^{CHITTER CHATTER}

The Inconvenient Truth
The bleeding doesn’t stop. AI job cuts keep coming. This week in the news, Atlassian announced “the sacking of about 1600 staff, or 10 per cent of its worldwide workforce.”

Cannon-Brookes did a fantastic job communicating the great news using corporate language that sounds honest and sincere while effectively managing the fallout.

Such smooth phrasing: “We are choosing to adapt”, making the job cuts sound like strategic evolution, not panic. Saying “the bar” for great software companies has gone up turns investor pressure, weak profitability and a falling share price into a noble quest for excellence. And “it would be disingenuous” to deny that AI changes the number of roles required is especially slick because it sounds candid while still gently escorting blame towards the future.

However, this scathing Quartz article is saying something different: AI often isn’t taking white-collar jobs. Tech companies are redirecting cash into chips, data centres and AI infrastructure, and payroll is one of the easiest places to raid.

AI may come for our jobs one day, but for now, the inconvenient truth is that it’s often a scapegoat for poor financial results or a cover story for the insane rush to cash in on the AI future before everyone else.

Bad Boy Busted & Sued
This week’s tech fail is a moral one: Shout-out to Chris Carson, US serial entrepreneur and former owner of the tech company Hayden AI. Carson allegedly forged board documents, pocketed $1.3 million from an unauthorised share sale, and spent it like a man speedrunning a midlife crisis in luxury goods. Gold Bentley. McLaren. Aston Martin. Ducati. Watches. Handbags. Jewellery. It gets funnier: he also allegedly padded his backstory; apparently, he was running a paintball business in a Florida strip mall, not getting his PhD at Tokyo’s Waseda University, in 2008. Despite being fired from Hayden AI, Carson still managed to raise $8 million for his next AI startup. In tech, being accused of fraud isn’t always a dealbreaker if investors think the potential returns are worth the inconvenience. All’s well that ends well, I say.

Chasing Immortality
In Berkeley, a crowd of death-haters gathered to argue that dying should be optional and defeating it should outrank basically every other human priority. The movement, called Vitalism, wants to rebrand longevity as a moral crusade, influence policy, certify biotech companies, loosen access to experimental treatments, and eventually build a society organised around not carking it. The venue offered napping rooms, body scanners, a sauna in a bus and 24-hour karaoke, which feels like exactly how tech would prepare for immortality: half wellness retreat, half cult, half startup offsite. Meanwhile, the rest of us are still trying to get through the week without needing a lie-down.

^SUBTEXT

The Waffle: “We are doing this to self-fund further investment in AI and enterprise sales, while strengthening our financial profile. We’re also changing the way we work… to move faster.” — Mike Cannon-Brookes on Atlassian’s layoffs

Translated: “We’re cutting 1,600 people to free up cash, please focus on the exciting AI part, and don’t dwell on the fact that 'moving faster' usually means fewer humans doing more work.”

Longevity Derangement noun | [lon-jev-i-tee di-raynj-muhnt]

Brain fry is “mental fatigue from excessive use or oversight of AI tools beyond one’s cognitive capacity. It happens when individuals are tasked with building and overseeing so many complex agents that the constant toggling becomes overwhelming."

^{THE SHALLOW END}

Dear Dr Comms
I’ve been caught with my hand in the cookie jar. I’m not a monster, I just happen to like nice things like flashy cars, mansions and shiny baubles. Unfortunately, I’m now being sued while trying to get another tech startup off the ground and heading into a fresh funding round. How do I create the right impression while desperately trying to cover up my wrongdoing? Yours, Desperately Seeking More Cookies

Dear Desperately Seeking More Cookies
Let’s consult the specialists:

🖌️ Touch-up artist:
“Freshen up the pitch deck. Polish the brand colours, and make everything look so premium that investors forget to ask where the numbers came from.”

🛋️ House stylist:
“Hide anything gold, imported or purchased during the alleged fraud era.”

🥁 Session drummer:
“Ba-boom-ba-bing your way through the meeting with enough noise, flair and drumstick acrobatics that nobody can hear the whispers about what you’ve allegedly done.”

AI-Generated Contestant Cries, Fools Some People
Why write a decent song or get on a real talent show when you can generate an ageing rocker, slap him onto America’s Got Talent, give him a fake deadbeat-child ballad, and farm the tears for clicks? The internet briefly fell for Michael Bennett, an AI contestant complete with one static tear and audience members crying before he even started singing. Committing fraud used to require effort; now it just requires a bit of AI prompting and a YouTube account. Unfortunately for lovers of synthetic heartbreak, the video has been taken down by AGT, so we can no longer ironically enjoy the AI crooner.

^{BIN THIS…}

One of the stupidest habits spreading in tech is using AI because leadership says you have to, even when it slows the work down. Recent reporting on Amazon found employees describing flawed AI outputs, extra cleanup work, pressure to use internal tools, and performance scrutiny around AI adoption. Ugh.

Know someone who lives for this kind of nonsense? Forward this email to them and help me spread the dysfunction.

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