#Society & jobs

AIWharton professor Ethan Mollick says non-tech people should think about the future they want from AI and how to reach it. He writes that they should not leave that work to Silicon Valley, after tech CEOs' claims that AI will free people from work.

AIhardmaru says he enjoys Pope Leo XIV's hot takes about intelligence. The quoted Vatican post says the mind must recall lived experiences rather than simply compile data, as an algorithm does more quickly.

AIEthan Mollick says many people he talks to do not see how AI can be useful outside of work. He says users of Muse or Dot often describe their AI proactively helping them, which made them feel more positive about AI.

AIExecutives at Anthropic, OpenAI and other AI companies are privately war-gaming how to respond to a major AI catastrophe and the public and political backlash it would trigger, according to Axios. The executives expect a large-scale event, possibly a cyberattack disrupting financial services, internet communications, or power and water utilities. OpenAI says it runs preparedness exercises and does not treat the scenarios as inevitable; Anthropic declined to comment.

AIGuillermo Rauch says bot-originated traffic across the Vercel network was 58.18% over the last 30 days, up from 32% in January 2024. He says more than 60% of Vercel deployments are now agentic, up from about 3% in January 2026, and that up to 83% of pageviews on Vercel's documentation sites come from agents.

AINVIDIA's Bryan Catanzaro says AI is giving amateurs new capabilities in every field and turning more people into amateurs in new areas. He argues this is good because amateurs love the work, and that letting more people explore and express ideas will enrich everyone.

AITrump presented the National Medal of Science to Elon Musk, calling him "our generation's Thomas Edison" during the ceremony. The source reports no further details on the award's terms or other recipients.

AIJack Clark, owner of the @jackclarkSF account, thanks the Import AI community for its interest in the research he highlights in the newsletter. He says that highlighting research and seeing it generate meaningful interest brings him a lot of joy.

AILogitech CEO Hanneke Faber discusses findings from the company's CTRL Tomorrow study on how technology affects users. She also talks about opportunities in the AI era and the continued role of design-led hardware, speaking with Bloomberg's Carol Massar and Jess Menton.

AIMichael Smith of Cornelius, North Carolina, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to forfeit $8,091,843.64 after using bots to inflate streams of his AI-generated music on Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music. The US Justice Department said he used up to 10,000 bots at a time, and he pleaded guilty in March 2026 to conspiring to commit wire fraud. He was not prosecuted for making AI-generated music, but for falsely boosting streams to collect per-stream royalties.

AIRohit Prasad, a longtime Amazon AI executive who helped build Alexa, will lead Boston Dynamics as the robotics company prepares to manufacture humanoid robots at scale. The source does not give further details on the appointment or production timeline.

AINASCAR says it is using increased automation and AI to expand what it offers fans and speed up its development work. The source gives no further details on specific tools, figures, or timelines.

AIA new poll finds 64% of Americans think AI is developing "too fast." The source text provides no further detail on the poll's sponsor, sample, or method.

AIMeta's Muse AI agent has millions of users and can handle tasks from refunds to insurance shopping. Its broad access to personal data has already led to some unnerving mistakes, according to Fast Company.

AIFast Company reports that AI systems keep citing journalists' work, so brands should track how often AI cites their coverage, whether favorable or unfavorable. The source says this creates an opportunity for brands to pay attention, but does not specify tools, metrics, or outcomes.

AILauren Tan (@poteto) says software engineering principles still matter but may eventually matter less as intuition fills gaps when using agents. She calls this shift "skill compression," comparing it to the first iPhone making filmmaking accessible without expensive equipment. She expects a new generation of builders who have never written code to build significant products.

AILauren Tan (@poteto) says software engineering interviews could shrink to two technical rounds: a system design round that tests how clearly candidates articulate ideas and engineer solutions, and an onsite project building a real thing with agents that tests how well they turn intent into high-quality outcomes. She says the other questions traditionally asked are no longer necessary.

AIIBM group vice president Bruno Aziza says enterprises need a platform to oversee the growing number of agents employees create across their data, applications and infrastructure. He says sovereignty requires control over data location, technology layers, operations and regulation, and IBM's Sovereign Core maps more than 200 compliance frameworks to controls. IBM TechXchange 2026 runs Oct. 26–29 in Atlanta.

AIJim Cramer says the start of earnings season next week will give investors a clearer picture of corporate performance and the strength of the AI trade. Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup report Tuesday, with Johnson & Johnson the same day, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing reports Thursday.

AIGergely Orosz says modern software engineering is no longer done without LLMs and that people who refuse AI use won't be hired at 99.9% of startups, Big Tech, and ambitious companies. He compares AI tools to the keyboard as a basic part of software development. The post quotes Geoffrey Huntley's view that teams too busy for normal work to experiment with AI are preparing to be replaced.

