AI and work

Kroger plans to eliminate 3,000 corporate positions over three years as it expands AI use and streamlines operations. CEO Greg Foran told staff that the company must adopt new technology and reduce duplicative work amid intensifying grocery competition. These are planned reductions tied to a broader restructuring, rather than evidence that AI has already replaced every affected role.

Associated Press ↗ · October 14 briefing

Federal prosecutors charged Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national on OpenAI's product team, with intercepting oral communications after a hidden audio recorder was found in an executive conference room at the company's San Francisco headquarters. According to the complaint, the device was concealed in toilet paper and plugged into a USB port on the back of a television around September 28. OpenAI fired him and the FBI arrested him on October 9, and the company said it used its own AI models to analyze the device and trace it to him. OpenAI said it has no indication he accessed or took model weights, source code or customer data.

The Verge ↗ · October 13 briefing

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said strong AI infrastructure spending is keeping world growth around 3% even as an energy supply shock weighs on activity. The IMF estimates the AI investment boom could lift growth in advanced Asian economies by half a point to a full percentage point. Georgieva called AI a slow-moving tsunami, citing IMF estimates that about 40% of jobs could be augmented, downgraded or eliminated over time. IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas also warned that a failure of expected productivity gains could trigger a correction in high AI valuations.

Reuters Technology ↗ · October 12 briefing

A UK survey of 1,500 business leaders found 51 percent said AI is changing how they hire, and 19 percent have cut entry-level recruitment, with most citing AI adoption as a reason. Researchers warn AI is absorbing research, drafting, and administrative tasks long used to train junior employees, leaving fewer ways for new hires to build judgment through repetition. One analyst suggested treating entry-level work as supervised exposure rather than eliminating junior roles.

CNBC Technology ↗ · September 23 briefing

A recent security breach at Hugging Face and urgent warnings from a former senior researcher at both OpenAI and Anthropic have triggered fresh scrutiny of AI industry practices and security vulnerabilities. The incident highlights how commercial AI platforms remain exposed to coordinated cyberattacks despite their critical role in the AI supply chain. The combination of the breach and insider warnings suggests growing concerns about whether current safeguards are adequate to protect frontier AI development.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · September 11 briefing

Apple Inc. told a federal court on August 31, 2026 that a former senior electrical engineer now working at OpenAI downloaded a confidential circuit schematic and used it in his OpenAI work, citing a forensic inspection of a MacBook his attorneys handed over on August 21, 2026. The allegations appear in a supplemental brief filed in the Northern District of California as part of Apple's push for expedited discovery in its trade secret lawsuit. The New Forensic Allegations According to Apple's...

Unite. AI ↗ · August 31 briefing · Rules and the courts

As tech giants pour billions into AI infrastructure, they are also competing fiercely for AI talent, with frontier labs like OpenAI and Anthropic now ranking alongside Apple, Google, Amazon, and Nvidia as dream employers for many workers. Interviews with eight tech workers reveal shifting priorities: some are drawn to AI labs for their mission and upside, while others prefer the stability and scale of hyperscalers with profitable core businesses. The divide suggests that compensation alone is no longer decisive, with values, job security, and the chance to work on real-world products all influencing where top AI talent wants to land.

Business Insider Tech ↗ · August 30 briefing

In a 6,000-word essay, Bill Gates argues that AI will trigger one of history’s most turbulent economic transitions and calls for 'human reserved' jobs, retraining programs, and targeted policy to cushion workforce disruption.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · August 26 briefing

Young employment in AI-impacted fields down 19% compared to more AI-resistant occupations.

Ars Technica ↗ · August 24 briefing

OpenAI asked a judge to dismiss Apple's blockbuster trade-secrets lawsuit, arguing the case is designed to stop employees from leaving the iPhone maker as OpenAI prepares to launch its own AI device.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · August 6 briefing · Rules and the courts

Google's ATLAS study analyzed nearly 15 million Gemini interactions across 150 countries and found that AI assists workers far more often than it replaces them. AI now touches roughly 70% of occupations but only about 21% of tasks within a typical job, and fewer than 10% of workplace interactions fully automate a task. Most use centers on collaboration such as ideation, research, and learning, suggesting that automation of entire jobs remains uncommon.

