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250k Marines Enlist in AI Boot Camp

May 14, 20265 min read
The AI stories that actually matter this week | Edition #23 | May 15, 2026
AI stopped being optional this week. The entire United States Marine Corps was ordered to complete AI training by the end of the year. Gartner warned that companies without an AI strategy will start losing their best people next year. And Anthropic just passed OpenAI as the most-paid-for AI in American business. Let's get to it.

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Top Stories

+ The Marines Just Ordered Every Marine To Learn AI This Year

The United States Marine Corps issued an order on Wednesday May 13 requiring every Marine, active duty and reserve, officer and enlisted, to complete a 45-minute Basic AI course by December 31, 2026. From here forward, every new Marine has to finish the same course inside the first year after entry-level training. The course runs through the Marine Corps eLearning platform and is mandatory. The course covers what generative AI is, how it gets used inside the military, and the rules for responsible use. It walks Marines through the commercial tools they are likely to encounter (ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, xAI's Grok) and the Department of Defense's own platform, GenAI.mil, which has now been adopted by five of the six US military branches as the official AI environment.
What it all means: The largest single employer of young Americans just made AI fluency a baseline job requirement, with a hard deadline. Most private companies are still arguing over whether to block ChatGPT on the corporate network. The Marines are training a quarter million people on how to use it well.

+ Anthropic Just Passed OpenAI With American Businesses

Ramp published its monthly AI Index on Thursday, and for the first time since the AI race began, more US businesses are paying for Anthropic's Claude than for OpenAI's ChatGPT. Claude sits at 34.4% adoption across paid US business accounts. ChatGPT sits at 32.3%. A year ago, Anthropic's number was a quarter of where it is now. OpenAI's grew 0.3% in the same period. The same week, the New York Times reported that Anthropic is in early talks with investors to raise $30 to $50 billion at a valuation as high as $950 billion. That would put the company above OpenAI's $854 billion valuation from March. The product driving the growth is Claude Code, Anthropic's AI coding tool, which has become the fastest-growing product in the company's history.
What it all means: Until this year, the default answer to "which AI should we use" was ChatGPT. That default just changed for paid business use. If your company is buying AI for the first time, Claude is now a credible starting point. If your team is only using ChatGPT, this is the week to take a real second look at the alternative.

+ Gartner Warned That Half Of Companies Will Lose Their Best AI People

On Wednesday, Gartner published a forecast that by 2027, half of the companies that have not built a real AI strategy for their workforce will start losing their best AI talent to competitors that have. The data behind the forecast is uncomfortable. Even at companies that provide AI tools, 88% of employees with company-issued AI are also using personal AI tools to get their work done. The employees who use both save 1.7 times more time than the ones who only use what their employer gives them. And 73% of the most productive AI users inside any given company are managers or executives. The rank and file are being left behind. Gartner's recommendation is that the IT and HR sides of the house have to start working together on this. Treating AI as an IT procurement decision is no longer enough. A real AI strategy now has to cover which tools your team is actually using, who is being left behind, and how you train and govern the rest of the company to catch up.
What it all means: Gartner's number captures two risks at the same time. The first is the talent risk Gartner names directly. The second is a data risk that runs right alongside it. The employees who are most productive on AI are also the ones using personal AI accounts to do company work, often with company data, on tools their employer never approved and cannot govern. Companies that build a real AI strategy keep their people, give them the tools to actually be more efficient, and keep the company's data inside the company. Companies that do not lose on all three ends at once.

More Stories

Anthropic Launched A Small Business Version Of Claude.

On May 13, Anthropic released Claude for Small Business, a package that drops Claude into the tools small business owners already pay for: QuickBooks, PayPal, HubSpot, Canva, Docusign, Google Workspace, and Microsoft 365. It ships with 15 ready-to-run workflows across finance, sales, marketing, HR, and customer service. Anthropic is also running a free in-person training tour through 10 US cities starting in Chicago this week.

Amazon Killed Rufus And Built A New Shopping Agent.

Amazon announced on May 13 that it is retiring Rufus, the standalone shopping chatbot it launched in 2024. In its place is "Alexa for Shopping," an agent built into the Amazon search bar that remembers your purchases, compares products side by side, and will actually take actions like "add this to my cart if the price drops to ten dollars." Rolls out to all US customers within the week. Prime membership not required.

Google Is Rebuilding Android Around AI.

