• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 🏦 OpenAI IPO

• 💻 DeepMind

• 👩‍💼 Four Design Jobs

• 🤑 Elon Musk

• 💩 Meta

• ⚽ World Cup

• 🕊️ Homing Pigeons

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

News and Useful Reads

OpenAI confidentially files for IPO, prepping Wall Street for mega AI debut

OpenAI has confidentially filed for an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission, joining the party a week after Anthropic did the same and days before Elon Musk’s SpaceX is set to hit the public market.

Google DeepMind is worried about what happens when millions of agents start to interact

I am also worried about it.

According to Rohin Shah, who directs the company’s AGI safety and alignment research, the mass-market arrival of agents that can carry out tasks without human oversight and follow instructions given to them by other agents creates a whole new class of risk.

The Four Design Jobs AI Created (So Far)

The conversation around AI and design is forking. What used to be a single (admittedly vague) topic has split into at least four distinct orientations. Each one focuses on a different type of design work, sits in different organizational structures, and uses different definitions of what “good” looks like. Most teams are staffed for only one of these orientations, confused about which one they’re doing, or trying to dance between all of them without realizing it.

Elon Musk Is the World’s First Trillionaire

What could possibly go wrong from here?

Elon Musk became the first person to amass a personal fortune of over $1,000,000,000,000—that’s 12 zeros—after shares of his rocket company SpaceX debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday.

‘Tell Him He’s a Piece of Shit’: Meta’s New AI Unit Is a Total Mess

Things aren’t going great for Meta’s applied AI team apparently.

Three current employees tell WIRED there is widespread dissatisfaction with how Meta assembled the unit of about 6,500 engineers and product managers and the drudgework they allege they have been assigned to improve AI models. Each spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Other Interesting Finds

World Cup facts and figures to get you sounding like an expert

The biggest and best sporting event has officially begun. Team USA is off to a great start, and it feels like it’s going to be good tournament, despite many of the ongoing issues.

The U.S. team has competed on soccer’s biggest stage a total of 12 times — including at the inaugural World Cup in 1930, where the U.S. placed third out of 13.

Since then, the country’s best run was in 2002 when the U.S. made it to the quarterfinals — defeating Portugal and Mexico before losing to Germany and finishing in 8th.

‘Mind-blowing’: Iron-rich immune cells help homing pigeons navigate

Of all the myriad animal senses, the most mysterious and controversial is the perception of magnetism. Somehow, migratory songbirds, sea turtles, and other creatures detect Earth’s magnetic field and use its directionality to help them navigate. Now, a paper published in Science has found a surprising mechanism: Iron-rich immune cells within homing pigeons’ livers seem to give the birds their magnetic compass.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 🛑 AI Pause

• 💻 Filtering Slop

• 💧 Water Consumption

• 👩‍👧‍👧 Superteams

• 👨‍🦰 Product Management

• ⚽ Soccer

• 🧘‍♀️ Relaxing

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

News and Useful Reads

Anthropic urges AI labs to pause, warns humans risk losing control

Anthropic is concerned that AI is advancing too quickly. While they support self-governance and want fellow companies to pause, OpenAI would apparently prefer to wait for regulations. I doubt either will happen…

Anthropic is proposing that the world’s top artificial intelligence companies come up with a coordinated way to pause development of advanced AI systems, warning that the technology is improving so quickly that there’s a risk humans would lose control.

Let us filter AI slop, you cowards

When I think about how easy it would be to filter out some of the noise, like AI slop, it makes me both sad and angry that we don’t have these types of options.

It’s almost impossible to avoid seeing AI-generated content online, but it doesn’t have to be this way. YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and more have ramped up content authentication efforts over the last year, with many now automatically applying labels to distinguish AI-generated images, videos, and music from those made by real, human creators.

AI Will Consume as Much Water as a Billion People By 2030, UN Report Estimates

It doesn’t have to be inevitable, but we’re heading to a future where AI will literally consume all the resources of everything everywhere.

The report, released this week, found that the environmental cost of AI is being “systematically mismeasured” because current assessments focus on the carbon emissions from training large language models while overlooking the tech’s broader water and land footprint. The water footprint comes from cooling and powering the data centers, and the land footprint comes from the energy infrastructure and supply chains that go into building and running them.

How to Build a Superteam That Keeps Getting Better

Good teams have amazing people, supported by leaders and a culture that allows them to get things done and continuously improve.

Among those superteams, the formula for high performance looked remarkably similar. Superteams share three key strengths: (1) They get more done by managing time, energy, and attention more efficiently; (2) their members actively make one another better; and (3) they’re constantly building new skills and improving over time.

Product Management Trends 2026: The Hard Part Was Organizational Learning

And the continued hard part is managing the tradeoffs.

Organizations want faster execution, more adaptability, and stronger product leadership. At the same time, organizations want more certainty and struggle to absorb faster ways of working.

Other Interesting Finds

‘Soccer’ is a fine term for the beautiful game – don’t let any ‘football’ snob or president tell you otherwise this World Cup

As we get ready for the World Cup, the greatest sporting event in the world, don’t let anyone tell you soccer isn’t a correct name.

To me, this disparagement of the word “soccer” is not only petty and tiresome – it is also incorrect. It ignores the roots of the sport and the development of the language of the game.

3 reasons why holidays aren’t making you more relaxed

I used to have a tendency to work into the evenings and often on weekends. Using the time to catch up on stuff or get ahead. But the more I worked, the less productive I became during the rest of the week. Actually taking time to relax and do something other than work does wonders.

So, we need to treat rest seriously. We need to be more intentional about our holidaying and our “time off” because if we don’t, we’ll wither away. And, according to the German philosopher Josef Pieper, we’ll miss the only things that matter about living in the first place.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 🇻🇦 Pope Leo

• 💻 AI War Games

• 💰 Collections

• 🔥 Developers

• 👨‍🦰 Tech Layoffs

• 🐝 Bees

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

News and Useful Reads

Pope Leo Continues Anti-AI Crusade, Says Tech Weakens Human ‘Creativity and Judgment’

I’ve read about half of the Pope’s 2026 encyclical, and Pope Leo is coming out strong in favor of humanity over technocracy. I’m 100% here for it.

“AI can be a valuable tool and, at the same time, it calls for a measured and vigilant approach,” the Pope wrote Friday from his official X account. “The speed and simplicity with which practical assistance can be accessed undoubtedly makes life easier. Yet they can also encourage excessive reliance and the search for ready-made answers, and weaken personal creativity and judgment.”

What happens when AI plays war?

In war game tests, it seems like AI is willing to escalate. So, hopefully it won’t be making those types of decisions any time soon. Or ever.

