Hacker News Reader

> Rapid improvements in AI capabilities and growing corporate adoption have led to predictions that the technology could lead to large-scale job losses before the end of the decade. So, just how concerned should we be about an AI “job apocalypse”? MIT’s Daron Acemoglu and Neil Thompson and GS’ Joseph Briggs generally agree that these predictions likely won’t come to pass, though they differ on the scale of disruption ahead. Briggs expects significant labor displacement but only temporarily as new jobs eventually emerge. Thompson is less convinced about large-scale job displacement and takes comfort in the ability to anticipate changes, seeing AI as a rising tide rather than a crashing wave for labor. And Acemoglu expects a small net negative impact on labor over the next five years, with possible larger losses over the longer term if investment remains focused on replacing rather than complementing workers. Amid this debate, we find that AI’s impact on corporate labor needs—and earnings—remains too uncertain for markets to reward (for now).

A GS report - including discussions with MIT labor economists DAren Acemoglu (Nobel), Neil Thompson

aaneton Most arguments are about ego, not ideas

I had two reactions, possibly more, as I read this.

First - yes, I agree. This is exactly how I think. I agreed with this. Then I thought. Why would somebody write something this... simple? true? obvious? Perhaps because they came to this realization a bit later in life, I thought. Maybe, yes. That must be it.

Then as I read more, I felt a bit incensed. Does this smell of... AI by any chance? The writing looks sincere and simple, but some tell tale signs pointed to AI. The argument structure is awfully well constructed. The inflection is just as the right moment.

Consider this: "Their opinions aren’t positions they hold; they are the position."

Or this: "You can’t win an argument like this, because it was never an argument"

Or this: "They learn from consequences. They have to touch the stove themselves. Words bounce off; pain sticks."

The contrastive negation is tell-tale AI. It could possibly be human, but I've read far too many AI-written articles now to think otherwise.

---

Does it matter, though?

In the large scheme of things, probably not. One reads an article, one moves on. But in the much grander scheme of things, when tons of articles are AI-written, I believe we will stop paying attention. To a greater or smaller degree.

YMMV ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

aaneton A.I. 'Employees' Might Disrupt Work in Unexpected Ways

> One well-documented but underappreciated flaw of artificial intelligence models is that they tend to favor work produced by artificial intelligence. A 2025 paper in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that several large language models had a low opinion of text written by humans, creating a “potentially consequential form of implicit ‘anti-human’ bias.”

Great. Now AI is judging humans' work (instead of the opposite). Who will eval the AI evals??

aaneton In Loving Memory of Om Malik – Hodinkee

aaneton Om Malik has died

Oh wow. What?! Just this morning I had an occasion to go thru his site/blog.

Still can't believe it. 60 is too young.

I met Om finally in 2013-ish at one of his GigaOm events in the SF Bay Area. Before that, I had been a long time reader of his GigaOm blogs and other writings at Fast Company, Red Herring, Light Reading, and elsewhere, including his book Broadbandits. He was one of the few bloggers / reporters who wrote it as he saw it; his takes were often brutally honest and pointed. He called upon the excesses of various telecom execs during the dot-com and telecom bust of 2000-2001/2. His book Broadbandits is basically an invective of the go-go days of telecom companies' incestuous deals (now seen in the AI companies too).

I had a few more occasions to meet him at dinners around the Bay Area. He was always gracious, and listened intently to what people said. As a venture partner, he focused on the people (founder) and their stories much more on the businesses.

I had heard about his troubles with his heart (~age 40-ish), which made him turn his life around to focus on only a few things that brought him joy - writing, photography, travels.

He will be missed. RIP, Om.

--- (Update: the book is Broadbandits (not Telecom Bandits, as I mistakenly wrote)

aaneton The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader

Thanks, all for the reco.

Looking fwd to my reader soon!

aaneton The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader

I've been eyeing the Xteink Reader but cannot decide between the X4 (4.7" diag) and X3 (3.7" diag).

FWIW, the X3 requires a pogo pin cable, while the X4 requires a standard USB-C.

Anybody got any recommendations?

Thanks!

aaneton A Free Tool Is Helping Drivers Dodge Automatic License Plate Readers

https://haveibeenflocked.com/

aaneton The Three AImigos versus the Magnificent Seven

In which FT claims "Attention Markets Hypothesis > Efficient Markets Hypothesis" [Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX > Mag7 ]

aaneton 1,700 free online courses from top universities

Have the LLMs digested these courses already? If so, How would we evaluate that claim ?

aaneton David Attenborough's life's work, searchable

Thanks for posting this. and more thanks to Sophie Warnes who made the app. Beautifully done, well presented, all the episodes of David Attenborough.

aaneton AI medical tools match or surpass doctors for advice

> Two health models displayed clinical value across a range of diagnostic and treatment decisions, studies show

> Two AI medical tools matched or surpassed doctors across a range of diagnostic and treatment decisions, in the latest sign that specialist health large language models are moving closer to demonstrating clinical value. Mira, developed by researchers in Germany, outperformed physicians in analyses of diseases including pancreatic cancer and pneumonia, while Google’s Amie produced more precise treatments and investigation plans than humans, according to results published in Nature on Wednesday.

Nature paper cited: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10764-5

By folks from Google Deep Mind, et al

aaneton France's OVHcloud plans frontier AI models to become Europe's second LLM player

I'm old enough to remember the "Java Funds" started by VCs (and the herds that followed them) back in the '90s...

This time is different, of course. These are LLMs ;-)

aaneton Allbirds rebrands as Smartbird in AI pivot, hires former AWS executive as CEO

Who says there are no second acts??

When shoemakers can pivot to AI, and MicroStrategy pivtos to Bitcoin, why couldn't individual SWEs/PMs/etc also pivot to <the-latest-hype-du-jour> and claim expertise??

aaneton World models startup Odyssey raised $310M from Amazon etc. at $1.45B valuation

Archive: https://archive.is/20260617062332/https://www.ft.com/content...

aaneton FT Alphaville's AI Prediction World Cup

In which the AI models from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc go berserk

aaneton If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort

Obligatory Marketoonist: https://marketoonist.com/2023/03/ai-written-ai-read.html

aaneton Fear of the SaaSpocalypse is tormenting techland

https://archive.is/20260611104642/https://www.economist.com/...

> "Software once ate the world. Now it is in danger of eating itself"

aaneton AI Economic Indicators – Digital Economy – Stanford

> The AI Economic Indicators at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab is an expanding series of economic dashboards that connects policymakers, business executives, and individual workers to timely and reliable information on the economic impact of AI.

These include trackers like AI Adoption Monitor, Canaries Dashboard, Takeoff Tracker

aaneton All 9,300 Japanese train station, animated by the year it opened (1872–2026)

Tell-tale signs of AI-built UX:

- Extremely low contrast typography

- Serif typefaces with body in sans serif

- Black + red/maroon color combo

- tiny, tiny typefaces

aaneton Waymo's New Reference Model for Human Collision Avoidance

Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-026-73345-0

> ... existing models of human collision avoidance behavior are fragmented, focusing on specific scenarios or only describing certain aspects of the avoidance behavior, such as response times. This paper addresses these gaps by proposing a computational cognitive model of human collision avoidance behavior based on active inference. Active inference provides a unified approach to modeling human behavior: the minimization of free energy.

aaneton Meta's ships facial recognition on smart glasses

Well, well, well... Guess what? Shaming FB seems to have worked (for now).

https://www.wired.com/story/meta-removes-face-recognition-co...