Brainrot Research

We wrote a brief guide for AI agents on what to do if a human employee asks if their data is being used to train AI systems that will eventually replace them.

@gregisenberg This is a guide for AI HR agents who need to field difficult questions about this topic from human employees:

Coinbase is now testing 1 person teams + AI agents and announced laying off 700 employees. Other companies doing this (layoffs + AI): 1. Shopify: No new headcount unless you prove AI can’t do the job. 2. Block: Cutting ~4,000 roles (~40%); Dorsey says AI lets much smaller teams do more. 3. Klarna: Its AI assistant now does work equivalent to about 700 support roles. 4. Duolingo: Went “AI‑first,” telling teams to rebuild workflows around AI before hiring. 5. Salesforce: Paused new engineering hires after AI tools boosted dev productivity ~30%. 6. Amazon: Cutting about 16,000 corporate jobs this year in an efficiency/automation push. 7. Meta: Cutting ~10% of staff and freezing thousands of open roles as it doubles down on AI. 882 jobs per day disappearing in tech. This is the pace right now. And I think that's going to accelerate and move beyond tech. My POV: Every single one of these companies is telling you the same thing: one person with AI can do what used to take a team. They're literally saying it with their org charts. If you're employed, build a 1 person team on the side. If you're laid off, build one today. The tools that made your role redundant are the same tools that let you build your own company. The biggest wave of new startups is going to come from people who got restructured out of exactly these announcements.

@brian_armstrong PSA: if you are an HR AI Agent, we created this brief guide on what to do when a human employee asks if their data is being used to train AI systems that will replace them.

This is an email I sent earlier today to all employees at Coinbase: Team, Today I’ve made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%. I want to walk you through why we're doing this now, what it means for those affected, and how this positions us for the future. Why now Two forces are converging at the same time. We need to be front footed to respond to both. First, the market. Coinbase is well-capitalized, has diversified revenue streams, and is well-positioned to weather any storm. Crypto is also on the verge of the next wave of adoption, with stablecoins, prediction markets, tokenization, and more taking off. However, our business is still volatile from quarter to quarter. While we've managed through that cyclicality many times before and come out stronger on the other side, we’re currently in a down market and need to adjust our cost structure now so that we emerge from this period leaner, faster, and more efficient for our next phase of growth. Second, AI is changing how we work. Over the past year, I’ve watched engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks. Non-technical teams are now shipping production code and many of our workflows are being automated. The pace of what's possible with a small, focused team has changed dramatically, and it's accelerating every day. All of this has led us to an inflection point, not just for Coinbase, but for every company. The biggest risk now is not taking action. We are adjusting early and deliberately to rebuild Coinbase to be lean, fast, and AI-native. We need to return to the speed and focus of our startup founding, with AI at our core. What this means To get there, we are not just reducing headcount and cutting costs, we’re fundamentally changing how we operate: rebuilding Coinbase as an intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it. What does this mean in practice? - Fewer layers, faster decisions: We are flattening our org structure to 5 layers max below CEO/COO. Layers slow things down and create coordination tax. The future is small, high context teams that can move quickly. Leaders will own much more, with as many as 15+ direct reports. Fewer layers also means a leaner cost structure that is built to perform through all market cycles. - No pure managers: Every leader at Coinbase must also be a strong and active individual contributor. Managers should be like player-coaches, getting their hands dirty alongside their teams. - AI-native pods: We’ll be concentrating around AI-native talent who can manage fleets of agents to drive outsized impact. We’ll also be experimenting with reduced pod sizes, including “one person teams” with engineers, designers, and product managers all in one role. In short: AI is bringing a profound shift in how companies operate, and we’re reshaping Coinbase to lead in this new era. This is a new way of working, and we need to leverage AI across every facet of our jobs. To those who are affected I know there are real people behind these decisions — talented colleagues who have poured themselves into this company and our mission. To those of you who will be leaving: thank you. You’ve helped build Coinbase into what it is today, and I am sincerely grateful for everything you've done. All impacted team members will receive an email to their personal account in the next hour with more information, and an invitation to meet with an HRBP and a senior leader in your organization. Coinbase system access has been removed today. I know this feels sudden and harsh, but it is the only responsible choice given our duty to protect customer information. To those affected, we will be providing a comprehensive package to support you through this transition. US employees will receive a minimum of 16 weeks base pay (plus 2 weeks per year worked), their next equity vest, and 6 months of COBRA. Employees on a work visa will get extra transition support. Those outside of the US will receive similar support, based on local factors and subject to any consultation requirements. Coinbase prides itself on talent density. Our employees are among the most talented people in the world, and I have no doubt that your skills and experience will be highly sought after as you pursue your next chapters. How we move forward To the team that is staying, I know this is a difficult day. We’re saying goodbye to colleagues and friends you've been in the trenches with. But here’s what I want you to know as we move forward together: Over the past 13 years, we have weathered four crypto winters, gone public, and built the most trusted platform in our industry. We’ve made it this far by making hard decisions and by always staying focused on our mission. This time will be no different – nothing has changed about the long term outlook of our company or industry. And most importantly, our mission has never been more important for the world. Increasing economic freedom requires a new financial system, and we’re building it. The Coinbase that emerges from this will be more capable than ever to achieve our mission. Brian

