Manila, Not Menlo Park
The BLS numbers show AI-exposed jobs actually vanishing, the commoditization of models is gutting the moat story, and Google has started shoving ads into your answers – all while a younger generation
Dear Friend,
This last week I have had the privilege of speaking to a roomful of executives in the Dominican Republic about the ideas we laid out in both Disrupt Disruption as well as OUTLEARN. A week later, I came across Ben Evans’s latest deck on the state of AI (see below) – flip to slide 76 in that deck and you see a graph showing the number of employees working in the IT-BPM (business process management) industry in the Philippines. You could draw a similar slide for the Dominican Republic. And as much as Meta laying off 8,000 catches the headlines, I think the much bigger effect of AI will be on the folks working in places like the Philippines on behalf of global businesses…
And now, this…
Headlines from the Future
AI-related Job Losses? It’s Complicated. The seemingly (for good reason) never-ending debate about AI job losses got another entry with the release of the latest report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The jobs you would expect to be at the highest risk of being replaced by AI are (at least looking at the raw data) being replaced: Customer service jobs dropped by 130,180 jobs in the latest report.
On Friday, in an ~annual data dump from BLS~, it emerged that a depression in these “artificial intelligence related occupations” really does appear to be happening. This category was down by 0.2% from May of 2024 to May of 2025, a tiny drop, but one made more notable by employment in general trending up 0.8% in the same time period.
Meanwhile, those affected by AI-related job losses are sometimes relegated to using their (human) skills to clean up the AI mess. Oh boy…
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AI Eats the World. The great Benedict Evans dropped his newest slide deck – this time on the state of affairs in AI. And when Ben talks, we listen. Skip the infrastructure cost slides and go straight to his insights on the commoditization of AI models (and hence why OpenAI & Co.’s moat might not be as deep as they make you believe), the challenge of AI for BPO-heavy countries like the Philippines, and the fun 1980s-era automation ads.
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Google eats AI. Or maybe it’s the other way around. After Google’s annual product fest, Google I/O, this week, the number of times AI was mentioned is hard to count. There is a humorous 52-second supercut of all the important announcements from the event (hint: it’s AI). But then there is also the beginning of the AI-fueled ad era (which, of course, had to come).
When researching a topic, consumers want to know exactly how a product suits their unique situation. In fact, 75% of people report making faster, more confident decisions using AI Mode in Search. That’s why we’re testing two new types of ads, built with Gemini, that offer relevant product details along with helpful guidance.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out over the longer term – with a growing backlash against AI in general, it makes you wonder how enthralled people will be about ads being shoved into their AI-generated responses. And how much will you trust an AI-generated response, one which, to this day, is at risk of being hallucinated in the first place, to be accurate, when you know that there are commercial interests at play?
What We Are Reading
Elon Musk and the US Government Fought an AI Anti-discrimination Law. the Arguments Don’t Hold up. When the federal government joins a billionaire’s lawsuit to kill state AI protections, it sends every other state a clear message: don’t even try. @Jane
This Literary AI Scandal Changes Everything A literary prize is at the center of an AI scandal, but this time the accused authors aren’t owning up to anything, exposing a loophole that may be difficult to close in the future. @Mafe
How Agentic AI Supercharges Startups and Threatens Incumbents Feels like we’re underestimating how much advantage is shifting toward teams that can move, decide, and adapt quickly. @Kacee
Ask an Astronaut Ever wanted to ask an astronaut (an actual space-faring one) some questions? Such as: How do you shower in space? Here is a delightful opportunity to do so – and get some real answers. @Pascal
Down the Rabbit Hole
⏳ The ever-great Simon Willison on the state of AI within the last six months – so much change, so much progress: The last six months in LLMs in five minutes.
🖼️ Give people a real Monet, tell them that it’s AI-generated, and watch the comments flow… Yep, Monet is overrated. Apparently.
🙍♂️ The kids are not having it: The AI bots are coming and the young are booing, not applauding.
🤑 Ed Zitron’s latest take-down piece traces the money in AI – and it ain’t pretty: AI is too expensive.
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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.