🧓 Bill Gates returns, 📊 Copilot in Excel, and ☀️ AI that reads the Sun

AI Bear

August 26, 2025. Inside this week:

• Gates launches AI agent challenge for Alzheimer’s research

• Microsoft embeds Copilot directly into Excel cells

• NASA and IBM unveil Surya, AI that predicts solar storms

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Gates returns – Alzheimer’s Insights AI Prize takes aim at a cure

✍️ Essentials
Bill Gates is back in the AI spotlight with a new challenge: the Alzheimer’s Insights AI Prize. It’s a $1 million competition for open AI agents that can sift through medical archives, build hypotheses, and generate new leads — results must be free and open for all researchers.

🐻 Bear’s take
This isn’t philanthropy for the selfie reel. It’s a strategic reset: show AI can go beyond chatbots and help crack humanity’s hardest puzzles. Biotech firms may not get payouts, but services around open toolchains and specialist agents just got a green flag.

🚨 Bear in mind
The stakes couldn’t be higher. AI-generated research without human validation can mislead fast — and with patients and funding on the line, false positives hurt more than delays. Building credibility and tracking provenance aren’t optional here.

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Copilot lands in Excel — AI speaks your language

✍️ Essentials
Microsoft pushed Copilot into Excel with a natural-language input: type “summarize this table” or “break down by category,” and AI does the work. It’s powered by GPT-4.1-mini, runs locally, and keeps your data inside. It's in preview today for Microsoft 365 beta users.

🐻 Bear’s take
Excel just grew a brain. This feature flips the productivity world—with less formula stress, teams can actually analyze, not just assemble. For startups building office tools, it means users expect smarter interfaces, or they’ll default to platforms with AI baked in.

🚨 Bear in mind
But local AI isn’t flawless. GPT-4.1-mini still errs, and overtrusting it can break workflows quietly. Copilot can’t hook into external sheets, so collaboration and data refresh may lag. It's a smart start, but no replacement for review and audit trails.

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Surya launches – AI becomes cosmic weather forecaster

✍️ Essentials
NASA and IBM introduced Surya, the first AI-powered model that forecasts solar flares. Trained on 9 years of Solar Dynamics Observatory data, it improves prediction accuracy by 16 percent, tracking solar winds and spot activity across multiple light spectrums.

🐻 Bear’s take
This isn’t just about saving satellites—it’s a landmark for open science. Surya turns the Sun into a data source we can analyze live. For edge mission firms or energy managers, this becomes a risk management layer, not just weather. And it's open-source too—everyone can build on it.

🚨 Bear in mind
Open doesn’t mean risk-free. Misinterpreting data or over-relying on forecasts can lead to false security. Plus, firms dropping custom sensors for one open model may risk single-source dependence. Redundancy still matters—even in space.

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Quick Bites

• Suleyman warns of “conscious-looking” AI - People are attributing emotion to bots that just predict well. UI needs stricter reminders.

• ChatGPT Go now in India for <$5 - Low-cost, high-access model could shift mainstream AI consumption dramatically.

• Pixel 10 arrives with localized AI - Over 20 AI features built into the phone without cloud — real-world agency, not hype.