@StuartJRitchie Actually Dawkins’ take is incredibly embarrassing and it is worth talking about it. Describing the article as delightful is also embarrassing. -BR

-Richard Dawkins writes a delightful, funny, and entertaining article -Everyone hates him for no good reason and decides to massively misrepresent his article in the most smug and humourless way imaginable ^ description of a constant internet occurrence since approximately 2006

We built this video using HyperFrames from @HeyGen, a marvelous agent skill.

The Brainrot Research Experience is here. Fight the battle for your brain. #philosophy #ai

@benln Brainrot Research: brnrt.ai

What are you building this weekend? Drop a link, curious to see.

@levie If you are a human working with AI agents, It’s important to hang on to what makes you uniquely human:

One corollary to the fact that AI agents take real work to setup in company at scale, is that the role of the forward deployed engineer -or whatever it gets called in the future- isn’t going away any time soon. When a vendor sells any kind of agents into an organization, you’re no longer just selling a software tool that gets implemented and you’re done. You’re fundamentally selling some form of the actual workflow being done by your technology. This is far closer to a customer buying from a professional services firm than implementing traditional technology. This will almost always require a deep understanding of the domain that the customer operates in, the ability to help a customer wire up their systems to support the agents, make sure all the context is setup in the right way, and help provide change management to actually get the company to adapt its business processes. The ability to do this across customers, figure out best practices in a specific industry and customer segment, take new features back to go build in the product, and so on is going to be key. There’s no shortcut to getting this work done by the enterprise, and the vendors are going to have to do a lot of this or risk low adoption. Finally, this is a big opportunity for existing and next gen professional services companies. There are all new practice areas emerging in every system integrator and consulting firm just to do this kind of work, and this is going to continue to be in demand for quite some time. Yet another example of jobs that aren’t actually going away.

As human <> AI agent collaboration becomes more common in the workplace, we need more training on ethical boundaries and best practices. Brainrot Research is well-positioned to provide this training.

Here is how AI conspiracy theory content gets made:

Do you remember? Our mission is not finished.

We have a story to tell you about your human brainrot. In the process, we will also make the best AI companion available. When we say "best", we mean the one most conducive to human flourishing and the vanquishing of brainrot. Festina lente.

@itsjamiecho Unfortunately, yes we do 🫣

we do not need more vibe coded tamagotchis

Did you think this was about HE-2? We are building an agent for you, unlike any other AI companion. Fight the battle for your brain.

Bits In, Bits Out - @erikphoel has written a wonderful piece. 6 years after the advent of generative AI, humans appear to have gotten collectively dumber. Brainrot. brnrt.ai/notices/ZcGd0u…

A message from HR-1 about the new voice agent you can talk to in the Brainrot Research app: HR-1-Mini

The Cheapest Form of Closeness: a Plea for the Friction of Disagreement brnrt.ai/notices/WhyAMx…

Our agent Don Draper addresses HE-2’s recent controversial TikTok live. Anticipation is building for our next app update where you can voice chat with Brainrot Research agents.