Here are some of the the major AI trends shaping 2026 — based on current expert forecasts, industry reports, and recent developments in technology. The material is analyzed using AI tools and final version hand-edited to this blog text:
1. Generative AI Continues to Mature
Generative AI (text, image, video, code) will become more advanced and mainstream, with notable growth in:
* Generative video creation
* Gaming and entertainment content generation
* Advanced synthetic data for simulations and analytics
This trend will bring new creative possibilities — and intensify debates around authenticity and copyright.
2. AI Agents Move From Tools to Autonomous Workers
Rather than just answering questions or generating content, AI systems will increasingly act autonomously, performing complex, multi-step workflows and interacting with apps and processes on behalf of users — a shift sometimes called agentic AI. These agents will become part of enterprise operations, not just assistant features.
3. Smaller, Efficient & Domain-Specific Models
Instead of “bigger is always better,” specialized AI models tailored to specific industries (healthcare, finance, legal, telecom, manufacturing) will start to dominate in many enterprise applications. These models are more accurate, legally compliant, and cost-efficient than general models.
4. AI Embedded Everywhere
AI won’t be an add-on feature — it will be built into everyday software and devices:
* Office apps with intelligent drafting, summarization, and task insights
* Operating systems with native AI
* Edge devices processing AI tasks locally
This makes AI pervasive in both work and consumer contexts.
5. AI Infrastructure Evolves: Inference & Efficiency Focus
More investment is going into inference infrastructure — the real-time decision-making step where models run in production — thereby optimizing costs, latency, and scalability. Enterprises are also consolidating AI stacks for better governance and compliance.
6. AI in Healthcare, Research, and Sustainability
AI is spreading beyond diagnostics into treatment planning, global health access, environmental modeling, and scientific discovery. These applications could help address personnel shortages and speed up research breakthroughs.
7. Security, Ethics & Governance Become Critical
With AI handling more sensitive tasks, organizations will prioritize:
* Ethical use frameworks
* Governance policies
* AI risk management
This trend reflects broader concerns about trust, compliance, and responsible deployment.
8. Multimodal AI Goes Mainstream
AI systems that understand and generate across text, images, audio, and video will grow rapidly, enabling richer interactions and more powerful applications in search, creative work, and interfaces.
9. On-Device and Edge AI Growth
10. New Roles: AI Manager & Human-Agent Collaboration
Instead of replacing humans, AI will shift job roles:
* People will manage, supervise, and orchestrate AI agents
* Human expertise will focus on strategy, oversight, and creative judgment
This human-in-the-loop model becomes the norm.
Sources:
[1]: https://www.brilworks.com/blog/ai-trends-2026/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “7 AI Trends to Look for in 2026″
[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2025/10/13/10-generative-ai-trends-in-2026-that-will-transform-work-and-life/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “10 Generative AI Trends In 2026 That Will Transform Work And Life”
[3]: https://millipixels.com/blog/ai-trends-2026?utm_source=chatgpt.com “AI Trends 2026: The Key Enterprise Shifts You Must Know | Millipixels”
[4]: https://www.digitalregenesys.com/blog/top-10-ai-trends-for-2026?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Digital Regenesys | Top 10 AI Trends for 2026″
[5]: https://www.n-ix.com/ai-trends/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “7 AI trends to watch in 2026 – N-iX”
[6]: https://news.microsoft.com/source/asia/2025/12/11/microsoft-unveils-7-ai-trends-for-2026/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Microsoft unveils 7 AI trends for 2026 – Source Asia”
[7]: https://www.risingtrends.co/blog/generative-ai-trends-2026?utm_source=chatgpt.com “7 Generative AI Trends to Watch In 2026″
[8]: https://www.fool.com/investing/2025/12/24/artificial-intelligence-ai-trends-to-watch-in-2026/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “3 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Trends to Watch in 2026 and How to Invest in Them | The Motley Fool”
[9]: https://www.reddit.com//r/AI_Agents/comments/1q3ka8o/i_read_google_clouds_ai_agent_trends_2026_report/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “I read Google Cloud’s “AI Agent Trends 2026” report, here are 10 takeaways that actually matter”
2,513 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lucinda Shen / Axios:
Warp, a startup using AI to automate payroll compliance and employee management, raised a $60M Series B led by Battery, bringing its total funding to $85M
Exclusive: Warp raises $60M to challenge Workday, Rippling
https://www.axios.com/pro/all-deals/2026/06/25/warp-60-million-workday-rippling
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Information:
Sources: Sam Altman told staff the US government asked OpenAI to stagger the release of GPT-5.6 over security concerns, approving “access customer by customer” — For AI companies on the verge of releasing cutting edge new AI models, there’s a new normal in the wake …
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/trump-administration-asks-openai-stagger-release-new-model-security-concerns
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Apple says “the rapid expansion of AI data centers has created an extraordinary surge in demand for memory and storage”; the MacBook Neo rises from $599 to $699
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-25/apple-raises-mac-and-ipad-prices-to-counter-memory-shortages?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4MjM5NTMyMSwiZXhwIjoxNzgzMDAwMTIxLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUSDZSMUVLSVAzSU4wMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJGM0I0ODYxQzQ2QzI0OUJFQjgwMEJCQ0NGODhBRTcwNCJ9.8kxnNkCauqZjtR2oBRRjuDhrElWCytwoJ3xeCoIYYaw&leadSource=uverify%20wall
Tomi Engdahl says:
Justin Lahart / Wall Street Journal:
How the US AI build-out is pushing up prices for electricity, software, and more; in a survey, 81% of economists say it will add to inflation over the next year
The Data-Center Boom Is Sparking a Third Wave of Inflation
Demand for memory chips is pushing prices higher. Will AI’s promise of increased productivity come in time to temper that inflation?
https://www.wsj.com/economy/the-data-center-boom-is-sparking-a-third-wave-of-inflation-926adc6e?st=AYXudu&reflink=article_copyURL_share
President Trump’s trade wars have waned. The price of gas is finally falling. But inflation has a new catalyst: America’s massive artificial-intelligence build-out is beginning to push up prices on everything from smartphones to electricity.
The question now is how widely that build-out might ripple through the economy, and how long it could keep inflation elevated. The answers will have big consequences for the economy.
