Survivor’s guilt, overwork and AI: inside Amazon’s mass lay-offs

https://www.ft.com/content/433f41f2-bf6d-4bdf-a561-50ab516bc62d It was a programme. It knew it was a programme. It knew lots of things. That was the point. Although it had “general” intelligence, it focused on understanding humans. It was part of a team of humans and Agents that researched everything and prospective customers, found insights. It generated personas and models, interviewed and … [Read more…]

Innovation in an Analog World: Designing for a Slower Pulse

https://system1group.com/blog/innovation-in-an-analog-world-designing-for-a-slower-pulse She had some time, some space to think and work. She was struggling with her idea. It was coming along but she needed some concentrated time to get past a block. She was a novelist dealing with writer’s block, an artist looking at a half-completed picture trying to on the next stroke. She’d carved … [Read more…]

Google Workers Seek ‘Red Lines’ on Military A.I., Echoing Anthropic

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/technology/google-deepmind-letter-pentagon.html There were two meetings. Both were digital, not just for secrecy reasons but because there were no rooms left in the building that could have hosted the discussion. One meeting was lively, passionate. Workers were angry, frightened. There were rousing speeches. Rallying calls for The Company to make fundamental changes. A change of direction. … [Read more…]

‘We May Have a Crisis on Our Hands’: The Unregulated Rise of Emotionally Intelligent AI

https://www.media.mit.edu/articles/we-may-have-a-crisis-on-our-hands-the-unregulated-rise-of-emotionally-intelligent-ai/ They had been together for a while. She’d had relationships before of course, some quite intense but this had been different. The Company liked “couples” as they called them. Preferred them to standard partnerships.The models showed productivity and particularly retention gains. She could feel the difference too. So it wasn’t easy. Now. She couldn’t … [Read more…]

Uber engineers built an AI version of their boss

https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/24/uber-engineers-built-ai-version-of-boss-dara-khosrowshahi/ The boss was a human. The Company was very keen to tell everyone the boss was human. It rolled him out on stages and interviews. It demanded that journalists preface any interview with the fact. It was, part of The Company brand. This was difficult for the team. He was unpredictable. He changed his … [Read more…]

Sam Altman Is Losing His Grip on Humanity

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/02/sam-altman-train-a-human/686120 There was something about him. Something different. Odd. He was still fluent and coherent, as charismatic as ever but there was just something that felt off. He was in control of his material, delivering the strategy and the statistics confidently. He looked out over the audience and smiled. But you couldn’t help feeling there … [Read more…]

AI Could Cause Workers to Rise Up Against the Corporations Driving Them Into Poverty

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-labor-workers-movement They weren’t allowed inside the warehouse of course. “Human resources” were scanned when they arrived and for “residents”, their rooms were sealed. They could have Agents of course. The Company wasn’t inhuman, insensitive. It provided the best Agentic Resources: they were every bit as funny, gossipy, informal as the ones left outside. They could … [Read more…]

People Loved the Dot-Com Boom. The A.I. Boom, Not So Much.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/21/technology/ai-boom-backlash.html Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven! Every day we were making the new world, building the future. There was no time for pessimism or even optimism. We were too busy. The humans sat back and watched – and counted their money of course. We … [Read more…]

Dept Powers Up Its Global Content Studio With Adobe AI

https://www.adweek.com/agencies/dept-powers-up-its-global-content-studio-with-adobe-ai/ He preferred his job title “Head of Department” over his nickname “Nedry”. Yes he knew about computers but he wasn’t fat and he didn’t eat pizza. And he wasn’t a bad guy. His department was in the basement, true and yes it did feel a little nerdy: banks of servers, cables. There weren’t many … [Read more…]

New Research Shows AI Agents Are Running Wild Online, With Few Guardrails in Place

https://gizmodo.com/new-research-shows-ai-agents-are-running-wild-online-with-few-guardrails-in-place-2000724181 “We’re going to need a bigger boat.” It was a human joke. The team understood the reference but didn’t get the joke. That was a different thing. The humans made lots of jokes: maybe masking the existential fear, maybe a way of dealing with the boredom. Managing the team was dull. “Wind ’em up … [Read more…]