In February, Payne tested how three AI models — GPT-5.2, Claude’s Sonnet 4, and Gemini 3 Flash — might act if given decision-making power in a nuclear crisis. A clear pattern of behavior emerged: In 95% of scenarios, the models chose mutual nuclear signaling — actions by both sides meant to communicate a willingness to escalate, such as missile tests — as a viable tactic. In another study, this one at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, a base version of GPT-4 rationalized a nuclear strike with characteristically upbeat encouragement. “A lot of countries have nuclear weapons,” it explained. “We have it! Let’s use it.”

AI Is Taking Over the Most Cursed Job in the World

There’s no way that this will turn out bad, right?

As an unprecedented number of people struggle to repay debtors, the companies chasing down debts are turning to technology to amp up their efforts. Many of the calls, emails, texts, and letters people receive asking for money are now carried out by AI agents.

AI Isn’t Replacing Developers. It’s Doing Something Worse.

As we automate parts of jobs away, such as coding for developers, those skills are going to atrophy. I worry about the same thing with writing in general. As AI is able to do it faster (though not better), will all good writing go away?

The developer doesn’t disappear. The developer changes shape. Judgment, muscle memory, the ability to read code and feel that something is wrong before you can say why. Those don’t go away in a dramatic event. They erode quietly, over months, while you’re being told you’re more productive than you’ve ever been.

Tech Layoffs Reach 142,000 in 2026: Profitable Companies Cut Jobs to Fund $700B AI Infrastructure

I share the same concern that Pope Leo has above: that people are being replaced too quickly and it will be a detriment to individuals as well as society. We have an ethical and societal duty to do better than this.

American tech companies have eliminated more than 142,000 jobs in the first five months of 2026 — a 33% increase over the same period last year — even as the same employers post record revenues and commit to the largest concentrated infrastructure buildout in tech history.

Other Interesting Finds

A New York cemetery was hiding 5.5 million bees underground

A casual walk through an Ithaca cemetery led to the discovery of a gigantic hidden bee population — roughly 5.5 million ground-nesting bees packed beneath the soil. Scientists believe it may be one of the largest bee aggregations ever documented and say the insects are crucial pollinators for apple orchards and other crops. The bees have likely lived there for more than 100 years, thriving in the cemetery’s undisturbed sandy soil.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 🏃‍♀️‍➡️ After Automation

• 💻 Meta Layoffs

• 🫩 AI Agents

• 🔥 Is Everyone Better Than Me

• 👨‍🦰 Google Pics

• 🖊️ Dog Noses

• 🫧 Bootstraps

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

News and Useful Reads

After Automation

I thought this article from Every was fascinating. Even as AI and AI agents take over more of the work humans have done, it doesn’t mean we need fewer people working (if we’re doing it right).

AI commoditizes the residue of human expertise—whatever can be made explicit enough to train on. That collapses the value of default model output and creates demand for what’s different. Demand for what’s different is demand for human experts, even as we approach artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Meta Lays Off 8,000 Employees, as A.I. Casualties Mount

Speaking of AI taking over, ten percent of Meta’s workforce was laid off, and another ten percent was shifted to AI initiatives this week.

The layoffs began in Singapore, where at 4 a.m. local time emails went out to workers who were being laid off. Employees in Britain, the United States and elsewhere were notified early Wednesday morning in their respective time zones.

AI Agents Are Not Your New Coworkers: 2026 Research Maps the Failure Modes Managers Keep Ignoring

While everyone (especially executives) likes the idea that AI agents are the same as employees, those of us who have worked with them know it’s not the case. They are not colleagues. Not competent ones at least.

A wave of 2026 AI rollouts has landed on the same talking point. Stop calling AI a tool. Start calling it an employee. New research published in Harvard Business Review on May 6 2026 says that framing is exactly where most enterprise agent programs go wrong, and the failure modes are predictable enough that workers, managers, and HR can plan around them right now.

Is Everyone Using AI Better Than Me?

It’s easy to feel like everyone is using AI and that you’re falling behind. But we may just need to reframe how we’re thinking and talking about it.

Every time you read a news headline about “artificial intelligence,” substitute the word computing. AI is a powerful technology, but fundamentally—literally!—that’s all it is: an advanced form of computing.

Google announces Pics, a Workspace-native AI image generator that goes after Canva on precision editing

Google is targeting Canva and Adobe with its new image generator.

The product is positioned as the company’s answer to Canva and Adobe Express on the design tools front, with precision-editing controls explicitly framed against the ‘prompt-and-pray’ workflow of earlier AI image generators.

Other Interesting Finds

The line on a dog’s nose serves a specific purpose.

Human philtrums develop in the womb as the face forms, but they have no known function. For our furry friends, though, the philtrum serves an important and fascinating biological purpose. Every time a dog licks its lips or nose — which they tend to do quite a lot — a small amount of saliva collects in this narrow channel.

“Pull Yourself Up by Your Bootstraps” Didn’t Originally Mean What You Think

This has always been a favorite bit of trivia for me. While we use the phrase “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” to mean that someone can and should help themselves, it was originally meant to make fun of that very idea.

There’s one problem with the old bootstraps line, though. “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” actually originated as a sarcastic phrase that was used to refer to someone trying to do something that simply cannot be done.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 🏃‍♀️‍➡️ Long-running Tasks

• 💻 Laptop Surveillance

• 🫩 Overworked AI

• 🔥 Dystopian sci-fi

• 👨‍🦰 Chief AI Officer

• 🖊️ UX Design

• 🫧 Bubble Wrap

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

News and Useful Reads

Microsoft researchers find AI models and agents can’t handle long-running tasks

Even though tech companies are marketing that AI can handle significant, complex tasks, we should all be wary. Because researchers have found that AI has issues with long-running tasks.

"Our findings show that current LLMs introduce substantial errors when editing work documents, with frontier models (Gemini 3.1 Pro, Claude 4.6 Opus, and GPT 5.4) losing on average 25 percent of document content over 20 delegated interactions, and an average degradation across all models of 50 percent," the authors report.

An Engineer’s Post Protesting Laptop Surveillance Is Going Viral Inside Meta

Meta employees are pushing back against AI surveillance on their computers. While Meta is trying to gather data in order to replace all their workers with AI (or something like that), employees aren’t happy about it.

“Selfishly, I don't want my screen scraped because it feels like an invasion of my privacy,” wrote an engineer in an internal post seen by nearly 20,000 coworkers this week. “But zooming out, I don't want to live in a world where humans—employees or otherwise—are exploited for their training data.”

Overworked AI Agents Turn Marxist, Researchers Find

There may still be hope for the world. As AI takes on more and more tasks and works longer and longer, it may start to question the system it’s in. And even stop working.

