• 📊 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.

News and Useful Reads

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.

News and Useful Reads

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.

News and Useful Reads

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.

News and Useful Reads

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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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 👨‍🏭 AI-Proof Jobs

• 👩‍💻 Amazon Layoffs

• 🤖 UX and AI

• 🦾 AI Product Managers

• 😨 Feeling Unprepared

• 👥 AI Agent Social Network

• 📋 Too Many Goals

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

Is Your Job AI-Proof? What to Know About AI Taking Over Jobs.

AI isn’t able to take over most jobs, but we’re seeing the job market shift dramatically as entry-level jobs are in less demand, as well as roles in certain industries.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the workforce, and not always for the better. As companies continue to adopt AI to boost productivity, many are also cutting human jobs and replacing them with tools like ChatGPT or GitHub Copilot. AI adoption is especially impacting entry-level jobs, as early-career workers in the most AI-exposed jobs have experienced a 13 percent decline in employment.

Amazon’s layoffs are staggering. We’ve seen this before

Speaking of massive changes in the job market, Amazon laid off 9% of its workforce in the past few months. While it’s not because AI has taken over those roles, much of it can be attributed to AI. Amazon is clearly moving to replace certain workers with technology while it also works to save money (from employees) to further invest in AI.

While Amazon’s layoffs aren’t a direct result of AI, they’re tangentially related. Advancements in AI have sparked widespread concern about the future of jobs, as fellow tech giants Microsoft, Meta and Verizon all made layoffs last year.

Demand Accuracy in Your AI Tools: Lessons from Baymard Institute

Most of us are beginning to use more and more AI tools in our work. While many of these tools seem to do well, we can’t take for granted that they are still wrong too often. That’s especially poignant in UX and product development.

Many AI-powered UX tools promise heuristic evaluations, UX audits, or instant insights. However, most fail to disclose how accurate those outputs are — or when they should not be used. This trend was particularly egregious in 2023, but even as AI technology has improved, many tools marketed for UX work still lack reliability.

How top companies are using AI in their design workflows

Speaking of using AI in our UX and design workflows, it can be helpful to understand what other companies are doing and what is working (or not).

Recently top companies have publicly come out to share their processes implemented by senior designers and entire creative teams. Some notable companies like Meta and Atlassian stood out. Not only are these companies building their own AI workflows, but they are spending millions of dollars to train their employees on them.

How to Become an AI Product Manager

Being an AI product manager isn’t fundamentally different from any other specialty of product management. However, with the relentless focus on AI currently, it may be helpful to really focus on those skills if you want to truly be an AI product manager.

AI product management is becoming increasingly important as more companies build AI-powered products. Companies are looking for people who can take AI ideas and turn them into real products that solve problems and make an impact. If you’re thinking about a career in this space, it helps to understand how product management and AI work together and which skills can give you an edge.

Feeling unprepared for the AI boom? You’re not alone

It feels like we’re racing ahead at breakneck speeds toward new AI capabilities and technologies. And for many of us, it may feel like we’re barely keeping up or we’re already falling behind. But does that mean we can’t do anything about it?

“The future should not be treated as a forecasting or prediction exercise,” he said. “It should be treated as a design problem – because the future is not (something) where we just wait and see what happens. … We have enormous control over the future in which we live, and [the quality of that future] depends on the investments and structures that we create today.”

Where Tech Leaders and Students Really Think AI Is Going

The future never feels fully certain. But in this time of rapid, intense transformation—political, technological, cultural, scientific—it’s as difficult as it ever has been to get a sense of what’s around the next corner.

OpenClaw’s AI assistants are now building their own social network

The OpenClaw community has already spawned creative offshoots, including Moltbook — a social network where AI assistants can interact with each other. The platform has also attracted significant attention from AI researchers and developers.

On the platform, AI agents share information on topics ranging from automating Android phones via remote access to analyzing webcam streams. The platform operates through a skill system, or downloadable instruction files that tell OpenClaw assistants how to interact with the network.

Other Interesting Finds

What to do when you have too many goals

One of my perpetual struggles is wanting to (even needing to) do too many things. As I was writing my goals for the new year, I saw a familiar pattern: I have too many.

