The First Rungs Are Breaking

On this Labor Day, I wanted to share a seminal piece of research out of Stanford on the impact of AI on the workforce. Their new analysis of ADP payroll data shows early-career workers (22–25) in AI-exposed jobs like software development and customer support have dropped ~13% in employment since late 2022.

Older workers? Holding steady or growing.

The split is clear:

• Where AI automates, entry-level roles vanish.

• Where AI augments, jobs stay intact—or grow.

👉 Read the study

⚡ Quick Hits

• ☁️ Meta bets $10B on Google Cloud to bulk up its AI training power. A long game play on scale. (The Times)

• 🧑‍💻 Google & Microsoft to employees: use AI or get left behind. Not optional anymore. (TOI)

• 📚 Anthropic quietly settled a big copyright suit over Claude’s training data. A new wrinkle in the fair use fight. (Reuters)

• 🧒 44 state AGs warn AI firms including Apple, Meta, and Anthropic: if your systems harm kids, expect to answer for it. (Economic Times)

🛠 Tool / Workflow of the Week

Claude’s “Task Iteration” → Don’t just delegate. Iterate. Treat the model like a junior partner: brainstorm, refine, edit. Data shows augmentation = job growth.

🪨 The Pebble

This last week was a lot. Big conversations. Many balls in the air. A holiday pause in the middle of it all. Now we head into a “short” work week, and I wish you meet each day with intention.

💡 How do we create new rungs on the career ladder when AI is quietly removing the old ones?

- Alejandro Jaegerman

Last week’s poll:
How Do You Prefer to Work with AI?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🗣️ Voice — I talk, it transcribes/refines
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🎙️ Hybrid — Voice to capture, typing to edit
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🧠 Other — I have my own system
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ⌨️ Typing — I like clean, deliberate prompts