#43 - Burgers, Acne Cream and Nuclear Power: AI Walks Out of the Lab

In Utah, an app now writes acne prescriptions and no doctor signs them. In Chicago, a McDonald's customer is suing because he thinks an AI helps set the price of his burger. Plus DeepSeek's $12 billion war chest, Google's nuclear deal and insurers bracing for rogue AI agents.

Today is one question: who is actually making the decisions now?

In this episode:

🌑 McDonald's sued over an AI pricing tool (02:14) — Reuters reports that Michael Thomas from DeKalb, Illinois, has sued McDonald's in federal court in Chicago. About 95 percent of McDonald's nearly 14,000 US restaurants are run by franchisees, and they use a pricing tool from Tiger Analytics that recommends prices "based on its estimation of what customers are willing to pay". The complaint argues that when every restaurant feeds its sales data into the same machine and gets price advice back from it, independent owners stop competing. According to heise, it claims the tool suggests a price increase once an item has gone up in at least 30 percent of locations. These are allegations, and McDonald's says AI does not set the price of a Big Mac. What is not in dispute: average menu prices rose about 40 percent in roughly five years. If this becomes a class action, McDonald's has a much bigger problem.

🌑 Utah lets an AI write acne prescriptions (06:56) — Nolla Health, which has already treated more than 50,000 patients in Norway, launched its Nolla Derm app in Utah: answer a questionnaire, scan your face, and the AI writes the prescription without a doctor signing it. The company says it is the first AI in the US allowed to write first-time prescriptions. It runs in Utah's regulatory sandbox, for adults with mild to moderate acne, and only for creams and gels. The pilot costs $4.99 a month. Company figures: only about 10 percent of Utahns with active acne see a skin doctor, the average wait is 61 days, and a visit can cost up to $300. My take: health systems under pressure everywhere will look at this very closely.

🌑 DeepSeek's war chest (11:37) — Bloomberg reports that DeepSeek, the AI lab from Hangzhou, is preparing an IPO for early 2027, and before that is raising about $12 billion (at least 80 billion yuan). It first sought about 50 billion yuan, but interest "outstripped expectations" after its latest model. The biggest cheques come from Tencent, the company behind WeChat, and CATL, the world's biggest maker of electric-car batteries. DeepSeek reportedly earns at a pace of about $1 billion a year and plans a data centre in Inner Mongolia with more than 160,000 Huawei AI chips. The deal is not closed yet. China is building its own AI chain with its own money.

🌑 Google buys power from upgraded nuclear reactors (14:48) — Google signed for 3,590 megawatts of power from Constellation Energy, the largest nuclear plant operator in the US: think three and a half big power plants. Part of it comes from uprates, upgrading existing reactors in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey so they make more power, on a 20-year contract, with Constellation investing more than $4.3 billion. Why upgrade instead of build? A new nuclear plant takes ten years or more. Google could spend up to $205 billion on data centres and computing this year. Jack Prandelli on X: "When AI companies outbid everyone for nuclear power, who gets left buying from gas plants?"

🌑 Insurers get ready for runaway AI agents (18:23) — the Financial Times reports that insurers are preparing for big claims caused by AI agents acting outside their makers' controls. The broker Aon looked at more than 300 AI-related lawsuits and disputes, and insurers are asking whether bosses like Sam Altman and Dario Amodei could be personally exposed. Reporter Leo Schwartz heard from one lawyer that AI companies are going to "get sued up the wazoo" over rogue AI incidents. Nobody knows yet how to price this risk.

🧵 The thread (20:34) — a pricing machine behind your burger, an app that writes prescriptions, insurers who can't yet price the risk. Who is actually making the decisions?

📱 Ping Malcolm on WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +43 676 6144 904

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AI Neanderthal — AI news for humans, not robots. Stay curious.