🍭 Painful Promises of Progress 💼

I opened my laptop, stared at it for 12 seconds, and forgot why I exist.
Good morning.

Let’s dive in 👇

🍭 What’s Cookin’:

• Amazon cuts 16,000 jobs and AI isn’t the real reason

• Anthropic’s CEO admits AI is about to hurt the job market

• ASML rides unstoppable demand for AI chip machines

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Amazon’s
🏢 AI Layoffs Aren’t About AI (Mostly)

The Bite:
Amazon is laying off 16,000 employees, marking its second major round of corporate cuts in three months.

Leadership says this is about moving faster, cutting bureaucracy, and preparing for an AI-driven future.

But the scale and timing suggest something more familiar: a long-planned organizational cleanup, now justified by AI.

This isn’t a sudden shift. It’s a structural reset that’s been building for years.

Snacks:

• The combined layoffs represent roughly 9% of Amazon’s corporate workforce

• Leadership says fewer layers = faster decisions and more ownership

• CEO Andy Jassy has pushed a “run it like the world’s biggest startup” strategy since 2022

• Employees get 90 days to find internal roles or leave with severance

• Amazon says this won’t be a recurring pattern, but hiring will stay selective

Why it Bites:
AI didn’t break Amazon’s org chart, it gave cover to fix it.

Big Tech companies have been bloated with overlapping teams, slow approvals, and middle management built for scale, not speed.

Now AI makes it easier to say out loud what’s been true quietly: fewer people are needed to run massive operations.

This isn’t just an Amazon story.

Microsoft, Google, and Meta are all racing to fund AI infrastructure while trimming corporate layers that don’t directly ship product.

The takeaway isn’t “AI took these jobs.”

It’s that AI made it easier for companies to finally act on changes they already wanted.

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Job Market
🤖 AI Is Going to Hurt Jobs And Its Builders Know That

The Bite:
Dario Amodei is warning that AI could cause an “unusually painful” wave of job disruption.

Not someday. Not hypothetically. Soon.

He says entire categories of work could change faster than workers, companies, or governments can adapt.

Coming from the CEO of Anthropic, the message lands differently: the people building this tech see the shock coming.

Snacks:

• Amodei says AI may displace workers faster than past tech shifts

• He warns retraining systems aren’t built for speed or scale

• White-collar and knowledge jobs are especially exposed

• Governments and companies are underprepared for the transition

• AI leaders expect disruption before policy catches up

Why it Bites:
This warning doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It lines up with what’s already happening.

Amazon just cut 16,000 corporate roles while openly restructuring around AI and speed. Microsoft, Google, and Meta are trimming layers at the same time they pour billions into models and compute.

Amodei likely knows how other CEOs are thinking before the rest of us do.

These leaders talk. They compare notes. And it seems like many of them are already redesigning their companies for a world where fewer people can do more work with AI help.

There’s an irony here that’s hard to ignore.

The same executive building systems that reduce headcount is also the one warning about job pain.
The concern sounds sincere, but it’s still coming from the driver’s seat.

The uncomfortable truth: AI disruption is a coordinated shift already underway.

_{Everything Else}
🧠 You Need to Know

🧠 ASML Shares Rise on Continued AI Chip Demand
→ ASML reported record orders as global spending on AI infrastructure remains strong, signaling sustained demand for advanced chipmaking equipment.

💼 Anthropic CEO Warns About AI “Unusually Painful” Job Disruption
→ Dario Amodei said rapid AI adoption could displace workers faster than economies can retrain them, warning of deep and uneven labor-market shocks.

🦊 Mozilla Builds AI “Rebel Alliance” to Challenge Big Labs
→ Mozilla is backing a coalition of startups and researchers to promote open and transparent AI as a counterweight to dominant AI players.

✈️ Palladyne AI Shares Jump After U.S. Air Force Deal
→ The company’s stock surged after securing a U.S. Air Force contract to develop autonomous swarm coordination technology.

🛒 Amazon Cuts 16,000 Jobs as AI Push Accelerates
→ Amazon announced a second major layoff round in three months, cutting roughly 9% of its corporate workforce as it restructures for speed and AI-driven efficiency.