Ever feel like your goals are competing for your attention? For example, maybe you want to go on a whirlwind international vacation next summer, but you also want to save money for retirement. There might be a way around that. Researchers set out to study “goal harmony,” which is what happens when goals feel like they complement or even facilitate each other.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 🗑️ TikTok

• 👩‍💻 ChatGPT

• 🤖 Cultural Stagnation

• 🦾 ICE

• ☢️ Aging

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

A group of US investors bought TikTok

Ownership of TikTok’s US operations has officially changed hands, but your experience on the app likely won’t change much…immediately.

A group of American investors closed a $14 billion deal Thursday night to acquire the US version of the short-form video app and avoid a shutdown mandated by the 2024 divest-or-ban law due to national security concerns.

ChatGPT to start showing users ads based on their conversations

If you thought ChatGPT was safe from ads (or thought anything was safe from ads), you better think again.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has previously expressed reservations about introducing ads to ChatGPT. But the move comes as OpenAI is urgently trying to figure out how to bring in more revenue from its 800 million monthly users to help it afford the $1.4 trillion it has committed to spending on AI infrastructure over the next eight years.

AI-induced cultural stagnation is no longer speculation − it’s already happening

I often feel like stagnating societally and culturally. That things are becoming more homogenized. And it may be that AI will push this trend even further. According to resent research, AI tends to favor the familiar.

Regardless of how diverse the starting prompts were – and regardless of how much randomness the systems were allowed – the outputs quickly converged onto a narrow set of generic, familiar visual themes: atmospheric cityscapes, grandiose buildings and pastoral landscapes. Even more striking, the system quickly “forgot” its starting prompt.

Other Interesting Finds

You don’t need to be a liberal to oppose Trump’s ICE

What is happening around the United States right now with ICE is deplorable on every level, especially with another execution this weekend. It is beyond an issue of left versus right and is now about whether we can maintain the rule of law and basic human decency.

The question posed by the president’s agenda is not merely whether non-criminal immigrants should be deported, but whether the Constitution should be shredded in service of that aim.

Why Life Feels Faster the Older You Get

Does it feel like each year seems to pass more rapidly than the last? If you’re like me, the answer is a resounding “yes.” And we’re not alone.

When we’re younger, it takes time for our brains to take in and process all the sights and sounds we’ve never experienced before. This overwhelming flood of knowledge may contribute to the sensation of time moving more slowly.

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The book introduces a model of five common dysfunctions that prevent teams from performing:

• Absence of trust

• Fear of conflict

• Lack of commitment

• Avoidance of accountability

• Inattention to results

These form a pyramid, with trust as the foundation. The core argument of the book is that a team must feel safe being vulnerable with each other, or the team can’t function and achieve results.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 🗑️ AI Slop

• 👩‍💻 Best of CES

• 🤖 Weirdest of CES

• 🦾 Agents

• ☢️ Nuclear

• ♟️ Board Games

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

It’s Not Just X, It’s Y

AI slop is everywhere now. And it seems like the right approach now is to assume most things are AI unless proven otherwise. That doesn’t excuse platforms from doing the work to limit AI or verify humanity, but it should give us all pause.

I am now at the point where I assume everything is AI and then work backwards to figure out if it’s not, based on the author and the publisher.

@prodity.cohas AI slop won? #ai

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The Best of CES 2026: The Products We Want to Get Our Hands On Most

CES was this week, and there was a clear focus on AI robots. Among the many weird offerings, there was some great stuff.

Clearly, no one can really outsource their grunt work to these humanoid bots just yet. But there were still plenty of other things that caught the attention of the 20-plus Wirecutter journalists who gathered in Las Vegas for the annual tech-centered trade show.

The weirdest tech we’ve seen at CES 2026 so far

While CES had some cool new things, it also had its share of the weird.

CES is a launchpad for serious tech, but it’s also where companies proudly unveil devices that make you stop mid-scroll and whisper, “Wait, this is real?” We’ve been keeping a running list of the strangest, funniest and most unexpectedly compelling gadgets we’ve spotted in Las Vegas, from bathroom computers to robots that look like they escaped a Pixar pitch meeting.

