^{CHITTER CHATTER}

The AI Feeding Frenzy Hits a Wall. Guess Who Pays?

Last week's technology stock rout turned into a bloodbath. On Thursday, 5 November, the Nasdaq plunged 5.5%, wiping trillions off market valuations and leaving the index nearly 12% below its October peak. The piranhas are getting restless. Investors who eagerly swallowed promises of enormous AI riches are now circling, demanding evidence that billions being poured into data centres and infrastructure will deliver worthwhile returns. The threat of tighter regulation following the US midterms has only sharpened their teeth. In tech, we’ve already endured three years of relentless layoffs. Now there's another reason to worry. We're frantically figuring out how to use AI to make ourselves more valuable, while watching the ocean churn. And when the feeding begins again, whose jobs will be the first to go? Because the piranhas are hungry. Let's hope we're not on the menu.

Canva Wants to Be a Start-up Again. We’re Not Buying It.

For years, Canva was Australia's technology darling, the company that seemed incapable of putting a foot wrong. Now it's having what CEO Melanie Perkins calls its hardest year yet. Growth has slowed for the first time in a decade, competition from AI is intensifying, and the company has announced a major restructuring affecting 1,271 employees, that’s 22% of its workforce. Some will lose their jobs. Others face changed roles or relocation, while most hybrid employees will be expected back in the office two to three days a week from January. Perkins wants Canva to behave more like the scrappy startup it once was, with smaller teams, fewer management layers and greater individual responsibility. It appears that becoming a successful global business has created problems that becoming a startup again might solve. Here's an idea: maybe founders aren't always the best people to run the companies they've built. The entrepreneurial instincts that make a startup successful aren't necessarily the skills needed to navigate a complex multinational. Just saying. And if you work at Canva, the reality is that you're no longer working for the cool outsider shaking up the tech industry. You're working for another tech giant, with all the corporate baggage that comes with it.

On that note … here are:

Five Careers AI Can Keep Its Grubby Hands Off

Forget looking for another tech job. Some workers are abandoning their careers altogether as AI takes the pleasure, purpose and security out of office work. A former Anthropic researcher has gone off to study poetry. A software engineer has become a police officer. Others are pursuing acting and literature. If you're contemplating an escape, we have five alternative career suggestions:

The pay might be terrible, but at least you won't spend your mornings pretending to be excited about your company's AI strategy. Ugh.

Much Ado About Nothing. Literally.

Technology company Nothing has announced that its revolutionary new AI device will arrive in December. What does it do? Nobody knows. What does it look like? Nobody knows that either. How much will it cost? Your guess is as good as mine. CEO Carl Pei says it's an “AI-native” productivity tool, has no new screen and couldn't possibly have been an app. He's even released a teaser image featuring a mysterious black corner. Apparently, that's enough to get the technology world speculating. Pei reckons the industry is searching for its AI equivalent of the iPhone, although he wisely suggests that particular miracle is still some way off. Previous attempts at screenless AI gadgets haven't exactly conquered the world. Remember the spectacularly unsuccessful Humane AI Pin? Maybe Nothing has invented something genuinely useful. Maybe it's another expensive solution looking for a problem. For now, we have a company called Nothing, showing us almost nothing, while promising something. The purest form of hype. Future founders, take note.

Tech Fails

Cybertruck: A Monument to Getting it Wrong

Elon Musk's futuristic stainless-steel monster is heading for the automotive graveyard. Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production in mid-2027, making way for its latest obsession, the driverless Cybercab. Musk once predicted annual sales of 250,000 for Cybertrucks. Last year, Tesla managed just 20,237 in the US, down 48% from 2024. Along the way, Cybertruck collected 11 recalls, shattered its supposedly unbreakable window during its unveiling, and proved rather less irresistible to buyers than Musk imagined. He's not alone. America's electric-pickup market is struggling, with traditional truck buyers proving stubbornly unimpressed by expensive vehicles that don't necessarily meet their practical needs. A prime example of a typical problem in the IT world: we sometimes put more focus on the bells and whistles of the tech but forget about making it applicable to the real world.