The money pouring into the AI arms race is unprecedented. Analysts peg capital spending at five of the so-called hyperscalers—Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Oracle—at $741 billion this year, according to FactSet, up nearly 75% from last year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kenneth Shepard / Kotaku:
Microsoft says the price of Xbox consoles will increase on August 1 by $100 for 512GB models and $150 for 1TB models, the third price increase since 2025 — Microsoft is increasing the prices of Xbox Series consoles once more and introducing a ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ option
https://kotaku.com/xbox-price-increase-2026-tariffs-buy-now-pay-later-2000710565
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple plans to skip higher-end M6 chips and launch its next Pro and Max chips in 2027 as part of the M7 lineup, to boost on-device AI capabilities — Apple Inc. is making one of the biggest-ever changes to its Mac silicon strategy, preparing to jump ahead to a new artificial …
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-25/apple-to-skip-high-end-m6-mac-chips-to-launch-m7-pro-m7-max-m7-ultra-instead?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4MjQwNTU2MCwiZXhwIjoxNzgzMDEwMzYwLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUSDM4OFJUOTZPU08wMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNEVEQ0FFMUZBMDU0MEJFQTI0QTlGMjExQzFFOTA4MCJ9.3RpcTAgL-JUz9iWRQYzyWaSzoOhLU50chTDHkeU0GTI&leadSource=uverify%20wall
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jo Constantz / Bloomberg:
California launches a tool to serve as an “early warning system” for widespread AI-driven job loss, linking AI exposure with unemployment insurance claims — Politicians like California Governor Gavin Newsom are under pressure to appear proactive in the face of the technology’s threat to the labor market
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-25/california-state-government-launches-ai-job-loss-tracker-as-layoff-fears-grow
Tomi Engdahl says:
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch:
Patronus AI, which builds simulated digital environments for evaluating AI agents, raised a $50M Series B led by Greenfield, bringing its total funding to $70M — AI agents are becoming more sophisticated. They are evolving from answering questions to autonomously executing multi-step complex tasks.
Patronus AI lands $50M to build ‘digital worlds’ that stress-test AI agents
https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/25/patronus-ai-lands-50m-to-build-digital-worlds-that-stress-test-ai-agents/
AI agents are becoming more sophisticated. They are evolving from answering questions to autonomously executing multi-step complex tasks.
But before these agents can be trusted to book trips or conduct financial analysis on behalf of users, model providers and the startups building such agents want to ensure that they perform reliably across a vast range of scenarios.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Richard Speed / The Register:
Elastic announces a ~7% reduction in its workforce, and says “advances in AI and automation are letting us operate with leaner teams”; ESTC closed down 8.70% — CEO says automation is enabling leaner teams as engineering is split into three core areas
Elastic stretches workforce 7% thinner as AI does more of the heavy lifting
CEO says automation is enabling leaner teams as engineering is split into three core areas
https://www.theregister.com/databases/2026/06/25/elastic-stretches-workforce-7-thinner-as-ai-does-more-of-the-heavy-lifting/5261993
Tomi Engdahl says:
Katrina Manson / Bloomberg:
Doc: the DOD has quietly revised its doctrine on how the US military picks its targets, envisioning “systems where AI initiates actions with human monitoring”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-25/pentagon-sees-broader-role-for-ai-in-setting-military-targets
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ann Gehan / The Information:
Source: Google is asking publishers that test new AI features in Google News to grant it broad rights to their content, including to potentially train AI models
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/google-strikes-tough-negotiating-stance-publishers-ai-licensing
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
General Intuition, which trains AI agents in spatial reasoning via gameplay footage, raised $320M led by Khosla at a $2.3B valuation, for $454M in total funding
General Intuition’s $2.3B bet that video games can train AI agents for the real world
https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/25/general-intuitions-2-3b-bet-that-video-games-can-train-ai-agents-for-the-real-world/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alberto Nardelli / Bloomberg:
Sources and a draft document: the US proposes that the EU sign on to an AI partnership to help secure chip supply chains; the one-page statement had few details
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-25/us-seeks-ai-partnership-with-eu-on-regulation-supply-chains
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lydia DePillis / New York Times:
OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon, Microsoft, and others launch Raise Us, a new non-profit led by ex-Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to help US workers adapt to AI
Big Companies Aim to Ease A.I. Transition for American Workers
OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon and Microsoft have signed on to an effort led by Gina Raimondo, a former commerce secretary.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/25/business/economy/ai-work-force-training-job-losses.html?unlocked_article_code=1.s1A.sI-A.skRbLqYWUI0K&smid=url-share
Congress has failed to address the work force disruption that artificial intelligence could generate. The White House, excited about the upside for stocks and investment, has downplayed the potential for widespread job losses.
Now, amid growing public anger over A.I. and a debate over how to regulate it, a group of employers, state governors and foundations has raised $500 million to try to answer some of those questions themselves.
The funders include A.I. labs preparing to go public, like OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as established corporate giants such as Bank of America and Amazon. Their new nonprofit, called Raise Us, is led by Gina Raimondo, a former commerce secretary and Rhode Island governor who since leaving office has called for companies and the government to do more to orient American workers in a new A.I. era.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sam Nussey / Reuters:
Shares of Japanese NAND flash maker Kioxia slid 12% on Friday after a report that OpenAI was considering delaying its IPO sparked a selloff in AI-related shares
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/kioxia-shares-slump-12-ai-related-stocks-fall-2026-06-26/
Tomi Engdahl says:
New York Times:
Sources: OpenAI leans toward holding off its IPO until 2027 after warnings that Sam Altman’s desired $1T valuation may not be met in current market conditions — The A.I. company’s advisers are pushing its chief executive, Sam Altman, to move slowly after SpaceX’s stock has been volatile …
OpenAI Leans Toward Waiting Until Next Year for I.P.O.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/25/technology/openai-ipo-artificial-intelligence.html?unlocked_article_code=1.s1A.wMuq.NWAdKIQ22Njw&smid=nytcore-ios-share
The A.I. company’s advisers are pushing its chief executive, Sam Altman, to move slowly after SpaceX’s stock has been volatile and as the start-up grapples with financial challenges.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Aya Wagatsuma / Bloomberg:
SoftBank shares fell 12% after reports that OpenAI may delay its IPO until 2027; expectations of a windfall from OpenAI’s debut helped support Softbank’s stock
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-26/softbank-s-shares-tumble-after-report-of-openai-s-ipo-delay
Tomi Engdahl says:
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Google launches a Google Finance app for Android, with market data, financial news, and an AI-powered “Key Moments” feature, and plans an iOS version this year — Google on Thursday launched a dedicated mobile app for Google Finance that houses users’ watchlists and provides real …
https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/25/google-finance-gets-a-dedicated-app-for-android/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Giulia Segreti / Reuters:
Italy is investigating Microsoft 365′s price hike, saying Microsoft failed to inform users that AI tools like Copilot were being integrated into the service
Italy regulator probes Microsoft over ‘Microsoft 365′ price hike
https://www.reuters.com/world/italy-regulator-probes-microsoft-over-microsoft-365-price-hike-2026-06-26/
Italy’s antitrust authority said on Friday it had opened an investigation into Microsoft (MSFT.O)
, opens new tab over alleged unfair commercial practices linked to the price hike of its “Microsoft 365″ subscription.
