Jorge Arango

Update: This is a bug. It will be fixed in the next release, aiming for right after Google IO. More info if you're interested: We ship this "helper app" (GeminiAppLauncher) to enable hotkeys so you can activate Gemini without the full app having to run all the time in the background. This helper app was never intended to ignore your explicit OS setting change. That is the bug that's being fixed. In the meantime, you can override this by turning off the "Open at Login" setting in the Gemini app settings - see the screenshot. One note: if you do this, it will turn off the background process that detects hotkeys, so global keyboard shortcuts won't work. Hope this helps, and sorry again for the frustration. A lot of us on the team, including me, love to read your stuff, and I hope you try Gemini again on your Mac.

There will be no AI jobpocalypse. The story that AI will lead to massive unemployment is stoking unnecessary fear. AI — like any other technology — does affect jobs, but telling overblown stories of large-scale unemployment is irresponsible and damaging. Let’s put a stop to it. I’ve expressed skepticism about the jobpocalypse in previous posts. I’m glad to see that the popular press is now pushing back on this narrative. The image below features some recent headlines. Software engineering is the sector most affected by AI tools, as coding agents race ahead. Yet hiring of software engineers remains strong! So while there are examples of AI taking away jobs, the trends strongly suggest the net job creation is vastly greater than the job destruction — just like earlier waves of technology. Further, despite all the exciting progress in AI, the U.S. unemployment rate remains a healthy 4.3%. Why is the AI jobpocalypse narrative so popular? For one thing, frontier AI labs have a strong incentive to tell stories that make AI technology sound more powerful. At their most extreme, they promote science-fiction scenarios of AI “taking over” and causing human extinction. If a technology can replace many employees, surely that technology must be very valuable! Also, a lot of SaaS software companies charge around $100-$1000 per user/year. But if an AI company can replace an employee who makes $100,000 — or make them 50% more productive — then charging even $10,000 starts to look reasonable. By anchoring not to typical SaaS prices but to salaries of employees, AI companies can charge a lot more. Additionally, businesses have a strong incentive to talk about layoffs as if they were caused by AI. After all, talking about how they’re using AI to be far more productive with fewer staff makes them look smart. This is a better message than admitting they overhired during the pandemic when capital was abundant due to low interest rates and a massive government financial stimulus. To be clear, I recognize that AI is causing a lot of people’s work to change. This is hard. This is stressful. (And to some, it can be fun.) I empathize with everyone affected. At the same time, this is very different from predicting a collapse of the job market. Societies are capable of telling themselves stories for years that have little basis in reality and lead to poor society-wide decision making. For example, fears over nuclear plant safety led to under-investment in nuclear power. Fears of the “population bomb” in the 1960s led countries to implement harsh policies to reduce their populations. And worries about dietary fat led governments to promote unhealthy high-sugar diets for decades. Now that mainstream media is openly skeptical about the jobpocalypse, I hope these stories will start to lose their teeth (much like fears of AI-driven human extinction have). Contrary to the predictions of an AI jobpocalypse, I predict the opposite: There will be an AI jobapalooza! AI will lead to a lot more good AI engineering jobs, and I’m also optimistic about the future of the overall job market. What AI engineers do will be different from traditional software engineering, and many of these jobs will be in businesses other than traditional large employers of developers. In non-AI roles, too, the skills needed will change because of AI. That makes this a good time to encourage more people to become proficient in AI, and make sure they’re ready for the different but plentiful jobs of the future! [Original text in The Batch newsletter.]

Eduardo took eleven minutes to cross the field this morning. The field is approximately 130 metres long. Eduardo, if he had wanted to, could have crossed it at a brisk alpaca walk in about three minutes. He did not want to. He stopped at the gorse bush. He stopped at the small section of clover near the gate. He stopped at the place where the badger crosses, which is not currently active but which Eduardo, by some assessment of his own, considers worth checking. He stopped at the dip where the rainwater pools, drank slightly, walked on. He stopped at the eastern fence post for ninety seconds and looked, by every visible indicator, at nothing in particular. He arrived at the far gate at 7.46am. The farmer, watching from the kitchen, made a cup of tea. The farmer's wife, who has watched Eduardo cross this field most mornings for seven years, said: "He's slow today." The farmer: "He's slow every day." The wife: "He's slow on purpose." The farmer: "...Yes." This is the thing about Eduardo. The eleven minutes is not inefficient. The eleven minutes is the work. The work is to walk the field, attend to it, notice what has changed, register the gorse and the badger crossing and the dip and the fence post, and finish at the far gate having processed the morning. Most useful animals, and most useful humans, work like this. The work is in the noticing. The noticing requires time. The time looks, to the casual observer, like the animal is doing nothing. The animal is not doing nothing. The animal is doing the most important part. The phone in your pocket has, in the last decade, optimised the noticing out of most modern lives. The walk to work has become the scroll on the bus. The lunch has become the working lunch. The slow look at the eastern fence post has become the answered email. Eduardo has not, at any point, optimised the noticing out. This is, in the long run, why Eduardo is fine and you are tired. Walk the field slowly. Notice the gorse. Be the alpaca.

Bob Fosse in Little Prince movie, 1974 had a massive influence on Michael Jackson.