Four things, every day.

Hey. South Korea just promised every citizen free AI, no subscription needed. Anthropic's lobbying bill jumped 26% in a quarter. New wage data shows exactly which AI skills pay off. And Google shipped a cheaper Gemini while quietly starting work on the next one.

A country just promised every citizen free AI.

South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT is building "AI for Everyone," a free, unlimited chatbot funded through 2028, with at least half the system running on domestic Korean models. Beta launches late September, full rollout by December, per Tech Times.

Nearly 23 million Koreans currently pay for ChatGPT. This isn't just public access, it's a state-funded bid to pull that spending toward domestic AI, sold as closing the digital divide by income and age.

Watch this as a template. If it works, expect other governments to pitch "free AI" as public infrastructure, not a product perk.

Anthropic's lobbying bill jumped 26% in one quarter.

Federal filings show Anthropic spent $1.97 million on Q2 lobbying, up 26% from Q1, now ahead of Nvidia and close to Oracle's $2 million. OpenAI spent $1.2 million, up 18%. Combined AI-lab lobbying hit $3.17 million, per CNBC.

Filings cite cybersecurity, copyright, cloud computing, and defense procurement as priorities. Meta still spends more than both combined, at $5.99 million, though that's down 15%.

The labs that talk most about AI safety are now also the ones spending fastest to shape the rules around it. Worth watching who wins those fights.

The AI wage premium just hit 62%.

PwC's Global AI Jobs Barometer, scanning over a billion job ads, finds workers with AI skills now earn a 62% wage premium, up from 57% last year. Roles "professionalised" by AI are growing twice as fast, with 42% faster wage growth, than roles AI merely simplifies, per PwC.

Meanwhile Bloomberg reports finance and tech payrolls are shrinking by 28,000 jobs a month on average this year, concentrated in the most automatable roles. Two tracks, same technology.

The pay bump goes to judgment and leadership skills layered on top of AI, not to using AI tools alone. That's the actual skill to build.

Gemini got cheaper. Gemini 4 is already training.

Google shipped Gemini 3.6 Flash on July 21 at $1.50/$7.50 per million tokens, output pricing down from $9, while using 17% fewer tokens to finish the same tasks. A budget Flash-Lite tier landed too, at $0.30/$2.50, per 9to5Google.

There was still no Gemini 3.5 Pro, which keeps missing its target. But Google confirmed it has now started pretraining Gemini 4, its most ambitious run yet.

If you're on 3.5 Flash, this upgrade is close to free: same task, lower bill. Worth switching over this week.

That's the four things today. See you tomorrow.