When Everyone’s Great, No One Is
AI can now print genomes from scratch and dim your kids’ critical thinking – yet inside actual companies, the much-hyped “LLM projects” keep dying in the meeting room.
Dear Friend,
This week, while spending a delightful day with our friends from EMBRACE at their annual HR-Tech festival in Berlin and speaking to many, many HR people, it was fascinating to hear and see how much their work has been impacted by AI (not surprisingly, of course). When you receive hundreds of AI-generated resumes and cover letters for your AI-generated job ad, all of which you run through your AI-powered applicant tracking system, the biggest challenge seems to be neither the sheer volume of applications nor the spotting of AI-generated content, but rather the fact that AI equalized all applicants to virtually the same level. Now everybody is great – and the actually good people are lost in the shuffle. “AI, the great equalizer” seems to cut both ways…
And now, this…
Headlines from the Future
GenAI Generates Genomes. The use of generative AI in genetic research, so far, has been held back by the complicated nature of turning DNA sequences into their physical forms – simply stated: The machines can dream up new DNA sequences much faster than we are able to assemble (and then test) them. This is about to change:
The technique, called Sidewinder, can assemble dozens of genetic sequences simultaneously in a single test tube, producing just one incorrect junction for every 10 million assembly events – a level of precision that far surpasses conventional methods, which misfire roughly once every 10 to 30 joins. Sidewinder also draws on cheap raw materials that have until now been too difficult to use reliably.
and:
In a demonstration of how squarely Sidewinder targets this bottleneck, the team behind the technique, led by Caltech synthetic biologist Kaihang Wang, harnessed the power of Evo 2 to redesign a 12,500-letter DNA sequence of the E. coli genome in silico and then used Sidewinder to build it from scratch – with no errors. Sequences of that length can encode entire biochemical pathways, laying the groundwork for engineered microbes that manufacture drugs, biofuels, or specialty chemicals, and eventually to the assembly of vast DNA constructs approaching complete artificial genomes.
Now, just as a thought experiment, consider what this could mean for the hotly-debated issue with the capability of frontier models to be use to assist with biological warfare. With great powers comes great responsibility…
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AI Is Coming for Your Kids Brains. Maybe. Classroom teachers in the US are becoming increasingly worried about the impact of AI on their students – specifically their critical thinking skills (which, ironically, are the very skills that are most needed in an age of AI).
Christa Corricelli, a special education teacher at Saugus Middle/High School outside Boston, says AI could be a valuable technology for learning, but too often students are using it as an answer machine – not a tool to bolster their thinking. “I think students who aren’t already intrinsically self-motivated to be critical thinkers, like that top 1% of the class … I think people who are not already that personality type, we’re going to see those critical thinking skills atrophy over time,” Corricelli says.
We likely won’t know how the use of AI, both on the teacher and student side, will impact our children’s mental and social development, nor what this will mean for the world at large – but it is surely something we might want to try to get right before it’s too late.
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A (funny) AI Reality Check. On her blog, German pharmaceutical database specialist Ava outlines the creative uses her company found for AI – it makes you cringe, smirk, and realize that this exact thing might be going on in many companies the world over.
We have recurring house-wide meetings where groups are asked to show off their LLM projects. They register them, try them out for a couple months, and then come back presenting their results. I have attended all of these meetings so far, and there was not a single one that actually worked out. All projects ended with the conclusion that this isn’t workable, that this isn’t saving time, or that it over-complicates things. Hundreds of people, different teams, people enthusiastic about AI, all kinds of projects, and there wasn’t a single success.
For one, it was shown that you can ask the bot how it feels today. That wasn’t presented as a joke, or being sarcastic; no, it was shown very seriously, I guess under the guise of how cool and futuristic and human it is. […] Next up was the great use case of downloading the cafeteria menu (which is a 1 page nicely designed Excel sheet, like a timetable, showing the different options for each day) from the intranet, giving it to ChatGPT, and asking it what’s for lunch on Wednesday.
Read the whole thing. It’s gold. And then, maybe, compare it to your reality in the company you work for… ;)
What We Are Reading
A Disease of Deforestation: How Ebola Is Linked to the Smartphone in Your Pocket Your smartphone’s supply chain runs through the Congo’s rainforest, and the mining that feeds it may be driving the next Ebola epidemic. @Jane
Fifa Faces Empty Seats as 180,000 World Cup Tickets Hit Resale Market FIFA’s aggressive variable pricing strategy is backfiring; more than 180,000 tickets are still available, and resellers will likely be losing money. Not to mention, there are legal probes into the strategy alleging false scarcity to increase prices. @Mafe
Your Search Results Are Getting Sloptimized The moment it became clear that AI search would become a thing, gaming AI search would also surely become a thing. And here we are. @Jeffrey
BUILD Vs BUY: The Decision Framework for AI in Accounting Firms Our friends at CPA.com released a framework that, while it’s meant for accounting firms, is super helpful for organizations of all industries when considering how to approach the new capabilities that vibe coding has presented. @Kacee
Vinyl Succumbs to Loudness War: More Than Just Collateral Damage! First vinyl came back, then it lost to the relentless pushing of loudness in pretty much all recent music recordings – which should remind you that, yes, music did sound better in the past (and not just because it was analog). @Pascal
Down the Rabbit Hole
🍔 McDonald’s is using AI to make their drive-thrus more efficient, people are not having it: McDonald’s introduces AI drive-thru system, sparking customer backlash.
🤦 Episode 12 in the series of “CEOs doing dumb things with AI”. CEO says there will be no raises because he spent all the money on AI: “We will fund this AI investment by reallocating the budget from 2026 annual salary adjustments.”
💼 The AI-triggered (or blamed) layoffs keep coming: Tech industry loses 123,000 jobs this year – AI is the most cited reason for layoffs.
🏢 Meanwhile: Half of Americans fear AI could put someone in their household out of work, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds. and ‘More harmful than helpful’: young people sour on AI
🪖 If you don’t pay for it, you ARE the product: Scans by Dutch Pokémon Go players may have helped U.S. develop military drone technology.
⚽ You say football, I say cybercrime: Cybercriminals create 19,000 FIFA-themed domains ahead of 2026 World Cup.
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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.
The early pressings of Led Zeppelin II and Destroyer by KISS back in the day had problems with being mastered too loud to the point where they would throw the stylus out of the groove on some phonographs.