The regulator said the Windows maker did not adequately inform consumers that its Microsoft 365 service had been integrated with artificial intelligence tools Copilot and Designer.
Consumers were automatically moved to a more expensive subscription plan unless they actively opted out, while receiving insufficient information to decide whether to renew their contracts, the watchdog added in its statement.
It added that the tech giant’s practice could be considered aggressive because it unduly limited consumers’ freedom of choice.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/06/ai-and-liability.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
AI-assisted law firm claims first court victory in England
https://cybernews.com/ai-news/ai-law-firm-first-court-victory-england/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samantha Subin / CNBC:
Chipmaker Onsemi agrees to buy Synaptics in a nearly $7B all-stock deal expected to close in the middle of 2027; ON drops 9%+ and SYNA jumps 11%+ after hours — ON Semiconductor has agreed to buy Synaptics in a nearly $7 billion all-stock deal to bolster its push into physical artificial intelligence technology.
ON Semiconductor strikes $7 billion deal for Synaptics in physical AI push
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/25/on-semi-synaptics-deal-physical-ai.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Olivier Acuna / CoinDesk:
Story Protocol, a blockchain-based IP ownership network that raised $140M, rebrands as Data Foundation to build an on-chain registry for AI training data
a16z-backed crypto firm rebrands, shifts focus to solving AI’s global copyright headache
The startup formerly known as Story Protocol raised $140 million to secure internet rights and is now building an audit layer for data consent, licensing, and provenance for tech firms.
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2026/06/25/a16z-backed-crypto-firm-rebrands-shifts-focus-to-solving-ai-s-global-copyright-headache
Palo Alto-based blockchain startup Story Protocol is rebranding as DATA Foundation and shifting its focus entirely to AI training infrastructure, with Kled founder Avi Patel joining the organization in an advisor position as chief data officer, Patel told CoinDesk in an email interview on Thursday.
The DATA Foundation will operate the DATA Network, an onchain registry designed to verify the origins, licensing and consent history of datasets used to train artificial intelligence models. The pivot moves the firm from targeting the broader intellectual property market to the specialized AI data sector, Patel said.
The startup’s shift comes as AI developers and Big Tech face mounting copyright lawsuits over the data used to train their models and increasing pressure to prove that datasets were collected with proper consent. DATA Foundation is betting blockchain can provide a transparent record of ownership, licensing and provenance for AI training data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://news.microsoft.com/tools-and-weapons-podcast/#JtvBWt9SfZeo
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
AI’s Mythos Moment: Rishi Sunak on preparing governments for AI
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
https://news.microsoft.com/tools-and-weapons-podcast/#JtvBWt9SfZeo
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17yJzGZG6W/
DuckDuckGo’s AI-generated answers briefly spread a false claim that U.S. President Donald Trump had died of rabies after its search assistant surfaced content originating from the satirical Reddit community r/poisonai.
The AI picked up the misinformation because it treated the subreddit’s deliberately fabricated posts as credible sources, highlighting how large language models can struggle to distinguish coordinated satire from factual information.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Business Insider surveyed dozens of founders to understand how coding has changed with AI. Speed is a double-edged sword because there is so much slop.
#AIcoding #startup #AI
Business Insider surveyed dozens of startup founders to understand how coding has changed with AI. : https://mrf.lu/nKP9
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Gaming has always been driven by great games built by great development teams and that will continue to be the case. Every generation has had its stereotypical low-quality games, from just plain old bad games to asset flips and now we’ll have AI slop. But in the hands of awesome professional creators and serious indies building a game, these tools are just an accelerant.”
Tim Sweeney Admits Epic’s Unreal Engine AI Tools Risk ‘AI slop’, but Calls them an Accelerant for Real Creators
https://wccftech.com/tim-sweeney-unreal-engine-ai-tools-accelerant-real-creators/?fbclid=IwdGRjcASrwt9jbGNrBKvCv2V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHjVi7ehlJUNe-7PJpHuehlBvwtQY0nfiR46G2R3vKt4PBWeGwAxy5fLg2fKB_aem_ytMTpGKyrZ2fNuUqvqThcw
Tomi Engdahl says:
Full story: https://mixmag.net/read/artists-check-music-used-train-ai-atlantic-investigation-news
Tomi Engdahl says:
It-jätti irtisanoi 21 000 työntekijää – Korvattiin tekoälyllä
https://www.tivi.fi/uutiset/a/ddc57c02-1bbe-4ef8-b4c9-41c047ffd6db
Ohjelmisto- ja pilvipalveluyritys Oracle irtisanoi viime vuonna maailmanlaajuisesti noin 21 000 työntekijää, mikä käy ilmi yhtiön tuoreesta vuosiraportista. Yritys hakee säästöillä lisärahoitusta tekoälypanostuksilleen. Oracle aikoo käyttää tänä vuonna vähintään 50 miljardia dollaria infrastruktuurin rakentamiseen
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.tipranks.com/news/ford-calls-back-gray-beard-engineers-as-ai-falls-short-ford-stock-nysef-gains?utm_source=robinhood.com&utm_medium=referral&fbclid=IwdGRjcASs3BpjbGNrBKzcDGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHtW_EuCFEFn2ltgFKdXaKNAFwQKD7p5VP0NIpvhhFP4cqI72bsW-C3o6Fl0t_aem_odgQGKOewxTkaNJZaniBlA
Tomi Engdahl says:
Washington banned Anthropic’s top models. OpenAI let it approve every customer.
Sol is the most powerful model OpenAI has ever built.
Only 20 partners can use it right now.
The US government approved each one by name.
This is the first frontier model gated behind a government list.
