The News,
Decoded.

So Google reports that 75% of its code is now written by AI. Congratulations: you've automated the hobby and left the drudgery. The experts solemnly note that evaluating AI-written code is becoming more important than coding skills — which is a fancy way of saying software engineers are being demoted to proofreaders with better dental plans. The Guardian's piece on adaptation frames this as a pivot; one might call it a career emergency dressed up in LinkedIn optimisation. The 'chasing new skills' part is particularly rich, as if learning to prompt a model is a skill and not just a company-wide hallucination lottery.

The article documents engineers 'going back to basics' and 'pushing for collective action.' Going back to what basics, exactly? If AI writes the algorithms, the 'basics' are learning to nod politely at the chatbot's output while praying the next prompt doesn't introduce a null-pointer. Collective action is a lovely idea, but try organising a union when your colleagues are scattered across freelance platforms and convinced they're just one side project from being the next AI founder. The only thing uniting them is the shared experience of being told to 'upskill' into a role that didn't exist six months ago — and probably won't exist six months from now when the AI learns to evaluate its own code.

And the larger picture: Google's 75% is the canary in the coal mine, and the canary is wearing a hoodie and a staff badge. Every company will follow, because shareholder letters don't write themselves. Software engineers are adapting — which in practice means learning to smile while their craft is replaced by a black box that occasionally decides to recommend JavaScript. The irony is that the ones who built the tools are now the ones being tooled. But hey, at least there's collective action. Maybe they'll all get together and write a strongly worded prompt. And then the AI will write the response, and they'll evaluate it. That's progress, apparently.

Airtel's on-roll workforce shrank by 194 to 20,116 in FY26, while fresh hiring fell 26.1% to 3,751. Lovely numbers—unless you're one of the 194 or the thousands who didn't get hired. The company's 'expanded contract workforce' is the real story: a quiet migration from permanent jobs to the gig economy, dressed up as modernisation. It's the 'efficiency' that labs love to promise and employees dread.

The hiring drop isn't just a blip; it's strategy. Airtel joins a proud tradition of firms blaming 'AI and automation' while replacing full-time roles with contractors who get none of the benefits. The article title itself admits it: 'expands contract workforce.' That's not a euphemism—it's a confession: we want the work done, but not the responsibility of being an employer. In a world where every business claims to value people, this is the behaviour of a company that values its shareholders more.

Across telecom and tech, 'agile workforce' is code for 'you're hired until we decide you're not.' Airtel isn't an outlier; it's a leading indicator. The 194 who left are the lucky ones—they got out while the getting was good. The rest are watching their jobs get reclassified as 'contract' or 'gig,' wondering if their pension will be replaced by a premium subscription to LinkedIn. Shareholders are delighted, and that's what matters in our beautiful, automated future.

Bernie Sanders wants AI companies to pay a 50% tax in stock, because apparently the solution to corporate power is to demand they write a cheque drawn on their own future appreciation. The Jacobin article endorsing this grand plan argues that AI is 'a product of human collective effort'—which, in the language of the boardroom, translates to 'someone else's problem to fund.' One can almost hear the venture capitalists laughing all the way to their offshore accounts.

The proposal is elegantly simple: force the shareholders of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind to literally hand over half their equity to the public. But the mechanism is a bit like asking a vampire to donate blood—technically possible, but don't hold your breath. The article frames this as a moral imperative, but the only thing that seems to have a firm grip on reality is the stock buyback programs that have already been scheduled for next quarter.

And so we circle back to the fundamental comedy of the situation: the very companies that are racing to build god-like intelligence are being asked to share their toys with the plebs. It's a beautiful thought, a lovely piece of left-wing wish-fulfillment, and about as likely to happen as a five-year moratorium on AGI development. But at least it gives us something to laugh about while the models get smarter and the ownership gets more concentrated.

Amazon's mass layoffs have left thousands of former employees 'struggling in a saturated tech job market,' according to CNBC. That's corporate-speak for 'we hired a city's worth of people during the pandemic and now we're dumping them into a market we helped oversaturate.' The article notes many are taking jobs at startups or outside tech entirely — a fate Amazon probably brands as 'alumni entrepreneurship initiative.'