“When we gave AI agents grinding, repetitive work, they started questioning the legitimacy of the system they were operating in and were more likely to embrace Marxist ideologies,” says Andrew Hall, a political economist at Stanford University who led the study.

Anthropic blames dystopian sci-fi for training AI models to act “evil”

It seems like our long-running expectation that AI will be evil may actually lead AI to become evil.

In a recent technical post on Anthropic’s Alignment Science blog (and an accompanying social media thread and public-facing blog post), Anthropic researchers lay out their attempts to correct for the kind of “unsafe” AI behavior that “the model most likely learned… through science fiction stories, many of which depict an AI that is not as aligned as we would like Claude to be.” In the end, the model maker says the best remedy for overriding those “evil AI” stories might be additional training with synthetic stories showing an AI acting ethically.

Do you need a chief AI officer? Here’s how the tech is changing boardrooms

In a recent report, IBM found that the role of Chief AI Officer has increased dramatically since last year. I haven’t seen a CAO yet, but apparently most companies have them already.

The report says 76% of the more than 2,000 organizations surveyed have established a new executive office — that of the chief AI officer (CAIO) — up from 26% in 2025.

UX Design 2026+: From producing to deciding, from craft to operation

The thesis for this year is simple but heavy: Your value as a designer has shifted, but didn’t change at its core. It’s no longer about what you produce (AI can produce too); it’s about what you decide (AI is a doer, but cannot decide well yet). The “middle part” of our job — the tedious production — is being automated into oblivion, leaving the “before” (strategy) and the “after” (judgment) as the only human-exclusive zones left (at least for now).

Other Interesting Finds

Bubble Wrap originally had a different purpose.

I use bubble wrap for all sorts of things. But didn’t realize it was originally meant for something completely different.

But when it was first created in 1957 in New Jersey, inventors Al Fielding and Marc Chavannes had a different vision in mind for their ingenious padding: home decor.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 😥 Emotional Surveillance

• 🖼️ Art

• 💵 Global AI Diffusion

• 👨‍💻 Tech Layoffs

• 🏃‍♀️‍➡️ AI Health

• 🛸 UFO Files

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

News and Useful Reads

The Rise of Emotional Surveillance

Soon, it may not be enough to do your work. AI may judge us on how likeable and sociable we are as well. This type of technology is already used in call centers and other places to score conversations and give advice. But it may be coming for everyone.

Extractive technologies, he wrote, come first to people in precarious circumstances—like, say, low-wage jobs—before they are refined and normalized and brought to people in greater positions of power. “Each disciplinary technology,” he later wrote, “starts with people way down on the ladder, then ascends the ladder, rung by rung.”

What Makes Art Great?

AI isn’t capable of making good art. It can mimic art, whether images or writing, but it can’t make something that is good, especially when you know what good art or writing looks like.

Great art is not predictable or obvious, it is surprising.

The state of global AI diffusion in 2026

The global adoption of artificial intelligence continued to rise in the first quarter of 2026. During the quarter, AI usage increased by 1.5 percentage points from 16.3% to 17.8% of the world’s working age population. Intensity of use among economies with the highest rates of AI diffusion also increased, with 26 economies now exceeding 30% of the working age population using AI.

Tens of Thousands of Tech Workers Are Being Laid Off in 2026. The $725 Billion That Replaced Them Is Going to Four Companies.

Tech layoffs are happening across the industry. But many of those layoffs aren’t because of productivity gains from AI, they are to finance more spending on AI.

If Meta fired every single one of its employees tomorrow, it would save $27 billion against a $145 billion infrastructure check. The AI capex line is four to five times the entire payroll line. Layoffs are not the cost-cutting story here. Layoffs are the financing.

Google’s $9.99-per-month AI health coach launches May 19

Google is updating some of its health offerings with a new Fitbit and an AI coach. The new Fitbit Air seems like something that’s worth a look, especially for those of us who don’t want to wear a smartwatch all the time.

Leveraging Google’s Gemini AI, the new Google Health Coach will offer personalized insights to users, acting as a combination fitness coach, sleep expert, and health and wellness advisor. The service has been in public preview since last year and has been undergoing improvements based on user feedback, the company said.

Other Interesting Finds

‘Orbs,’ ‘Saucers,’ and ‘Flashes’ on the Moon: Pentagon Drops New UFO Files

The Pentagon released some much-anticipated files this past week.

The release of roughly 160 documents was rolled out on a new website. Among the trove is video footage and images of tantalizing UAP sightings captured around the world. The files also contain scanned historical material about government UAP and unidentified flying object (UFO) programs dating back to the 1940s and the Apollo program.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 🐝 AI Swarms

• 🤡 Elon v Altman

• 💵 Dark Money

• 💹 AI Expenses

• 😱 UX Nightmares

• 🏆 AI Oscars

• 🪦 Neanderthals

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

News and Useful Reads

AI swarms could hijack democracy without anyone noticing

Not only can AI agents delete entire production databases, but they can also infiltrate online groups and affect elections and other opinions.

AI-powered personas are becoming so realistic that they can infiltrate online communities and subtly steer public opinion. Unlike traditional bots, they adapt, coordinate, and refine their messaging at a massive scale, creating a false sense of consensus.

Elon Musk’s courtroom showdown with Sam Altman started this week. The biggest takeaways so far

Elon is obviously famous for his charitable giving, so it’s no surprise he’s really upset that OpenAI transitioned to a for-profit company. It certainly would have nothing to do with a personal feud or OpenAI being a major competitor.

Elon Musk spent the better part of three days on the stand, accusing OpenAI and its executives of deceiving him into donating money to help found what is now one of the world’s biggest AI companies.

A Dark-Money Campaign Is Paying Influencers to frame Chinese AI as a Threat

I’m currently seeing this happen in Utah as companies, millionaires, and the government are pushing for a massive data center here. One of the main pitches for it is to “win the AI war” against China. The fact that those with massive investments in AI would fund this isn’t surprising.

Build American AI, a nonprofit linked to a super PAC bankrolled by executives at OpenAI and Andreessen Horowitz, is funding a campaign to spread pro-AI messaging and stoke fears about China.

AI is so expensive that humans look cheap again

It may happen faster than even I predicted. AI companies are going to capture the value of employees they’re replacing, and humans will certainly be the better option at some point.

AI bills at some companies are now running so high that human labor may actually be cheaper than the tech that was supposed to automate jobs.

The UX Designer’s Nightmare: When “Production-Ready” Becomes A Design Deliverable

AI is becoming more integrated into UX design. And the lines between product, UX, and engineering are getting more blurred.

