The Sad Wives of AI Phenomenon

This show is supported by Outshift, Cisco's incubation enngine Today's AI agents operate in silos, limiting their true potential. We've been focused on building bigger, smarter models, but scaling up is just one approach to reach super intelligence together, we need to do more We need to scale out And we actually have a blueprint from seventy thousand years ago Humans didn't just get smarter individually, the cognitive revolution transformed society because we began sharing knowledge, goals, and innovation aggents are now at that same inflection point They can connect, but they can't think together. That's why Outshift by Cisco is building the internet of cognition. transforming AI from isolated systems into orchestrated superintelligence By creating an open, interoperable infrastructure, Outshift by Cisco is enabling agents and humans to share intent, context, and reasoning Cognitive evolution for agents is here Explore the internet of cognition at outshift. com Oshift. com Gigo presents a thirty second podcast between your podcast Today's story is shared by one of our listeners. It's called Betrayed by Bill It was in that moment I caught who was staring back at me in betrayal, or more like what my insurance bill. And with trembling hand, I grabbed my phone and switched to Geio, saving about nine hundred dollars in the process, and never to be betrayed again Now that was bloody riveting. It feels good when the story ends with savings. It feels good to Gaiko Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Zoe Schiffer, Director of Business and industry. I'm Brian Bart, exeutive ditor. I'm Leia Figer, d Director of Politics and Science. And we're all in the same room. Oh my the first time. Same room. I got invited to the group chat. You did. Today on the show, we're discussing the complete meltdown over mass layoffs at MetA. We spoke to more than a dozen employees, and it turns out the job cuts are far from the only reason why MetA employees are really going through it. And of course, we wouldn't skip the Elon Musk verdict. He lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and Open Eye in really is full away as you can as dramatically as possible. I know Zoe, you're looking forward to talking about that. And I'm looking forward to talking about Google's annual developer confference IO. where it debuted some dramatic changes to search And you might have seen that Google's former CEO, Eric Schmidt recently got booed by graduating students after he praised AI in a commencement speech. We're going to get into why young adults might be using AI, but they have very complicated feelings about it. And later in the show, we're gonna to hear about why women married to AI bros have had enough. So first up, let's dive into what is happening at meteta This week, the company is letting go of roughly ten percent of its workforce, which is about eight thousand employees total. It's the latest round of job cuts, adding to the roughly twenty five thousand jobs that have been cut in the past few years as part of Mark Zuckerberg's kind of year of efficiency that started in twenty twenty three and now the latest AI forward workplace, which he is trying to develop and impose And while these latest cuts are not as big as some of the rounds of layoffs that have already happened, they're getting a ton of attention because Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO, has said that the reason they're happening in part, at least, in large part, is because the company is spending so much money on AI and data centers. So we record this on a Tuesday, but the reason we're able to talk so fully about this confidently about this is because Meta announced this a while ago. Oh ye They didn't announce it. The news le But then but then they acknowledged it weeks and weeks later. Yes, but still it's been a long time a long time that this is battened out in the open, which has resulted in, I think, a little bit of chaos time inside of Ma because you've got like a what a one in ten chance of not having your job anymore Yeah, it's, I mean, suffice to say, impacting morale in really horrific ways. but it's not the only thing. likeike we said, Mark Zuckerberg is also really encouraging employees to use AI. There've been all of these changes internally to that end. Some people really like it and are adopting it, someome people are really pushing back on it. But I think for a lot of employees who joined Meta during this era of like Endless perks, lots of job security, kindind of like a iller atmosphere compared to some of the other startups. best. They have that going.ind it wasn't full Google, but I feel like it was it vibe. I think to me, someone so on the outside of this in every single way I know about these layoffs because they've been A, so chaotic, but be in some ways like needlessly so. I'm not not to say that like other tech companies aren't firing scores of workers all the time. That feels like something we discuss on this podcast frequently, but this is happening with such a large runway and in a way that's making employees feel so terrible about themselves. Well, because it's not just the loffs, right? It's also even if you stay there, if you're not culled from the herd You are going to have to deal with this world in which You've got spyware on your laptop. Cing AI to ro probablyably take your job at some point, right? I mean, explain that a little bit. But they announced Meta announced and this was more public that they were going to put software on employee laptops