The Flop

Welcome back to The Flop—your cozy corner for demystifying AI with warmth, wit, and a dash of whimsy!

👉 This week, we’re going behind the scenes to see what really powers AI, and sharing a Hack for using that brainpower to tackle tough parenting questions.

🐰 Down the Rabbit Hole

What Powers AI, Anyway?

If AI were a superhero, the model (like ChatGPT) would be the cape-wearing star you see in action. But behind the scenes? It’s powered by an unsung cast of techy sidekicks - computer hardware - doing all the heavy lifting.

Let’s break it down.

🧠 What Is Hardware?

Hardware is the physical stuff: chips, processors, and servers that run the software (like AI models). If your computer is the kitchen, the hardware is the stove, and the software is the recipe. No stove = no cookies. 🍪

🔍 What’s a “Chip”?

A chip (also called a processor or microchip) is a tiny but mighty square of silicon that handles instructions, like doing math problems really fast. AI needs chips that can crunch lots of numbers at once, especially for tasks like image recognition or language generation.

🎮 Enter: GPUs

You might have heard of CPUs (central processing units), which run most apps on your laptop. But for AI, we need GPUs (graphics processing units). These were originally made for video games, but it turns out they’re really good at multitasking on giant sets of data. AI models love that.

🌟 Why Is Nvidia Such a Big Deal?

Nvidia is the Beyoncé of GPUs. Their H100 chips are the gold standard for AI. That’s why Nvidia’s stock has been on a rocket ship 🚀 and why tech companies treat H100 shipments like rare treasure.

The Nvidia H100 is a hefty piece of hardware. The PCIe version is over 10 inches long and takes up two slots in a server rack. It’s designed for data centers with serious power and cooling needs.

🏢 From Big Chips to Massive Server Farms

It’s not just one big GPU doing the work. It’s thousands of them, stacked and networked together:

• GPUs are mounted on server boards—each board can have multiple GPUs.

• Servers are stacked in racks—neat metal shelves lined with blinking, humming machines.

• Racks are packed into data centers—enormous, industrial-scale facilities with cooling systems, power substations, and security worthy of a Bond villain’s lair.

A server farm filled with Nvidia H100 GPUs is not your average computer room. Imagine a football-field-sized Costco—but instead of giant pickle jars, it’s wall-to-wall racks of servers, all slurping power and blasting cool air to keep from overheating.

🧘‍♀️ So, What Does This Mean for You?

You don’t need to buy an H100 (they cost tens of thousands of dollars!). But it helps to know that behind every AI tool you use, there’s a data center full of powerful chips doing lightning-speed math.

🛠️AI Hack of the Week

Use Google’s Genius Chips for Smarter Research

You don’t need a warehouse full of Nvidia H100s to do advanced research. In fact, Google will lend you its AI superpowers for free. 🦸‍♀️

🧠 Meet Gemini’s “Deep Research” Mode

If you’re trying to dig into a complex topic, Gemini can gather information across multiple sources and give you a thoughtful, footnoted summary.

That’s Gemini’s Deep Research mode, and it runs on Google’s own custom chips called TPUs (Tensor Processing Units), designed specifically to train and run AI models.

🧪 What Makes It Cool?

• It pulls from a wide range of sources (not just the top few links)

• It explains things in plain English

• You can double-click any sentence for the source

• It will create cool infographics and summaries from pages and pages of research

🧘‍♂️ No Brain Overload

Deep Research is especially great for all those thorny parenting questions that don’t have easy, one-size-fits-all answers. You know, the kinds of things that come up in mom chats ☕🗣️, like:

👶 What are the best sleep training methods for a 6-month-old, and what does recent research say about their effectiveness?

📚 What are the pros and cons of starting reading instruction with phonics vs. whole language?

🫧 How can I talk to my 13-year-old about vaping in a way that actually works, based on psychology?

🎓 What’s the impact of AP classes on college admissions outcomes?