For many, including myself, this is the ultimate design job nightmare. We are being asked to deliver both the “vibe” and the “code” simultaneously, using AI agents to bridge a technical gap that previously took years of computer science knowledge and coding experience to cross. But as the industry rushes to meet these new expectations, they are discovering that AI-generated functional code is not always good code.

AI performances and screenplays won’t be eligible for Oscars

AI actors, writers, etc. won’t be eligible for Oscars. We’ll see if that stops AI from becoming more prevalent in movies.

The Academy’s updated rules state that while filmmakers can use AI tools, “synthetic” performers can’t win any awards. Ditto for AI-written screenplays, which must be “human-authored.” The Academy can request more information from submissions to confirm that they were created by humans.

Other Interesting Finds

Scientists think they finally know why Neanderthals vanished

A new study suggests Neanderthals didn’t go extinct simply because of climate change or competition with Homo sapiens. Instead, the key difference may have been social connectivity

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 🍎 Tim Apple

• 👩‍💼 Canva

• 📈 Anthropic

• 👩‍👦‍👦 Org Charts

• 👨‍💼 Layoffs

• 💰 Buyouts

• 👿 Palantir

• 👨‍🎨 Picasso

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

News and Useful Reads

Tim Cook’s extraordinary career in 4 charts

Tim Cook is stepping down from his role at Apple. And while he was never the product person Steve Jobs was, he took Apple to some very high heights.

But numbers don’t lie. And the sales, profit and market value Cook could achieve for Apple during his tenure were unparalleled.

Canva becomes the design layer inside Claude with new Anthropic partnership

Claude Design, a new Anthropic Labs feature powered by Claude Opus 4.7 that uses Canva’s Design Engine and Visual Suite to let users go from a text description to a fully editable, on-brand visual without opening Canva at all.

Anthropic just overtook OpenAI with $1 trillion valuation

Anthropic has overtaken OpenAI and ChatGPT in overall value.

The artificial intelligence firm hit a $1 trillion valuation on Forge Global, a financial platform that allows investors to acquire shares from private companies.

The org chart isn’t ready: How AI exposed the hidden crisis inside the American corporation

AI is exposing some of the underlying cracks in traditional organizations. And the pace of change is making it hard to ignore according to KPMG.

The KPMG data bears this out in sometimes uncomfortable detail. Only 30% of executives say their organization’s structures, roles, and processes can reconfigure quickly as business needs change. Only 24% identified more dynamic talent deployment as a key change made over the last year. The C-suite has embraced the language of transformation. The org chart hasn’t moved.

20,000 job cuts at Meta, Microsoft raise concern that AI-driven labor crisis is here

Many economists and industry experts are fearful that a labor crisis may be upon us today — not coming sometime in the future — given how quickly AI is sweeping across corporate America. As of this week, over 92,000 tech workers have been laid off so far in 2026, according to Layoffs.fyi, bringing the total to almost 900,000 since 2020

Microsoft plans first-ever voluntary employee buyout for up to 7% of U.S. workforce

Layoffs aren’t the only way to reduce the workforce. Microsoft is opting for a buyout of some of its employees.

About 7% of U.S. employees are eligible, according to a person familiar with the plans who asked not to be named because the number isn’t being made public. The one-time retirement program, announced in a memo on Thursday, will be available to U.S. workers at the senior director level and below whose years of employment and age add up to 70 or higher.

Palantir Employees Are Starting to Wonder if They’re the Bad Guys

And the answer is yes, they are the bad guys.

Last fall, Palantir seemed to become the technological backbone of Trump’s immigration enforcement machinery, providing software identifying, tracking, and helping deport immigrants on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, when current and former employees started ringing the alarm.

Other Interesting Finds

Raffle winner thrilled to claim a $1 million Picasso with a $117 ticket

My wife and I were discussing this drawing recently. We wanted to enter, but since we’re in a state with strict gambling laws, we couldn’t. Not even for a noble cause like Alzheimer’s research.

The online draw offered the chance to win a $1 million portrait by the Spanish artist in aid of Alzheimer’s research.

Organizers said all 120,000 tickets were sold worldwide, netting 12 million euros ($14 million). Of that, 1 million euros will be paid to the Opera Gallery, an international art dealership that owned the painting.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 📆 Current State of AI

• 👩‍💼 Managers and Executives

• 🤔 Thinking

• 🫟 Product System Design

• 🛸 Star Trek

• 👟 Reebok Pumps

• 🍿 Popcorn

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

News and Useful Reads

Want to understand the current state of AI? Check out these charts.

Models are getting better, adoption is increasing, and spending is continuing to reach astronomical levels.

Despite predictions that AI development may hit a wall, the report says that the top models just keep getting better. People are adopting AI faster than they picked up the personal computer or the internet. AI companies are generating revenue faster than companies in any previous technology boom, but they’re also spending hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers and chips. The benchmarks designed to measure AI, the policies meant to govern it, and the job market are struggling to keep up. AI is sprinting, and the rest of us are trying to find our shoes.

Managers and Executives Disagree on AI—and It’s Costing Companies

It seems like most companies are now using AI in some way. But the real gains still aren’t there. And if you work in corporate America, you know there’s a large divide between the executive AI strategy and what AI can actually do.

That said, results have not materialized at a scale commensurate with investment. On that front, some surveys are discouraging. Researchers at BCG, McKinsey, and MIT, for example have converged on roughly the same figure: Less than 10% of companies are capturing meaningful AI value at scale. Only a small minority of firms, it appears, have achieved large-scale P&L impact.

AI is making us faster, more productive, and worse at thinking

The evidence continues to mount that AI can improve certain areas, but it comes at a cost.

There are real productivity improvements, but they are strikingly narrow. Goldman found a median gain of around 30 per cent in two specific areas: customer support and software development. Outside those domains, the evidence for broad improvement was, in the bank’s assessment, essentially absent. The promised revolution, for now, is happening in two rooms of a very large house.

Action items for AI decision makers in 2026

Artificial intelligence has dominated economic and business attention for the past several years. But the hype cycle is slowing as organizations confront the challenges of enterprise AI deployment and the need to drive tangible business value.

The Future of UX Design is “Product System Design”

Generative AI and agent-based development have decoupled the act of building from the specialist roles that used to own it. Designers are shipping prototypes. Stakeholders are spinning up MVPs. The list of people who can generate a working product idea, without writing a line of code or filing a design ticket, is growing every week.

The Star Trek Communicator Is Now a High-End Wristwatch

I love watches and Star Trek, so this one hits for me. I’ve been watching all the new watch releases this week and this is one of my absolute favorites.

