After Automation, Meta Layoffs, Google Pics, and Dog Noses

Your Weekly Review of News in Technology, UX and AI

Here’s the latest news, resources, and use cases from the world of product, UX, AI and technology. Let’s go:

• 📊 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.

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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.