Run AI on Your Laptop, Destroy the Job Market
From Vogue to the job market for college grads – AI is doing it all (and now runs easily on your laptop)
Dear Friend,
It’s time for a little (summer) break here at radical HQ – Jane and I (Pascal) will head out to Tanzania, climb Kilimanjaro, and see if we can spot some animals on their migration across the Serengeti. We will be back with our regular (twice-weekly) programming on August 26th – and have a couple of cool things in store to make the radical community hum even more. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, here is your weekend reading…
Headlines from the Future
Ollama’s New App ↗
Ollama allows you to run LLMs locally on your computer. So far, it was somewhat cumbersome to do so, as you had to operate Ollama from the command line. Not anymore - now they have a neat, little app.
—//—
AI Is Wrecking an Already Fragile Job Market for College Graduates ↗
The current narrative of AI eating up college graduate entry-level jobs will have interesting and lasting ramifications if true. But before we get there, let’s back up for a second. Here is where we (seemingly) are at:
George Arison, CEO of Grindr: “Companies are ‘going to need less and less people at the bottom.’” […] Matt Sigelman, President of Burning Glass Institute: “This is a more tectonic shift in the way employers are hiring. Employers are significantly more likely to be letting go of their workers at the entry level—and in many cases are stepping up their hiring of more experienced professionals.” […] Ford CEO Jim Farley: Stated he “expects AI will replace half of the white-collar workforce in the U.S.”
And it’s not just CEOs talking about this shift:
Jadin Tate, University at Albany graduate: Recounted his mentor’s warning that his chosen field is being “taken over by AI” and “may not exist in five years.” […] Arjun Dabir, student at University of California, Irvine, on intern work: “That task is no longer necessary. You don’t need to hire someone to do it.”
Which is all well and good for the hiring companies (and, of course, terrible for college grads) – but just like China’s infamous “one child per family”-policy, it will bite you in the tail down the line. You might not need the entry-level worker anymore – but how does someone progress to a mid- to high-level worker if they never had the chance to, well, start somewhere?
Chris Ernst, Chief Learning Officer at Workday: “Genuine learning, growth, adaptation—it comes from doing the hard work. It’s those moments of challenge, of hardship—that’s the crucible where people grow, they change, they learn most profoundly.”
Time will tell.
—//—
“Cheap, Chintzy, Lazy”: Readers Are Canceling Their Vogue Subscriptions After Ai-Generated Models Appear in August Issue ↗
Vogue, the iconic fashion magazine, used AI to generate “models” in its latest edition – and caused quite the stir:
Vogue’s August 2025 issue, starring Anne Hathaway on the cover, has ignited a heated debate because of its use of AI-generated models. […] The inclusion of AI-generated “models” has led to subscription cancellations and criticism online.
There are, of course, many angles to this critique – from concern about jobs (models, makeup artists, photographers, etc.), to issues with the uncanny valley (“Although the models wear real fashion from top labels, many say the images resemble luxury video game renders more than genuine editorials.”), to more philosophical questions around “detractors believe it sacrifices emotional depth and the artistry that human models bring.”
All of which brings up an interesting point – with AI and AI-generated “art” becoming more and more prevalent, where do we draw the line? And what’s the market size for both the AI-enabled (digital) and AI-free (analog) world? Draw a parallel to the world of music, and you see a niche market for vinyl records emerge from the depths of the streaming platforms – but it’s tiny in comparison and surely will always be tiny.
Fashion fans aren’t just reacting emotionally, they’re calling out a deeper concern about the future of representation and authenticity in the industry.
What We Are Reading
👵 Age Inclusion Is Your Company’s Next Competitive Advantage As someone starting to get up there in years, this struck a chord: businesses that ignore older consumers and workers are missing the century’s biggest growth opportunity. @Jane
🤖 Daniel Kahneman: Algorithms Make Better Decisions Than You A couple of Kahneman’s insights from this great conversation: Behavior is situation, not personality; wherever there’s judgment, there’s noise, and your rules become your default. @Mafe
🔄 Unbundling the Job We need a better vision (and soon) of what might replace the job as a key to social integration and cohesion. @Jeffrey
🤖 What Does Responsible AI Look Like in the Age of Agentic AI? A worthy listen from the World Economic Forum @ Davos. Agentic AI isn’t just a tech leap; it’s a trust test. As these systems start making decisions on our behalf, the real challenge isn’t capability; it’s making sure they reflect our values, not just our code. @Kacee
🚀 The Four-Letter Code To Selling Just About Anything Being one of the most influential industrial designers, it is no surprise that some of his methods are being validated by research today. When considering the optimal degree of newness, Raymond Loewy pursued MAYA: “Most Advanced Yet Acceptable.” This was symbolically realized in his addition of a viewing window to NASA’s space station. Something very new, but with a window to something very familiar. @Julian
📉 What Went Wrong for Yahoo Yahoo, the once mighty Internet giant, fall from grace is of epic proportions, and the list of failures and misses on their end is seemingly endless. Read this for some Schadenfreude, but also to learn from others’ (costly) mistakes. @Pascal
Rabbit Hole Recommendations
Beware: Sam Altman says your ChatGPT therapy session might not stay private in a lawsuit
OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent casually clicks through “I am not a robot” verification test
AI researcher ‘turns down $1bn pay offer from Mark Zuckerberg’