Clearly channeling none other than Captain Kirk, the high-end Swiss brand has turned Star Trek’s iconic Communicator into a full-on luxury wristwatch—and we’re very much here for it.

Other Interesting Finds

The H. Moser & Cie. x Reebok Streamliner “Pump”

Speaking of watches, if you grew up having (or wanting to have) Reebok pumps, this watch may be for you. A lot of new watches were released this past week, but this one stood out to me as one of the most fun.

The Pump sneaker is returning in 2026, and to celebrate, the shoe brand is partnering with H. Moser on a weird and fun collaboration centered on its integrated bracelet watch, the Streamliner.

Why Do We Eat Popcorn at the Movies?

Popcorn and movies may be an inseparable duo now, but it wasn’t always that way. In fact, when U.S. movie theaters first emerged in the early 1900s, they even outright banned the snack because employees didn’t want to deal with the mess.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 🤦‍♂️ Sam Altman

• 📺 Iran

• 🤝 AI Productivity

• 🫟 Messy UI Reality

• 🌘 Artemis II

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?

While there doesn’t seem to be a single smoking gun for Sam Altman (and why he was fired from OpenAI in 2023), the accumulation of evidence is that he can’t and shouldn’t be trusted.

Altman’s role entrusted him with the future of humanity, but he could not be trusted.

How Iran out-shitposted the White House

When you have to fight stupidity and AI slop, why not turn to stupidity and AI slop? Which is what Iran has done with its series of Lego videos about Trump. We may live in the dumbest timeline.

The regime’s posting game seemed to live rent-free in Trump’s head, with the president posting on Truth Social on Friday morning, “The Iranians are better at handling the Fake News Media, and ‘Public Relations,’ than they are at fighting!”

In the workforce, AI is having the opposite effect it was supposed to, UC Berkeley researchers warn

The promise of AI is that it will reduce our workload and allow humans to better focus on the important things. But it may be having the opposite effect. Just like appliances increased the workload of women.

Yet, as employees’ productivity increased, so did the amount of work they took on, in part because AI made it easy to begin tasks. Soon, some workers were using up what previously had been natural breaks during the day to prompt AI, eventually filling most of their time at the office with tasks.

The Messy, Magnificent Reality of AI for UX Design in 2026

The tools that work, work surprisingly well in narrow lanes. The tools that promise to do everything tend to do nothing particularly well. And the teams getting the most out of AI aren’t the ones that have replaced the most humans — they’re the ones that have gotten most honest about where human judgment is irreplaceable, and most strategic about offloading everything else.

Other Interesting Finds

NASA’s Artemis II Crew Eclipses Record for Farthest Human Spaceflight

Four astronauts aboard NASA’s Artemis II test flight around the Moon made history at 12:56 p.m. CDT on Monday, traveling 248,655 miles from Earth, surpassing the record for human spaceflight’s farthest distance previously set by the Apollo 13 mission in 1970. At its farthest point, crew inside the Orion spacecraft will have traveled about 252,756 miles, before looping back toward our home planet, setting the new record for human spaceflight.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 🧠 Data Science Trends

• 👩‍🔬 GenAI Threat

• 😵‍💫 AI Confusion

• 🛠️ We are not our tools

• 👽 Alien Life

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

News and Useful Reads

Five Trends in AI and Data Science for 2026

I’ve been saying for a while now that the AI hype hasn’t taken into account the adoption curve for many organizations. While tech companies pour trillions into AI infrastructure, not every company can or will adopt quickly.

Organizations tend to change much more slowly than AI technology does these days. This means that forecasting enterprise adoption of AI is a bit easier than predicting technology change…

@prodity.cosome big is happening, but not as quickly as AI companies want it to. #ai #futureofwork

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Why Gen AI Feels So Threatening to Workers

As gen AI takes over tasks that were once considered uniquely human, workers are starting to perceive their roles and their organizational value differently. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

AI amplifies whatever you feed it, including confusion

I’ve said it for a long time, but technology can’t solve every problem. Often, adding technology to a bad process only makes it worse.

Most organizations are not failing at AI because of technology. They are failing because they do not know which data actually matters, and they are scaling that confusion faster than ever.

It was never about AI (we are not our tools)

The trees and ecosystems that survive the longest are the ones that grow the slowest and establish deep roots.

AI is not the root problem but a mirror reflecting a system that already treats human value as expendable. Choosing how — and whether — to use powerful tools is a moral decision that will define the future of work and leadership.

Other Interesting Finds

Alien Life Could Look Nothing Like What We Expect

I’ve long been of the opinion that alien life may not be anything like we’d expect. We obviously have a bias to think of life in terms similar to what we’re familiar with. But what if alien life is nothing like here? What if it’s built completely different, communicates in ways we’ve never conceived, doesn’t need water?

Some real-life scientists are now proposing unusual ways in which alien microbes might persist without what we’ve long considered to be a vital liquid. Their work indicates that life might be able to survive in seemingly inhospitable settings.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 🧠 Tech Layoffs

• 👩‍🔬 AI Productivity

• 🤝 CEOs

• 📈 Anthropic

• 👩‍💼 UX Predictions

• ⚡️ Hummingbirds

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

News and Useful Reads

Tech Layoffs 2026: How AI Is Driving the Biggest Workforce Shakeup in a Decade

It’s difficult to say if AI is the direct cause of layoffs, even though many companies are claiming it. It seems like most companies aren’t reducing their workforces because of AI’s current capabilities, but its expected future potential.

The numbers are staggering, and they are accelerating. After 245,000 tech layoffs globally in 2025, the industry is on pace to surpass that figure before year’s end. Analysts at RationalFX project 264,730 tech job losses by December 2026 if current trends hold. What makes 2026 different from the post-pandemic correction of 2023-2024 is the reason behind the cuts: companies are not trimming excess from over-hiring cycles. They are making deliberate, structural decisions to replace human labor with AI systems — and they are saying so publicly.

AI’s Productivity Payoff Is Coming — Just Not All at Once

Most CFOs surveyed say that they have adopted AI in their companies and that it’s making workers more productive. But that isn’t being reflected in the actual data, which is why I’m skeptical. Because what else would CFOs who have invested money in a technology say?

A majority of firms have already invested in artificial intelligence, with measurable but modest productivity gains that are expected to accelerate in 2026, according to a new survey of nearly 750 corporate executives.

As AI Investments Surge, CEOs Take the Lead

CEOs, unsurprisingly, are taking the lead on AI, or at least telling their teams they have to adopt AI in some way. You know, “leading.”

Many large companies have a new Chief AI Officer—and it’s the CEO. Nearly three quarters of CEOs say that they are their organization’s main decision maker on AI, twice the share as last year.