Or, for me lately: 🥘 Are family dinners really associated with better mental health in teens?

✅ Step by Step: My Deep Research on Family Dinners

As my kids get older and juggle more activities, it’s getting harder to have family dinners every night. I found myself wondering: Should I be worried about this?

So I decided to put Gemini’s Deep Research to the test. Here’s exactly how it went:

Step 1: Go to Gemini and log in

Head to gemini.google.com and sign in with your Google account.

Step 2: Ask Your Question:

I typed in:

Step 3: Start Research

Gemini will break down how it plans to research your question. You can edit the plan if you want to get fancy, or just hit Start Research and let it go.

Step 4: Have a Cup of Tea ☕

Gemini will start crunching through dozens of sources. This can take a while!

My family dinners research took about 10 minutes to run. I’ve had other topics take 30 minutes or more.

It’s the perfect time to step away, make a cup of tea, help a kid find their missing shoe, or switch tabs and do something else while the AI does the heavy lifting.

Step 5: Dig Into the Findings

After about 10 minutes, Gemini delivered a detailed, footnoted report with clear sections summarizing the research.

Honestly, this is great for parents who want to read every line and say, “Well, actually, according to a 2021 meta-analysis…” at the dinner table.

But for the rest of us? You can also generate an infographic version. Simply Click Create and Choose Infographic.

The Infographic is perfect if:

• You’re not in the mood to wade through academic citations before your coffee kicks in ☕

• You want the TL;DR with pretty pictures

• Or you want to casually share the infographic with your spouse as a gentle nudge: “Hey look, research says we should put our phones down at dinner.” 😇

It’s like choosing your own adventure—nerdy deep dive or quick, colorful summary.

What I loved was that it didn’t just say “family dinners are good” and call it a day. The infographic (which you can share with others via a link) broke it down in ways that made sense:

✅ Fewer family dinners were linked to higher rates of risk-taking behaviors like smoking and drinking

🗣️ It explained that dinners help through connection, communication, and routine

⚡ It even called out that quality matters more than quantity, so stressful, forced dinners aren’t the goal

🧩 And it pointed out confounding variables: family dinners often go hand-in-hand with other positive things like stronger parent-child relationships, stable schedules, and more involved parenting. It’s not that dinner itself is magic - it’s a marker for other good stuff happening at home.

Honestly? It made me feel a lot better. Even if we can’t sit down every single night, I know the important thing is creating space to talk and connect when we can. And that’s something I can do—even on busy, kid-juggling weeknights.

🙂 Tiny Delights

Binkies & Zoomies

Let’s be honest: as we get older, we need more protein, but a lot of protein options taste like disappointment.

Thankfully, my cousin Laura shared this low-glycemic, antioxidant-packed, actually-delicious morning smoothie with me years ago and it’s been a staple ever since. Everyone I’ve shared it with loves it.

Here’s what I blend every morning to help check my “get more protein” box:

🥛 1 cup unsweetened almond milk

🥄 1-2 scoops vanilla protein powder (plant or whey, your call, no added sugar though)

🌱 1 tablespoon flax seeds

🍫 1 tablespoon cacao powder (unsweetened)

🥜 1 tablespoon almond butter

🍂 A few shakes of cinnamon

🫐 1/4 cup frozen blueberries

🧊 1/2 cup ice

Blend, pour and enjoy. (Add more or less ice depending on your taste. )

🌳 Moment of Calm

AI Antidote: Where in the World?

Before we wrap, here’s a little moment of calm for your eyeballs. No AI, no productivity hack—just nature doing its thing.

Can you guess which National Park this is?

Kudos to Sheri for correctly guessing last week’s mystery park: Bryce National Park.

👋 Until Next Week

Thanks for being here. I know your inbox is a busy place, and I hope this one made you feel just a little smarter and more prepared in this new world of AI.

Warmly,
Ricci

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Last week, we explored how to create a custom invite with AI. You can read all about it here.