that would monitor like their keystrokes and how they move their cursors and basically how they do their job as meta engineers and use that as training data for their own internal models to try to make their AI models better because they're running out of other sources. Could you opt out of that brand? You could not absolutely So that's a great question. I'm so glad you asked. You could like you didn't know the answer to that one. In fact, when an employee ased in a very public forum within Ma Hey, could we not do this? Zoe, the response was Oh, absolutely, you're going to do this.. And shame on you for asking. It hges. And some of the employees who are staying, actually thousands of the employees who are staying are getting drafted into the AI ranks. We published a piece today that was kind of about The morale inside the company, but also how there's been this mad dash to use up perks and stipends that employees have. But one of the things that said at the end was that remaining employees are being asked to like join AI teams. So whatever your job was previously, they're calling it internally like getting drafted. You're getting drafted into the AI ranks. Now your job is going to look quite different. That's like seven thousand people. I've actually heard people use the word raptured Isn't that? And I wish we had that in the c. I'm so sorry, but like raptured into other teams all of a sudden one day they've just disappeared. after this, after this layoff Has Zuckerbererg and Co proposed like a sort of coherent leadership plan or proposal? L what happens after this This is the confusing thing according to employees I have talked to because the tough thing about what's happening right now is that Meta is actually experiencing record or near record profits and revenue growth. like the company is doing exceptionally well. But the company is not doing exceptionally well because of artificial intelligence. I talk to employees who are on Instagram and they say, lookook, our main competitor is TikTok. TikTok iss not an AI company. So in fact, you're trying to index on this thing. that's really not at all why we're printing money and now you're laying a bunch of us off because of that thing. when actually we're doing our jobs quite well because again, the company's printing money Yeah. and there seems to be sort of a little bit, I think in our reporting has shown a little bit of like mission drift within the company, right? I think And you've seen that not just with AI. You've seen that, I think for a long time when you see this eighty billion dollars bet or whatever it was on the metaverse and then saying, oh, never mind, here's this new shiny thing. AI is not another metaverse. AI, I think has a better business case behind it At the same time, to your point, it's not right now. It's not making. And I I talked to two people who were like personally recruited by Mark Zuckerberg to join the kind of very fancy AI effort. and both of them said Look, the vision was AI generated slop for Instagram and the other meta properties. Like it just wasn't un inspired. Meanwhile, you have open eye and anthropic, you know, not to say they've done it, but their mission is we're gonna completely change the economy and cure cancer. And it'ed to make your grandmothers feed. destructive something you can ever say just Not inspired. N even Meta has acknowledged that ten percent ish of its ad revenue comes from scams. They're like, yes, we know there are scams. We know we make a lot of money off of them. And you know, there's a presume like we're on it, but ye not enough, probably And we're seeing layoffs or announcements of layoffs in a lot of places, right? Like Microsoft, Coinbase Cisco announced it was laying off like four thousand employees. Is this the spring of layoffs? What are we looking at here? Yeah, I think it's the same conversation, I think that is evolving a little bit where A lot of times it's cover for having over hired, but increasingly, I think so you've made this point, it actually is getting to be the point where AI can replace some engineers, or not entirely, but at least you can have like a couple of engineers overseing agentic AI is as or more effective than fifty engineers. I have talked to a ton of people about this. and my opinion, which I'm open to evolving over time, is that if you have really talented, high level engineers, they can manage agents that will do the work of lower level engineers. And so what you're losing out on is like the entry level jobs. And we're seeing that in studies. job loss and AI, job replacement. what's happening is that entry level jobs are being replaced by artificial intelligence. I feel like you have evolved on this in some ways. L over the time that we've been talking about this, you really went from like, no, people aren't losing their jobs yet. We're now in like This is starting to happen, as Brian said. What's the next stage of this? justust like tons more layoffs? Is this going to happen in a bigger, faster way? Or are we just going to see hiring just stagnant across the board You know, it's interesting. Brian brought up Google IO, which I am reluctant to talk about. spe to me, goo ahead. Disis has talked to Will Knight, one of our reporters today. and he said, I don't think that we should be having layoffs. I think that AI should create more productivity and we should be doing more. And so I think you're going see companies that are like Yeah, we can do even more than we could previously. We're just gonna to do more things, build more things, ship