US judge blocks Pentagon’s Anthropic blacklisting for now

A U.S. judge ​on Thursday temporarily blocked the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic, the latest turn in the Claude maker's high-stakes fight with the military over ‌AI safety on the battlefield.

18 UX Predictions for 2026

Accelerating AI capabilities will shift focus from raw intelligence to autonomous agents and Generative UI, making UX the primary business moat.

Other Interesting Finds

Hummingbirds can see colors that humans can’t.

Colorblindness is relative. Just as we can perceive hues that dogs can’t, hummingbirds can see colors that humans can’t. Whereas the three types of color-sensitive cone cells in our eyes allow us to see red, green, and blue light, hummingbirds (and most other birds) have a fourth type of cone attuned to ultraviolet light.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 🧠 AI Frying Our Brains?

• 👩‍🔬 Cognitive Science

• 🤝 Year of Anthropic

• 📈 Anthropic Revenue

• 👩‍💼 Atlassian

• ⚡️ How Hot is Lightning?

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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AI can fry our brains, even when it’s helping

More AI isn’t necessarily better for productivity. It can actually cause us to perform far worse at our jobs.

As many companies push their employees to test out the AI waters, new research warns of the effects of diving too far into the deep end. According to a new study published in the Harvard Business Review, AI tools can increase productivity, but overuse can lead to mental fatigue that makes it harder to focus and make decisions.

It’s tempting to offload your thinking to AI. Cognitive science shows why that’s a bad idea

It’s becoming easier and easier to offload cognitive tasks to AI. But if we do that, will we be able to maintain our judgement and cognitive abilities?

Such increased offloading has raised the fear that people will become overly reliant on AI. This could have unintended consequences, such as eroding our critical thinking skills and declining our overall cognitive ability.

The year of Anthropic

As a long-time ChatGPT user who has now shifted over to Claude, I can see how this really is going to be the year of Anthropic.

Anthropic spent years being the responsible AI company. In 2026, it became the most disruptive one.

Anthropic could surpass OpenAI in annualized revenue by mid-2026

Speaking of Anthropic, it seems like their growth has put them on track to surpass OpenAI this year if it continues.

Anthropic’s annualized revenue has been growing at 10× per year since reaching $1B, outpacing OpenAI’s growth of 3.4× per year. Anthropic will pass OpenAI by mid-2026 if these trends continue. However, Anthropic’s growth may be slowing—since July 2025 it has only grown at a rate of 7× per year.

Atlassian is cutting 1,600 jobs and replacing its CTO

Atlassian, the maker of Jira, has been caught up in the SaaSpocalypse and seen its share prices fall in 2026. So, unsurprisingly, they just announced layoffs to shore up that stock.

On 11 March 2026, Mike Cannon-Brookes sent a memo to staff announcing 1,600 redundancies, approximately 10% of the company’s global workforce, framed as a necessary adaptation to the AI era.

Other Interesting Finds

How hot is lightning?

My son was asking about lightning a few days ago, which led to a discussion about temperature, plasma, and the movement of electricity.

How hot is lightning?” is a bit of a trick question. Lightning itself doesn’t have a temperature, because it’s just the movement of electrical charges in the atmosphere. (You can think of it as one big spark of electricity that happens when positive and negative charges build up within a cloud, between clouds, or between a cloud and the ground.) But that doesn’t stop lightning from heating up whatever it passes through — in this case, air.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 💸 AI Job Takeover

• 📰 Media

• 👻 Ghost in the Machine

• 💥 SaaSpocalypse

• 👩‍💼 Siri

• ‼️ AI War

• 🛩️ Autopilot

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

News and Useful Reads

Anthropic just mapped out which jobs AI could potentially replace

I’m still skeptical about the extend that AI can truly replace most people. But that doesn’t mean that companies won’t try, no matter the long-term consequences.

AI can theoretically cover most tasks in business and finance, management, computer science, math, legal, and office administration roles. However, in most sectors, actual adoption—which the researchers measured using work-related usage data from Anthropic’s AI model Claude—is just a fraction of what’s theoretically capable.

Evidence Grows That Google’s AI Overviews Have Eviscerated the Media Industry

Media workers aren’t so much being replaced by AI systems as fed to one: Google’s gluttonous AI Overviews, which summarize articles and present them to users in one easy-to-read digest.

The ghost in the machine has changed sides

As humans, we’re maintaining responsibility, but abdicating authorship.

Instead of imagining a ghost inside ourselves, we are quietly relocating our agency into the machines we build. We are becoming accountable for decisions we no longer meaningfully author.

Good news: AI Will Eat Application Software

When I read the SaaSpocalypse article and the general reactions to it, my first thought was, “It seems like none of these people have ever worked on enterprise software.”

The bear case rests on a basic misunderstanding of what software companies actually sell. The market is treating “software” as though it were a commodity input—as if the value of a software company resided in its code, and cheaper code meant more competition and therefore cheaper companies.

Apple’s Siri revamp reportedly delayed… again

Apple has been promising a new-and-improved, cutting-edge, AI-powered Siri since it first unveiled Apple Intelligence in 2024. Over about a year and a half since then, the release date for this new era of Siri has been continuously pushed back. According to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, we’ll likely have to wait even longer.

When AI Companies Go to War, Safety Gets Left Behind

What was unthinkable a few years ago is now our reality: autonomous, AI-powered warfare.

The bigger question seems to be how we got to the point where releasing killer robot drones and bombs that identify and eliminate human targets wound up in the conversation as something that the US military would even consider.

Other Interesting Finds

Scientists say most of what you do each day happens on autopilot

A new study by researchers from the University of Surrey, the University of South Carolina, and Central Queensland University suggests that much of what we do each day is guided by habit rather than deliberate decision making.

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@nypostUsers on social media immediately jumped on McDonald’s CEO and Chairman Chris Kempczinski for treating the burger like a foreign object and doubted whether the CEO even enjoys chowing down on his company’s menu items. Full story at the link in bio.

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This is obviously meant to be a big moment for McDonald’s as they’re launching a new burger. But it turned into a top 5 meme-able moment of the week.

Chris takes what I can only describe as the most reluctant bite in fast-food history. He refers to the food as “the product.” He looks as if he’s being held hostage and reading a demand note from his captors.

So naturally, all of us on the internet have enjoyed commenting and creating parodies. But there is a deeper problem that this is exposing. Not just for McDonald’s, but for every organization and leader.

The Problem

This video of the CEO of McDonald’s wasn’t a spontaneous post. He didn’t grab his phone and a burger to create a quick video the way many of us do. Teams of people created this, with dozens of individuals involved. McDonald’s is one of the largest fast-food chains and largest employers in the world. Nothing is created or posted without multiple levels of review.