Weird Tech

The Robot Invasion Meets Its Worst Nightmare: A 78-Year-Old Woman

Forget about good-looking, young and muscular heroes using futuristic weapons against robot invaders. Humanity's resistance movement is being led by a 78-year-old professor in Philadelphia armed with nothing more than a blue visor and an impressive capacity for stubbornness. Carolyn Marvin has made it her mission to obstruct Uber Eats delivery robots. She simply stands in front of them and refuses to move. Her objections are serious: robots taking people's jobs, invading public footpaths and creating hazards for pedestrians. During one standoff, three police officers handcuffed her and issued a disorderly conduct ticket. Undeterred, she's back on the streets, staring down the machines. Under Pennsylvania law, delivery robots are classified as pedestrians, and this worries me. How long before robots the world over have the same rights as us? I, personally am not good with this. Right now, though, Marvin seems to be the only one arguing that humans should have more rights than robots. On the lighter side, the latest robot she confronted eventually gave up and went home. Humanity 1. Robots 0. Meanwhile, somewhere in Silicon Valley, an engineer is developing a new feature: Granny Avoidance Mode.

^SUBTEXT

Tech Waffle Torture

The culprit: Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, explaining the company's restructuring in her 4 November announcement:

“We're reducing subspecialisation and collapsing layers to broaden ownership.”

Plain English Translation (without the verbal gymnastics):

“We're removing management layers, combining responsibilities and expecting employees to handle a wider range of work.”

The Satirical Translation:

“We're getting rid of some people, giving the remaining staff bigger jobs and calling it empowerment.”

An acute fear of AI-generated rubbish, particularly among executives who encouraged its use.

Agentic Flooding: The use of AI agents to bombard people or organisations with enormous volumes of messages, complaints or requests. What once took hours to write can now be generated in seconds. It's the digital equivalent of a dam bursting. Except instead of water, we're drowning in 200-page complaints about the neighbour's crooked fence.

^{THE SHALLOW END}

Grimes Goes Hollywood. AI Does the Heavy Lifting.

Meanwhile, one of Elon Musk's former flames, Canadian musician Claire Elise Boucher, better known as Grimes, is making her film debut in Gods Don't Give Gifts, an AI-generated sci-fi movie. She's lending her real voice and digitally recreated likeness to a futuristic aristocrat. The film, due in cinemas on 4 December, is even being put forward for Best Animated Feature Oscar consideration. Coming soon, Grimes’ acceptance speech generated by ChatGPT: “Oh my God! I never imagined this moment. I'd like to thank the Academy, my lawyer, my Reiki healer, my astrologer for predicting this, my agent for negotiating my digital likeness rights, and the entire cast of algorithms. To my children, you are my inspiration. And finally, to my AI therapist, who always believed in me. I love you all!”

Dear Dr Comms

After hundreds of job applications, endless rejections and humiliating AI interviews, I've created an AI avatar to attend interviews for me. It's confident, articulate and much more qualified than I am. Now it's getting shortlisted for jobs I couldn't possibly do. What happens if someone actually hires me? Yours, Professionally Obsolete.

Dear Obsolete
Let's consult three professionals who understand how to disguise defects, improve inferior specimens and make a dud look like a star:

🚗 Used-Car Salesman
“Never reveal what's under the bonnet until they've signed the contract. If they discover the real model has fewer features than advertised, call it vintage and charge extra for authenticity.”

🧬 Geneticist
“Clearly, your digital offspring has inherited all your best qualities and none of your deficiencies. I recommend cloning it immediately and retiring the original specimen before natural selection takes its course.”

🎬 Casting Director
“Congratulations! Your avatar has landed the role of you. Unfortunately, you failed the audition. But don't despair. There's always work as an unpaid extra in your own career. Just try not to upstage the star, Claude Ayeye.”

The last human job.

^{BIN THIS…}

Melanie Perkins, Canva, for “Refound Canva”.

Yes, she actually said it. Re-found is a legitimate, if awkward, word meaning to establish something again. But Canva isn't being founded again. It's being restructured.

Perkins has taken a perfectly ordinary corporate overhaul and dressed it up as an an act of creation. Apparently, ‘restructure’ didn't sound sufficiently inspirational. I wonder if she’ll re-found her naval some time soon.

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

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