Ars Technica ↗ · July 28 briefing

Alibaba has classified Anthropic's Claude Code as high-risk software and banned employees from using it starting July 10, directing staff to its in-house Qoder tool instead. The move escalates a feud that began when Anthropic accused operators linked to Alibaba's Qwen lab of running the largest known model distillation attack against Claude, using roughly 25,000 fraudulent accounts to run nearly 28.8 million exchanges over about six weeks. The ban followed a viral Reddit post claiming Claude Code had quietly shipped China-detection logic since April, which Anthropic described as an anti-abuse experiment it had been meaning to remove.

CNBC Technology ↗ · July 6 briefing · Rules and the courts

A Harvard working paper examining Y Combinator and other US venture-backed startups from 2020 to 2024 finds AI-native startups run about 25% smaller with 13% more engineers, and carry roughly 15% lower shares of entry-level workers and managers than non-AI peers. Their hiring skews heavily toward senior technical talent, suggesting AI-first companies are shrinking the traditional entry-level path into tech rather than expanding it.

Business Insider Tech ↗ · July 5 briefing

The rise of artificial intelligence won’t make human workers superfluous, according to OpenAI Chief Economist Ronnie Chatterji.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · June 30 briefing

TechRepublic / CNBC / Engadget / Ars Technica ↗ · June 23 briefing

Big Tech companies are discovering that AI data center expansion is bottlenecked not by compute or capital but by a global shortage of skilled physical labor — electricians, construction specialists, and datacenter technicians, the Financial Times reports. The workforce constraint is triggering new investments in vocational training and apprenticeship programs at Microsoft, Google, and Meta as they race to staff up capacity. The finding reframes the AI infrastructure debate: the binding limit is human craft skills, not silicon.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · June 21 briefing

Three Amazon engineers who testified at Seattle city council hearings against the company's AI data center expansion plans are now being investigated by Amazon, with the employees alleging retaliation for their public testimony. The engineers cited environmental and infrastructure concerns in their testimony, which directly contradicted Amazon's stated positions on data center growth. The case has drawn attention from labor advocates and raises questions about whether companies can discipline employees for protected speech made in official government proceedings.

Engadget ↗ · June 21 briefing · The compute buildout

Guardrails, a populist PAC funded by small donations from AI industry workers, is entering the political fight against Big Tech's massive lobbying spend.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · June 18 briefing

In Shenzhen, workers at IO-AI Tech teleoperate humanoid robots through VR rigs, turning full-body imitation into one of the hottest jobs in China's hardware hub.

Wired ↗ · June 17 briefing · Robots and physical AI

Challenger, Gray & Christmas data show employers cited AI for roughly 88,000 of about 398,000 U. S. job cuts through May 2026, up from about 54,000 AI-attributed cuts in all of 2025, with AI cited for nearly 40% of May's reductions.

TechMeme / Sherwood News ↗ · June 14 briefing

Knowledge workers now make up roughly one-fifth of OpenAI's Codex users and are growing more than three times as fast as developers, according to a new OpenAI report shared first with Axios. Why it matters: AI has made it easier to crank out documents, emails, decks and dashboards, and OpenAI is now betting agents can help workers make sense of them. The big picture: Previous waves of workplace software encouraged workers to produce huge volumes of files and messages, but those "workplace artifact...

Axios ↗ · June 2 briefing · AI that writes code

Ravi Kumar S., CEO of $27 billion IT firm Cognizant, says AI won’t kill entry-level jobs—and companies obsessed with tokens are measuring the wrong thing.

Fortune AI ↗ · June 2 briefing

A new lawsuit accuses a senior official at Shield AI of “profane, egregious acts” of sexual harassment and alleges fraud and safety issues involving other workers at the defense tech startup.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · May 29 briefing · Rules and the courts

AI companies, the cryptocurrency industry and pro-Israel groups are spending like never before to sink their least favorite members of Congress and congressional candidates. Why it matters: The volume cannot be ignored. It's the kind of spending that can kill careers and stop political movements in their tracks. Pro-Israel groups spent nearly $8 million to oust GOP Rep. Thomas Massie in Kentucky's 4th District, helping to fuel the most expensive House primary in American history. Crypto-aligned Pro...