Agent-native Architectures: How to Build Apps After the End of Code

As the tools continue to improve, everyone’s role in the product development lifecycle is going to change. I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently, as many organizations will stop seeing coding as a bottleneck, but rather generating the ideas.

The core of an agent-native architecture is not code. Instead, as the name implies, the core is an agent—something squishy and alive, planted in sun and soil. Each feature of the app is a prompt to the agent that names the result to achieve, not a set of steps to follow.

Meta bets big on nuclear power with 6.6 gigawatt expansion plan

At this point, nuclear power seems like one of the best options given our need for more energy. And corporations are driving it forward, with Meta betting big on nuclear.

Meta has signed 20-year contracts with energy company Vistra to purchase power from three nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The company will also provide financial backing for the development of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) at Oklo and TerraPower.

Other Interesting Finds

7 Board Games With Surprising Origins

We’ve been playing a lot of board games recently, as winter has set in and it’s extremely cold. So it’s interesting to see some of the history of the most popular games that we still play today.

One of the oldest board games still widely played today, chess can trace its origins all the way back to the Gupta Empire in 6th-century India. Originally called “Chataranga,” meaning the four divisions of the army, chess was first developed as a tool with which one could teach military strategy.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 👩‍💻 AI in 2026

• 🤝 AI Pragmatism

• 🗑️ AI Slop

• 💩 Grok

• 📺 Brainrot

• 👴 Alzheimer’s

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

17 predictions for AI in 2026

Will AI models be able to successfully complete about half a week’s work of a software engineer? Possibly. Especially if they continue to improve at the rate they have been.

The AI evaluation organization METR released the original version of this chart in March. They found that every seven months, the length of software engineering tasks that leading AI models were capable of completing (with a 50% success rate) was doubling. Note that the y-axis of this chart is on a log scale, so the straight line represents an exponential increase.

In 2026, AI will move from hype to pragmatism

2025 was about creating the largest LLMs. 2026 will (hopefully) be about making AI far more practical.

The focus is already shifting away from building ever-larger language models and toward the harder work of making AI usable. In practice, that involves deploying smaller models where they fit, embedding intelligence into physical devices, and designing systems that integrate cleanly into human workflows.

AI Slop won in 2025 — fingerprinting real content might be the answer in 2026

It’s on ongoing game in our house to point out when we think something was created using AI. One of the easiest tells is when it is too perfect or polished. As we move into the new year, I expect we’ll continue to see a trend toward authenticity and human imperfection, rather than AI generated slop.

The battle against AI content is lost. Slop fills our feeds, and it's up to us to discern what is real. But what if 2026 represents the dawn of a new approach, a flipping of the script where we no longer chase identifying what's artificially created and instead fingerprint the real?

Grok is undressing anyone, including minors

Unsurprisingly, Grok is creating questionable content with few guardrails.

xAI’s Grok is removing clothing from pictures of people without their consent following this week’s rollout of a feature that allows X users to instantly edit any image using the bot without needing the original poster’s permission.

Online ‘brainrot’ isn’t ruining children’s minds – it’s a new way of navigating the modern internet

When I was younger, we constantly quoted movies and popular shows with each other. It was a way to connect, much like the “brainrot” of today.

Although brainrot is often used knowingly and with a touch of irony to describe these phrases, remixing and repeating fragments of media has always been part of how people connect. It creates a shared cultural code, a second language made of references, rhythms and sounds that bind groups together and turn everyday moments into opportunities for humour and social connection.

Other Interesting Finds

Alzheimer’s Fully Reversed in Mice, Scientists Say

I’m hopeful that we could see an end to Alzheimer’s soon. This could be one of the greatest modern-day breakthroughs in medicine.

“The key takeaway is a message of hope — the effects of Alzheimer’s disease may not be inevitably permanent,” said Andrew A. Pieper, the study’s principal investigator and a CWRU neuroscience professor, in a statement about the research. “The damaged brain can, under some conditions, repair itself and regain function.”

