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Issue 001
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AI Bootcamp · Austin, TX · May 2026
AI Builder
Brief.
What happened in AI this week, and what it means for your work.
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From the Desk
Welcome to the first issue.
Every Tuesday we'll cut through the AI noise and send you what actually matters: curated news, one thing you can try this week, and a plain-English explainer on something worth understanding. No hype. No jargon. No selling. Just signal.
This week: Google made its biggest AI move yet, the job displacement numbers landed, and we explain what "AI agents" actually means in language that doesn't require a computer science degree.
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Marliis Schneider
Founder & CEO, MakerSquare · Austin, TX
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01 · The 3 Things
The AI stories worth your attention.
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Google · Big Tech
Google just rebuilt Search from scratch.
At its annual developer conference on May 19, Google announced what it called the biggest change to Search in 25 years. AI is now the default experience, not a feature you toggle on. It also unveiled Gemini Spark, a new AI agent that can take actions across your connected apps on your behalf, and Gemini 3.5 Flash, a faster, smarter model now running as the default across Gemini products globally.
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Why it matters
If you use Google Search, Gmail, Docs, or Drive, your tools just changed. The people who learn to direct these AI features, rather than just type into a search bar, will be operating at a different level by Q3.
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Read the story →
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Workforce · Economy
92,000 tech jobs gone in 2026.
Over 92,000 tech workers have lost jobs so far in 2026, with Meta cutting around 8,000 employees beginning May 20, explicitly to fund AI investment. Cloudflare, Coinbase, PayPal, and Cisco have all announced cuts in the past month, and most framed them as restructuring "for the AI era."
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Why it matters
The headlines miss the nuance: "AI" is partly being used as cover for cuts companies were making anyway. But the underlying shift is real. Roles built around repetitive information work are shrinking.
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Read the story →
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AI for Good · Anthropic
Anthropic committed $200M to problems AI actually needs to solve.
Anthropic and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a four-year, $200M partnership to deploy AI in global health, education, and economic mobility. The work focuses on vaccine research, disease forecasting, health services access, and K-12 tutoring tools.
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Why it matters
The same tools being used for meeting summaries are now being aimed at drug discovery and outbreak modeling. The technology is real. Using it well still requires clarity about the problem.
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Read the story →
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02 · Try This Today
A 60-second meeting pre-brief.
Use this when you have a meeting in 20 minutes and have not had time to prepare.
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Copy this prompt
I have a meeting in [X minutes] about [topic] with [who's attending]. My role is [presenter / decision-maker / listener].
Help me with:
1. The 3 most likely questions I'll be asked
2. A 2-sentence framing I can open with
3. Any context I should make sure I know before walking in
Here's the agenda / background I have: [paste it here]
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Works for client calls, internal reviews, board meetings, and vendor negotiations. Save it somewhere you can grab it fast.
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03 · Deep Dive
What is an AI agent?
You've heard "AI agents" at least four times this week. Google announced them. OpenAI is selling them. Every startup claims to be building one.
Plain English: an AI agent is an AI that takes actions, not just answers questions.
Classic AI works in one direction. You type, it answers. An agent is different. It breaks a goal into steps, takes actions to complete each one, checks its own work, and keeps going until the task is done.
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"The difference between a chatbot and an agent is the difference between a smart answer and a completed task."
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Example: you need to research three competitors and build a comparison table. A regular AI gives you advice on how to do it. An AI agent opens your browser, visits each competitor's website, reads their pricing pages, organizes the data, and drops a finished table into your Google Doc while you're in another meeting.
You don't need to build agents. You need to know what they can do and when to point one at a problem.
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Myth of the Week
"You need to be technical to use AI agents." Not anymore. The barrier is understanding what they can do, not writing code. If you can write a clear instruction to a person, you can direct an agent.
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04 · Tool Spotlight
Motion.
Motion connects to your calendar and task list, then automatically schedules everything: deadlines, meeting buffers, working hours, and energy levels. When your 2pm moves, it reschedules everything downstream.
If you've ever spent Monday morning figuring out when to do what, this is that problem solved. You tell it what needs to happen and by when. It handles the rest.
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Best for
Busy professionals & managers
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Price
$19/mo annual
$49/mo monthly
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Setup time
About 30 minutes
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05 · What We're Building
Cohort 1 starts July 6.
Fifteen operators, founders, and consultants. Two weeks in Austin. Three deployed AI products each, built around their actual businesses.
By Day 5, every student has a working tool connected to a real database. By Day 9, an automated workflow running inside the tools they already use. The capstone gets presented publicly at Demo Day on July 17.
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Cohort 1
July 6-17
15 seats
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Cohort 2
July 27-Aug 7
15 seats
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Cohort 3
Aug 17-28
15 seats
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Download the curriculum →
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Two weeks. Three AI products you ship.
Found this useful? Forward it to someone who should be reading it.
Enroll now →
Austin, TX · No coding required · makersquare.ai
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2-Week AI Builder Program · Austin, Texas
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