This is the week that was in AI: Stories from sixteen sources probe whether AI is becoming a boon or leading to doom.
8–11 minutes read
News from Big Technology
Wait, Are 74% Of Businesses Actually Seeing An ROI From Generative AI?
A new Wharton study finds two thirds of businesses are actually seeing a positive ROI from generative AI. Is it a watershed moment?
October 31, 2025
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News from DAILY KOS
The AI Bubble will burst, and it may save society
I am sure you have already heard about the AI Bubble we are in. The self-dealing between tech companies with nVidia at the center of it all….Even if any of the big video or text platforms wanted to prevent AI Slop, the tools just don’t exist yet…. it will be an arms race that will make cleaning up email spam look easy….Then, a couple years from now, they will wonder where all the real users have gone and why ad spend on their services is dropping off a cliff….My perspective is we are ripe for what I hope will be Web 4.0. The human web. A growth of …curated communities where people choose to visit so they can appreciate content that is only from real human beings.
October 31, 2025
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News from GeekWire
Survey: Two-thirds of AI-native startups let AI write most of their code
This month, I ran a survey with early-stage founders from Seattle-based Foundations about their use of AI tools and agent….The sample size represents 22 startups…. 68% of startups have AI write over 80% of the production code.
October 31, 2025
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News from Naked Capitalism
Big Employers Using AI to Decimate White Collar Jobs; What Happens When Real Incomes, Employment, and Social Compacts Erode?
We may have reached peak AI….. Several key growth measures are stalling out or even falling. Yet a wave of high profile employers like Amazon, UPS, and Walmart announcing of big headcount cuts, citing AI implementation as the driver of the firings, says AI uptake is gaining steam. What gives?
October 30, 2025
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News from Axios
The AI boom goes on
The AI spending spree isn’t going anywhere. It’s only getting stronger, in fact, and the sums more astronomical.
Why it matters: The longer the boom can keep carrying the economy, the more it can offset other structural changes, like a reordering of global trade and a transformation of the labor market.
October 30, 2025
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News from NBC
Tens of thousands of layoffs are being blamed on AI. What are companies actually getting?
….some experts questioning whether AI could be serving as a fig leaf for companies that are laying off employees for old-fashioned reasons, such as financial underperformance or global economic uncertainty.
October 30, 2025
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News from Brad Delong
Yes: AI Is a Bubble. But It Is a Bubble-Plus. & That Makes a Substantial Difference
Bubble-double-plus: how the AI boom props up the economy with debt, data centers, faith, and valuations without rational expectations of durable and monetizable productivity growth…
October 30, 2025
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News from The Atlantic
Here’s How the AI Crash Happens
The U.S. is becoming an Nvidia-state.
The AI boom is visible from orbit…. seven rectangular data centers there, with 23 more on the way….endless rows of fridge-size containers of computer chips wheeze and grunt….Global spending on the technology is projected to hit $375 billion by the end of the year and half a trillion dollars in 2026….And yet….Job openings have fallen …22 states are in or near a recession, and despite data centers propping up the construction industry, U.S. manufacturing is in decline.
October 30, 2025
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News from Bloomberg
Microsoft Data Center Crunch Persists Despite Heavy Spending
Microsoft Corp. is still suffering from a computing capacity crunch despite massive spending on data centers….During the first quarter, the company lavished a whopping $34.9 billion on capital expenditures….up about $10 billion from the previous period, and Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said spending will increase again in the current fiscal quarter.
October 30, 2025
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News from the Wall St. Journal
Big Tech Is Spending More Than Ever on AI and It’s Still Not Enough
Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon will increase spending in 2026; ‘Are we in a bubble?’
“We’ve been short [on computing power] now for many quarters. I thought we were going to catch up. We are not. Demand is increasing,” said Amy Hood, Microsoft’s chief financial officer. “When you see these kinds of demand signals and we know we’re behind, we do need to spend.”
October 30, 2025
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News from Havoc Journal
AI for Everyone: Evolving Thinking, Not Replacing It
AI is here to stay—get on board or be left behind. I used AI to help me write this article—notice I said “used” and “helped.” It did not write it for me; I used it to help me write—it wrote with me. I am excited about the potential of AI and was a pretty early adopter.
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News from Peter Wildeford
AI is probably not a bubble
AI companies have revenue, demand, and paths to immense value
But the twist is that most of these people are saying “yes, it’s a bubble” while simultaneously announcing they’re spending hundreds of billions more. Zuckerberg says a collapse is “definitely a possibility” but insists underinvesting is worse. OpenAI’s Sam Altman warns investors will get “very burnt” while still planning $850 billion in data center buildouts. Jeff Bezos says AI is in an industrial bubble while Amazon spends $100B/yr in AI R&D.
How do we make sense of this?
October 29, 2025
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News from Axios
Behind the Curtain: How an AI job apocalypse unfolds
Almost every company is planning to slow hiring in the short term, and operate with much smaller human workforces in the future. Yes, new technologies usually result in a net increase in labor and wealth over time. But the transition is often painful….Ford CEO Jim Farley warned this summer that AI will replace “literally half” of white-collar jobs….See our list of the 10 most-threatened (interpreters and translators) and least-vulnerable (dredge operators) jobs.
October 29, 2025
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News from David Brin
Could a planet really develop a brain?
Google researcher, Mohamad Tarifi, PhD. suggests that instead of malevolent destroyers, “there instead exists the possibility that artificial intelligence would most likely be more like a Buddha or saint.” Tarifi’s theory hinged on two points: AI would not live in a human body, thus it wouldn’t have a physical amygdala—the fear center for human beings. Lacking fear, AI would always be at one with everything it connected to, thus wanting to serve and provide rather than destroy. [On the other hand,] From Kipling’s The Secret of the Machines, But remember, if you make a slip in handling us you die!
October 29, 2025
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News from the Wall St. Jourmnal (no paywall)
Tens of Thousands of White-Collar Jobs Are Disappearing as AI Starts to Bite
Layoffs at companies ranging from Amazon to Target are sending young and experienced workers alike into unwelcoming market… The nation’s largest employers have a new message for office workers: help not wanted.
October 28, 2025
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News from Newsweek
US warned of problem with 60% of workforce
The U.S. has become worryingly reliant on a small segment of its workforce, according to hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio, particularly tech elites who, he argues, are propping up an “unproductive” majority…. that the U.S. economy could no longer be viewed “as a whole” and had become defined by the growing divides between its social and economic strata….Taking the case of artificial intelligence, Dalio said the industry was led by around 3 million people, or 1 percent of the population, supported by another “5 or 10 percent” …. the “bottom 60 percent of the population” is “almost becoming useless or unproductive” thanks to deepening educational inequalities, which have resulted in an “extreme dependency.”
October 27, 2025
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News from Sustainability by Numbers
Artificial intelligence could dramatically improve weather forecasting
An AI-based model outperformed every other in forecasting the Indian monsoon this year. This helped millions of farmers.
Weather forecasts are important to almost everyone, but they can make a huge difference to farmers … as they guide them on when and what to plant. A good forecast could be the difference between a great harvest and none at all.
This is where AI could really change things.
October 26, 2025
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