Listen to the audio version of this article (generated by artificial intelligence).
The cold calculations behind mass layoffs at Oracle… The Prisoner’s Dilemma, live and in person… Luc Lango describes the backlash that could end the rise of AI… Eric Fry with Where’s the Smart Money Going Now… Make Money Before 2028
The demobilization itself was not noteworthy…
This is what this employee – “Jill” – was doing in the months before she was fired.
oracle (ORCL) I asked her and others on her team to document their workflow.
Not long after that work was done — after Oracle had a detailed, step-by-step roadmap for training its AI how to do its job — the company let her go.
Here is from her recent interview with time:
It really makes you feel used and abused.
They ask you to do something, it gets recorded, and then they’ll replace you with whatever you just built.
Jill (a pseudonym she used for fear of retaliation) is one of about 30,000 workers Oracle has just laid off as the company moves aggressively toward artificial intelligence — both internally and in the booming business of building AI data centers.
Meanwhile, Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison briefly became the world’s richest man last fall after his company reported its best growth quarter in 15 years. This operating outperformance appears set to continue, thanks in part to cost savings resulting from the recent wave of layoffs.
This is the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which takes place in real time
normal digest Readers will learn exactly what just happened.
In our April 6 digestI delved into the prisoner’s dilemma created by AI, and put forward five versions of the same structural trap it has introduced throughout our economy.
Here’s what I wrote about the worker’s dilemma specifically:
Your boss has made it clear: Use AI. Increase your productivity. Be competitive.
So, you have to. You can use every tool available, automate repetitive work, and produce more output in less time. You become more valuable to your employer in the short term.
But here’s what else it does: map out your job in minute detail so that a future, smarter version of AI can replace you.
Every workflow you automate, every task you hand off to a form, every process you optimize – you’re clarifying exactly what your role consists of and how it can be done without you.
The worker who does not integrate AI loses his job first. The worker who embraces AI is the one who loses it last. But the worker using AI is accelerating the shift toward an automated workforce for all the other human workers who come after him.
This was written three weeks before Oracle’s “Train Your AI Replacement” story broke nationally.
but timeThe story published last Friday found that Oracle ran a deliberate data collection program — asking employees to document their workflow, knowledge, and organizational experiences — and then used the results to train systems that made those employees redundant.
here time:
(Another fired employee) was also directed to train AI systems in her work.
While she was afraid of the outcome of this training, she felt trapped in a dilemma.
“We were training AI to replace us, but AI is the only way we can outpace our workloads,” she says.
“You’re late on all your deadlines, and your hand is forced.”
This is exactly the prisoner’s dilemma I mentioned. A rational choice—to comply or to be left behind—leads to an outcome that no individual agent chose.
Oracle is not alone…
In early spring, just weeks after Mark Zuckerberg purchased a $170 million compound on Miami’s Billionaire Bunker Island, dead (dead) It announced 8,000 layoffs — while at the same time deploying software to log keystrokes and screen activity for its US employees to build AI agents designed to automate their work.
It’s hard to imagine that more layoffs at Meta aren’t on the horizon.
The backlash has begun…
The Oracle and Meta stories are not isolated. They are just the most visible data points in a pattern trending toward something politically significant.
About two weeks ago, Futurism He cataloged some recent examples of public anger directed against AI, calling it a “powder keg.”
Here are some stories excerpted from the article:
- A man allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail into the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
- An Indianapolis City Council member reported that someone fired dozens of bullets into his home, leaving a handwritten note that read “No Data Centers.”
- And in Missouri, voters fired half their city council over a recently approved $6 billion data center deal.
- Across rural America, small towns are resisting data centers that strain local power grids and water supplies.
This is no longer just a vitriolic Twitter rant.
It is a physical and political expression of the same dissatisfaction felt by former employees of big tech companies who have just trained replacements in artificial intelligence.
The AI industry is aware of this backlash and appears to be trying to allay some of the frustration
For example, OpenAI recently claimed in a paper on industrial policy that we could shift the tax burden from human labor to capital and move to a four-day workweek.
Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella said companies should invest in people as aggressively as they invest in technology, suggesting that the “efficiency dividend” should fund apprenticeships on a large scale.
Anthropic has called for a subsidy of $10,000 per apprentice to incentivize companies to retrain workers instead of putting out fires (funded by you, the taxpayers – no Anthropic).
Despite these attitudes, reports indicate that the public is increasingly skeptical of artificial intelligence.
