Trump is suing the WSJ over the Epstein piece:

“I’ve become very efficient at using A.I. as a tool to help me draft patent applications in a way that’s reduced our need for contract lawyers," said Robert Plotkin, a partner in a small law firm specializing in intellectual property.

"Mr. Reed said that from a purely financial perspective, it increasingly made sense for companies to hire junior employees who use AI to do what was once midlevel work, a handful of senior employees and almost no mid-tier workers. That, he said, is how his company is structured.".

“How you decrease cost is not by firing the cheapest employees. You take the cheapest employee and make them worth the expensive employee.” One of the most heated debates in the AI discourse is who's more vulnerable: entry-level workers or the middle-aged

"In the first season of 'America’s Sweethearts,' the docuseries showed the financial struggles of many on the squad who had full-time day jobs in addition to their cheerleading duties. Ms. McLean, for example, worked at a dermatology clinic.".

"In a rare instance of a Cowboys cheerleader discussing her compensation, Ms. McLean told The Times that in 2024, her 5th year, she had made $15/hr and $500 for each appearance. With the increased wages, veteran cheerleaders could now be making $75/hr."

For a sense of how Amazon software engineers feel about this development, see here

He also said it would "rapidly accelerate our ability to make customers lives easier and better every day, and it’s going to make our jobs even more exciting and fun than they are today.".

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent employees a note today about the company's use of Gen AI. Among other things, Jassy said he expected it to lower headcount at the company in the next few years.

"At a companywide meeting earlier this year, Nicholas Thompson, chief executive of the Atlantic, said the publication should assume traffic from Google would drop toward zero and the company needed to evolve its business model."

Interesting argument from @bsachs about why Trump may have opened the door to having states and cities regulate labor relations--say, allowing sectoral bargaining and other new arrangements--by firing an NLRB member and depriving the NLRB of a quorum.

There's been a lot of uncertainty and skepticism about what AI adoption actually means - do you just mess around with ChatGPT every once in a while or actually incorporate AI into your work on a regular basis. This helps get at what's actually going on.

Some very helpful numbers out from Gallup today about AI use in the workplace. Since last year, the portion of workers who use AI a few times a week has nearly doubled--to 19%. That figure for white-collar workers has increased from 15 to 27%.

Important piece from @natashanyt on the race to get Gen AI into the hands of college students

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that it should be just as easy for white men to sue for discrimination as any member of a minority group. Does this open the floodgates to reverse-discrimination lawsuits? And how common is that anyway? Some thoughts

Hmm. "A final phase, allowing nonprofessionals to submit columns with help from an A.I. writing coach called Ember, could begin testing this fall. Human editors would review submissions before publication."

NEWS: Video game workers at Microsoft have just reached a tentative contract with the company, the first in the industry in the U.S. after lots of union organizing over the past few years.

Completely fascinating piece

"It would be crazy if in an auto factory people were measuring to make sure every angle is correct,” said Harper Reed, who was the chief technology officer of Obama’s re-election campaign. “It’s not as important as when it was group of ten people pounding out the metal.”.