Robot Apocalypse, Vibe Revenue, AI Cyberattacks, and Wizard of Oz
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 Entrepreneurship
🤖 Robot Apocalypse
💸 Vibe Revenue
💩 AI Cyberattack
👨💼 Product Managers
‼️ Error Handling
🧙♂️ Wizard of Oz
Podcast
Unlocking the Secrets of AI Entrepreneurship with Founder Andrew Amann
In this episode of Prodity: Product by Design, Kyle Evans interviews Andrew Amann, CEO and co-founder of NineTwoThree AI Studio. Andrew shares his extensive experience in entrepreneurship, product development, and the challenges of building AI products. We discuss the importance of understanding product-market fit, the patent process, and the journey of founding multiple companies. Andrew emphasizes the significance of focusing on a specific audience and the value of holistic entrepreneurship, where success is measured not just by financial gain but also by personal fulfillment and work-life balance. We also explore the future of AI, its applications across various industries, and the evolving landscape of technology.
News and Useful Reads
Is AI really coming for our jobs and wages? Past predictions of a ‘robot apocalypse’ offer some clues
We keep talking about this topic and how AI will affect jobs. Despite some companies claiming that AI is the reason for mass layoffs, most studies point to more muted predictions.
Some studies reported wage declines, others found increases, but on average, the effect was close to zero. In fact, the estimated overall impact was so small that it fell below even the minimal threshold for economic significance.
‘Vibe revenue’: AI companies admit they’re worried about a bubble
Even the AI companies themselves are beginning to question the amount of money being poured into AI.
In recent weeks, markets have been reckoning with the notion that too much capital is pouring into the AI boom, clouding the outlook on revenue and actual profit and putting high valuations into question.
Anthropic disrupts AI-orchestrated cyberattack
It seems we’re officially entering the age of agentic cyberattacks. Anthropic has reported that they disrupted a professional and highly coordinated attack. But how many more are coming?
This campaign demonstrated unprecedented integration and autonomy of AI throughout the attack lifecycle, with the threat actor manipulating Claude Code to support reconnaissance, vulnerability discovery, exploitation, lateral movement, credential harvesting, data analysis, and exfiltration operations largely autonomously.
Product Managers Are About to Get Their Jobs Back
As a product leader, I couldn’t agree more with the idea of this article. Product managers too often become glorified project managers or ticket writers. But if AI can automate much of that, we can finally get closer to doing the important work: understanding human problems.
Your job as you know it very well might die, but this is your chance to turn it into the PM job you always wanted. Those skills are about to become incredibly essential because, in a world where anyone can build software, differentiation comes from understanding humans. And humans are beautifully, productively unpredictable — something AI fundamentally cannot replicate.
Error handling - UX design patterns
It is easy as product managers or designers to only plan for the happy path. But the happy path isn’t the only path users will take. And we have to plan for that as well.
Users don’t remember your fancy animations or pixel-perfect layout; they remember the time spent on your app, enjoyably or badly.
Other Interesting Finds
Founder Admits His “AI Transcription” Startup Was Just Him Joining People’s Meetings and Taking Notes by Hand
I think this story is wild. I’m not opposed to a “wizard of oz” type experience, and have done this sort of thing myself when launching a new product. But not by pretending to be AI…
“The best way to validate your business idea is by becoming the product yourself,” Udotong wrote in a LinkedIn post. “We told our customers there’s an ‘AI that’ll join a meeting.’ In reality it was just me and my co-founder calling in to the meeting sitting there silently and taking notes by hand.”