- Below is the latest edition of w3w, my free newsletter about emerging technology, including AI, Bitcoin, Ethereum, and more . If you would like to receive it in your inbox every Sunday, please subscribe here.
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Perhaps the most burning question about AI is what effect it will have on employment.
The consensus among AI startups and venture investors seems to be that the tech will soon be sufficiently awesome to put millions of humans out of work. They often predict this will inflict dire consequences on the broader society that someone (else) should immediately start working to mitigate.
But hey. Maybe the startup guys are biased.
Last week I came across two independent takes that apply a very different sort of logic. The two ultimately arrive at opposite predictions on employment, but they both do so by wrestling with a very compelling question I don't often hear asked:
What if the technical sophistication of AI software and its impact on unemployment are separate matters, variables that can move inversely or independently to one another rather than in some direct relationship?
On his blog, author and marketing guru Seth Godin said he's optimistic about AI's long-term impact on jobs. He essentially believes the technical advances will happen as advertised. But he also expects humans to adapt adequately.
Godin expects adaptation to create unanticipated new categories of employment that replace old ones, in a pattern that's been present going back to the very earliest days of tech-driven industrialization.
"It’s entirely possible that a magical AI will replace every single human job and then destroy the Earth," he writes. "But it’s far more likely that the pattern of the last five hundred years will continue."
Bryan Creely, a former corporate recruiter turned career coach, is much less sanguine in a recent self-described "rant" on his YouTube channel. In making a broad-based critique of many companies' "psychotic" practices around hiring and layoffs the last several years, Creely touches on AI just shy of the video's 13-minute mark.
He sounds mostly agnostic about technical advances. Yes, they'll inevitably happen, but Creely doesn't necessarily expect some of the ills we're already seeing, like AI slop on social networks, to improve.
For Creely, that's also mostly beside the point. He's more concerned about companies' anti-employee, ruthlessly bottom line-driven tendencies. Those dynamics existed well before the current AI boom started, of course. But they are crucial context in which executives' decisions about AI will be made going forward.
In that light, if the tech is merely "good enough" (though still deeply flawed) and saves them money, what do you think managers will do regarding staffing levels? Protect people for the sake of quality control in their companies' products and services?
They already haven't been doing that in many other respects. Why would they do it regarding AI?
In this view, the next step for AI could be to become a vehicle for what author Cory Doctorow calls enshittification at grand scale throughout the global economy, thus a big negative to employment.
AI probably doesn't have to become sentient or make great technical leaps to do this. The only real requirement is the presence of human greed, which is already plentiful.
You can probably tell, I lean toward Creely's outlook myself right now. But who knows? In my heart, I would really, really like to get where Godin is somehow.
Five Things: Aug. 24-30, 2025
The week's top headlines about emerging technologies and trends reshaping the web:
- Crypto and stocks stumbled late in the week on fears about the U.S. economy and the outlook for AI. Bitcoin fell below $110,000, nearing a two-month low. And chipmaker Nvidia's shares fell more than 3% Friday after issuing a mixed earnings report including a third-quarter sales forecast that missed analysts' expectations. Since Nvidia has been the market leader in selling components for AI devices, its results sparked broader fears that the recent boom in the entire AI sector might have gotten ahead of the technology's limitations for now.
- The nonprofit A New Social launched a public beta version of Bounce, a tool for migrating a user's Bluesky account to Mastodon or Pixelfed, including follower lists and posts. Over time, advocates of the open, social sites known collectively as the "fediverse" hope such functionality can become an important advantage to attract users. By comparison, centralized incumbents like Instagram and Twitter tend to be highly reticent to allow users to move their data from one service to another.
- Tether announced plans to launch its USDT stablecoin on RGB, a protocol for issuing digital assets on the Bitcoin network. The move could prove particularly useful for pro crypto traders, who often use USDT to finance leveraged positions in the BTC token. (Cryptonews)
- Chainlink introduced a new set of data feeds to publish U.S. Department of Commerce economic data across ten different blockchains. (Blockworks)
- Elon Musk's startup xAI filed an antitrust suit against Apple and OpenAI, alleging that the two companies are teaming up to stifle competition in artificial intelligence. Musk claims Apple's partnership with OpenAI has given OpenAI an unfair advantage, including preferable treatment in its mobile App Store for OpenAI's ChatGPT app over xAI's Grok. (AP)
Market Snapshot
A quick look at some major indicators as of Friday's close on Wall Street:
| Indicator | Close | Weekly | YTD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | $107,906.68 | -7.6% | +15% |
| Nasdaq 100 | 23,415.42 | -0.4% | +11.4% |
| Gold | $3,516.10/oz | +2.9% | +33.7% |
| USD Index | 97.86 | +0.1% | -9.8% |
| 10-yr U.S. Treasury Yield |
4.227% | -0.033 | -0.346 |
Looking Ahead
The Wall Street Journal's David Luhnow and Tom Fairless recently published a fascinating deep dive about Europe's economic competitiveness and innovation. Like many journalists who have previously tackled this topic, they describe the region as less dynamic in many respects than America or China.
That said, the Journal's coverage did add certain details to the narrative that I found truly surprising, like this one about space exploration:
"On May 13, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched 28 satellites into orbit in a single day, one of over 100 successful U.S. orbital launches this year. China has sent more than 40 rockets into space since January. Russia, bogged down by war in Ukraine, has launched 10 rockets."
"Europe, by contrast, has launched four."
Ouch.
Other developing tech stories to watch:
- A congressman in the Philippines has introduced a bill proposing creation of a national bitcoin reserve holding 10,000 tokens. (Cryptonews)
- Startups are racing to develop new batteries using materials like sodium and sulfur as an alternative to the dominant lithium-ion devices that power electric vehicles and other electronics. The goal is to lower costs and reduce reliance on China, which dominates the lithium-ion market. (Reuters)
Odds & Ends
- Fallingwater has leaks to fix. Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural masterpiece is undergoing a $7 million renovation, with painstaking attention to preserving important historical elements. (Washington Post)
- For once, a crypto-free fraud case: A Tennessee man has been charged with 91 counts of mail fraud, identity theft, and other crimes for impersonating baseball legend Babe Ruth and other deceased or retired players in submitting false claims in class-action lawsuit settlements. How quaint. (New York Post)
That's it for now. Thanks for reading the newsletter today! If you want to know more about w3w's history and (ahem) the author, that info is available here.
If you need to reach me directly, please email peter[at]w3w[dot]media.
Best wishes for a healthy and productive week ahead. 😊