more product. But then I think you are gonna see a lot of companies that say, we can build and run Shopify with a handful of engineers, not the team of hundreds that we had previously. That's just an example. Speaking of ways in which AI companies grow and change Elon Musk officially lost his lawsuit to Sam Alman in open AI It was a special moment. It was a special moment to get people caught up a little bit who have not been tracking this as obsessively as I know Zoe has. and as Leah has too, Elon Musk had sued over claims that Op Eye illegally abandoned its nonprofit mission and turned into this for profit giant. It took a jury slightly less than two hours to say, no, go away.. not. But it was interesting too, the reason that they said that they didn't even bother dealing with the merits The statute of limitations had expired on this basically. and they said, you cannot, it's too late to bring this. If you had wanted to do this, you should have done this a while ago And even beyond the statute of limitations Maybe you have more credibility if you're doing this before you are building your own giant competitor to open eye and have such a clear monetary interest beyond whatever like commentation you get from the trial When the decision was released on Monday, Judge Ivon Gonalez Rogers said that in her eyes, the trial had been worthwhile to bring clarity to the dispute there was, quote a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's findings, which is why I was prepared to accept the jury's findings and dismiss on the spot.. Which just to clarify, the jury decision was only one step. We needed the judge to also make their own determination, which happened almost immediately. I was talking to someone about this yesterday, and I think that Elon Musk was trying to make the case that the clock should only have started when he realized there was a breach of the trust, basically when he realized that Open Ee was no longer a nonprofit. He was allowed to like make that case in court. I do think a lot of people were confused on this point because they were like, a statute of limitations, things seems like something he could have been told before. But I think you are allowed to argue the point. But this is why the entire trial, we were like He has to make a very compelling argument that He didn't find out that openpAI was starting this for profit until twenty twenty three. And that's just the evidence did not back it up. No, I also should say to no one' surprise, Elon Musk is going to appeal or says he's going to appeal. He does have infinite mion October one word, onene word leaving that courtroom. Elon Musk's lawyer. and he just said, appeal. He also unsurprisingly posted about it on X, saying of the judge she just handed out a free license to loot charities if you can keep the looting quiet for a few years. I like that he called her an activist judge. I think that that has taken on like a new realm of popularity in the Trump era of like determining that these judges and this like very specific branch of the government is in fact acting against one's best interest. And again, there were emails where Elon Musk was very aware that they were starting a for profit arm of the company that they needed to do that to raise money. He even tried to start an AI lab within Tesla that he wanted to recruit Sam Altman to join and then he wanted Tesla, a for profit company famously to buy openp AI, like acquire it. I was editing the pre writes and Ph Dveay, One of our great reporters had written three versions and the first version I edited was like Elon Musk wins. And I was just like, there's no way this version has ever seen a light of right. What does this mean going forward for Open AI You know, it's interesting. I actually think it gives them a lot of momentum and now they're going to like go full speed ahead. I do think the image of Oen Eye and Sam Altman in particular has been a bit tarnished throughout this trial. It came on the heels of like a series of reporting about his allegedly duplicitous behavior and I don't think He looks necessarily better coming out of the track. But I think the company, you, is really bullish on its IPO, which could come as soon as this year, like its full steam ahead on enterterprise code, which is kind of the phrase of Silicon Valley right now. And so I think people are feeling really, really good over there. I do think to your point about This was also a trial in the court of public opinion, right? A lot of this was trying to embarrass the opponent, but it was just a mud fight where everybody got dirty, right Nobody came out of this looking great. Nobody came out of this. I don't think anyone changed anybody's minds about, oh, no, you should be entrusted with the future of this powerful technology. The maker of butt pillows for courtrooms. They are the real w rampant Butt pillow usage in the courtroom and different brands of butt pillow too. Different brands of butt pillow. Yeah, fancy ones, cheaper ones. Everyone's using a fancy butt cushion on those rock hard seats Yeah, I mean, I think Elon Musk is a very litigious figure. I think he is willing to roll the dice and try for a lawsuit on the off chance that it could be successful. But I also think he knew that And he said this in text messages that were revealed as part of the trial when there was settlement conversations before it started. And he said, you, being Sam Altman and Greg Rockman, are going to be the most hated men in America by the end of this. And I think that was partially his intent, at