#ai

It's already feeding on its own exhaust, and it's way too expensive. Hallucinations are the feature, not a bug. It's an excuse - to offshore, to cut headcount permanently (and dump the extra work on whoever's left), and to save face for leaders who are too embarrassed to admit they bought into the most obvious hype in history.

Could this be in store for PepsiCo as well?

https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/10/opendoors-india-exit-is-fueling-a-bigger-conversation-about-ai-and-outsourcing/

Intuit announced significant layoffs affecting 3,000 employees. This represents 17% of the company's global workforce. The company attributes these cuts to an AI pivot and restructuring efforts. Offices in Reno, Nevada, and Woodland Hills, California, will close. Intuit also signed multi-year AI agreements with Anthropic and OpenAI.

Mountain View, California

https://unitewithpriti.co.uk/news/intuit-layoffs-2026-why-3000-employees-are-paying-the-price-for-an-ai-pivot/

Elon Musk: Coding Was a Top Job for Decades. It Will Be Dead By the End of the Year.

Still too much vagueness around how they are going to fix the execution at this company. AI buzzwords isn’t going to be it.

I had to laugh at some of the most basic execution problems ML pointed out regarding emails or tickets. Embarrassing for us.

The Wall Street Journal evaluates how leading US corps stack up in 6 areas: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, resilience and agility.

Cisco is one of the clearest winners in the entire table. It ranks #5 overall with an Overall Score of 78.9, and it is #1 out of 21 companies in Technology Hardware & Equipment. The profile is unusually balanced: AI #13, Innovation #13, Talent #20, Financial Fitness #57, Resilience #11, and Agility #37.

This is not a one-factor story. Cisco screens as a balanced infrastructure compounder: strong in AI readiness, strong in innovation, financially sound, resilient, and organizationally agile. The strategic implication is that the market often talks about AI in terms of chips and hyperscalers, but the WSJ model is also rewarding enterprise network infrastructure. Cisco’s ranking suggests it is viewed as a durable enabler of the AI and connectivity cycle, not merely a mature hardware incumbent.

Source:
https://www.wsj.com/rankings/best-companies-for-the-future/full-rankings-2026

The Wall Street Journal evaluates how leading US corps stack up in 6 areas: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, resilience and agility.

Optum does not appear as a standalone company in the uploaded table, so I used UnitedHealth Group as the closest listed proxy. UnitedHealth ranks #89 overall with an Overall Score of 57.7, ranking 6th out of 44 companies in Health Care Equipment & Services. Its strongest factor is Financial Fitness Rank #48, with Innovation at #85 and Agility at #130.

The weaknesses are Talent Readiness #297 and Resilience #283, which are notable for a large health-services platform. The strategic read is that UnitedHealth, and by proxy Optum, screens as a financially strong, moderately innovative healthcare infrastructure company, but not as a fully resilient or talent-leading organization. The table supports a “platform with scale advantage” thesis, but not an unqualified future-readiness leadership thesis.

Source:
https://www.wsj.com/rankings/best-companies-for-the-future/full-rankings-2026

The Wall Street Journal evaluates how leading US corps stack up in 6 areas: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, resilience and agility.

Wells Fargo ranks #187 overall with an Overall Score of 52.3, putting it above the bank-sector average of 48.7 but outside the top quartile of the full 500-company universe. The positive surprise is AI Rank #16 and Innovation Rank #66, both strong for a traditional bank. That is not a trivial finding: among large banks, Wells Fargo screens as more forward-positioned on digital and AI-related readiness than its overall rank implies.

The problem is execution culture and adaptability. Wells ranks #386 in Talent Readiness and #453 in Agility, which are severe offsets. The data reads Wells Fargo as a bank with meaningful technology potential but weak organizational velocity. Strategically, that creates a familiar incumbent-bank problem: digital investment is necessary, but not sufficient, if employee systems, operating model, and institutional agility remain behind the curve.

Source:
https://www.wsj.com/rankings/best-companies-for-the-future/full-rankings-2026

https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/10/opendoors-india-exit-is-fueling-a-bigger-conversation-about-ai-and-outsourcing/

The Wall Street Journal evaluates how 500 leading US corps stack up in 6 areas: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, resilience and agility.

