Here are the highlights from the week that was in AI and our spicy takes on what it actually means. 🌶️
This week in AI: The Pope tells priests to put down ChatGPT, software creation hits a hockey stick inflection, Stripe's AI engineers ship 1,300 PRs a week with zero human-written code, Karpathy picks favorites in the AI agent wars, and Airtable launches a full agent platform. The gap between builders and watchers is getting wider by the day.
On the Chipp side, we're running hands-on workshops to help you build and sell AI agents. Register for upcoming events including AI for Fundraising, Create AI Voice Sales Agents, and How to Sell White-Label AI Agents. Jump into the Agents of Change cohorts if you want to go deeper.
AI Highlights from Around the Web
The Pope Says Put Down ChatGPT and Pick Up a Pen
Pope Leo XIV urged priests not to write sermons using ChatGPT, warning that relying on AI would cause their minds to "atrophy." During a meeting with the Diocese of Rome, he stressed that "AI will never be able to preach the faith" and that Christianity requires a living relationship, not formal recitation. It's the Vatican's strongest stance yet on AI in religious practice.
He's not wrong — and not just about sermons. The "atrophy" warning applies everywhere. If you use AI to replace your thinking instead of augmenting it, you're not getting smarter — you're outsourcing the one thing that makes you valuable. The best AI users we see at Chipp use it as a force multiplier for their expertise, not a substitute for having any.
We're Living Through the Biggest Software Creation Explosion in History
New website creation is up 40% year over year. iOS apps are up nearly 50%. GitHub code pushes jumped 35% in the US. Nicholas Charriere points out these metrics were flat for years before late 2024 — the graph is a pure hockey stick. The barrier to building software didn't just lower. It disappeared.
This is the macro trend behind everything we're building at Chipp. When anyone can ship software, the advantage shifts from "can you build it" to "do you know what to build." Taste, domain expertise, and understanding your customer — that's the moat now. Our cohorts exist because the agencies and consultants who pair AI building skills with deep client knowledge will dominate this next era.
Stripe's AI Engineers Now Ship 1,300 Pull Requests Per Week
Stripe revealed that 1,300 of their weekly pull requests are now fully AI-generated — zero human-written code, just human-reviewed. That's the equivalent output of ~565 engineers at ~$270K median comp, or roughly $150M in annual salary replaced by compute. Oh, and it went from 1,000 to 1,300 in a single week.
The 30% week-over-week jump is the real story. This isn't linear growth — it's compounding. The companies building internal AI tooling are creating advantages that widen every quarter. If you're an agency or consultancy still billing hourly for dev work, the clock is ticking. The future is AI-augmented delivery at software margins.
Karpathy Picks Favorites in the AI Agent Wars
Andrej Karpathy bought a Mac mini to tinker with AI agents and declared the big frameworks a "security nightmare." His pick? Smaller, auditable alternatives like NanoClaw — ~500 lines of code where customization happens by having AI rewrite the source code, not toggle config flags. Aakash Gupta's analysis nails the implication: "Write the most maximally forkable repo possible, then let AI fork it into whatever you need."
The "forkable repo" pattern will eat way more than AI agents. Every SaaS settings page, every plugin registry, every configuration layer exists because modifying source code used to be expensive. That cost just dropped to near zero. At Chipp, we're watching this closely — the future of AI tools might not be platforms with infinite toggles, but small, purpose-built forks shaped exactly to your needs.
Airtable Enters the Agent Race with Hyperagent
Airtable CEO Howie Liu announced Hyperagent — a full agent platform where every session gets its own isolated cloud environment. Real browser, code execution, data warehouse access, hundreds of integrations. The kicker: you can deploy agents as Slack coworkers that follow conversations and act autonomously. They're onboarding early users now.
The big players are entering the agent space fast. But notice the pattern: Airtable, OpenAI, Salesforce — they're all targeting enterprise. That leaves a massive gap for agencies and consultants serving SMBs, nonprofits, and vertical markets. That's exactly where Chipp lives. If you're building AI solutions for clients who aren't Fortune 500, you have more runway than ever.
Chipp Updates
Upcoming Workshops & Events
- AI for Fundraising: Real ROI for Nonprofits — with Scott Meyer & Katie Clark
- Create AI Voice Sales Agents — Build voice agents that close deals
- How to Sell White-Label AI Agents — Turn AI into agency revenue
All free. All practical. Browse all events →
Business Agents of Change
Our Business Agents of Change cohort is designed for founders, agency owners, and business leaders who want to build and sell AI agents. Learn the strategies behind launching AI-powered services, pricing models, and go-to-market playbooks. Applications are open now.
The Agents of Change Cohorts
Our cohort programs are live — one for technical builders, one for business leaders. Learn how we built Chipp with AI agents and apply it to your own work. Learn more →
