Track 4. Apple + AI, Social Media Laws, Concrete Batteries

Bullet Train is your express route to the stories, products & concepts shaping our future. No short-term headlines, no fluff—just the innovations transforming the world and our place in it, curated by the team behind the Meco App.

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Onwards! It’s June 12th. Today’s stops include:

• Were Apple’s AI announcements worth the wait? 🍎 

• Do laws have the power to stop doom-scrolling? 🤳 

• The material that could turn your home into one big battery 🔋 

And don’t miss our #offtherails segment — not so future-focused, just a bit of fun

Weekly coverage of stories shaping the future — brought to you in streamlined bullet points:

Were Apple’s AI announcements worth the wait?

• ICYMI: Apple had a little thing on Monday called the Worldwide Developers Conference, their annual event announcing the company’s latest innovations

• To recap: Apple Intelligence is the big AI reveal we were waiting for, stealthily embedded across your iOS devices — from Siri to Photos to Notes

• How it’s marketed: they’re calling it AI ‘for the rest of us’ — Apple’s way of saying Siri might actually become helpful in our everyday lives

• Personal context: this AI might know you better than your mom does, by connecting the dots across your data points (calendar, email, maps, reminders, you name it), acting like a personal assistant that helps you avoid scheduling mishaps and missed to-do’s

• Privacy at its finest: Apple uses multi-layered architecture, so tasks happen on your device, keeping your data private. For those wanting to get deeper in details, it’s part of their new Private Cloud Compute, a temporary (and private) cloud solution just for your AI tasks

• Big collaborations: Apple teamed with OpenAI to embed ChatGPT directly into their iOS. If Apple senses ChatGPT can handle a task better, it'll ask if you’d like it to take over — and supposedly this is just the first of more integrations to come

• In sum: Apple’s finally caught up with the competition, using its strengths to deliver AI to the masses — highlighting a future with fewer individual apps and more seamless, fluid experiences

• Where our minds are going: We're eagerly anticipating how AI will spur an increased presence of Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant and make a more meaningful impact to our day-to-day lives — now, Google, over to you

Do laws have the power to stop doom-scrolling?

• What to know: New York State passed the first-of-its-kind legislation aimed at protecting children under 18 from the addictive nature of social media

• SAFE for Kids Act: teens will need parental consent to enable recommendation algorithms that show ‘suggested’ posts, and platforms can’t send notifications to kids in the middle of the night

• Growing concerns: a recent study found that teens spend nearly 5 hours a day on social media platforms and usage is linked to poor sleep and body image, as well as bullying, depression, and anxiety

• Up for debate: some argue that blocking these algorithms might not help and it could restrict online freedoms for younger people

• Where our minds are going: it’s wild to think that this is the first law attempting to regulate the addictive nature of a digital product

• Looking ahead: will it actually work and make a positive difference for kids — and if it does — could there be pressure to regulate these algorithms more broadly?

The material that could turn your home into one big battery

• What to know: researchers at MIT and Harvard have turned concrete into a supercapacitor (a device that stores energy, similar-ish to a battery)

• How it works: this concrete is made of water, cement, and carbon black (the key ingredient, as it conducts electricity and allows the material to hold a charge)

• The renewable energy problem: there’s long been a challenge in storing solar and wind power in an efficient and eco-friendly way

• The battery problem: typical batteries are made of lithium — but there’s a finite supply of this metal, mining it is energy-intensive, and they degrade over time

• A limited solution: supercapacitors won’t fully replace lithium batteries as they can’t power devices needing steady energy, but they can store and release energy quickly — which is ideal for renewables

• Future applications: one thing they envision is homes with concrete foundations that can store excess solar or wind energy, another is to create roads that can store solar energy to recharge electric cars wirelessly

• Hurdles: this has only been tested in the lab, and scaling it into a structurally sound energy storage option will be a challenge

• Where our minds are going: the building industry is ripe for innovation — and we never expected concrete could be the thing to get us to a more sustainable future

A story that diverted us from our day job

Underrated updates from Apple’s WWDC

• It wasn’t all about AI: although AI dominated the headlines, there were some improvements that may seem small on the surface but solve big pain points and fundamentally change how we behave

• The under-the-radar updates we’re excited for:

  • Photo organizing — K we know this uses AI but someone else sorting the 18,000 photos on my phone might become my new love language

  • Tap to cash — I hate owing people money but it also took me years to give in to Venmo and maybe that’s my toxic trait — so you better believe I’ll be tap-happy when this feature rolls out

  • Scheduled sends — not technically impressive at all, and honestly it shocks us that Apple didn’t have this sooner, but we agree this may be the most underrated release of iOS 18 

  • Genmoji — sometimes the existing 3000 emojis are simply not enough to fully express oneself… bound to make messaging more fun

A bit of fun to round out your ride

• Want to have more meaningful chats with friends, family, and coworkers? Check out the science of having a great conversation

• An airline dedicated to dogs completed its inaugural flight from New York to Los Angeles without a scratch (lol). The plane was fully equipped with calming aids, personal dog bowls, and in-flight service featuring a variety of treats and each ticket only cost a cool $6K…

• China is developing humanoid robots that developers believe will eventually act as psychotherapists — but after looking at the images we might need a bit of therapy ourselves

• What if we told you you could live longer and heal the earth while you’re at it? Studies suggest you can by following a Planetary Health Diet

• If you’ve got 30 minutes to kill, watch this Veritasium coverage on what jumping spiders teach us about color

Please mind the gap as you get off the train ✌️