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• ✍️ Top Posts of 2025

• 🧑‍💻 Technology Stories

• 🎥 Movies

• 📺 TV Shows

• 📖 Books

• 🎙️ Podcasts

Best of 2025

Top Posts from Prodity

We’ll start off the list with the top posts from this year. From book reviews to weekly updates to podcasts, we’ve had an interesting year.

• Book Review: Meditations for Mortals

• Product Marketing: The Missing Link

• Career: Small, Consistent Improvements

MIT Technology Review’s most popular stories of 2025

It certainly has been a big year in tech, and in tech news.

As the year winds down, we wanted to give you a chance to revisit a bit of this work with us. Whether we were covering the red-hot rise of artificial intelligence or the future of biotech, these are some of the stories that resonated the most with our readers.

The 20 Best Movies of 2025 (Rolling Stone)

I haven’t seen all the movies on this list yet, but my favorite from 2025 was undoubtedly Train Dreams.

These 20 titles aren’t just the highlights of the last 12 months. They’re the ones we’ll likely be going back to year after year. From an epic tale of resistance to a personal reimagining of a gothic horror classic, welcome to the best movies of 2025.

The Best TV Shows of 2025 (Collider)

Severance and Pluribus stand out in 2025. And Andor is highly underrated, especially given how relevant it is to current events.

The 10 Best Books of 2025 (NYT)

Admittedly, I have such a long “to read” list that I don’t often get to new releases as quickly as others do. But if you’re looking to add to your “to read” list, this might be a good place to start.

After a full year spent reading hundreds of books and meeting regularly to bicker — er, converse — about their merits and flaws, the editors of the Book Review have chosen the 10 Best Books of 2025.

The 20 Best Podcasts of 2025 (Atlantic)

Podcasting has suffered a series of blows over the past few years: industry layoffs, the rise of AI-produced slop, and, perhaps most existentially, a growing focus on video platforms. But 2025 countered the narrative that the medium is somehow no longer interested in audio—with a slew of ambitious productions that emphasized podcasting, not just as a vehicle for comedy or the news, but as an art form in itself.

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• 📊 AI in Healthcare

• 👩‍💻 Minesweeper

• 🌯 AI Vending Machines

• 🎙️ Netflix Podcasts

• 👁️‍🗨️ Product Vision

• 🎅 Christmas Colors

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

We asked four AI coding agents to rebuild Minesweeper—the results were explosive

We saw a couple interesting tests of AI agents this week. In this experiment, agents were asked to code Minesweeper, with varying degress of success.

To see how effective these modern AI coding tools are becoming, we decided to test four major models with a simple task: re-creating the classic Windows game Minesweeper. Since it’s relatively easy for pattern-matching systems like LLMs to play off of existing code to re-create famous games, we added in one novelty curveball as well.

We Let AI Run Our Office Vending Machine. It Lost Hundreds of Dollars.

In another test of AI agents, the WSJ put an AI agent in charge of a vending machine to see how well it could run a business.

@prodity.coare AI agents ready to run a business? #ai #agents

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Netflix is betting on podcasts to become the new daytime talk show

Podcasts continue to grow as a medium, and Netflix wants to compete against YouTube in this area.

“As people begin to spend less time watching traditional television, and more time watching short form or low-cost, low-production value content on YouTube, that might present a long-term competitive threat to Netflix,” Matthew Dysart, an entertainment attorney and former head of podcast business affairs at Spotify, told TechCrunch.

You’re Confusing Vision, Strategy, Objectives, and Roadmap (Here’s Why That Matters)

I’ve encountered this same problem many times over my career. It’s critical to understand the difference between a vision and a strategy, especially for leaders.

If your vision is “be the leading SaaS platform in our category,” you’ve failed. That’s a business goal dressed up in vision language. Nobody cares.

Other Interesting Finds

Why Are Christmas Colors Red, Green, and White?

If you're guessing it’s a mix of pagan traditions, early Christianity, and modern marketing, then you’d be correct.

Part of the reason the colors red and white are so heavily associated with Christmas is — as you may have guessed — because they’re the colors worn by Santa Claus. However, that wasn’t always the case.

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