AT&T ranks #375 overall with an Overall Score of 44.2, making it a clear laggard in the table. The headline surprise is that AT&T has a strong AI Rank of #33, close to Verizon’s #26 and well above many industrial and financial firms. Innovation is also not terrible at #181, which suggests the table does not see AT&T as technologically irrelevant.

The issue is that AT&T fails to convert AI readiness into broad future-readiness. It ranks #390 in Talent Readiness, #352 in Resilience, and #465 in Agility, which overwhelms the positive AI signal. The Goldman-style read is that AT&T looks like a company with technological investment capacity but legacy operating drag. The data suggests it may understand the AI transition, but the corporate system does not yet look adaptive enough to benefit fully from it.

Source:
https://www.wsj.com/rankings/best-companies-for-the-future/full-rankings-2026

The Wall Street Journal evaluates how leading US corps stack up in 6 areas: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, resilience and agility.

Oracle ranks #91 overall with an Overall Score of 57.7, just below the Software & Services industry average of 58.1. Its standout attribute is extraordinary: Innovation Rank #7, one of the best scores in the entire dataset. Talent is respectable at #106, but the rest of the profile is less convincing.

Source:
https://www.wsj.com/rankings/best-companies-for-the-future/full-rankings-2026

The surprising weakness is AI Rank #262, especially given Oracle’s public positioning around cloud infrastructure, data, and enterprise software. Financial Fitness is also weak at #327, while Agility is only #230. The table appears to reward Oracle for durable innovation capacity, but not for being a fully balanced future-readiness leader. The analyst implication is that Oracle has strategic assets, but the ranking does not view the company as operating with the breadth of Microsoft, Salesforce, Adobe, or ServiceNow.

The Wall Street Journal evaluates how leading US corps stack up in 6 areas: AI readiness, innovation, talent readiness, financial fitness, resilience and agility.

Verizon ranks #149 overall with an Overall Score of 54.5, which places it above the median but not in the leadership tier. Its strongest dimensions are AI Rank #26 and Resilience Rank #48, a combination that says the company is being credited for technology readiness and durability. In the telecom group, Verizon sits 2nd out of 3 listed companies, behind T-Mobile but well ahead of AT&T.

The problem is operating speed. Verizon’s Agility Rank is #447, one of the weakest in the dataset, and Innovation is only #250. The strategic read is that Verizon screens as a resilient, AI-aware incumbent, but not as a company that is structurally fast-moving. That matters because telecom is moving toward network automation, edge compute, enterprise connectivity, and AI-enabled service models, where organizational velocity will increasingly separate winners from regulated-utility-like carriers.

Source:
https://www.wsj.com/rankings/best-companies-for-the-future/full-rankings-2026

AI agent to take over CFO role nd HR head roles

If you work on a control team, your days are numbered. Work that can’t be automated by AI is being shifted to business accountability people. Huge effort to get rid of most controls. Nothing left for anyone to do.

Anyone hearing of layoffs within CRIU for analysts who work cases? This whole AI CoPilot bullsh-t is getting everyone on edge. Doesn't help when C14s consistently say "AI might be taking our jobs soon".

Funny how the people pushing the most disruptive AI initiatives never seem to apply them to themselves. If we're serious about efficiency, the first AI agent we should build is one that replaces the Corporate GTF function. It would likely have a lower operating cost, generate fewer slide decks, require fewer alignment meetings, and produce a higher ROI than the "AI transformation" efforts it's replacing.

As an added benefit, it would stop forcing BU’s to absorb initiatives they never asked for in the first place. The BU’s already know their customers, markets, and operational realities, they don't need another round of centrally mandated AI programs designed far from the front lines. If the goal is truly to create shareholder value, replacing the function imposing these initiatives may be the most impactful AI deployment available.

Yes, it includes St Paul based jobs. Authorization cards have started.

Of course being replaced by ai is not impossible, and obviously scary, yet hilarious to think about our executives regurgitating data organized by ai because they won’t even know what’s incorrect.

So we rolled out these AI tools last week. You know who you are. They are a complete disaster. The tools provide minimal value and very tedious to use. They actually make our work much more difficult, all to improve “quality”. This is going to lead to a backlog of work. What is the play here? Create a disaster on purpose so some higher-up finally gets that AI ain’t all it’s cracked up to be?

