The AI Round-up: Man, people hate AI!
AI news covering the week of May 25, 2026
The AI Round-up: Year 4, Issue 18
Man. A lot of hate out there for this sea of sameness we’re seeing in our LinkedIn posts, comments, articles, etc. (And it turns out this is being backed up by research. You’ll want to read this.)
Two things:
- Did you think this wasn’t going to happen? Remember what I said about where people will ultimately cut their corners? (Time, good enough, etc.)
- I bet all of this AI stuff dies down now, right?
The only way to navigate through what we’re experiencing with AI is…to do the same thing we’ve been saying all along: decide what relationship you want to have with it. Is it overkill at this point to keep quoting Ethan Mollick and saying we should be the ‘human in the loop’? No, not at all. Because that value I’ve been saying you can create by not using AI as an easy button is on full display. THIS is why we need to be familiar with the tools, what they can do, what we can do with them…and what they can do to us.
Now’s the time. Take advantage of the head start you’ve earned to stand up and be the human. Because you never know when an AI company may want to pay $400,000 for a copywriter.
Let’s get to it.
Ethan Mollick: It was the only place I could start.
His latest blog is titled ”Choosing to stay human.”
Yes, please.
“We are standing in the foothills of the singularity.”
Oh boy.
Demis Hassabis has spoken.
He said this during the keynote at Google I/O’s keynote recently.
And by singularity he means AGI.
And by AGI he means we’re ‘nowhere near that’.
And by ‘nowhere near that’ he means a 50/50 shot by 2030.
I think his definition of ‘nowhere near’ is not the same as mine.
Whether you think we’re close to the singularity/AGI or not…the leap was never going to be in how you and I use AI. It was going to be in how it’s used for the things Google is talking about – science, health, tech advancements. This is where we will see the biggest gains…not in how fast and creative our company blog is.
Sam I am. Wrong.
“I’m delighted to be wrong about this.”
The white collar job apocalypse Sam Altman promised, er predicted, isn’t happening.
Anthropic flexes.
Coding jobs are coming to an end. Long live coding!
Makes a lot of sense, right?
No, it doesn’t. BUT, don’t worry…we have this Platformer interview with the head of Claude Code to talk us through both of these realities.
Vibe coding is leaking your data.
Is it time to start treating vibe coding as a security risk? 5,000 corporate data leaks would seem to suggest that yes, yes it is.
So—how can you tell if something was written by AI? It’s not a this. It’s a that. And here’s the thing…
The Atlantic has dug into this and provided some easy tells if you’re looking…or trying to hide.
No, this isn’t an AI generated sequel Mike Lawrence made for our film festival. She’s actually back. This time because she wants to stop data centers.
And it appears she isn’t alone – a new Gallup poll shows that 71% of Americans are not in favor of them in their local areas.
The Pope.
If you heard the Pope published an encyclical on AI… then realized it was 42,000 words…but still want to know what he’s thinking, this is the read from you, courtesy of Conor Grennan.
3 Nopes.
- AI voice scams are on the rise. How to protect yourself. (CNN)
- Billionaires brace for AI backlash. (Axios)
- 99% of CEOs are preparing to layoff workers and replace them with AI, according to this survey. (Futurism)
-Ben
As a reminder, this is a round-up of the biggest stories, often hitting multiple newsletters I receive/review. The sources are many … which I’m happy to read on your behalf. Let me know if there’s one you’d like me to track or have questions about a topic you’re not seeing here.