Last fall, the Pew Research Center put out some numbers on this:
Americans remain more concerned (50%) than excited (10%) about the increasing use of AI in everyday life. Anxiety rose from 37% in 2021.
More Americans, overall, believe that artificial intelligence will make people worse than their best at basic human abilities, such as thinking creatively or forming meaningful relationships with others.
Two weeks ago, the title of an article from New Republic Summed it up best:
The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it
Our technology expert Luke Lango sees this building as a market-moving event
This is where the story becomes directly relevant to your portfolio…
Luke – Editor Innovation investor – He was tracking this violent reaction, and believes that it leads us towards one conclusion…
The ultimate end of the AI bull market.
To be clear, we’re not talking tomorrow, or even next year. But Locke believes it is coming, and on a specific, specific timetable.
Here he explains:
The force that could derail the AI boom is not technological failure, a collapse in demand, or even a recession.
It’s politics — specifically, the populist backlash against AI that’s already gaining momentum, fueled by the growing economic pain that American families are hitting right now.
It is on track to reach full power in the 2028 presidential election period.
Locke’s case rests on three compound pressure points: rising energy costs from data center construction that directly impact residential electricity bills… accelerating AI-driven layoffs across major employers… and widening wealth inequality.
He predicts that by 2027, anti-AI messages will become dominant political discourse.
From Luke:
Any politician who runs on the phrase “you should be in charge of this technology, not them” will already have majority support before he says another word.
And the convergence across the aisle makes this doubly dangerous for the AI industry: Republicans and Democrats are now equally concerned about AI in everyday life.
This is a bipartisan pressure cooker.
Locke expects legislation to limit AI to arrive in 2029, and we’re talking here about AI taxes, restrictions on building data centers, and labor displacement provisions.
But here’s what’s important for us to realize today…
The market will begin to price these risks even before invoices are submitted.
Remember, markets are always looking to the future, trying to price today what tomorrow will bring.
Here’s Luke with practical takeaways for your wallet:
This is the scenario that ends the AI boom. It is not a long-term risk.
Earn your money now.
The opportunity to create transformative wealth in this AI cycle is the next two to three years.
So, what is today’s portfolio action step?
Let’s start with what isn’t…
Buy anything that claims to be an AI stock.
Luke’s warning cuts both ways. The window to profit is open – but so is the door if you get into the wrong AI game (see the recent SaaSmageddon explosion).
As we’ve been covering recently SummariesOur global expert, Eric Fry, has carefully charted this highlight.
His point is that the AI story is changing in a way that will surprise millions of portfolios — and the mistakes investors make in the next 12 months could affect their portfolios for years to come.
Here he explains:
Cisco shares fell 80% after the dot-com bubble burst and did not surpass their peak in 2000 until 25 years later.
Investors who bought near the peak in 2000 and held would have seen their significant gains disappear, resulting in more than a decade of waiting just to break even.
Given the current AI market landscape, I believe today’s AI creators will face similar drawbacks.
Eric links the building of the Internet to the building of AI today, concluding that hyperscalers are pouring hundreds of billions into AI infrastructure, and borrowing heavily to do so. But this will turn AI into a cost center for them instead of a growth engine.
So, pay attention to margin pressure… followed by valuation pressure.
Eric urges investors to find safer opportunities elsewhere
Specifically companies application Artificial intelligence instead of building it.
These are companies that are integrating autonomous intelligence into their existing operations — improving margins, reducing headcount costs, expanding capabilities — without exorbitant valuations and without a huge bet on infrastructure that relies on uncertain returns.
He adds one specific trigger worth noting: On May 19, alphabet (Google) It is expected to announce a radical new, autonomous AI platform for 1.8 billion users.
Eric believes this announcement will force the market to finally think about how quickly the AI story is shifting — and which companies are actually positioned for what comes next.
He’s put his full thought into it, including the specific names he’s watching Free broadcast you can watch here.
If Luke’s two- to three-year term is the timeline, and the leadership rotation Eric describes is already underway, getting the names right now is crucial – and Streaming it is a good place to see if you have those right names.
Just a heads up – we’ll be wrapping up Eric’s presentation tomorrow, so this is the last call.
conclusion…
These are not separate stories, but rather the same story at different stages.
Luke’s advice is to make your money now. Eric’s advice is to make sure you’re doing it in the right places. for him Free streaming It is the place where these two ideas meet.
We will keep you updated.
I wish you a good evening,
Jeff Remsburg
(Disclaimer: I own MSFT and GOOGL)