Anyone who is familiar with the dunces unable to write more than a sentence for themselves recognise the telltale signs. Stuff like repeated use of "It's not X, it's Y". Explains why he says so much, yet there's so little substance.

What a joke.

People managers will either be offered to go back to IC or let go. Is this true? With AI what's the role of managers anymore?

All Health Insurance companies will accomplish by leveraging AI over human being workforce is to provide a lesser quality of services and product to whom should be their customer base.

Will AI save corporations millions if not billions of dollars, which will make shareholders money and also C-suite executives bonuses.

But at the cost of it membership having a lesser, albeit cheaper, quality of services.

Problem is, all Health Insurance corporations consider shareholders to be their customer, not their membership. That is the problem with allowing public stock traded corporations to administer government funded products, such as Medicare.

All Health Insurance companies will accomplish by leveraging AI over human being workforce is to provide a lesser quality of services and product to whom should be their customer base.

Will AI save corporations millions if not billions of dollars, which will make shareholders money and also C-suite executives bonuses.

But at the cost of it membership having a lesser, albeit cheaper, quality of services.

Problem is, all Health Insurance corporations consider shareholders to be their customer, not their membership. That is the problem with allowing public stock traded corporations to administer government funded products, such as Medicare.

All Health Insurance companies will accomplish by leveraging AI over human being workforce is to provide a lesser quality of services and product to whom should be their customer base.

Will AI save corporations millions if not billions of dollars, which will make shareholders money and also C-suite executives bonuses.

But at the cost of it membership having a lesser, albeit cheaper, quality of services.

Problem is, all Health Insurance corporations consider shareholders to be their customer, not their membership. That is the problem with allowing public stock traded corporations to administer government funded products, such as Medicare.

All Health Insurance companies will accomplish by leveraging AI over human being workforce is to provide a lesser quality of services and product to whom should be their customer base.

Will AI save corporations millions if not billions of dollars, which will make shareholders money and also C-suite executives bonuses.

But at the cost of it membership having a lesser, albeit cheaper, quality of services.

Problem is, all Health Insurance corporations consider shareholders to be their customer, not their membership. That is the problem with allowing public stock traded corporations to administer government funded products, such as Medicare.

All that Humana and other Health Insurance companies will accomplish by leveraging AI over human being workforce is to provide a lesser quality of services and product to whom should be their customer base.

Will AI save corporations millions if not billions of dollars, which will make shareholders money and also C-suite executives bonuses.

But at the cost of it membership having a lesser, albeit cheaper, quality of services.

Problem is that Humana and all Health Insurance corporations consider shareholders to be their customer, not their membership. That is the problem with allowing public stock traded corporations to administer government funded products, such as Medicare.

Question posted on AI service:

'How does anything get fixed if customer service is automated and doesn't know the answer'

AI answer would surprise the leadership!

'That's a real problem, and many people run into it.

In theory, automation is supposed to handle common issues quickly and route unusual cases to someone with the authority and knowledge to solve them. In practice, some organizations over-automate customer service because it's cheaper, creating a situation where:

The automated system only recognizes a limited set of problems.
The customer has an issue outside those categories.
The system keeps looping through scripted responses.
Reaching a human becomes difficult or impossible.

When things do get fixed, it's usually because one of these happens:

The customer finds a path to a human representative.
The issue gets escalated through a supervisor or specialist team.
Public pressure is applied (for example, through social media or formal complaints).
The company notices a pattern of failures and updates its systems.

There's also a broader organizational issue: customer service often isn't the group that actually fixes problems. They act as a bridge between customers and the departments that can make changes. If that bridge is entirely automated and poorly designed, information about new problems may never reach the people who could solve them.

A common criticism of excessive automation is that it works well for routine cases but fails precisely when customers need the most help—novel, complex, or unusual situations. Those are the situations that typically require human judgment.'

Sounds like AI is now smart enough to replace the leadership teams. And it won't slurp when drinking its coffee.

Hey AML personnel, why are we letting them step all over us? Threatening to fire us if we don’t meet production. Implementing AI that doesn’t work. At the end of the day (well probably year) we will be laid off for the AI we are ultimately training. Let’s stop doing so much. We can only do what we can do!!! Layoffs are inevitable, and you know that.