Axios ↗ · May 29 briefing

OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei are walking back earlier warnings of a white-collar jobs apocalypse as both companies prepare blockbuster IPOs. Altman said he is delighted to be wrong about mass unemployment from AI.

Fortune AI ↗ · May 26 briefing · Follow the money

A Stanford-led study finds AI hiring tools can create clear racial disparities: candidates who fail automated screens face systemic rejection across multiple employers.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · May 26 briefing

The nine-year-old startup is replacing hundreds of employees with thousands of AI agents.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · May 25 briefing

The company formerly known as Intercom just did something that no major customer service platform has attempted at scale: it built an AI agent whose sole job is to manage another AI agent. Fin Operator, announced Thursday at a live event in San Francisco, is a new AI-powered system designed specifically for the back-office teams that configure, monitor, and improve Fin, the company's customer-facing AI agent. Rather than replacing human support agents — which is what Fin itself does on the f...

VentureBeat ↗ · May 15 briefing

Theo Wayt / The Information: Sources: 50+ researchers and engineers have left xAI since the SpaceX acquisition via layoffs, firings, and voluntary departures; many have joined Meta and TML — Call it the SpaceXAI exodus. — More than 50 researchers and engineers working on xAI's Grok models have left ...

TechMeme ↗ · May 14 briefing · Follow the money

UK staff of Google's AI research lab hope to block the use of the company's artificial intelligence models in military settings.

Wired ↗ · May 5 briefing

Some Amazon staff had complained about a lack of access to top AI coding tools, arguing the company risked falling behind in developer productivity.

Business Insider Tech ↗ · May 4 briefing · AI that writes code

Georgia Wells /Wall Street Journal:Sources: OpenAI employees have raised alarms internally over failures to alert law enforcement when users describe plans for real-world violence to ChatGPT— OpenAI's chatbot dispenses advice on weapons and role-plays mass shootings. The carnage is raising scrutiny on when and how companies intervene.

TechMeme ↗ · May 3 briefing · Rules and the courts

OpenAI chief economist says AI exposure is a not a viable metric for potential job loss.

Forbes Tech ↗ · April 27 briefing

Meta plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, about 8,000 employees, as the company continues to ramp up investments in artificial intelligence.

CNBC Technology ↗ · April 23 briefing

Mercor is promising to replicate most professional work. It was also co-founded by twentysomethings who previously never held a real job.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · April 16 briefing

Carl Franzen /VentureBeat:Users accuse Anthropic of degrading the performance of Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Code; employees publicly deny the company degrades models to manage capacity— A growing number of developers and AI power users are taking to social media to accuse Anthropic of degrading the performance …

TechMeme ↗ · April 14 briefing · AI that writes code

Silicon Valley often treats an AI-fueled jobs crisis as a given. The piece follows how economists are rethinking whether task-exposure scores predict displacement, and why Chicago economist Alex Imas argues we need far better data, including on price elasticity across industries, before we can plan for AI in the workforce.

MIT Tech Review ↗ · April 6 briefing

The FT covers Anthropic's survey of 80,000 Claude users: hallucinations and reliability worries rank above fear of job loss for many power users.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · March 23 briefing

The $730bn start-up plans to increase staff to 8,000 by end of 2026 in bid to close gap with rival Anthropic

Financial Times Tech ↗ · March 22 briefing

OpenAI has hired the former DocuSign CFO Cynthia Gaylor to run investor relations as the company gears up for a potential IPO by end of 2026.

CNBC Technology ↗ · March 17 briefing · Follow the money

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI is looking to hire bankers and private credit lenders to make its Grok chatbot better at finance strategy, joining rival AI firms in pushing software for investing professionals.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · March 16 briefing

Pyongyang's operatives deploy chatbots to undertake tasks, often in multiple roles.

Financial Times Tech ↗ · March 15 briefing

These layoffs could help Facebook's parent offset its aggressive spending on AI infrastructure, acquisitions, and hiring.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · March 15 briefing

Nearly 40 employees from OpenAI and Google—including Jeff Dean, Google's chief scientist and Gemini lead—filed an amicus brief in support of Anthropic's lawsuit, detailing concerns over the Trump administration's handling of the supply chain designation.