least we think I'm about to be the most hated man on this podcast. It' so ready. Couldn't be more ready. Because and I don't know why this was contentious. I'm genuinely baffled So again, we're recording this on Tuesday. Google had its IO conference, It's its big developer conference every year. And when we started playing with this podcast, I said, Hey, we should probably talk about Google IO and you both Oh my God, yes. we lovely disagreed. Acted like I had a head grown out of my neck, a second head grurn out of my neck. like I was suggesting the most insane thing in the world. Before we talk about Google Io Why Why? I have my own reasons. I'm curious what Zoe's are. Yeah, it's boring. Okay. Okay, good. Yes, we moving on. feel funky sometimes when we're being spoonfed news by these tech companies or by the US. government or by whatever entity we're reporting on, which isn't to say that like reporting on these very important changes to, I don't know, the world's largest and most impactful and powerful search engine isn't entirely valuable, but is it something that I want to speak about in this sacred space of theure I guess what I would say is as for anything, we don't transcribe what they say at these events. We put them in proper context and do the reporting to back it up. We have a great team of gear reporters without a doubt Its phenomenal work and did phenomenal work today. Without a doubt. andull love and support of them appreciate where you come from, but you're both Wong. And who's ouross. so we're gonna say.'s here's why Google search is changing more than it ever has. Okay They are Think of search now instead of as a search box. it's been drifting this way. Like it's no longer ten links, but it's not even like even one link now. Google seearch is now like basically a chat butt. Like it's a conversational query. like it'll expand When you put in like what you know, hey, what do you think, Google? shouldhould I do this? whatever? And it'll not just show you sort of text necessarily. it'll also show you an interactive graphic that it just cooked up. It'll show you different like it'll it'll Instead of saying I want to go to Google Images for this, it'll be like, hereere's your images. And also, hear this. That's phase one. phase two is going to be a Gentic search ious that means you go to Google and you say, Hey, Let me know The example they gave was something to the effect of Let me know when my favorite celebrities are dropping new shoe collabs And that's it, and you're done Google Aents will then AI agents will then monitor the web for you. They will do the searching for you and they will send you a notification through your Google app that says, hey this thing just dropped that you're looking for The idea is not only that you're not going to visit websites anymore because it's all going to be within Google You're not going to search anymore. You're not going to use the internet anymore because agents are going to do it for you. Google is going to mediate every interaction you have with the web It's a really, really significant change. And I think it's one that is definitely worth talking about What does it mean for us? What does it mean for wire d? Great. Not good. But I think like we and other publishers have sort of been assuming that we can't rely on Google For a while now, that's why a direct relationship with our audience is so important and we sort of invest in different things along those lines. A really important moment to say, please subscribe to wired dot com dot Please go to wireot com. please you can markark Wired as a preferred source in Google, all those things. But I think everybody's sort of embracing for this moment. It's just it feels more like it's here than it has a while because there's sort of this like general like AI overviews, but no now AI reviews the whole thing. Yeah. And again, like like you said, we've known that Google was headed in this direction. But I do think it's a really interesting moment for the company because search is such a big part of its business model and ads on search are such a big part of its business model. And so it feels a little bit like it's cannibalizing itself while at the same time preparing for a new future. Like I'm curious, I mean, I assume they'll be stuffing ads in this thing and that will be how they make money, But like you would imagine that they're also going to take an interim hit I mean, the branding of it aside of like what that's going to look like, what your search experience is going forward. I have to assume there's going to be at least like some teething issues there. Yeah, I'm sure. I think that in the same way that a lot of people don't love AI overviews and have been begging for a way to turn it off and haven't really had an easy way to do it, I think that's going to be the same thing. But there's not much you can do about it. Google's very clearly committed to this. It's clearly how they want the web to work. What I worry about even more than that like Google's bottom line is something, again, it's the sort of same themes but accelerated. The idea that once you sort of stop going to websites and once you stop onnce it's only agents, only bots are visiting websites, you're choking off the supply of information, right? You are smaller publishers. Well you're going to run out at some point. Exactly. So like the web itself kind of shriveled up into a Google shaped whole. Yeah, I know. I feel like Sam Altman has been asked about this recently, like what happens to publishers in this world and the answer