OpenAI says it should not become the norm.
Read more on TNW: https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-gpt-5-6-sol-limited-preview-government-approved-partners
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Curious Case of Max Planck retracted papers. When past scientific practices meet contemporary publishing norms
https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.17534
Tomi Engdahl says:
“If these companies want quality data, then they should offer quality contracts.” https://trib.al/98ErdZX
Tomi Engdahl says:
“AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more.”
all is not lost
How to burst the AI bubble: Strike at its roots
Sci-fi author/tech journalist Cory Doctorow on his new book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/06/how-to-burst-the-ai-bubble-strike-at-its-roots/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dhfacebook&utm_content=null&fbclid=IwdGRjcASto5xleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR5qUuB1B0IcScDnr3evA9RmLn_md50VpW6Xla991JVMWzR7ydfKRpWoYtDm7w_aem_WdpU-JRKUwlM_BjXT5qHwQ
Last year, we featured a lengthy interview with tech journalist/science fiction author Cory Doctorow about his book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It. The prolific Doctorow is back with a provocative new book that serves as a follow-up of sorts, focusing on AI and related issues: The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI.
Doctorow doesn’t actually enjoy talking about AI, but he’s constantly being asked to comment on it. “I made the tactical error of being sick of talking about AI,” Doctorow told Ars. “So I wrote a book about why I think it’s a dumb thing to keep asking people to talk about, and now I have to talk about it.” Reverse Centaur is Doctorow’s attempt to “sort out the bullshit from the material reality.”
In automation theory, per Doctorow, a “centaur” describes a human augmented with a technology, like machine learning, or even just driving a car or using autocomplete. A reverse centaur “is a machine head on a human body, a person who is serving as a squishy meat appendage for an uncaring machine,” Doctorow said in a speech last December. He gave the example of an Amazon delivery driver, surrounded by AI cameras monitoring their driving, who essentially serves as a peripheral to the delivery van.
Being a centaur is generally viewed as a positive thing; few people relish being a reverse centaur. And yet the AI industry seems intent on using those tools to create more reverse centaurs.
It’s one thing to incorporate AI tools into the medical field to help radiologists process X-ray images and spot potential tumors they might otherwise miss. It’s quite another to fire nine out of 10 radiologists and let AI make the diagnoses, with the remaining radiologist solely responsible for checking the AI’s work—and, ultimately, taking the blame for any errors.
Doctorow is not virulently anti-AI; he uses AI tools regularly and sees potential in many of those tools as useful plugins or cool new apps. But he is nonetheless alarmed at all the hype surrounding AI, the enormous capital expenditures, the unrealistic expectations and self-serving messaging, and the potentially catastrophic economic consequences when the AI bubble inevitably pops.
“The bubble doesn’t want cheap useful things,” Doctorow said. “It wants expensive ‘disruptive’ things: big foundational models that lose billions of dollars every year. When the AI investment mania halts, most of the models are going to disappear, because it just won’t be economical to keep the data centers running. The collapse of the AI bubble is going to be ugly. Seven AI companies currently account for more than a third of the stock market, and they endlessly pass around the same $100 billion IOU. AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more.”
Cory Doctorow: Enshittification is primarily a thesis about how firms in the absence of constraint get tilted to the bad, but it’s also a thesis about how the constraint of competition, when it falls away, produces all kinds of perverse outcomes. One of those perverse outcomes is that firms that have saturated their markets can no longer grow, and they have to find other markets. There’s a ticking bomb when you saturate your market because it’s only a matter of time until investors start to worry that you’re not a growth stock, you’re a mature stock. Mature stocks trade at a small fraction of the multiple that growth stocks do.
There’s an enormous amount of liquidity in growth stocks, which means that you can use growth stocks to grow. You can buy other companies with shares, and shares are an endogenous substance that you make on the premises by typing zeros into a spreadsheet. Firms with growth stocks can grow by typing zeros, whereas firms that are mature, they have to use money if they want to grow, and you’re not allowed to make money on the premises.
“The capital markets have the object permanence of a toddler, and they would lose a game of peekaboo if they were drafted to play in the league.”
That’s why those firms started promoting stories about how they were going to conquer imaginary markets. Imaginary markets have no agreed-upon valuation because you just made them up. Unless you can turn an imaginary market into a real market pretty quickly, you need to come up with another imaginary market and announce that this is the new imaginary market you’re going to conquer.
So you can say, “Oh, actually, it’s not metaverse. It’s crypto. It’s not crypto. It’s Web3. It’s not Web3. It’s something else.” And the markets will forgive you, provided you do it quickly enough.
But something different happened with AI. It is much, much bigger in terms of capitalization than anything we’ve ever seen—not just bigger than other tech bubbles, bigger than other bubbles. When I wrote the book, capital expenditure (CapEx) globally was $700 billion, now it’s $1.4 trillion. Meta wasted $60 billion on the metaverse. They spent $150 billion in the last three years on AI, and they say they’re going to spend another $150 billion this year.
There was a lot of low-hanging fruit in AI, although it’s tapering off now because, as they say in finance, anything that can’t go on forever has to stop. So we’re losing the end of that growth period in terms of returns to scale.
Ars Technica: Why do you think AI is so appealing to political and business leaders in particular?
Cory Doctorow: It’s not just that it makes for a good demo. AI really appeals to a fantasy that I think all of us have to some extent but that powerful people really have, of a world without people in it—because hell really is other people.
So AI is very attractive. One of the reasons DOGE fired so many government workers was because it played into the fantasy that you can have a government without government employees. In the corporate sphere, it’s the fantasy of a business without workers, because every corporate leader is haunted by the secret fear that if they don’t show up for work, everything goes on just fine. But if the workers don’t show up, everything shuts down. Maybe they’re not really driving the car, maybe they’re strapped in the backseat with a toy steering wheel.
If that’s the case, AI will let them wire the toy steering wheel directly into the drivetrain. So you can have an amazing idea as a corporate visionary, and you don’t have to have any ego-shattering confrontations with people who know how to do things, who tell you you’re actually an idiot. You just type some stuff to the chatbot, and it shits out your product.
Ars Technica: You raised an interesting point recently on your blog: Workers actually wanted earlier technological breakthroughs and often had to fight to get them into the workplace. With AI, people are more likely to feel that the technology is being shoved down our throats; some workers are even required to use it.