Layoffs have impacted specific industries like technology and media organizations. However, the broader job market continues to evolve with new demands. Demand remains strong in essential services, infrastructure development, and emerging technologies. Healthcare, artificial intelligence, skilled trades, and clean energy are key hiring sectors. This indicates a structural shift in the labor market, not a broad decline.

https://www.storyboard18.com/trending/jobs-hiring-now-where-opportunities-still-exist-despite-layoffs-across-industries-100518.htm

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/businessinsider_salesforce-layoffs-jobcuts-activity-7470150259428593664-KMqZ?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAA4Bi0oBs8Ddvldtd9fxma6xbBuG6OaOo4I

https://cryptobriefing.com/salesforce-layoffs-ai-stock-decline/

Verizon Replacing Its Customer Service Personnel With AI Has Turned Live Chat Queries Into Low-Quality ChatGPT-Like Replies, Enraging Customers.

Curious people’s thoughts or knowledge of Gunjans announcement from last week announcing the new AiDI org and the change of moving Ankit under CBB product. Seems like a big change that will shift how we work but can’t quite piece it all together, and if it’s viewed as a positive move. What say you, layoff people?

The bank needs to rapidly increase Ai investment to stay relevant.

The news comes in an especially delicate context for tech employment. In just five months of 2026, companies in the sector have accumulated nearly 140,000 layoffs worldwide.

https://www.escudodigital.com/en/technology/artificial-intelligence/google-announces-ffresh-layoffs-deepening-tech-industry-turmoil.html

In the Monday, June 8, 2026 the Wall Street Journal included a complete section listing the top 500 companies across all industry segments. Each company was ranked by AI readiness, Innovation, Talent, Resilience AI Readiness & Agility. The lower the ranking the better the company.

#1 Nvidia
#2 Alphabet
#3 Microsoft
#4 Meta Platforms

Telecommunications Services sector (only 3 companies in this sector)
#56 T-Mobile US (Agility rank 82, Innovation 283, Talent 136, AI 71)
#149 Verizon Communications (Agility rank 447, Innovation 250, Talent 155, AI 26)
#375 AT&T (Agility rank 465, Innovation 181, Talent 390, AI 33)

What do these numbers tell you? AT&T looks significantly less prepared for future success than its two major wireless competitors when all of the ranking factors are combined. The ranking appears to view AT&T as substantially weaker in attracting, retaining, developing, or positioning its workforce for future needs than its peers.

"AT&T has some innovative capabilities, but the organization is viewed as bureaucratic, slow to adapt, and less successful at developing and retaining the talent needed for future growth."

That combination can be especially damaging in a "future readiness" ranking because future performance increasingly depends on AI adoption, digital transformation, and workforce quality rather than simply owning a large network.

From an investor's perspective, the most concerning number in the table is probably not the innovation rank, it is the 390 talent rank, because that sees AT&T as having a weaker human-capital foundation than either Verizon or T-Mobile.

So any action before they announce?
Usually this month is supposed to be last month we see any action...

Over 100 tech companies cut more than 115,000 jobs in the first quarter of 2026. This trend is fueling a new wave of one-person startups. Qu Xiaoyin, founder of HeyBoss.AI, helps individuals build businesses using AI "executives". AI tools now handle tasks like coding, marketing, and customer support. This significantly lowers the cost and team size needed to launch a company.

Redwood City, California

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/international/ai-linked-layoffs-us-spark-new-wave-one-person-start-ups

A new Mercer study reveals 99% of surveyed CEOs anticipate AI-related job reductions. These cuts are expected within the next two years. Entry-level workers face the highest risk of displacement. Some companies like Meta and Amazon have already cited AI for recent layoffs. However, consumer AI usage remains low, and some firms find AI implementation costly.

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/99-ceos-planning-ai-layoffs-173000476.html

I got employee appreciation messages today from three leaders at different levels in my group. When I pasted them into Pangram.com, I learned they were ALL 100% AI generated!!! Really diminishes the impact, which was weak to begin with...

First big to do it wins.

Like sure, there's some mild benefit to some agentic augmentation to the workforce, but the scale of unrecoupable investment is about to ruin the world.