AINVIDIA's Bryan Catanzaro argues that math as a hobby does not have to change, because hobbies like music and baking are valued for the joy of the work rather than for being first. He compares it to machines baking bread, which does not destroy baking as a hobby. He replies to a post by @EigenGender, who sympathizes with mathematicians whose publicly funded hobby is now less fun.

AIBloomberg's Brad Stone discusses surveillance pricing on the Everybody's Business podcast, a strategy in which store shelf labels could raise prices based on a shopper's cart contents. The article says Walmart appears to be acquiring technology that could enable such pricing, and Walmart has denied using it.

AIEthan Mollick says it is reasonable for mathematicians to note that proofs are not always the same as advancing mathematics. He argues this calls for new goals for what math is trying to do. He adds that AI-driven increases in output, such as 100x more PowerPoint or code, do not automatically mean progress.

AIFlock Safety plans to cut about 18% of its roughly 1,500 employees, affecting around 270 people after a voluntary buyout program, people with direct knowledge of the plans said. The company, which runs a network of about 120,000 AI-powered license-plate cameras across 49 states, declined to comment. The cuts come as Flock faces growing opposition from communities, lawmakers and privacy advocates, including Florida's ban on automated license plate readers on state highways in September.

AINASCAR says it is using increased automation and AI to expand what it offers fans and speed up its development work. The source gives no further details on specific tools, figures, or timelines.

AIA new poll finds 64% of Americans think AI is developing "too fast." The source text provides no further detail on the poll's sponsor, sample, or method.

AIMeta's Muse AI agent has millions of users and can handle tasks from refunds to insurance shopping. Its broad access to personal data has already led to some unnerving mistakes, according to Fast Company.

AINikon disqualified the first-place video in its Small World in Motion contest because it did not comply with the competition's rules on generative AI. The entrant, Dr. Ning Xu, admitted to using an unsupervised neural-network method for AI-assisted post-processing of the footage. Nikon says it will revisit its rules and evaluation procedures for future entries, and a video from Nguyen Nam Nhat now holds first place.

AIMore than three dozen mathematicians told The Verge they need years to understand OpenAI's release of nearly 400 AI-generated results across more than 700 manuscripts. Only about 42 percent of the manuscripts had been formalized in Lean, and OpenAI retracted three papers over a sign error. Researchers also said some fields were disrupted and that early-career mathematicians face new uncertainty.

AIAmazon says it will stop using NDAs when negotiating data center deals with local governments, following a similar move by Microsoft earlier this year. Secrecy has fueled community backlash against AI infrastructure, with hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums from New York to San Francisco.

AIJAN3 CTO Jan Ceuleers says he rebuilt the AQUA wallet from Flutter into React Native, using Claude Code for most of the coding. He started by binding GDK to a React Native app and showing a wallet balance in about half an hour, then ported the Aqua UI component library from Flutter over roughly a year of prior work.

AIAmazon says it will stop using NDAs when negotiating data center deals with local governments, following a similar move from Microsoft earlier this year. Secrecy has fueled community backlash against AI infrastructure, with hundreds of proposed and enacted moratoriums from New York to San Francisco. A wave of startups is betting consumers will give AI agents access to their inboxes, files, and credit cards.

AIPresident Trump has ordered federal agencies to avoid the term "AI" and adopt "super intelligence," renaming the Center for AI Standards and Innovation to CAISSI and calling anyone who uses "Artificial Intelligence" THE ENEMY. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang and Sam Altman have praised the term, though OpenAI says it won't change its name. The article argues the rename clashes with existing laws such as the Take It Down Act and with the earlier, different meaning of superintelligence used by Sen. Bernie Sanders.

AIA commentator says they regret taking part in "The AI Doc," arguing it platforms eugenist cult leaders such as Eliezer Yudkowsky who lack expertise on AI. They recommend watching the documentary "Ghosts in the Machine" instead and point readers to Emily M. Bender's review comparing the two films.

AIBryce Vincent Gowryluk, 16, had to be rescued by North Shore Rescue after following route directions from the AI chatbot Claude that took him to the base of the Widowmaker Arete, a 1,700-foot wall in British Columbia. He had asked Claude to plan a route from Grouse Mountain to Crown Mountain and back, and he was ill-equipped for the rock climbing the wall requires. Rescue manager Paul Markey warned hikers not to rely blindly on AI for route planning.

AIThe FCC is considering loosening rules on political robocalls that use AI voices before the midterms. Federal law currently bans most robocalls to cellphones unless the caller obtains prior consent.