is like micropayments and I'm like, lookook, our industry is not going to be held up by like ten cents or even you know, point I don't know what Every years someone decides microayments are going to save journalism. Every time I hear that, I see red. L when I talk to people in the industry they'll say like, you know, that's the future. and also I loved that this you know, six thousand word story you did on like the sand that makes the iPhone or whatever. And I'm like, guess how much that story cost to report? Like just the payment to the freelancer, like it's thousands. I'm going to pull this back from implications for us and focus again on the broader implications because there's one other part there were a lot of announcements today. Search to me was the biggest one I'll say too, like Google has announced big changes before and then like not actually gotten there and not gottenhere in the way that they initially proposed. So there's a little bit of an asteroisk next to a lot of this. I think it's probably mostly coming though. But they also announced something called Geminispark, which I just wanted to talk about very briefly. Geminispark is Google's answer to openpencla. We remember openenlaw. We had. Yeah, defefinitely. Delightful. Openclaw, a little agent that can sort of just like run autonomously, has access to all your stuff. Geminis Park is Google's answer to openpenclaw. It's the same sort of autonomous assistant that can do other the things But because it's Google It has access to everything that you do on Google or any app that you tyie in. So you can see how that becomes really powerful and a real sort of You know, OpenClaw was already kind of a privacy question mark. This even more so. It's like you have it, give it access to your Gmail, give it access to your calendar, give it access to everything that you touch online, all of your entire search history and just say, hey, go do this. remind me of this, do that. I couldn't be less interested in a product. We know. But here's the thing. I agree for me, but it's the kind of thing where this is going to be presented eventually to billions of people, right? That theca the scale is the thing. Yeah who don't necessarily know or understand or appreciate, not talking down to anybody, but like this is the way in which this thing will have access to your stuff. can go wrong potentially. I would say that openpenClaw was kind of a one man project. like the founder is now part of openpen AI, but this was kind of a bootleg kind of experiment. I would imagine that when Google does it, they're implementing safety cards. I'm not saying it's not. I'm sure this is up and down the line. But I would expect that if they're rolling it out to millions or billions of people that we were going to see Additional checks and balances.. here's to hoping Speaking of the major AI players, I think that we all know that the reputation of AI in the public eye has taken a little bit of a nosedive, which I personally love. I am loving the backlash. I L is personally behind it..ark money?.very single little story and comment warms my AI Grinch heart And we're continuing to see reports of people really not happy about data centers being built near their homes to power all of this AI, raising their electricity bill while at it. And then there's the effect of AI in an increasingly tough workplace. We were just talking about the metal layoffs et ceter. So it's not probably a huge surprise to everyone here that last week when former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt took to the podium to speak to the graduating class at the University of Arizona. He brought up AI And things didn't go particularly well It will touch every profession. Every classroom, every hospital every laboratory, every person and every relationship you have I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you There is a fear There is a fear in your generation yet that the future has already been written that the machines are coming And I understand that fear Schmidt's not even the only speaker who has received this kind of response from graduating students, the very people who are supposedly wholeheartedly embracing this technology. Re estate executive Gloria Cawfield was also booed after she referred to AI as the next Industrial Revolution during a commencement address at the University of Central Florida The rise of artificial intelligence is the next Iustrial Revolution. Oh Wh I struck a cord I am just beam you guys. How can sorry, I suffer from secondhand embarrassment and can't handle it. These are high profile wealthy executives who are entirely insulated them, their families, their children, their grandchildren from the effects of AI Now and future on the workplace. theseese people are not concerned about AI taking their jobs. These people are not graduating into a market where everyone's going, I don't need an assistant. Have you heard of Oenclaw Of course everyone's flipping out at them. There is an entire category of our population that doesn't know how they're going to get work experience to all of a sudden not be considered irrelevant by our tech overlords. Of course they're booing. Here's the thing. There's an argument, donon't boom me that they're not wrong that this could be the next industrial revolution. But it's sort of like saying, so get ready to head into those factories, right? Like it's it's the wrong message to the wrong set of things Theong tone. I would interesting about this to me is that we know college students are using AI. But like you