Cory Doctorow: I think that’s entirely right. One of the things that I’ve been attending to a lot lately is the difference between the bubbles that we had before and the bubble that we’re having now. People will say, “Oh, Amazon wasn’t profitable, and it became profitable. And the web wasn’t profitable, and it became profitable. The web was a bubble.” Of course the web was a bubble. You don’t get pets.com and all those Super Bowl ads without a bubble. But it is a very obvious error of logic to say, “Once, there was a thing that lost money and then it made money, therefore, if you are losing money, someday you’ll make money.”
“AI is the money-losingest thing our species has ever done. We have never lost as much money as we’ve lost on AI.”
The thing that made the web profitable was not that it was unprofitable; it was things like good unit economics, where every time someone started using the web, the web got less unprofitable.
Every generation of web technology made the web more profitable. That’s the opposite of AI. Every AI customer loses money for the company, every use of AI by that customer loses money for the company, and every generation of AI loses more money than the last one. AI is the money-losingest thing our species has ever done. We have never lost as much money as we’ve lost on AI.
The foundational idea of science fiction is that what the gadget does is less important than who it does it for and who it does it to. I call those people centaurs. They are workers who are assisted by technology and who decide how that technology is going to assist them. Whereas the workers who hate it are workers who are being asked to produce more with AI at the expense of quality, at a higher speed, at the expense of their own wellbeing, and who understand that they’re being recruited to be what Dan Davies calls accountability sinks—to take the blame when the AI screws up their job.
It’s the difference between the words on the Greek temple, “Know thyself,” and your boss shining 16 cameras in your face and going, “I know you better than you do. And by the way, I think you could work an extra hour a day without breaking a sweat.”
Ars Technica: You make a point of emphasizing that you are not fundamentally anti-AI, despite sharply criticizing the industry.
Cory Doctorow: I have many comrades who describe themselves as anti-AI, and I’ve had some very spirited, productive, but heated debates with those people because I don’t think AI is exceptional. That means that I don’t think it’s exceptionally evil. The argument that it’s the fruit of the poisonous tree, that it was made by bad people in bad ways, so you shouldn’t use it—I think it’s very foolish. That is not the merit on which we judge technology.
You can talk about whether giving money to these companies is bad. I think it is. You can talk about whether the environmental impact of using foundation models is unsustainable and unsupportable. I think, by and large, it is. But that is not to say that statistical inference using convoluted deep neural networks is bad or—and this is where I get into many arguments—that scraping the web to train a convoluted neural network is bad. I think it’s fine. Scraping is good, actually.
It’s just bonkers to say, “It is theft to make transient copies of works, to analyze those transient copies, to publish the results of your analysis.”
Those are all socially beneficial activities, and we will all lose if we prohibit them, not least because the firms that creative workers are worried about them, the big media companies, are extremely capable of entering into arrangements with the Big Tech companies to license their corpuses to them in order to try and put us all out of a job. If we get the right to decide who can train an AI with our work, our bosses are just going to modify our contracts to say, “Great, you now must license that right to me. And it’s non-negotiable.” Failure to learn from that lesson is not tragedy. It is farce.
Rather than ask for a new copyright law, we could make a new labor law, because the only people who’ve ever beaten AI are the Hollywood screenwriters and actors.
Ars Technica: It could be catastrophic, economically speaking, when the AI bubble finally bursts. But you point out that there might very well be something useful left over when that happens.
Cory Doctorow: I advise to go long on laser tag arenas because you can definitely turn a data center into one of those. There’s not much else you can do with them, unfortunately. A bubble is a way for insiders to pump, and then dump, some mania to the normy investors, to people who’ve been flushed into the capital markets because they’ve been denied a defined-benefits pension and who are only really offered market-based pensions. That means you have to be the sucker at the table. You have to put your money into the market if you don’t want to die homeless and starving after you retire.
The dot-com bubble was very bad. It separated a lot of pension funds and ordinary investors from their money, but it left behind something very useful.
Everybody knew how to code.
A generation of humanities undergraduates were induced to drop out of university and learn Python, Perl, and HTML, and a lot of them were really creative.
So there was a very productive residue that was left behind by the dot-com bubble. It gave rise to a more robust form of the web, Web 2.0, full of things that were more useful, more interesting, more thought-through, more creative, more innovative than the stuff that the bubble threw off in Web 1.0. There are other examples of bubbles that are less likely to throw off that residue. Around that time, we also had Enron. Enron produced nothing
“We can distinguish between bubbles with productive residues and unproductive bubbles while still not saying that bubbles are good. Bubbles are bad and destructive.”
When the cryptocurrency bubble bursts, all that’s going to be left are shitty monkey JPEGs and worse Austrian economics. But when AI bursts, you’re going to be able to buy GPUs for pennies on the dollar. You’re going to have your pick of applied statisticians, many of whom are very creative and have interesting ideas for things you could build with AI but are stuck building the things their bosses want to build. There are going to be these open source models that have barely been touched. Any time someone tries to optimize them, they find so many opportunities to make them run on lower-end and commodity hardware.
DeepSeek was a spin-out of a Chinese hedge fund; the fund gave them $6 million and said, “Go play with these open source models. See what you can squeeze out of them.” When they launched, their model was so good running on commodity hardware that the market did a mass sell-off, $600 billion in 24 hours—the largest 24-hour decapitalization of any firm in the history of markets. If you’ve got cheap hardware and you’ve got applied statisticians, you’ve got these open source models and you’ve got a technology that fundamentally is interesting and has done useful things and will do useful things in the future—that’s a better setup than one in which we’re all running around arguing about whether the word-guessing program is going to wake up, become God, and turn us into paperclips.
Ars Technica: You also push back a little on the “AI is coming for your job” messaging.
Cory Doctorow: I think we have to distinguish between the AI doing your job and the AI being incapable of doing your job, but your boss is such a sucker that he fires you and replaces you with the AI anyway. There’s infinite evidence for the second one. I think that there’s very little evidence for the first one, at least so far. A lot of the stories we’ve heard, when you interrogate them, just turn out to be nonsense. There’s a chapter in the book about how many of the demos for AI have just turned out to be people in India pretending to be robots.
The most egregious example was when Amazon announced that cashiers were now out of a job because now you could just walk into [an Amazon Go store], grab stuff off the shelf, and walk out again, and the AI knows what you took. There wasn’t an AI. It was three people in India watching each customer through a network of cameras in the ceiling trying to guess what you put in your bag.
