a Pike County, Ohio, project it’s helping build that promises thousands of jobs.
- OpenAI policy chief Chris Lehane called the debate “democracy in action,” and the company wants state bills giving locals a voice in new projects.
Is your AI strategy ready for what’s next? 
The Rundown: 42% of enterprises plan to deploy AI agents by the end of 2026, but only 22% capture significant value today. The Gartner Top Tech Trends for 2027 reveal how enterprises can shift into the autonomous era and get ahead.Key themes include:- Leveraging the nontextual AI frontier
- Governing the autonomous agent platform
- Architecting durable agility
The Rundown Roundtable: Our AI use cases
The Rundown: The Rundown Roundtable is a weekly feature where we poll members of The Rundown staff about how we use AI in our work and daily lives.Nick, Video Producer: When I create video content, I pull imagery from many different sources, so my editing folder often ends up with photos that may or may not work inside my editing program. For a handful of photos, converting them manually is fine. For larger projects with dozens of images, it eats into my time and focus. I wanted something simple, lightweight on compute power, that could batch convert photos.I asked Claude to create an app that runs on my local machine and can batch convert photos into formats I know will work in my video editor.Claude returned an app that worked exactly the way I needed. I asked Claude to install it on my computer, and it was working within seconds. I now use the app to batch convert my photo folders before bringing them into the editor.There are plenty of traditional ways to do this, but with Claude I got a solution that fit my workflow perfectly, and large image batches no longer slow my editing down.Shubham, Editor: I had about $2K in contributions from past jobs stuck in a government scheme for more than two years. The portal was slow, spread across several forms, and unclear about how to withdraw the money.I gave the task to Claude and Perplexity Comet. Claude worked through the rules and found the withdrawal route that kept my tax bill lowest. Comet then verified and implemented that route. It ran the portal in my browser, filled in and submitted the claim forms, and let me watch the screen and check each detail before submission. Two weeks later, the $2K arrived.After that, Claude compared the amount I received with the scheme’s online statement and found a gap: interest that had not been paid out. It filed a second form for the difference, and I’m waiting for the payment now. I’ll use the same technique to solve this for my wife, too.AI TRAINING
Make AI artwork you can actually editThe Rundown: In this guide, you’ll use Arrow 2 to create a three-part graphic for a client proposal. You’ll refine one scene, add editable headings, and change a color without generating the artwork again.Step-by-step:- Open QuiverAI, select Arrow 2, and check that your plan includes SVG export. Install Inkscape for the final text and color changes
- Paste the guide’s brief to draw a folder, review board, and laptop in one matching style. Leave space for the title and headings
- Ask Arrow to replace one badge with speech bubbles. Compare the result with the original and check that the other scenes stay intact
- Download the SVG and open it in Inkscape. Add the headings, then change the middle label and one screen color directly
- Save the editable master and export a high-resolution PNG. Reopen both files and check the words, colors, and dimensions before sharing
Discover your brand’s top AEO priority
The Rundown: Trade chance for certainty with Conductor’s free AEO Analysis. Compare your mentions with competitors, see which content gets cited, understand funnel visibility, and identify opportunities. 500+ brands are already winning AI search with Conductor.The free report analyzes:- AI market share showing your brand mentions vs. competitors
- Funnel visibility with top prompts by search intent
- Content performance based on total AI citations
- Brand sentiment revealing how AI perceives your brand
Google’s space data center sends home a haiku
Image source: Google / SpaceXThe Rundown: Google just announced that its Project Suncatcher satellite answered its first AI prompt from orbit, with Google’s open Gemma 4 model writing a haiku in an early test of the company’s moonshot goal to put AI data centers in space.The details: - Gemma’s haiku (Blue marble below / Data streams in silent grace / Starlight feeds my core) reached the ground while the satellite passed over Svalbard, Norway.
- Google CEO Sundar Pichai called it “a ‘hello world’ milestone,” a reference to the test programmers typically run first on a new machine.
- Power is still a big constraint, with the craft able to run just one of its four Google AI chips (TPUs), and only in bursts of roughly 20 minutes.
- Two more powerful satellites launching in 2027 will test the laser links a fleet needs to split one AI job, if the chips first survive radiation and heat tests.
Trending AI Tools
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Phonic-1 - SOTA voice model that swaps between 50+ languages mid-call
Super-Agent - DeepSeek’s prototype open-source coding agent
Brush - Canva’s new vision-language model that edits designs via text
Everything else in AI todayAtlassian’s webinar on the State of the Developer Experience in 2026 features insights from industry experts on moving beyond AI adoption to operationalization. Register today.*Cisco president Jeetu Patel revealed that he put a 27-year-old ex-founder who was “buried away in the organization doing something unstrategic” in charge of trying to rewrite the company’s legacy code, giving him unlimited tokens and orders to “go nuts.”Elon Musk’s SpaceX said it will start invisibly watermarking text that Grok generates for developers via API on Nov. 7, citing the EU AI Act regulations. OpenAI rolled out new changes to usage limits on its platforms, scrapping a planned cut and instead doubling rates for certain plans, with plans to move Plus, Pro, and Business tiers to a single token meter covering both Chat and Codex in December.Anthropic renamed its consumer plans, with Max 5x becoming ‘Max’ and Max 20x becoming ‘Ultra’ at the same prices, while also removing the 5-hour usage limit for verified Ultra accounts.*Sponsored Listing
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- Today’s AI tool guide: Make AI artwork you can actually edit
Source: https://therundownai.beehiiv.com/p/ai-b ... -the-polls