🧪 AI ends the flu lottery, 🇨🇳 DeepSeek takes on back offices, and 🧑💻 OpenAI kills HR
AI Bear
September 20, 2025. Inside this week:
MIT’s AI model predicts flu strains better than WHO
China’s DeepSeek launches autonomous multi-step agents
OpenAI Jobs Platform threatens HR and universities
🧪 AI to stop the flu epidemic
✍️ Essentials
MIT researchers created VaxSeer, an AI that predicts which flu strains will dominate months ahead. Pharma can finally stop guessing which vaccine formula to make. Backtests show it outperformed the WHO in 15 of 20 seasons, including nailing the 2016 combo a year early.
🐻 Bear’s take
No more “wrong flu shot” lottery. Businesses save billions in lost sick days, insurers cut costs, and patients get better protection. For investors, 75% vaccine accuracy is a health gold rush.
🚨 Bear in mind
If AI beats the WHO year after year, credibility shifts fast. Smaller labs may get swallowed by big Pharma with AI advantage. Vaccine guesswork careers? Likely finished.
🇨🇳 China’s DeepSeek agents threaten back-office jobs
✍️ Essentials
DeepSeek unveiled an AI agent that executes multi-step tasks: invoice processing, insurance claims, logistics reconciliation, even coding. It learns from its own runs, reducing human oversight.
🐻 Bear’s take
Clerks, call-center reps, and back-office staff are in the firing line. Companies could save $70–80B a year in the US by automating 20–30% of repetitive workflows. Small firms now get enterprise-level efficiency without armies of staff.
🚨 Bear in mind
Administrative roles risk extinction. HR degrees, script-based jobs, invoice pushing — obsolete. The only survivors will be “AI supervisors” checking edge cases. Everyone else? Adapt or exit.
🧑💻 OpenAI certificates take aim at HR
✍️ Essentials
OpenAI launched a Jobs Platform and AI literacy certificates with Walmart, Accenture, and Texas state as early partners. Target: 10M Americans certified by 2030. Certificates could become a new standard of employability.
🐻 Bear’s take
If OpenAI certificates get more trust than bachelor’s degrees, LinkedIn and Indeed are in trouble. Hiring becomes faster, cheaper, and less dependent on bloated recruiting firms. SMB owners can bypass agencies completely.
🚨 Bear in mind
HR pros and recruiters — half a million of them in the US — risk redundancy. Universities face the same heat: why pay for a 4-year degree if a ChatGPT certificate gets you the job?
Quick bites
🏫 Microsoft gives free Copilot to US students - AI literacy at scale starts in classrooms.
🎬 Warner Bros sues MidJourney - $150K per superhero image, big precedent for AI-generated IP.
🔎 Exa raises $85M - wants to be “Google for AI agents.”
🎤 Lovable launches voice-to-code - prototype apps built just by talking.