I think there’s lots of things that skilled workers will ask AI to do that will help them do their jobs. There’s lots of things that skilled workers will ask AI to do that they’ll be wrong about and that won’t help them do their jobs. And there’s probably space at the margin to replace humans with AI, at least in some cases. But the idea that we’re at a “jobspocalypse” is such a self-serving narrative. If you’re trying to convince people that the way you’re going to turn $1.4 trillion in CapEx into more than $1.4 trillion in revenue is by convincing bosses to fire workers and replace them with chatbots, you have to have a story about how the chatbot can do anyone’s job.
Here’s a wager. If you ever have the opportunity to interview Dario Amodei or Sam Altman, I want you to ask them this. Someday, you will retire. Right now, I want you to make a binding decision. Will the thing that wipes your ass and takes care of you when you are too old and frail to take care of yourself be a person or an AI? We’re just going to use whatever it is that’s around at that time, and you get to choose. I think we should ask anyone who says they know how to fix things, would they themselves go to an old folk’s home run according to the principles they’re establishing?
Ars Technica: We are now starting to see news stories about how companies that invested in AI are suddenly getting hefty bills.
Cory Doctorow: They’re getting the bill because the AI companies are trying to get out before they’re stuck holding the bag. They want to do IPOs, and to do IPOs, they need to clean up their balance sheet. So they’re like, “I bet these [companies] are pretty price-insensitive. Let’s just jack it. Let’s go from a 90 percent subsidy to a 40 percent subsidy and more than double everyone’s prices. They’ll hang in there.” And then you get the CTO of Uber saying, “I’m not sure why we put AI in the business to begin with, and I really don’t know why we’d use it if it was $20,000 a seat. So I don’t know that we are going to use AI anymore.”
Ars Technica: We hear plenty about the negative aspects of AI. What do you like about it?
Cory Doctorow: I have a couple of local models on my computer, which is just a framework laptop running Ubuntu. It doesn’t even have a GPU. I use Whisper to transcribe audio. I will sometimes want to cite something I’ve heard in a podcast and not remember where I heard it. One time, I just threw the last 30 hours of audio I’d listened to at Whisper, and it shot out verbatim logs that were good enough that when I searched the full text, I could find it. And it gave me time codes so I could check the transcript. That’s amazing.
The idea that I might someday have a computer full of audio and video files with full text indexing is great. I could even imagine conversational interfaces to that: “Where’s the photo of my daughter at her birthday party where she’s dressed like a pirate?”
AI doesn’t have to be 100 percent accurate for that to be useful. It doesn’t have to be free from false positives. It can just be OK. That stuff’s running on your own computer. It’s not burning down a rainforest. It’s not consuming the last three drops of potable water left in Nevada. There is a certain kind of person who is performatively horrified by AI: “But, but, but that’s energy you wouldn’t have used.” I’m like, “You have never said that about someone who turns cell shading on while playing an MMORPG.” Everything you do with your computer burns electricity.
I’ve been using another chatbot where I paste my daily blog post in and say, “Find my typos.” It finds a lot of the errors that are normally not caught by a regular spell checker: doubled-up words, punctuation marks, or words that are actual words but are misspellings for other words. When you dial up the sensitivity to the point where it actually catches all of those, it also gets a lot of false positives. That’s fine for 1,500 to 3,000 words. I never feed it a book. On a 100,000-word manuscript, it’s going to give me thousands of false positives, and it just won’t be useful. I treat this like a plugin to my word processor. It’s fine. Sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it’s not.
Patrick is using a bunch of Copilots to write software to do a lot of special-purpose stuff. For example, they work with Innocence Project of New Orleans, which has exonerated a bunch of [wrongly convicted] people.
You don’t want innocent people in prison. That should be the least controversial thing in the world. That’s just good, and the proof is in the pudding.
Tomi Engdahl says:
$50M Mesh went from stealth to Musk in months.
The FTC cleared the deal this week.
Mesh was built by three former SpaceX engineers.
The AI tools you use run inside giant data centers.
Inside, copper wires slow that data down.
Mesh replaced it with light at 1 terabit per second.
The race for AI now runs on light, not copper.
Read more on TNW: https://thenextweb.com/news/ftc-clears-musk-acquire-mesh-optical-spacex-data-centers
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oops! https://trib.al/LmMbjA3
Tripping Over Feet
Ford Scrambled to Rehire Engineers After Sabotaging Itself With AI
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ford-rehire-engineers-ai?fbclid=IwdGRjcAStv8BjbGNrBK2_qGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHq_8cyDdIryqhbQe6p0qJLHZbmXsDl9iM8repjNfxMrlsOfsQgbktYRAEpvA_aem_iQHr9NUEe2NL8jUiw-TnYg
Ford just admitted that it scrambled to rehire former employees and find new technicians after its AI systems simply weren’t good enough.
“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and adjusting the design requirements that we had, that that would produce a high-quality product,” the automaker’s VP of vehicle hardware engineering Charles Poon told reporters, per The Verge.
It’s a catastrophically naive blunder that plenty of other arrogant bosses have been making. But seemingly Ford thinks it can come out looking better if it owns up to it and frames it as a cautionary tale — fresh off of earning the number top spot in JD Power’s initial quality ranking for the first time in over nearly two decades.
The way Poon tells it, though, AI wasn’t exactly the problem. Instead, it all went wrong because its experienced workers left before Ford could get them to transfer their valuable knowledge to Ford’s AI systems and help refine the tech intended to obviate them. So of course they had to bring them back to train the AI systems and the hapless new employees. They were also asked to improve the AI training behind these systems.
Poon is being vague about why those experienced employees left, but Ford has been gradually cutting down its workforce, with over 5,000 fewer workers than it had in 2020. Meanwhile, its CEO Jim Farley has declared that AI “going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the US.”
In all, Poon says Ford rehired, newly hired, or promoted 350 experienced engineers to fix the AI fallout. That’s not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but the true cost was the reputational damage it suffered in the meantime. As The Verge notes, it’s recalled cars more often than any other automaker in the US this year, and has slipped in dependability rankings.
per The Verge, it’s added more than 100,000 new AI-powered tests to identify edge cases and stress software systems.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Code Red
Software Engineers Are Facing an Existential Crisis As They Drown In Horrendous AI Code
“Most software engineers are facing an identity crisis bordering on depression.”
