Friday AI Note: Sticking it to employees, sticking to baking pies, and sticking it to the Man

Anthropic vs the United States: Dario says no domestic mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Plenty of other AI companies will be willing to step up to the plate though. [Link]

Employees go down, stock goes up: Jack Dorsey fires 4,000 out of 10,000 people at Block (the company formerly known as Square) due to efficiencies created by AI. He’s sorry; the market isn’t. And unlike a lot of recent layoffs, this one is unambiguously caused by AI. [Link]

Is AI really discovering things? Sort of, says Terence Tao: “There’s a big crowd of people who really, really want AI success stories. And then there’s an equal and opposite crowd of people who want to dismiss all AI progress. And what we have is a very complicated and nuanced story in between.” [Link]

What do we all do when the world is post-employment? Bake pies, maybe. This woman made one per day for a year: “I’m not sure I really understood what I was getting into,” she says. Former colleagues, baristas, grocery clerks, strangers in the street … One day, she gave a pie to a homeless man who was sitting in front of the mall. He shared it with his friends.” [Link]

Did you know Tesla had a diner, and the steel comes from recycled Cybertrucks? I must admit I did not. [Link]

AI anxiety this week: High.

Stephen