Amazon drops Sam Altman movie, months after its $50B OpenAI bet

The movie Amazon won't release: Amazon MGM Studios has stepped away from "Artificial," a nearly finished film about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The studio said last week that the movie would be better served if it were released by a different studio. The decision comes just months after Amazon's $50 billion OpenAI investment, which included an additional $100 billion commitment by the ChatGPT maker to run AI workloads on AWS. Read more.

Mapping the heat below: The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is teaming up with Nvidia and geothermal developer Fervo Energy to build a publicly available "digital twin" that models underground reservoirs — mapping the superheated rock miles below the surface so power plants can tap it more efficiently. The goal: turn the clean, renewable heat trapped beneath the Earth's crust into a more predictable source of electricity. Read more.

Referee and machine: The 2026 World Cup has added AI and computer vision to the officiating crew — a sensor inside the ball, semi-automated offside calls, and 16 tracking cameras per stadium. Oren Etzioni explains how the systems work, what they deliberately leave to human referees, and what it says about automation more broadly. Read more.

Riding the clean energy waves: Sila CEO Gene Berdichevsky has spent years building a next-generation battery company, and he's now scaling up production of automotive-grade silicon anodes at a plant in Moses Lake, Wash. In our latest Sustainability Spotlight, he says real progress in the energy transition comes down to patience, market timing, and getting the material science right. Read more.

Hot Links:

• Microsoft endorsed the bipartisan Ratepayer Protection Act, which says datacenter builders must pay their own way for energy infrastructure they require, attempting to address concerns about electricity and water use in the rollout of AI data centers. (Brad Smith on LinkedIn)

• On a related note, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned that a few AI giants are gaining too much influence, advocating for cheaper, more user‑controlled models to rebalance the economy. (Wall Street Journal)

• Seattle ranks third among large cities and Bellevue is third among mid-size cities in Coworking Cafe’s new study of the best places in the U.S. for grads to launch a career. (CoworkingCafe) 

• Seattle‑based smart‑home startup Wyze put out a $79.98 BodyScan scale that uses a handheld, eight‑electrode setup to give a clearer picture of body composition. (Business Wire)