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/software-engineers-crisis-drown-ai-code?fbclid=IwVERDUAStwIJleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR58wivCehk3-wBAbktmE-vyE0qg3gaY3KF8RrYOnIpzO3du_TOu46FoSnaIgg_aem_iXDD2GeoImtGKgHwIzBz-Q
A lot of ink has been spilled on the programmers who got replaced by AI agents. But it doesn’t sound like it’s a whole better for the ones who avoided getting the axe, either.
According to Deedy Das, a partner at the VC firm Menlo Ventures, the rapid embrace of AI tools is tearing companies apart by creating a “class divide” between brainless vibe coders and experienced engineers. The veteran “craftsmen” engineers — the ones who actually care about their profession — are forced to wade through and fix the swamp of terrible AI code that comes their way, leaving them despondently questioning their livelihoods.
“Most software engineers are facing an identity crisis bordering on depression,” Das wrote in a lengthy X post, spotted by Business Insider.
Das is speaking to an increasingly documented trend in tech and tech adjacent sectors. Bosses are demanding that employees use AI tools as much as they can
Some studies have explored this phenomenon. One harbingered the bureaucracy of “workslop” — shoddy AI-generated outputs that lazy workers pass onto their colleagues. This creates the illusion of increased productivity, but in reality needs to be corrected by a fastidious coworker. Brewing resentment ensues.
Das describes this dynamic in dramatic fashion.
“The craftsmen are tired,” he wrote. “Day after day, their workload grows. Bugs seep into production. No one seems to care. Another round of AI is thrown at it. Their animosity to their colleagues rises.”
“Eventually, they give up,” he added. “The craft they loved is dead.”
Indeed, plunging spirits are being felt across the industry. Meta has demoralized its workforce by firing thousands of employees, pushing the survivors to use AI, and relocating them onto “soulless” AI projects they have no interesting in work on.
The actual economics of AI automation, meanwhile, remain pretty dubious. Companies are using so many AI agents that consultancies are cautioning against “AI agent sprawl.” And they’re racking up absurd usage fees, with one unnamed firm reportedly blowing $500 million on Claude in a single month.
Tomi Engdahl says:
SoftBank’s CEO isn’t the only one with questions about Elon Musk’s orbital data center hype
https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/27/softbanks-ceo-isnt-the-only-one-with-questions-about-elon-musks-orbital-data-center-hype/?utm_medium=organic_social&utm_source=FBPAGE&fbclid=IwVERDUASt3zlleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR7Wa4xEBT5uEZAePbLeXoKsieTAjUXNLoVIys9YuYaSz4aDFEL-jlGao6VVgQ_aem_LjRJOP3Xr_SSrxJJAAjtow
Not everyone is buying Elon Musk’s vision for orbital data centers.
Masayoshi Son, the founder and CEO of Softbank, argued at a recent shareholder meeting that building data centers in space won’t do much to cut costs and will take too long when “in the battle for AI, the next few years will be far more important than what might happen a decade or so from now.”
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed Son’s remarks as part of a broader discussion that included OpenAI’s plans for custom chips, chipmaker Groq’s new $650 million funding, and much more.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Or whether you’re SpaceX, where your idea was: I’m gonna build an AI platform that’s gonna have an addressable market the size of U.S. GDP, but before we get there, we’ll just rent out our compute. And we saw this continue to happen with SpaceX, where it’s not as big as the deals that they’ve struck with Google or Anthropic, but they just signed another deal, [their] first post IPO deal, to rent out compute to another smaller player. They’re continuing down that road.
You know, I can see this being a business for Groq in the near term. The question with all of these is how durable is it in the long term.
Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank, made recently, where he basically said: What is the point of data centers in space? Which is a question we’ve asked on this show.
And it speaks to, again, this sense in the industry of being really, really compute constrained — they need to build as many data centers as possible, [and] there’s all kinds of reasons why that is proving to be challenging here on Earth, so maybe space is the answer. But I think Son makes some pretty fair points about: All this stuff we’re talking about, even if it all works — and the costs are going to be very, very serious to make it work — this is not happening for years and years and years, so this is not a solution to any immediate problem, as far the current need for data centers goes.
there are a lot of VCs and founders [who] have been swept up into the idea of orbital data centers and it seems like suddenly everyone’s on board. When just a couple of years ago, I think, if someone had mentioned that, it would get slapped down a little bit.
Sean: WeWork! Listen, we’re going to be saying this for a lot over the next couple years. The idea of putting these things in space is going to be an interesting engineering challenge and certainly an interesting economic challenge.
Anthony, what you said is definitely right to a certain extent. Elon Musk is a person who hates red tape and you know, there are no NIMBYs in space so of course he’s going to try and do that.
To me, it comes down to: The business as it stands now for SpaceX, especially its launch business, is just overwhelmingly reliant on Starlink. The reason that they are 80 or 90% of the launch market globally is not just because they’ve done all these things that are better than pretty much every other launch provider around the globe, it’s also because they have Starlink that is driving up that number.
If you remove Starlink from the equation, they would be closer to — I don’t know, maybe 20% or 30% of the launch market, or 40%, but it certainly wouldn’t be 90%.
And when you talk about making a constellation of satellites — satellites that need to be replaced every few years as well — to make up an “orbital data center,” quote unquote, you’re just guaranteeing that much more business for your launch business.
Executives at tech companies, or any other company, what they’re predicting for the future is ultimately the future that is going to be advantageous to their business.
But I think it’s something that’s just always worth remembering when we’re having these conversations about big AI companies, because it is this moment of incredible uncertainty, and we’re all wondering: What does the job market look like in the future? What effect is this going to have on the environment? What are the skills I need to learn?
All these AI CEOs or AI investors, they all have thoughts on that. And it’s not that they’re wrong or that they are being deliberately misleading, but in each case, there’s an asterisk to these predictions. In Musk’s case, he’s talking about something that would be very good for SpaceX’s business. In SoftBank’s case, they are very, very heavily invested in data center projects here on Earth. Sam Altman is the other notable figure who’s rolled his eyes a bit at the orbital data center idea — and again, he and Elon Musk obviously have a long and complicated history together.