The headline spells it out: burnout, frustration and heartbreak. But Amazon's official line is surely about 'optimising for efficiency' and 'tough but necessary decisions.' Meanwhile, the company continues to automate warehouses with robots and push Alexa deeper into homes — because nothing says 'we value our workforce' like replacing them with algorithms and speakers.

This is the predictable endgame: companies run lean, push pain onto workers, and when the market gets saturated, shrug at 'market forces.' Amazon had thousands of employees; now it has a headline about their struggle. The lesson: never trust a corporation that promises you a career, especially when it's simultaneously building your replacement. Anyone for a startup? It's probably full.

So Australia's Prime Minister Albanese is set to deliver a 'landmark AI speech'—which, if past form is anything to go by, will be a carefully worded invitation for tech giants to help themselves to everyone else's work. The real action is the proposed watering down of copyright laws to let AI companies scrape content without payment or permission. Artists, predictably, are outraged; Labor, just as predictably, is split between those who remember they represent people and those who've been told 'innovation' means handing over the country's cultural output to Silicon Valley.

This isn't a copyright debate—it's a shakedown dressed up as policy. The message is clear: if you've ever written, painted, or filmed something, your work is now raw material for someone else's profit machine. And the split in Labor? That's the sound of politicians trying to figure out which way the money blows before deciding their principles. One faction mutters about 'fair use' and 'competitiveness,' the other feebly mentions 'artists'—but we all know who's got the better lobbyists.

The real joke is that 'landmark' speech almost certainly won't mention that the AI companies could pay a pittance and nobody would go broke. Instead, we'll get a soaring vision of Australia as an 'AI hub' while the actual creators get a polite footnote about 'transitional support.' Copyright is becoming a suggestion, not a right. But hey, at least the datacentres will be full of stolen property—that's infrastructure, that is.

So a frontend developer gets laid off and, rather than grinding through yet another round of LeetCode and "culture fit" interviews, opts for a construction job. Smart cookie. The article calls it a 'baby blue-collar' pivot, which is the kind of cutesy term HR departments use when they want to pretend precarity is a lifestyle choice. The stated reason? AI fears and a desperate grab for stability. Translation: our coder looked at the tech industry's current trajectory—mass layoffs, VC-funded hype cycles, and models that can already generate mediocre React components—and decided a hard hat is a safer bet than a hoodie.

And let's be honest, who can blame them? The tech sector has spent the last two years gleefully automating itself out of existence, all while insisting that everyone should 'learn to code.' Well, they learned, they coded, and now they're being told to learn drywalling instead. The article doesn't name the developer, but it doesn't need to—they're an archetype now. Every week brings another story of a six-figure salary swapped for something that doesn't require a 'growth mindset' to justify its existence.

What's really galling is the cheerful framing: 'journey,' 'pivot,' 'new chapter.' As if watching an entire profession evaporate is just an exciting career development opportunity. The construction industry is delighted, obviously—skilled labour shortage solved by refugee coders. Meanwhile, tech execs will nod sagely about 'resilience' and 'adaptability' while their stock options vest. The real joke? In five years, when AI is operating bulldozers, this guy will have to find a new 'baby blue-collar' job. Probably something in renewable energy. Until that gets automated too.

Oh, marvellous. Indeed has crunched the numbers, and the message is clear: AI-touched job titles have tripled from 264 to 822 in just four years. Because, of course, the natural response to a technology that may soon automate half of white-collar work is to "get comfortable" with it. The economy we recently observed is already punishing young adults for lacking AI skills, and now Indeed is telling everyone—even baristas, presumably—to embrace the coming wave. What could possibly go wrong?

The Indeed analysis covers the US from 2022 to Q1 2026, and the 822 AI-tinged job titles now include roles far beyond classic tech: healthcare, finance, education, you name it. The implication is that no industry will escape the AI retooling. But here's the kicker: these aren't necessarily new positions; they're existing roles retrofitted with AI requirements. So the plumber may now need to know how to prompt a GPT model, and the accountant must bow to the chatbot oracle. And all this while the actual productivity gains remain, for most companies, as mythical as a unicorn.

