Issue #62: AI Taking Over Your Email, Workflows, Replacing Market Research

Good morning.

This week, your inbox is quietly getting smarter.

Research is being integrated so that it doesn’t interrupt your workflow.

An AI company raised $27M to automate user interviews, and Microsoft is already using it.

And this is the undercurrent.

The work we think we still own?

Like planning, communicating, researching, and understanding customers?

Doesn’t have to be done by only you and me anymore.

And not even with another chatbot or another search bar.

It’ll all be done with systems that understand where your work lives.

The answers will show up there, quietly, reliably, and increasingly on your behalf, without you even lifting a finger.

And that’s exciting.

—Sam

IN TODAY’S ISSUE 👨‍🚀 

• Claude turns into a research agent (and integrates Gmail, Docs, and Calendar)

• OpenAI quietly ships their smartest models + 3 new guides for enterprise teams

• Listen Labs raises $27M to scale automated customer interviews

• The beginning of AI handling your inbox

• ChatGPT memory improvements and implementation playbook

• McKinsey's State of AI: Adoption and value capture insights

• AI is dropping in price: What this means for businesses

• Humanity's Last Exam: The new benchmark challenging AI systems

Let’s get into it.

AI Integration: The Silent Domination of Your Workflow

(This is a shorter version of the full issue, available to free subscribers and on the web. If you’re a Cortex subscriber, you get the full issue below—if you’re reading on the web, make sure you’re logged in. Cortex opens up once a month and is now open again for a few days).

Invisible Intelligence: AI Embedding in Everyday Tasks

The technological landscape is shifting as AI systems move from being standalone tools to becoming integrated components of our existing workflows. 

This week's developments highlight how AI is quietly embedding itself in the places where work actually happens—your documents, emails, and calendars.

• AI is evolving from requiring manual prompting to operating autonomously with just permission

• Systems now understand where your work lives and can provide answers directly within your workflow

• The transition is happening subtly but will fundamentally change how work gets done

Research Reimagined: Claude's New Integration Capabilities

Anthropic has launched major updates to Claude, transforming it from a simple chatbot to a context-aware research assistant with Google Workspace integration.

• Full integration with Gmail, Google Docs, and Calendar

• Claude's Research tool can synthesize information from both public and private contexts

• Designed to provide the "missing middle" between shallow quick answers and deep slow analysis

• Focuses on comprehensive, fast, and context-aware responses with appropriate depth

Strategic Implementation: OpenAI's Enterprise Guidelines

OpenAI is shifting focus from simply showcasing models to providing practical guidance for enterprise integration, releasing three strategic guides alongside new, more efficient models.

• Three new guides: "AI in the Enterprise," "A Practical Guide to Building Agents," and "Identifying and Scaling AI Use Cases"

• New models o3 and o4-mini offering better reasoning, improved memory, and faster execution

• Focus on helping businesses embed AI across workflows rather than just demonstrating capabilities

• Emphasis on ROI, risk assessment, and practical implementation strategies

Take a look at the strategic guides here.

Voice of the Customer: Listen Labs' Automated Interview Platform

SoundCloud cofounder Alfred Wahlforss has secured $27M in funding for Listen Labs, a platform that uses AI to conduct user interviews at scale.

• Automates thousands of user interviews to extract product and service insights

• Already being used by major companies like Microsoft and Canva

• Creates a continuous feedback loop that improves over time

• Eliminates the traditional wall between product development and customer insight

Intelligent Inbox: The Next Frontier for AI Assistants

Your email inbox is becoming the central command center for AI assistants, with developments pointing toward autonomous systems that understand and operate within your communication flow.

• Email represents a rich context surface containing decisions, priorities, and responsibilities

• AI systems are moving from requiring prompts to simply needing permission to operate

• The shift transforms AI tools into team members that can handle complete workflows

• Organizations should consider which context to hand over first for maximum efficiency

Enhanced Recall: ChatGPT's Memory Improvements

OpenAI has significantly upgraded ChatGPT's memory capabilities, allowing it to reference past conversations and provide more personalized responses.

• Persistent cross-thread recall enables accessing details from all past conversations

• Memory-enhanced search automatically incorporates relevant context when performing web searches

• Robust user controls allow reviewing, deleting, or disabling memories for compliance purposes

• Implementation possibilities span multiple business models including marketing, SaaS, consulting, media, freelancing, and education

Business Impact: McKinsey's State of AI Report

McKinsey's latest report provides valuable insights into how organizations are adopting AI and capturing value from implementation.

• Over 75% of large companies use AI in at least one business function

• CEO oversight of AI governance correlates with higher bottom-line impact

• Workflow redesign shows the biggest effect on EBIT impact from generative AI

• KPI tracking for AI solutions significantly impacts value creation, though less than 20% of companies do this effectively

The report is accessible at McKinsey.

Economic Shift: Decreasing AI Costs and Market Implications

The economics of AI are changing rapidly as hardware costs decrease while performance and energy efficiency increase.

• Inference costs (expense of querying trained models) are falling dramatically

• AI systems becoming cheaper alternatives to junior-level human employees for certain tasks

• Strategic considerations needed for balancing human vs. AI resource allocation

• Lowered barriers to entry that could allow startups to compete more effectively against incumbents

Benchmark Challenge: Humanity's Last Exam

As AI systems saturate existing performance benchmarks, researchers are developing new challenges to test the limits of current capabilities.

• Many traditional benchmarks are no longer useful as AI systems achieve near-perfect scores

• Humanity's Last Exam features extremely challenging questions from experts across 500 institutions

• Even the best AI systems currently struggle with this benchmark (OpenAI's o1 achieves only 8.8% correct answers)

• Raises questions about how long these new challenges will remain difficult for AI

Get more info at Humanity’s Last Exam.

If you’re a Cortex subscriber, you get the full issue with tips, details, prompts, and more below.

Not a Cortex subscriber?

For a limited time, Cortex is now open again for new subscribers:

You can cancel at any time. But no refunds for any reason. All sales are final.

With Cortex, every month you get:

• 2-3x full, unrestricted email issues on various AI news, tools, automations, use cases.

• 1x Signals issue, focused on strategic use of AI in your business.

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Together, they’ll help you make moves in your business to go autonomous—and scale with AI.

I don’t write this to track AI news and product launches.

I write this because I know what it’s like to build while the ground shifts beneath your feet. 

To juggle product velocity, team bandwidth, and user insight, only to realize your tools haven’t kept up with your ambition.

This week wasn’t about shiny features. It was about workflows getting rewired.

We crossed a line:

• Agents retrieve, reason, and decide.

• Research is working smarter.

• Listening to customers is autonomous, always-on.

And most people won’t even notice the shift, because good infrastructure feels invisible.

I don’t want you to “adopt AI.”

I want you to be the company where AI isn’t even mentioned anymore.

It’s just how you work.

That’s why the Cortex premium subscription is now open again.

You can cancel at any time. But no refunds for any reason. All sales are final.

With Cortex, every month you get:

• 2-3x full, unrestricted email issues on various AI news, tools, automations, use cases.

• 1x Signals issue, focused on strategic use of AI in your business.

• 1x Circuits issue, focused on tactical, how-to implementation in your business.

Together, they’ll help you make moves in your business to go autonomous—and scale with AI.

Cortex is open for a few days, get in now if you’re interested (click for more info).

Again, can cancel at any time. But no refunds for any reason. All sales are final.

Until next time,
Sam Woods
The Editor