Efficiency Kills
The same AI agents gutting white-collar work just plundered McKinsey’s most confidential client data – and a self-driving car blocked the ambulance on its way to the crime scene
Dear Friend,
We truly do live in interesting times. From the war in the Middle East, to AI-related mass layoffs, to the global rise of nationalism (latest point in case: the elections in Chile), the climate crisis rearing its ugly head – and then you have wireless eye implants making blind people see again, EV batteries charging in 5 minutes with a 600+ mile range, AI agents doing meaningful work, and companies freeing themselves from the tyranny of overpriced and outdated SaaS tools. I just can’t shake Walt Whitman’s words: “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Our world truly contains multitudes.
And now, this…
Headlines from the Future
Tech Is the New Plastic. Not a good time to be in tech… Remember when your uncle said: “Become a coder. That’s the future – and you’ll be rich!”
Mr. McGuire: “I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.”
Benjamin: “Yes, sir.”
Mr. McGuire: “Are you listening?”
Benjamin: “Yes, I am.”
Mr. McGuire: “Plastics.”
Benjamin: “Exactly how do you mean?”
Mr. McGuire: “There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?”
(In related news, Oracle slashes 30,000 jobs, Atlassian lays of 1,600 people… the list goes on.)
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Not a Coder? Not a Problem. AI Is Still Coming for Your Job. Here’s a good, long read on The Verge about lawyers, PhDs, and scientists who lost their jobs to AI. Despite all the talk about “Jevons Paradox” – the observation that efficiency gains lead to increased consumption – for now, we seem to be squarely stuck in a world where AI is a net job destroyer. It does make you wonder how long it will take for the masses to catch up with the trend and start pushing back (we, of course, already see it in pockets – the weak signals are talking).
”My job is gone because of ChatGPT, and I was being invited to train the model to do the worst version of it imaginable.” – Katya, content marketer turned AI trainer
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Battle Royale: AI vs. AI. McKinsey, your friendly consulting firm, has deployed their own ChatBot “Lilly”. Hackers (in this case, and luckily for McKinsey, white-hat hackers – the good and friendly kind, who disclose their findings to the company) have, by using a set of AI agents, managed to exploit a vulnerability in Lilly and gain access to “46.5 million chat messages about strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and client engagements, all in plaintext, along with 728,000 files containing confidential client data, 57,000 user accounts, and 95 system prompts controlling the AI’s behavior.” You know, no big deal…
[…] the entire process was “fully autonomous from researching the target, analyzing, attacking, and reporting.”
As useful as agents are for businesses, they are equally useful for hackers. Prepare yourself for an onslaught of AI-powered cyber attacks.
What We Are Reading
A Technology for a Low-Trust Society Prediction markets promise the wisdom of crowds but, in reality, deliver a playground for insiders, manipulators, and those willing to bet on human suffering. @Jane
A New Generation of Mall Rats Has Arrived Gen Z’s need for immediate gratification has an unexpected winner: malls – they are now ramping up their social media presence and figuring out what the “future mall” should look like. @Mafe
What Is Claude? Anthropic Doesn’t Know, Either Maybe the single most uncanny thing about our historical moment – we’re all struggling to effectively deploy (and adapt to) a technology that continues to baffle even its creators. @Jeffrey
The Hidden Power of Messy Teams A study of hundreds of innovation teams found the ones most likely to implement their ideas didn’t start with clear problems; they started messy and discovered the real problem along the way. @Kacee
The Gervais Principle, or The Office According to The Office Absolutely delightful deep dive into the world of the TV show “The Office” – both the British and US versions – to uncover why Ricky Gervais deserves the Nobel Prize in both economics and literature. @Pascal
Down the Rabbit Hole
🧑🏼🍳 Cofounder of Netflix, Mozilla’s former CFO, and a dear friend of ours, Jim Cook, has an excellent newsletter (Cook’s Playbook), which you ought to subscribe to. His latest post is a very thoughtful takedown of the now-infamous Citrini AI Report.
📺 It feels like yesterday when Google bought YouTube for a – at the time – shocking $1.65 billion. That was in 2006 – 20 years later, and YouTube now generates more ad revenue than Disney, NBC, Paramount, and WBD – combined.
🔋 Five minute charging, 621 miles of range, 620,000 miles of life – BYD has cracked the EV battery code.
👁️ In medical news: Wireless eye implant helps blind patients read again.
🚘 One of the vexing problems self-driving cars still face is their behavior in edge cases – and it could be a stumbling block in their widespread adoption – as questions about self-driving cars amplify after one blocked an ambulance responding to an Austin shooting.
🇨🇳 While many of us, for good reason, stay miles away from autonomous AI agencies like OpenClaw, Chinese users seem to embrace them: OpenClaw Conquered China in 100 Days.
🧾 It surely shouldn’t come as a surprise - but please: Don’t Trust A.I. to File Your Taxes
🛒 Looks like ChatGPT’s dream of becoming your commerce hub is not panning out (yet): ChatGPT users research products but won’t buy there, forcing OpenAI to rethink its commerce strategy
🧑🏼 Undoubtedly, OpenAI has a strong interest in moving companies from dabbling with AI to full-blown adoption. Hence a blog post from the company on “five value models driving business reinvention” – which reads like it was written by ChatGPT.
🥈 Here’s an interesting use case for ChatGPT: Ukrainian para-biathlete wins silver using ChatGPT as his coach.
🤬 Pardon the language, but the argument is solid: AI will f*** you up if you’re not on board.
🧶 3D knitting your next sweater is a thing – it’s super cool, produces a more durable product, and it’s here.
🧼 Admittedly nerdy, but “clean room” re-engineering is a thing ever since we had IP protection (for a good primer, watch the first season of Halt and Catch Fire – excellent show!). With AI coding tools, the question now becomes: Can coding agents relicense open source through a “clean room” implementation of code?
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Should We Work Together?
Hi! I’m Pascal from radical. This newsletter is our labor of love. When we’re not writing, we run radical, a firm that helps organizations navigate the future without the “innovation theater.” Most leaders want to seize new opportunities, but they hate endless strategy decks that go nowhere. At radical, we don’t run “projects”; we build your organization’s internal capacity to handle disruption and change. Our goal is to make you future-proof so you can stop reacting to the world and start shaping it. If you’re interested, let’s jump on a call to see if we’re a good fit. Click here to speak with us.