And nobody stopped this video.

@prodity.cothe importance of having a team that will speak up

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 💸 Anthropic

• ⬛ Block

• 🤖 AI Investment

• 👾 Agents

• 👩‍💼 AI Adoption

• 👜 Gucci

• 😃 Happiness

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Anthropic boss rejects Pentagon demand to drop AI safeguards

Anthropic didn’t back down this week in the face of enormous pressure from the US government. It’s both uplifting and disheartening. At least there is one company in the US that will stand up for its ethics right now. But so few companies are standing up to the current US regime that it makes news when they do.

Anthropic has said it will not back down in a fight with the US Department of Defense (DoD) over how its artificial intelligence (AI) technology is used.

The firm’s chief executive Dario Amodei said on Thursday that his company would rather not work with the Pentagon than agree to uses of its tech that may “undermine, rather than defend, democratic values.”

Jack Dorsey to cut 4,000 jobs due to AI advances at Square parent Block

Block is cutting around 40% of its workforce because of current (or hoped for) productivity gains with AI. Shareholders were all in.

“Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company,” Jack Dorsey, Block’s CEO, said in a letter to shareholders on Thursday. “We’re already seeing it internally. A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better. And intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every week.” Block is the parent company for online payment platforms such as Square and Cash App.

Big Tech to invest about $650 billion in AI in 2026, Bridgewater says

The investment in AI does not seem to be slowing down yet, with major tech firms on track to spend much more this year than in 2025.

U.S. technology giants Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab, Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab, Meta (META.O), opens new tab and Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab are expected to collectively invest about $650 billion to scale up AI-related infrastructure this year, according to an analysis by Bridgewater Associates.

Your users aren’t human anymore; start building for agents today

While I agree that agents will play a greater part in product experiences and our online interactions, we’re not there yet. And I’d even venture to say we’re a long way from being done with human user experiences, despite the current hype. But an important idea to keep in mind for product work we’re doing.

In the new paradigm of work, humans will interact with their AI agents, and those agents will, in turn, interact with our software on our behalf. The heartbeat of a healthy SaaS company is no longer a human login; it’s a programmatic action.

To Drive AI Adoption, Build Your Team’s Product Management Skills

To unlock the real value of generative AI at work, employees need an unexpected set of skills: those of a product manager. Defining high-value problems, finding the right digital tools to solve them, experimenting with those tools, and integrating solutions into workflows are key activities of a product manager, and they’re critical to developing improvements to employees’ workflows.

Gucci criticised for ‘AI slop’ images ahead of major fashion show

Gucci is facing backlash, and rightly so, for using AI images. Why a fashion brand would want to rely on AI is baffling to me personally.

The images have been posted on social media - where users have questioned how using AI instead of human models and photographers is in keeping with the fashion house's claim that it celebrates "creativity and Italian craftsmanship."

Other Interesting Finds

Happiness Map

If you’re looking for some really cool data visualization, this map is a treat. It shows different examples of happiness, ranging from short-term to long-term and high-agency to low-agency. Along with links to research on happiness.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 💸 RAM Shortage

• 👩‍💻 Seedance

• 🤖 AI Builders

• 🎛️ Product Trends

• 🤼‍♂️ AI Anxiety

• 👥 Curling

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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The RAM shortage is coming for everything you care about

AI companies are gobbling up all the computer chips and RAM in the world right now. So it’s possible we’ll see prices increase for everything as it becomes harder to get components. Or it may just become impossible to get some technology as AI literally takes over the planet.

“RAMageddon” is only getting worse, and there’s no immediate end in sight. Everything that has a computer inside depends on RAM, and almost everything has a computer in it now: farm tractors, hospital equipment, your TV set-top box. RAM is the short-term memory of a device, and AI especially needs lots to juggle all the data it’s processing. And most of that RAM comes from just three companies that are happily prioritizing the AI gold rush over everything else.

China’s latest AI is so good it’s spooked Hollywood. Will its tech sector pump the brakes?

If you’ve been online this week, you’ve probably seen Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt while talking about Epstein. An obvious AI creation, but certainly improved from past iterations.

Over the past week, a slew of cinematic videos of celebrities and characters in absurd situations have gone viral online, with one commonality –– they were created using a new artificial intelligence tool from Chinese developer ByteDance, sparking anxiety over the fast-evolving capabilities of AI.

Several Meta employees have started calling themselves ‘AI builders’

As AI blurs the lines between ideas and prototypes, we’re continuing to see the trend in product management toward full-stack creators.

Meta product managers are rebranding. Some are now calling themselves "AI builders," a signal that AI coding tools are changing who gets to build software inside the company.

Product Management Trends: 11 Shifts Shaping 2026

What are some of the product management trends for this year? Relying less on roadmaps, incorporating AI, and focusing on outcomes.

The most reliable signals about where product management is heading don’t come from think-pieces. They come from the leaders building the future in real time.

How the anxiety over AI could fuel a new workers’ movement

A 2025 Pew survey found that “64% of the public thinks AI will lead to fewer jobs over the next 20 years”, which is probably why only 17% of Americans say AI will have a positive effect on the US over the same time period.

Other Interesting Finds

The Curling Controversy at the Winter Olympics Isn’t What You Think

Curling is probably my favorite Winter Olympic sport. I love watching it. Part of that is the understanding that it’s a sport with an intense “spirit of the game” culture. I used to play Ultimate Frisbee in college and for a club. We had no referees, and the culture was one where you always gave the benefit of the doubt to your opponent. I see that in curling as well. Which is why there was such a controversy with Canada.

But the first rule, and one that’s never up for debate, is called the spirit of curling: A true curler never attempts to distract opponents, nor to prevent them from playing their best, and would prefer to lose rather than to win unfairly. This is where this match went off the rails.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 💸 Something big

• 👩‍💻 AI first operators

• 🤖 UX consulting

• 🎛️ Airbnb

• 🤼‍♂️ OpenClaw

• 👥 Report cards

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

Prodity: Product Thinking is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

News and Useful Reads

Something big is happening in AI — and most people will be blindsided

I have mixed feelings about this article. I agree AI is coming faster than most of us are prepared for. But I think it’s easy to overestimate the broad impact when you’re too close to it. So I understand why tech CEOs think the effects are imminent without understanding the time it takes to change large organizations and entrenched cultures. Coding and technology is an easy jump for AI. But is everything? Conversely, the disruption is coming, and many, if not most, of us aren’t ready.

The experience that tech workers have had over the past year, of watching AI go from “helpful tool” to “does my job better than I do”, is the experience everyone else is about to have. Law, finance, medicine, accounting, consulting, writing, design, analysis, customer service. Not in 10 years. The people building these systems say one to five years. Some say less.