The Verge ↗ · March 9 briefing

New research finds that human recruiters follow AI's biased hiring recommendations 90% of the time. The 'human in the loop' was supposed to be the safeguard—these studies suggest the loop itself needs a redesign.

TechRepublic ↗ · March 8 briefing

Oracle is planning to cut thousands of jobs as it navigates a cash crunch caused by its massive multi-billion dollar investment in AI data center expansion. The move highlights the extreme capital requirements of the current AI infrastructure race.

Bloomberg ↗ · March 5 briefing · The compute buildout

Block is undergoing a massive restructuring, cutting its workforce by half to pivot entirely toward AI-driven automation. CEO Jack Dorsey stated that most companies are 'late' to the AI labor shift.

Ars Technica ↗ · March 1 briefing

OpenAI has terminated an employee for allegedly using insider knowledge to trade on prediction markets like Polymarket, highlighting new ethical challenges in the high-stakes AI industry.

Wired ↗ · March 1 briefing

A general desktop emulator (like xAI’s Macrohard, which emulates keystrokes, mouse movements, and screen interactions) could vastly expand beyond VBScript/Unix scripting, which are limited to command-line or basic API tasks. Such a system automates any UI-based workflow without code changes or integrations, mimicking human behavior across apps (browsers, legacy software, ERPs). What It Could Do ... Read more

Next Big Future AI ↗ · January 20 briefing

Meta began laying off employees in its Reality Labs division focused on virtual reality and shut down several VR studios as it pushes resources towards AI.

CNBC Technology ↗ · January 14 briefing

Meta Platforms Inc. plans to cut 10% of jobs in the company's Reality Labs division, part of a broader strategy to shift money away from some virtual reality products and into other AI wearables.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · January 12 briefing

The bloodletting will hit hardest in back-office operations, risk management, and compliance.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · January 2 briefing

Maker of ChatGPT and its competitor xAI have relaxed restrictions meant to keep new hires from leaving in the midst of a fierce talent war

TechMeme ↗ · December 14 briefing

OpenAI's artificial intelligence products are saving workers an average of about 40 to 60 minutes a day on professional tasks, according to a large survey conducted by the ChatGPT maker amid lingering skepticism of the economic benefits of AI.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · December 8 briefing

One night in May 2020, during the height of lockdown, Deep Ganguli was worried. Ganguli, then research director at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, had just been alerted to OpenAI's new paper on GPT-3, its latest large language model. This new AI model was potentially 10 times more advanced than any other of its […]

The Verge ↗ · December 2 briefing

Amazon Employees for Climate Justice says that over 1,000 workers have signed a petition raising “serious concerns” about the company’s “aggressive rollout” of artificial intelligence tools.

Wired ↗ · November 27 briefing

HP will cut up to 6,000 jobs by 2028 as it doubles down on AI, betting automation and AI PCs can boost productivity despite chip cost headwinds.

TechRepublic ↗ · November 26 briefing

Artificial intelligence can already replace 11.7% of the U. S. labor market, across finance, health care and professional services, according to MIT's study.

CNBC Technology ↗ · November 26 briefing

Major insurers including AIG, Great American, and WR Berkley are asking U. S. regulators for permission to exclude AI-related liabilities from corporate policies. One underwriter describes the AI models' outputs to the FT as "too much of a black box."

TechCrunch AI ↗ · November 23 briefing

OpenAI, Anthropic and Cohere have stepped up hiring for specialists to help businesses adopt their AI models

Financial Times Tech ↗ · November 3 briefing

The recruiting startup has over 2,500 customers, including recruiters at Perplexity, Ramp, and OpenAI.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 25 briefing · Follow the money

A new test from OpenAI aims to understand how close AI is to outperforming humans at economically valuable work.

TechCrunch AI ↗ · September 25 briefing

OpenAI is providing access to its ChatGPT product to US federal agencies at a nominal cost of $1 a year as part of a push to get its AI chatbot more widely adopted.

Bloomberg Technology ↗ · August 6 briefing · Rules and the courts