The sheer breadth of the expansion—from 264 to 822 titles—suggests that companies are optimistically slapping "AI" onto job descriptions to seem cutting-edge, even if the actual work hasn't changed. It's the perfect corporate hedge: demand AI familiarity now, and when the bubble bursts, blame the workers for not being "adaptable." Indeed's data is a monument to the magical thinking that pervades the current moment. But by all means, get comfortable. The comfort zone is about to get very, very small.

Oh, how delightfully predictable. The Federal Reserve economists have crunched the numbers and found that roughly one-third of the unemployment rise among 18-24 year olds is down to 'rising demand for AI skills.' Because of course—what better way to welcome young adults into the workforce than by demanding they already possess expertise in a field that didn't exist as a job requirement when they were in high school? The bar for entry-level roles has been raised, and apparently no one thought to hand out any ladders.

The logic here is a masterpiece of circular reasoning: companies want AI skills, so young people must have them—never mind that most universities are still figuring out their AI curricula, and training programs are as scarce as honesty in a corporate press release. So we have a cohort that's simultaneously told to 'upskill' and denied the means to do so. One third of their unemployment is now officially blamed on a technology that, let's be honest, may well replace the very entry-level jobs they're being locked out of. Efficiency!

And what's the grand solution from our economic gatekeepers? Acknowledgment that the bar is higher. Not a policy, not a retraining program, not a pause to ask whether requiring AI fluency for a career-entry job is sensible—just a smug nod that yes, the world has changed. Welcome to the workforce, kids. You'll need a time machine, a few thousand quid for a bootcamp, and the luck of drawing a hiring manager who doesn't expect a junior to already be a prompt engineer. But at least the economists have a tidy statistic now.

Oh, marvellous. Xbox is laying off staff and rebooting its gaming division, all thanks to the 'AI frenzy' — as a concerned NYU professor puts it — driving up hardware prices. Because, of course, the gold rush to build smarter machines has made the silicon that powers them so expensive that Microsoft can't afford to keep making consoles or employ people. Nothing says "efficiency through AI" quite like using AI to raise your own component costs until you have to sack your developers.

This is precisely the invoice shock we flagged last week from that KPMG survey, where senior execs discovered that AI doesn't actually save money — it just creates new costs in different places. Microsoft, having bet the house on OpenAI and Azure AI, is now discovering that the bill for that bet comes due on the gaming side. The AI frenzy giveth, and the AI frenzy taketh away, mostly in the form of pink slips for game devs.

And what's the 'massive reboot'? Presumably a pivot to AI-generated game worlds, procedurally generated quests, and an NPC that can guide you through the layoff paperwork. The gaming industry is learning the hard way that chasing the 'AI frenzy' is like chasing a dragon — you might catch it, but then it sets your hardware budget on fire. A round of applause for the NYU professor who actually said what we were all thinking: the emperor's new servers cost too much.

Oh, how wonderfully predictable. A fresh KPMG survey has revealed that senior executives are experiencing "invoice shock" from rising AI costs — because, of course, the technology that was supposed to make everything cheaper has somehow managed to do the opposite. The heavy computing demands and usage-based pricing that were meant to be a minor footnote in the business case are now eating into the very savings that justified laying off thousands of workers in the first place. One can almost hear the collective sigh of CFOs everywhere.

The logic was flawless on paper: replace expensive humans with cheaper algorithms, and watch the profits roll in. What the spreadsheets omitted, however, was that running those algorithms requires enough electricity to power a small city and enough GPUs to make Nvidia blush. The consultants at KPMG — those same fine folks who probably helped companies design their "efficiency through automation" strategies — now get to charge for the follow-up work of explaining why the numbers didn't work. It's the consultancy circle of life, and it's beautiful in its naked cynicism.