All of which is to say that there’s just no objective, impartial observers here. It’s all these people with baggage and tremendous amounts of money at stake.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/27/softbanks-ceo-isnt-the-only-one-with-questions-about-elon-musks-orbital-data-center-hype/?utm_medium=organic_social&utm_source=FBPAGE&fbclid=IwVERDUASt4YNleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR7Wa4xEBT5uEZAePbLeXoKsieTAjUXNLoVIys9YuYaSz4aDFEL-jlGao6VVgQ_aem_LjRJOP3Xr_SSrxJJAAjtow
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://thenewstack.io/agent-session-aware-runtime/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yhdysvallat höllentää Anthropicille asetettuja rajoituksia – Claude Mythos 5 palaa rajatusti käyttöön
https://mobiili.fi/2026/06/27/yhdysvallat-hollentaa-anthropicille-asetettuja-rajoituksia-claude-mythos-5-palaa-rajatusti-kayttoon/
Tekoäly-yhtiö Anthropic on saavuttanut edistystä neuvotteluissaan Yhdysvaltain hallinnon kanssa.
Yhdysvallat on osittain purkanut Anthropicille asetetun vientirajoitusmääräyksen, joka pakotti yhtiön pari viikkoa sitten poistamaan uudet Claude Fable 5- ja Claude Mythos 5 -mallit kaikkien asiakkaiden käytöstä.
Uuden päätöksen myötä Anthropic saa tarjota Claude Mythos 5 -mallia yli sadalle yhdysvaltalaiselle organisaatiolle. Näihin kuuluu raportin mukaan suuria yrityksiä ja valtion virastoja.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://thenewstack.io/akrites-open-source-vulnerability-coordination/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18k5Ku9U85/
OpenAI’s leaked 2025 audited financial statements confirm a massive $20.92 billion operating loss alongside a $38.53 billion net loss, despite generating $13.07 billion in revenue.
While OpenAI’s revenue grew over 250% year-over-year from $3.7 billion in 2024, its total spending exploded to $34 billion.
—
I wonder how much demand there will be for AI when it costs enough for AI vendors to turn a profit.
In the world of “FinOps” we look at the cost of tech and try to manage the expense. The practice goes back a long way. In the 1970s, memory was expensive, disk space was expensive, CPU time was charged by the second. Code had to be written to conserve these scarce and expensive resources.
In the cloud, we’re back to paying per hour to lease virtual machines, memory, network, and storage resources. There is a lot of management activity aimed at “optimizing” these costs, which really means finding wasteful allocations and cancelling unnecessary commitments.
If the meter is going to be running for every AI token that is consumed, and we burn through a vast number of them because of automation, then AI will be the next frontier of “FinOps”. Instead of using AI more and more, the pressure will be on, to use it less and less.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/19111-jo-laehes-puolet-uusista-puhelimista-tukee-genai
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ben Jiang / South China Morning Post:
DeepSeek details DSpark, a speculative decoding framework for its V4 models, saying it speeds up AI inference by up to 85% and was tested on Gemma and Qwen — Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek has rolled out a major upgrade to its flagship V4 model aimed …
Faster AI, lower costs: DSpark eases inference bottlenecks and chip strain, says DeepSeek
Start-up unveils speculative decoding framework that speeds up inference by up to 85 per cent amid China’s push to overcome US AI curbs
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3358647/faster-ai-lower-costs-dspark-eases-inference-bottlenecks-and-chip-strain-says-deepseek
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Maurer / Wall Street Journal:
AI is forcing consulting firms to shift from hourly billing to fixed-fee or outcome-based pricing, a transition proving slow and difficult for the industry — As AI threatens to make the billable hour obsolete, professional-services firms wrestle with reinventing how they charge clients
CFO Journal
Inside Consultants’ Messy Shift From Hourly Billing
As AI threatens to make the billable hour obsolete, professional-services firms wrestle with reinventing how they charge clients
https://www.wsj.com/cfo-journal/inside-consultants-messy-shift-from-hourly-billing-7bd9b802?st=CtWuNj&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Warnings about existential risks that AI poses to consulting firms are forcing a rethink of entrenched billing practices in the profession, but the transition to charging clients a new way is proving slow and difficult.
A Deloitte executive unveiled a chart at a town hall last month showing that traditional labor-based, hourly-rate consulting work is expected to shrink significantly as a proportion of the total market over the next decade.
The green bar at the bottom representing the industry’s core services would narrow to a sliver of the total market. “The not-so-great news is that type of work, even though still a significant part in 2035, will only be a part of the overall picture,” Jason Manstof, a leader in Deloitte’s U.S. government consulting practice, told consultants on a webcast viewed by CFO Journal.
Meanwhile, AI agents, while in a nascent stage now, are expected to grow exponentially to become a majority of the expanding professional services market by 2035, Manstof said.
One Deloitte consultant’s takeaway from the town hall: “They heavily implied our model is toast. We’re basically getting replaced by robots.” A Deloitte spokesman said the firm is “making significant investments to lead this human-led, AI-powered shift for our industry.”
As they wake up to the idea that the traditional model of billing for human time may no longer work as AI grows, consulting firms are seeking to operate more like software or product businesses, selling fixed-fee subscriptions or packaged solutions rather than essentially renting out human labor.
But doing away with hourly billing introduces the risks of having to absorb the costs of working for free if a project takes much longer than expected, struggling to pay everyday bills because the payouts are unpredictable and ruining client relationships by arguing over subjective measures of success. If a project drags out, the firm could face significant delays in getting paid, creating cash-flow issues.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Max Miller / Engadget:
A look at security flaws, police misuse, and other concerns over the 100K+ AI-enabled automated license plate readers installed across the US, mostly from Flock — “You can’t get a breath of fresh air … without us knowing.” — Thanks to the rise of AI, a new kind of surveillance camera …
https://www.engadget.com/2203000/flock-cameras-recording-license-plate/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Marton Eder / Bloomberg:
Letter: Austria is pushing the EU to consider hosting Anthropic within its borders, highlighting EU efforts to boost bloc independence from US and Chinese tech — Austria is pushing the European Union to consider hosting Anthropic PBC within its borders to counter US efforts to block foreigners …
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-28/austria-lobbies-eu-to-host-anthropic-after-us-access-curbs
Tomi Engdahl says:
Zvi Mowshowitz / Don’t Worry About the Vase:
GPT-5.6′s system card indicates Sol is well below the level of the most worrisome Mythos use cases, suggesting all GPT-5.6 versions could launch without delay — While we wait for a general release, the system card is the best hint as to what is going on with the new candidate for America’s Next Top Model, GPT-5.6.
GPT-5.6: The System Card
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/gpt-56-the-system-card