Good morning, Two Minute Warriors.
Just when I was ready to call the AI bubble, it popped; companies went back to their old ways: layoffs are on, and now AI is picking the list. Meanwhile, OpenAI is offering Washington 5% of itself to avoid getting "Fabled." If the algorithms are keeping score, maybe you should, too.
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⏱ The 10-Second Version
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The Big Thing
The algorithm picked the listWhat happened Twenty-six Meta employees have asked a US federal court to halt layoffs scheduled to begin July 22, alleging the company used AI-assisted monitoring and productivity scoring to select who gets cut, and that those metrics disadvantaged workers with disabilities, on medical leave, or caring for family. Meta denies AI made the decisions. Courts will sort out what happened; the precedent question is already live. Why you care This lands one week after hotel-software firm Mews cut about 15% of staff and named AI outright as the reason. Two stories, one shift: AI leverage is now measured on both sides of the table. The work gets scored, and increasingly, so does the worker. Whatever the ruling, assume productivity metrics touched by AI are coming to a review cycle near you.
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Speed Round
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OpenAI proposed handing Washington a 5% stake, roughly $42.6B, with Altman pitching an Alaska Permanent Fund-style vehicle for every major lab. A deal that size likely needs an act of Congress, which is one way to guarantee a long meeting.
Amazon is closing Mechanical Turk to new customers on July 30. The humans who labeled AI’s training data have been automated by the thing they trained. Somewhere, a philosophy department is updating its syllabus.
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The Two-Minute Win
The “minutes saved” ledger
Twelve Fridays from now you have a quarter of receipts: “AI-assisted work saved me ~14 hours this quarter, line items attached.” If an algorithm is going to score your output anyway, walk in holding a better dataset. This turns an unprovable claim into a 2-minute Friday ritual. |
Sponsored (by us, and today it’s barely an ad)
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Today’s edition is about who holds the measuring tape. Two Minutes AI drafts the first two minutes of your deep-work tasks, and helps you keep track of the tasks you are getting done. Your leverage, your ledger, your number. Early first access members lock in $1 to get first access to the limited Foundering member packages. |
Forward this to the coworker who just found out their standup updates were feeding a dashboard.
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