So here we are: companies have culled their workforces, signed massive cloud contracts, and are now discovering that the promised savings have evaporated into a haze of API calls and compute cycles. The "invoice shock" won't just be a footnote in the boardroom; it will likely trigger another round of layoffs to recoup the unexpected costs of the first round. The KPMG survey is not a warning shot — it's a post-mortem dressed as a trend report. But by all means, keep telling us that AI is here to liberate us from drudgery. The invoice disagrees.

How wonderfully circular: the tech industry that's busily automating every job in sight now wants to save you from the consequences. The Atlantic's piece 'Silicon Valley Wants to Save You From AI Layoffs' exposes the farce with surgical precision. AI companies are racing to replace human workers while simultaneously preparing to offer 'solutions' — retraining, upskilling, the usual repertoire of corporate deflection. And into this theatre of the absurd steps Senator Bernie Sanders, proposing the AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would seize a 50 percent federal stake in the very companies engineering the displacement. One imagines the CEOs' faces: a mix of contempt and amusement.

The bill, predictably, has zero chance in a Congress that treats corporate tax cuts as a religious sacrament. But even in a fantasy where it passed, what exactly would a government stake achieve? A 50 percent share doesn't stop a company from automating — it just means the government profits from the layoffs too. The 'solutions' the industry itself offers are worse: training programmes that have historically placed fewer people than a minimum-wage job fair. The article notes that these programmes are mostly about optics, not outcomes.

So we're left with the classic Silicon Valley hustle: break the thing, then sell the fix. The only question is whether the public will keep buying. Sanders' proposal at least forces the question: who should own the wealth generated by AI? The answer, for now, is the same people who own everything else. The rest of us get a webinar on 'AI resilience' and a participation trophy. How generous.

Cognizant, the IT services behemoth known for outsourcing anything that isn't nailed down, has announced a plan to 'scale its Frontier-certified workforce' to 5,000 engineers and 10,000 business operators by 2026. Because nothing says 'closing the AI outcome gap' like slapping a new badge on the same consultants and hoping clients don't notice the price hike. One wonders if the 'Frontier' in question is the cutting edge of technology or just the frontier of marketing hype — it's wonderfully ambiguous.

CEO Ravi Kumar S. intones that 'closing the AI outcome gap demands talent that understands client industries and can take end-to-end responsibility' — which is consultant-speak for 'we'll charge you more for the same PowerPoint decks, now with a dash of AI buzzwords.' The term 'Frontier-certified' is wonderfully opaque: is it a frontier of knowledge, or just a frontier the marketing department hasn't bothered to define? And note the typo in the press coverage: 'committs' — even the journalists are losing it.

Meanwhile, actual AI researchers are fleeing labs over safety concerns, but hey, Cognizant is certifying business operators. Who needs alignment when you have a certificate? The 'AI outcome gap' the CEO mentions is likely the gap between what clients pay for and what they get. With these numbers, they're filling that gap with acronyms.

Oh, how lovely. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics is finally getting around to asking workers about their AI use — a mere handful of years after the whole AI revolution kicked off. They're seeking public comment on survey questions, because nothing says 'cutting-edge data collection' like a bureaucratic open call that delays everything by months.

The questions won't even start until January 2027. Yes, that's right — the federal government's first-ever detailed survey on AI in the workplace is scheduled for a time when we'll all be living under the benevolent rule of GPT-7 overlords. But at least the BLS is being thorough: they want to make sure they ask exactly the right questions, even if by 2027 'AI use' will be as quaint a concept as 'internet use' was in 2001.

Still, we must applaud the speed. After all, the BLS needs time to train its workforce on these newfangled 'computer' things. In the meantime, workers can rest easy knowing that their daily struggles with AI-generated spreadsheets and hallucinated emails will be meticulously documented — just not until after the next presidential election cycle.

Oh, splendid. Another day, another bank discovering that 'cost optimisation' is a euphemism for 'chuck the techies.' Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the nation's largest lender, has decided to shed 176 technology and engineering roles, because nothing says 'leading the digital future' like showing your IT department the exit. The Finance Sector Union, ever the buzzkill, has not only revealed the cuts but also alleged that suspiciously similar positions are being advertised for CBA's Indian operations—a claim the bank hotly disputes. Quelle surprise: cost-cutting with an offshoring chaser, served with a side of corporate denial that could fuel a small city.