At the Android Show on Tuesday May 12, Google introduced "Gemini Intelligence," a system designed to let your phone do work across apps for you instead of bouncing you between them. Android lead Sameer Samat called it "transitioning from an operating system to an intelligence system." The features roll out this summer on the newest Samsung Galaxy and Pixel phones, then expand to watches, cars, glasses, and laptops later this year. Google also announced a new line of laptops called Googlebooks.

OpenAI Said Enterprise AI Has Hit A Tipping Point.

OpenAI revenue chief Giancarlo Dresser told CNBC on May 11 that more than 40% of OpenAI's revenue now comes from enterprise customers, and the company expects enterprise to match its consumer business by the end of the year. The comment landed one week after OpenAI launched a $4 billion services arm to compete with Anthropic's Wall-Street-backed services firm.

Why It Matters

The story this week is what happens when a technology stops being optional. A research firm, a branch of the United States military, and the customers themselves all said the same thing in three different ways. AI is now part of the standard operating environment for work.

For You

The Marine Corps order is the moment AI literacy got formalized. A quarter million uniformed Marines now have to know what generative AI is, what it can do, and what the rules are for using it, before the end of this year. Anthropic running an in-person training tour for small business owners in ten US cities is a smaller version of the same trend. The institutions are starting to do the teaching, and the gap between people who learn now and people who put it off is going to keep widening.

For Your Work

Your best people are already using AI you did not buy them. This week Gartner put a price on that. The talent risk is real: the most productive AI users inside any company are also the most likely to compare offers from employers who take AI seriously. The data risk is bigger. Every personal AI session run with company information inside it is data flowing out of the building. The companies that invest to catch up to what their teams are already doing keep their people and their data. The rest do not.

One Thing To Try This Week

How To Talk To Your AI Out Loud

Every major AI tool now has a voice mode that lets you have a real conversation, ask follow-up questions, and get spoken answers back. Useful when you are driving, walking, multitasking, or just thinking out loud. Here is how to use voice mode on each platform.

Claude (via Cowork or claude.ai)

  1. Open the Claude app on iPhone or Android. (Voice mode is also available on the desktop and web app.) Voice mode is free for all Claude users as of early 2026.
  2. Open any conversation. In the chat bar at the bottom, look for the sound wave icon to the right of the text box. Tap it.
  3. The first time you use voice mode, Claude will ask you to pick a voice. There are five options: Buttery, Airy, Mellow, Glassy, and Rounded. You can change the voice and the pace anytime from the settings button in the bottom-left of the voice screen.
  4. Start talking. Claude listens, replies out loud, and shows you a live transcript as you go. You can switch back to typing in the same conversation without losing context.
  5. Tap the X to end the session. The transcript stays in your chat history so you can scroll back, copy quotes, or keep going by typing.

ChatGPT

  1. Open the ChatGPT app on iPhone or Android, or open ChatGPT on the web. Advanced Voice is included on the Free plan with a daily preview limit (around 15 minutes per day). Plus, Pro, Team, and Enterprise plans get much higher limits.
  2. From any conversation, tap the sound wave icon on the right side of the message bar. On the web, click the microphone or voice icon next to the message box.
  3. The first time, ChatGPT will ask you to pick a voice. There are nine options: Arbor, Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper, Maple, Sol, Spruce, and Vale. You can change it later under Settings → Voice.
  4. Start talking. Advanced Voice handles interruptions, switches languages mid-conversation, and picks up tone. You can also share your phone camera so ChatGPT can see what you are pointing at.
  5. Tap the X to end. The full transcript is saved into your chat history.

Microsoft Copilot

  1. Open the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on iPhone, Android, or your desktop. Voice is included with any Microsoft 365 Copilot license.
  2. In any chat, look for the microphone icon in the message bar or tap "Start a new voice chat." If it is your first time, allow microphone access when prompted.
  3. Copilot greets you out loud and starts listening. You can interrupt naturally, ask follow-up questions, and get spoken responses grounded in both the public web and your own work files (Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint, Teams).
  4. Use it on the go. Voice works across the Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook mobile apps too, so you can ask Copilot to summarize a document, draft an email, or pull a number out of a spreadsheet without opening anything.
  5. Tap the X to end the voice chat. The conversation is saved to your Copilot chat history.
Bonus: Voice pairs well with last week's research lesson. Kick off a deep research project at your desk in the morning, and then ask the model to read you the highlights on your commute. Same task, no extra effort.
Try This Prompt
I am going to start the day by talking through my priorities with you. Here are the three things on my plate today: [say them out loud]. Help me think through which one is highest leverage, what could go wrong with each, and what one question I should ask before I start. Reply out loud, then save a written summary I can refer back to.

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