AI Insights
Colin Kaepernick makes surprise visit to Portland Public Schools, a new partner with his AI company
Former NFL player and AI company founder Colin Kaepernick speaks to a group of educators and students at Benson Polytechnic High School in Portland, Ore., on Aug. 6, 2025.
Natalie Pate / OPB
Portland Public Schools Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong kicked off the upcoming school year with a familiar message to help students learn and excel in the classroom.
The large gathering of Portland educators, elected officials and students was surprised soon after when Colin Kaepernick walked onto the stage.
The former NFL quarterback rose to national prominence for publicly kneeling during the playing of the pre-game national anthem in the 2016-17 season. Critics pushed back against his protests, which were meant to draw attention to marginalized Black communities.
Related: Oregon state employees to receive AI training
The civil rights activist and former San Francisco 49er is the founder and CEO of Lumi Story AI, an artificial intelligence company launched last year with the intent, as explained on its website, to help creators in the ever-changing digital landscape maintain creative control and stability, especially diverse creators.
Now, Lumi is partnering with Portland Public Schools in the classroom during the upcoming school year by piloting an AI literacy platform, as first reported by The Oregonian/Oregonlive. Details on the partnership so far are scarce.

Colin Kaepernick, first from right, and Portland Public Schools Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong, third from right, speak with a group of students at Benson Polytechnic High School.
Natalie Pate / OPB
Armstrong said artificial intelligence is already used in some ways in local classrooms.
Many people argue that AI can be a useful tool for efficiency and to train students for a more technologically advanced future. Some also fear it will be used as a means to replace staff with algorithms. Others point to evidence that AI is already being used as an avenue for bullying.
Kaepernick spoke to the packed Benson auditorium Wednesday morning, and later with a small group of student advisors from local middle and high schools.
“Excellence refuses to be finished,” he said in his speech. “Educators, you already know this. Every time you raise the bar, students stretch farther than they thought possible.
“Let’s make Portland Public Schools the easiest place on Earth to find greatness.”
Related: As AI advances, Oregon lawmakers seek to specify only humans can be nurses
In her keynote address preceding Kaepernick’s remarks, PPS Superintendent Armstrong noted achievement gains she’s already seeing, such as high enrollment in career-technical classes.
She emphasized her focus on four core areas: early literacy, middle-grade math, attendance and enrollment, and four-year or “on-time” high school graduation rates.
“Growth is what is anchoring us, right?” she said. “It’s not the finish line. What I’m talking about today — we are just getting started.”

Colin Kaepernick, standing next to Kimberlee Armstrong, speaks to members of the press after a speech at Benson Polytechnic High School.
Natalie Pate / OPB
Kaepernick told reporters in a press conference after his speech that he and Superintendent Armstrong first met earlier this year through a mutual friend. When it comes to his company and education, he said they want to make sure students are prepared for the future.
“We’ve seen the impact of the digital divide,” he said. “We do not want our students playing catch-up.
“As we’re seeing new technologies show up, being able to do different things to advance our students,” he said, “we want to make sure that we’re getting those tools in front of them to help them succeed and compete with every other student across the country and the world.”
AI Insights
OpenAI says spending to rise to $115 billion through 2029: Information

OpenAI Inc. told investors it projects its spending through 2029 may rise to $115 billion, about $80 billion more than previously expected, The Information reported, without providing details on how and when shareholders were informed.
OpenAI is in the process of developing its own data center server chips and facilities to drive the technologies, in an effort to control cloud server rental expenses, according to the report.
The company predicted it could spend more than $8 billion this year, roughly $1.5 billion more than an earlier projection, The Information said.
Another factor influencing the increased need for capital is computing costs, on which the company expects to spend more than $150 billion from 2025 through 2030.
The cost to develop AI models is also higher than previously expected, The Information said.
AI Insights
Microsoft Says Azure Service Affected by Damaged Red Sea Cables

Microsoft Corp. said on Saturday that clients of its Azure cloud platform may experience increased latency after multiple international cables in the Red Sea were cut.
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AI Insights
Geoffrey Hinton says AI will cause massive unemployment and send profits soaring

Pioneering computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, whose work has earned him a Nobel Prize and the moniker “godfather of AI,” said artificial intelligence will spark a surge in unemployment and profits.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Financial Times, the former Google scientist cleared the air about why he left the tech giant, raised alarms on potential threats from AI, and revealed how he uses the technology. But he also predicted who the winners and losers will be.
“What’s actually going to happen is rich people are going to use AI to replace workers,” Hinton said. “It’s going to create massive unemployment and a huge rise in profits. It will make a few people much richer and most people poorer. That’s not AI’s fault, that is the capitalist system.”
That echos comments he gave to Fortune last month, when he said AI companies are more concerned with short-term profits than the long-term consequences of the technology.
For now, layoffs haven’t spiked, but evidence is mounting that AI is shrinking opportunities, especially at the entry level where recent college graduates start their careers.
A survey from the New York Fed found that companies using AI are much more likely to retrain their employees than fire them, though layoffs are expected to rise in the coming months.
Hinton said earlier that healthcare is the one industry that will be safe from the potential jobs armageddon.
“If you could make doctors five times as efficient, we could all have five times as much health care for the same price,” he explained on the Diary of a CEO YouTube series in June. “There’s almost no limit to how much health care people can absorb—[patients] always want more health care if there’s no cost to it.”
Still, Hinton believes that jobs that perform mundane tasks will be taken over by AI, while sparing some jobs that require a high level of skill.
In his interview with the FT, he also dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s idea to pay a universal basic income as AI disrupts the economy and reduce demand for workers, saying it “won’t deal with human dignity” and the value people derive from having jobs.
Hinton has long warned about the dangers of AI without guardrails, estimating a 10% to 20% chance of the technology wiping out humans after the development of superintelligence.
In his view, the dangers of AI fall into two categories: the risk the technology itself poses to the future of humanity, and the consequences of AI being manipulated by people with bad intent.
In his FT interview, he warned AI could help someone build a bioweapon and lamented the Trump administration’s unwillingness to regulate AI more closely, while China is taking the threat more seriously. But he also acknowledged potential upside from AI amid its immense possibilities and uncertainties.
“We don’t know what is going to happen, we have no idea, and people who tell you what is going to happen are just being silly,” Hinton said. “We are at a point in history where something amazing is happening, and it may be amazingly good, and it may be amazingly bad. We can make guesses, but things aren’t going to stay like they are.”
Meanwhile, he told the FT how he uses AI in his own life, saying OpenAI’s ChatGPT is his product of choice. While he mostly uses the chatbot for research, Hinton revealed that a former girlfriend used ChatGPT “to tell me what a rat I was” during their breakup.
“She got the chatbot to explain how awful my behavior was and gave it to me. I didn’t think I had been a rat, so it didn’t make me feel too bad . . . I met somebody I liked more, you know how it goes,” he quipped.
Hinton also explained why he left Google in 2023. While media reports have said he quit so he could speak more freely about the dangers of AI, the 77-year-old Nobel laureate denied that was the reason.
“I left because I was 75, I could no longer program as well as I used to, and there’s a lot of stuff on Netflix I haven’t had a chance to watch,” he said. “I had worked very hard for 55 years, and I felt it was time to retire . . . And I thought, since I am leaving anyway, I could talk about the risks.”
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