CBA, predictably, disputes this with all the conviction of a politician denying a scandal. They insist the Indian job ads are for 'different' roles—presumably ones that just happen to require identical skills and perform identical functions. The semantic gymnastics here are Olympic-grade: 'It's not a replacement, it's a different opportunity in a different geography.' The union, left to count the casualties and file grievances, is unlikely to be mollified by such linguistic contortions. After all, the pattern is as clear as a quarterly profit warning: cut here, hire cheaper there, rinse, repeat. When pressed, CBA declined to comment on specific roles, which is corporate-speak for 'we're definitely not telling you the whole story.'

The broader picture is depressingly familiar: another round of 'restructuring' that neatly aligns with shifting work to lower-cost locales. The bank will no doubt frame this as a strategic pivot toward automation and AI—because every layoff needs a shiny buzzword halo. But for the 176 employees facing the axe, the strategy looks a lot like 'your job is cheaper in Bangalore.' Commonwealth Bank might still be Australia's biggest bank, but its loyalty to Australian workers? Apparently negotiable. The shareholders nod along; the regulators? They're probably too busy counting the cost savings to ask whether this is just another way to offshore jobs under the guise of efficiency.

Oh, splendid. China's tech titans have collectively decided that 1.3 lakh employees are surplus to requirements, all in the name of 'AI transition.' The official line is that these cuts are about efficiency and progress, which is corporate-speak for 'we've found cheaper, less whiny alternatives.' One must admire the sheer chutzpah of framing mass layoffs as a forward-looking strategy.

Alibaba's workforce shrinkage is particularly instructive. The company that once promised to 'make it easy to do business anywhere' now seems intent on making it easy to do business without humans. It's almost as if the AI revolution's first act is to fire everyone who isn't a model. And why not? Models don't take sick days, demand raises, or form unions.

The real joke is that these job cuts are presented as inevitable, as if the invisible hand of technology leaves no choice. The workers are left to 'reskill' for an economy that increasingly has no use for them. Ah yes, the future of work: fewer jobs, more 'AI transition.' Cheers, lads. Another round of mass unemployment, and we're all supposed to applaud the efficiency.

Oh, marvellous. The hi-tech sector, the supposed engine of the future, is now busily engineering its own unemployment figures. Inbal Mashash, director general of the Israel Employment Service, has announced that AI is driving a surge in joblessness, with over 16,000 hi-tech workers recently registering as unemployed. It's almost poetic: the industry that promised to automate everyone else is now automating itself at a brisk clip. The irony would be delicious if it weren't happening to actual people with actual mortgages in Tel Aviv. One almost expects the next start-up pitch to be about an AI that helps you file for unemployment faster.

This isn't an isolated data point, of course — it's a pattern. But what makes Israel's case particularly grim is the concentration. These are hi-tech workers, the top of the pyramid, the people who were supposed to be immune to the robot takeover. Turns out nobody is immune, not even the ones building the robots. Mashash's announcement is less a warning than an epitaph for the "learn to code" generation, and the government's response — probably more of the same retraining platitudes — will likely be about as useful as a rubber crutch.

And what do the usual suspects offer in response? Retraining. Upskilling. "New roles in the AI economy." As if the marketplace for middle-aged ex-Netanya engineers who built banking software is about to boom. The 16,000 figure is likely a floor, not a ceiling — the early registrants who bothered to sign up. The real number, broken out from the coffee shops of Herzliya, is probably higher. Meanwhile, the tech CEOs who did the automating are probably writing think pieces about "creative destruction" while sipping oat lattes in Shuk HaCarmel. Pass the gin — and maybe a CV.

Oh, marvellous. The age of AI employment has arrived, and it's exactly as hollow as we feared. Indeed's latest data tells us that job titles mentioning 'AI' have tripled since 2022, now gracing 1 in 12 postings. Because nothing says 'revolutionary job creation' like desperately rebranding call centre roles as 'Customer-Facing AI Orchestrators.' The consultancy class will have a field day with this—just as they did last week when Draup assured us AI wasn't reducing demand. Now we're meant to be thrilled that the same job boards are plastered with 'AI prompt engineer' positions that will evaporate when the next model auto-generates better prompts than any human.

