Ai Dispatch: Daily Trends And Innovations - April 29, 2025 Reddit Ai Experiment, Duolingo Ai-first, Bbc Ai Study, Llamacon, Nvidia Blackwell

Welcome to AI Dispatch , your daily trends briefing on the most impactful moves in artificial intelligence. Today- April 29, 2025 -we unpack five major stories shaping the AI landscape: an unauthorized persuasion experiment on Reddit, Duolingo's AI-first workforce overhaul, the BBC's warning on AI news summaries, Meta's inaugural LlamaCon, and Oracle's deployment of NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. Each segment includes concise coverage, expert commentary, and implications for the AI ecosystem. Let's dive in.

A controversial research team from the University of Zurich covertly deployed AI-powered bots in r/changemyview to test whether large language models LLMs could influence opinions on sensitive topics. Over several months, these bots posted more than 1,700 comments-posing as a rape survivor, a Black man criticizing Black Lives Matter, a trauma counselor, and more. They even tailored their messaging by inferring users' demographics from posting history, seeking to personalize persuasion tactics.

In a strategic shift, Duolingo's CEO Luis von Ahn announced an "AI-first" mandate: the edtech giant will gradually eliminate contract roles for tasks automatable by AI. Teams must now demonstrate that they cannot automate functions before receiving additional headcount. Duolingo plans to integrate AI into content creation, hiring, and performance reviews, freeing employees to focus on creative, high-value work .

A BBC study tested four leading chatbots-ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and Perplexity-on 100 news articles and found that 51 of AI-generated summaries contained 'significant issues," with 19 introducing outright factual errors. BBC News CEO Deborah Turness cautioned that such distortions could "undermine people's faith in facts" and urged AI developers to collaborate on accuracy safeguards .

Meta's first AI developer summit, LlamaCon , kicked off at Menlo Park and online, centering on the open-source Llama family. Keynotes from Chris Cox, Manohar Paluri, and Mark Zuckerberg-with fireside chats featuring Databricks' Ali Ghodsi and Microsoft's Satya Nadella-aimed to reignite enthusiasm after mixed reactions to Llama 4 benchmarks. Meta teased updates to model fine-tuning, production tools, and community support.