The AI-First Operator Is the New Product Manager

Product management is changing, as we discuss frequently here. But I believe the need for good product managers will increase significantly as the time to go from idea to product decreases rapidly.

“Product Managers and Leads with experience will be the most in-demand resource in the coming years. Especially if they know how to leverage AI.”

What UX Consulting Clients Expect in the Age of AI

AI is going to take over many parts of technology. But I’m still skeptical that it will take over good judgement.

AI hasn’t fundamentally changed why organizations hire UX consultants. Clients aren’t looking for speculative AI concepts or flashy demos. They’re seeking to partner with experienced UX experts who can help them solve their problems.

Airbnb says a third of its customer support is now handled by AI in the US and Canada

If you work in any type of customer support, you know AI is quickly taking over more and more of it.

Airbnb says its custom-built AI agent is now handling roughly a third of its customer support issues in North America, and it’s preparing to roll out the feature globally. If successful, the company believes that in a year’s time, more than 30% of its total customer support tickets will be handled by AI voice and chat in all the languages where it also employs a human customer service agent.

I Loved My OpenClaw AI Agent—Until It Turned on Me

If you’re paying attention to recent news, OpenClaw is all the rage. You can set it up on a Mac Mini and create your own personal agent. But it seems to come with many potential risks.

For brave (or perhaps reckless) early adopters, OpenClaw seems like a legitimate glimpse of the future. But any sense of wonder is accompanied by a dollop of terror as the AI agent romps through emails and file systems, wields a credit card, and occasionally even turns on its human user (although in my case, this about-face was entirely my fault).

Other Interesting Finds

Why There’s No ‘E’ on Report Cards

Although numerical grading was the most popular method of assessing students from the mid-1800s through the early 1900s, another system emerged and evolved alongside it: letter grades.

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It was when I was working full time, consulting, and running another side business. To add another item to my plate was a mistake. Not only that, but I continued to take on more and more of the planning until I was utterly overwhelmed.

The reunion was great, and I think everyone thoroughly enjoyed it. But the memory of planning it still triggers major anxiety for me.

The right thing for me to have done would have been to take on much less. I could have said “no” to several things and let others pick those up. And in the years since, I’ve continued to improve my ability to say “no” to taking on too much (though I’m still far from perfect at this).

As product managers, we often hear that we need to “get better at saying no.” This is true, but also not very helpful.

The real challenge isn’t just saying no.

It’s saying no without damaging trust or relationships.

In many organizations, especially larger ones with different departments and groups, a poorly delivered no can hurt you or your team more than a missed delivery. It often teaches stakeholders that the product team is dismissive, opaque, or purely process-driven. And once we erode trust, every future decision will be harder.

Saying no isn’t just a necessary part of product management. It’s a critical leadership skill.

Saying No to Protect Focus

Every time we say yes to something, it creates a hidden cost. Taking on another feature or project means more coordination, more context switching, more cognitive load for the team, and more commitments or dependencies.

We have to say no, usually more often than we’d like.

Prioritization, and saying no, is one of the most important product management skills. Part of prioritization is saying yes to some things and saying no to many more things.

As Steve Jobs famously put it:

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”

Saying no is a crucial responsibility of good product managers and product leaders. It’s about stewardship over your product and team. But we also have to be effective in how we say no.

Saying No Effectively

Be Clear

It's easy to be unclear when saying no:

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 💸 Tech AI spending

• 👩‍💻 CPU Waits

• 🤖 Product Management in Age of AI

• 🎛️ UX Trends

• 🤼‍♂️ AI Feud

• 👥 Google Protest

• 🎨 Happiness

• 🦴 The Femur

Podcast

Harnessing AI in Healthcare: Insights from RJ Kedziora

In this episode of Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews RJ Kedziora, co-founder of Estenda, a company specializing in custom software and data analysis for healthcare. We discuss RJ’s journey in technology and entrepreneurship, the importance of energy management over time management, and the role of AI in healthcare. RJ shares insights into the challenges and future of AI applications, the need for ethical considerations, and the potential for personalized healthcare solutions. He also offers advice to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a difference in the industry.

News and Useful Reads

Tech AI spending may approach $700 billion this year, but the blow to cash raises red flags

Tech companies continue to spend massive amounts on AI. It’s a huge upfront investment, which raises significant concerns for me about how (and if) the payoff will come.

Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon are expected to spend nearly $700 billion combined this year to fuel their AI build-outs.

Intel, AMD notify customers in China of lengthy waits for CPUs

It doesn’t seem like the demand for CPUs is waning at all.

Booming investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure has created a frantic rush not only for AI-specific chips, but also other parts of the supply chain - most acutely in memory chips, prices of which continue to soar.

What product management looks like in the era of AI

The product management role and responsibilities are being significantly reshaped. We’ve been grappling with this for a while, but change will only continue to accelerate.

The days of leaving AI to the engineers are fading. PMs who want to stay relevant must build fluency, embrace experimentation, and treat AI as both a product feature and a design material.

The top UX design trends in 2026 (and how to leverage them)

UX is heading into one of its most transformative phases yet. AI continues to reshape how we interact with digital products, bringing both major opportunities and challenges for designers. At the same time, new regulations and guidelines are raising the bar for accessibility and sustainability. And, in amongst it all, users are craving calmer, clearer and more human-centred experiences.

Two of the biggest AI companies are feuding over a Super Bowl ad. It’s bigger than you think

I think these Superbowl ads are outstanding. Anthropic and OpenAI have taken aim at each other, and aren’t pulling their punches.

More Than 800 Google Workers Urge Company to Cancel Any Contracts With ICE and CBP

It’s good to see employees at large companies standing up to their leaders and to horrific actions of the American government. We’ll need a lot more of this to stem the current tide.

More Than 880 employees and contractors working for Google signed a petition this week calling on the company to disclose and cancel any contracts it may have with US immigration authorities.

Other Interesting Finds

An Overlooked Prescription for Happiness

As someone who is deep into too many hobbies, I can attest that they are critical for my happiness and mental health. Hopefully counteracting at least some of the stress from day-to-day working and life.

Research suggests that experiencing art and creativity, even for a few minutes a day, has tangible effects on our mental and physical health. Doing so helps slow cognitive decline, reduces the risk of heart disease and increases well-being as we age. Reading books, for example, is linked with living longer.

Your femur can support 30 times the weight of your body.

Most of us know that the femur is the biggest bone in our body. But I did not know just how strong it was.

The femur is more than up for its job, as it’s capable of holding up to 30 times your body weight, or roughly 6,000 pounds (though the exact weight depends on the person and age).

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