Barbie Is an AI Now, and We Will Never Stop Working Again

From toys to the workplace to overpriced robo-taxis – you truly don’t need to watch Black Mirror anymore… But AI is still awesome.

Jun 20, 2025

Dear Friend –

This week saw, yet again, the release of updated AI models (OpenAI, Google, and a few others). Judging from the online buzz, we seem to have now entered the “🤷🏼” phase, where each new release is registered, but we have stopped fawning over each new release – mostly because for many of us, the differences between version “2 Flash Lite” and “2.5 Flash Lite” are just not that big anymore. Overall, this is good – it means that things are maturing, it takes a bit of the craziness out of it, and it means we can focus on building rather than constantly keeping up…

And now, this…

P.S. We just released the “2025 AI in Accounting Report” together with and for our friends at CPA.com. Free download here.

P.P.S. Organizing an event? Check out Projectory, the newest venture of our very own Jeffrey Rogers (yes, we all do tons of things!), along with our dear friend Oren and a group of talented individuals who truly care about creating incredible event interactions.

Headlines from the Future

Toy-Maker Mattel Teams Up With OpenAI ↗

What could possibly go wrong? Toy maker Mattel (Barbie, anyone?!) teams up with OpenAI to create AI-powered toys…

By tapping into OpenAI’s AI capabilities, Mattel aims to reimagine how fans can experience and interact with its cherished brands, with careful consideration to ensure positive, enriching experiences.

Sounds like a potentially nightmarish experience…

Children do not have the cognitive capacity to distinguish fully between reality and play. […] “Endowing toys with human-seeming voices that are able to engage in human-like conversations risks inflicting real damage on children. It may undermine social development, interfere with children’s ability to form peer relationships, pull children away from playtime with peers, and possibly inflict long-term harm.” - Robert Weissman, Public Citizen co-President

Link to article.

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Breaking Down the Infinite Workday ↗

Microsoft’s WorkLab team is out with a new report on what our workplace looks like mid-2025 – and the results are ugly:

Nearly half of employees (48%) – and more than half of leaders (52%) – say their work feels chaotic and fragmented. […]
Half (50%) of all meetings take place between 9–11 am and 1–3 pm—precisely when, as research shows, many people have a natural productivity spike in their day. […]
On average, employees using Microsoft 365 are interrupted every 2 minutes by a meeting, email, or notification.

And is goes on and on… Particularly hilarious (and sad is this):

In the final 10 minutes before a meeting, PowerPoint edits spike 122% – the digital equivalent of cramming before an exam.

The report offers some positive outlook though:

The future of work won’t be defined by how much drudgery we automate, but by what we choose to fundamentally reimagine. […] The most effective organizations know this—and act on it. Frontier Firms are putting the Pareto Principle into practice, focusing on the 20% of work that delivers 80% of the outcomes.

Link to report.

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Microsoft CEO Admits That AI Is Generating Basically No Value ↗

Nadella nails it:

“So, the first thing that we all have to do is, when we say this is like the Industrial Revolution, let’s have that Industrial Revolution type of growth,” he said. “The real benchmark is: the world growing at 10 percent,” he added. “Suddenly productivity goes up and the economy is growing at a faster rate. When that happens, we’ll be fine as an industry.” Needless to say, we haven’t seen anything like that yet.

Good reminder to look beyond the hype train. But also do not forget that AI is already changing many aspects of our daily work life.

Link to article.

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Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft — and people are paying anyway ↗

Obi, an app that aggregates real-time pricing and pick-up times across multiple ride-hailing services, has just published what it’s calling the “first in-depth examination of Waymo’s pricing strategy.” The company found Waymo’s self-driving car rides to be consistently more expensive than comparative offerings from Uber and Lyft — and it doesn’t seem to matter.

I get why people ride Waymo’s (novelty), but this is telling:

“Colloquially, there is an idea that autonomous vehicles are something that will erode driver jobs and put drivers at risk. And I think the irony of what we’ve seen is that it’s actually quite expensive to run an AV, and that that’s not going to be happening, at least in the near term,” she said.

Link to article and study.

What We Are Reading

🤯 At Secret Math Meeting, Researchers Struggle to Outsmart AI Top mathematicians worldwide were shocked to discover just how capable AI has become in their work. @Jane

🌀 Conway’s Nightmare Org software mirrors organizational structure, and as complex organizations begin to integrate AI-generated software, it’s time to build systems that can survive confusion. Probably a lot of it. @Jeffrey

🧠 Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task MIT published a study that shows people who use AI to write essays have weaker brain connectivity than those who do the heavy lifting of writing and rely on AI solely for editing. @Kacee

💀 I Convinced HP’s Board to Buy Palm for $1.2B. Then I Watched Them Kill It in 49 Days Fascinating behind-the-scenes account of the absolutely bonkers 49 days at HP from the acquisition of Palm (and their WebOS platform) for $1.3 billion and shutting it down. @Pascal