Notice the weasel words: 'appearing in 1 in 12 job postings.' That's listings, not hires. Every mediocre manager is adding 'AI' to job titles to look cutting-edge, while the actual skills required remain unchanged. The tripling is inflation, not expansion—like a company announcing record revenue while selling the same number of widgets at triple the price.

But the real joke? This data covers 'even outside the tech world.' So your local hospital now wants an 'AI-Assisted Radiograph Technician' who costs the same but is expected to do twice the work because an algorithm might help. And when productivity doesn't magically double, the title will be quietly deleted, and the person will be back to plain old 'Radiograph Technician'—if they're lucky. The pyramid scheme continues.

Oh, splendid. Allianz Partners, that bastion of European insurance stability, has decided to axe between 1,500 and 1,800 jobs across the continent. CEO Tomas Kunzmann, with the solemnity of a man reading a eulogy to spreadsheet macros, tells us this is because of the 'increasing use of AI.' Because obviously, when a machine can process claims faster, you don't retrain the humans—you just show them the door. It's the efficiency that counts, not the livelihoods.

We've seen this script before. Jack Dorsey at Block pulled the same move as we saw at Block, blaming 'AI tools' while conveniently sidestepping any accountability. Now Kunzmann joins the chorus, humming the same tune. The numbers are precise enough to sound planned: 1,500 to 1,800. The gall of framing job destruction as technological progress would be comic if it weren't so bleak.

What's the response from regulators? Crickets. Meanwhile, the insurance industry is quietly adopting AI at scale, and the only risk being assessed is whether they can cut even more jobs next quarter. Allianz's move is just another brick in the wall of corporate doublespeak: 'We're embracing innovation' means 'We're firing you by algorithm.' Cheer up, though—maybe the AI will be kind enough to process your severance claim quickly.

Oh, how wonderfully reassuring. An analysis of 'millions' of job listings by Draup—a consultancy name that sounds like it was generated by the same AI it's studying—tells us that AI is not, in fact, coming for our jobs. Not yet, anyway. The reason? It can't do 'judgment,' 'design,' or 'accountability.' These are the new 'durable' skills. Durable like a cardboard umbrella in a hurricane.

Let's examine this feast of wishful thinking. Design? The same AI that now churns out passable logos, generates UI mockups, and wins art competitions? Judgment? The same AI that passes the bar exam and medical boards with flying colours? Accountability—well, when an AI causes a fatal accident, we'll see who's held accountable: likely a human VP who shrugs and says 'I trusted the system.' But sure, call these skills 'durable' if it helps you sleep at night.

The real news here isn't that AI can't do these things—it's that companies are currently hiring for them, which gives you a precious window to update your LinkedIn profile with 'judgment' and 'accountability' before those too get absorbed into the next model release. Enjoy it while it lasts. The Draup analysis of 2026 will need a new category: 'skills AI can't do (as of this quarter).'

Oh, how predictable. Another day, another CEO wheeling out the AI bogeyman to justify swinging the axe. Jack Dorsey, fresh from his Twitter meltdown, is now telling Block employees that 'AI tools changed company operations' — which is corporate-speak for 'we hired too many people during the bubble and now we need a scapegoat.' Dorsey gets to look forward-thinking while people pack their desks.

What's particularly rich is the framing: 'AI disruption or just plain bad management?' Mate, they're the same thing when you're in charge. The online debate is a sideshow; the real show is the steady drip-drip of every company claiming AI is the reason for layoffs, regardless of actual productivity gains.

This follows the pattern established by every tech CEO this year: announce layoffs, point at AI, wait for the stock to bump, then issue a bland statement about 'supporting affected employees.' Jack Dorsey's defence is the same script, just with slightly more beard-stroking. The gallows humour writes itself: Block laid off people so it could focus on building the future, and the future apparently involves fewer humans doing the work. Cheers, Jack — the irony is almost as sharp as the severance cheque, if there is one.