said, they're pissed because they are graduating into a job market where people aren't hiring. And there's a couple of reasons for that. Like I don't think it's just that AI is already taking adant of jobs. It's happening on some level, but not super, super widespread quite yet It's also that people aren't leaving jobs because they're scared. And so there's just not a lot of movement in're not in an elastic market and you're looking at the Iran war and you're looking at rising gas prices. peopleeople aren't changing things up during an election year historically. There's so many reasons for that. So these people are graduating into a market that I do not envy them for so many reasons. To me, I'm a little bit like I guess there's two parts to this where I'm very much confused as to why both Schmiditt and Cafffield thought that this was like the appropriate message, but also even asZoe said, the appropriate tch. Like I'm kind of wondering if it's like in this beautiful world of changing technologies, you can go out and create changing technologies. The world is your oyster. You telling me a billionaire wasn't self aware about the people killed me Madis. There's actual statistics, I'll say or behind just how bad Gen Z feels about AI? A recent study from Gallup showed the percentage of respondents ages fourteen to twenty nine who said they felt hopeful about AI declined Down from twenty seven percent last year to eighteen percent. Wow That's very, very, very few people Postings for entry level jobs in the US overall have declined about thirty five percent since january twenty twenty three. So it's real. I mean, there's an impact on the market I mean, I actually think that this is going to be an issue in the next election, which is so interesting, because I definitely wouldn't have said that a few months ago. But I think I mean, and this is you, Maxwell Zaff, one of our great AI reporters, has reported about Greg Rockman's donations to Trump and other MAGA leaders He's talked to Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, who said that he feels like it's really important to give money to politicians who are bullish on AI. And I think the subtext there is that Oen AI and other companies are actually concerned about the lack of popularity for what they're building. Quick thing on Greg Brockman. I think we should mention too, he put he's literally putting his money wors about this. He donated twenty five million dollars to Maget Inc, which is the big Super back There's real money in here in the pro database side. There's less on the anti database side as these things tend to go. But it is like across party lines. The opposition is really interesting. You've got Democrats, you've got Republicans pushing back in a way that is going to make for some weird coalitions. It's gonna be really interesting because I went down to Aelen, Texas with OpenAI a few months ago and I was really struck. Ted Cruz was there, the like mayor of the town was there. L it seemed like there was so much political support for this initiative. and I was immediately thinking like I think that this is going to turn at a certain point. L rightight now, you're like, look, it's going to create all these jobs. It's going to be so great. We're going into these areas that didn't have a lot of economic opportunity and we're creating it. But the thing about data centers is not only do they spike the water bills of the people who live close by, energy bill, all of that, but even if they create a certain amount of jobs at the beginning, and many of those jobs being brought in from other states, like you don't need that many people to run a data center once it's up. So lots of fun happening at the moment with AI World. Coming up after the break, we're gonna to dive into a fascinating story about why women in marriages to men obsessed with AI have just about had enough There's a reason millions of people start their day with Morning Brew Daily. Each morning, we break down the biggest news in business from the latest tech headlines to why Nobody can afford a House Right. All in a format that fits seamlessly into your day. You'll leave each episode of Morning Brew Daily smarter and ready to take on the world around you. I'm Toby Howell, and I'm Neil Freman, and we're ready to show you business news It doesn't have to be boring. So join us on Morning Brew Daily, available wherever you get your podcast Beyond the ever increasing spending on AI, the latest releases, the suspected IPOs, yadda, yadda, there is also a more personal and strange side effect to the AI boom right now. what it is doing to family dynamics particularly what it's doing to the wives of men who work at AI or would like to be working in AI spepecifically the fact that these women are completely sick and tired of the whole damn thing Wired contributor, Alessandra Ram reported on how AI has taken over some women's home lives, and she's joining us now to talk about that piece. Hi, everyone, I'm excited to chat with you. Hello. Hey, so happy you're here. I absolutely loved this piece. I laughed out loud multiple times You refer to women who are married to AI pilled men as the quote sad wives of AI. and you include yourself in that group. What do you all have in common? What do you share? And when did you first realize that this was not just something you were experiencing in your personal life, but it was actually a pattern The sadwives of AI are a sort of symptom of the AI tech boom, especially here in the Bay Area And I noticed this because it was happening in my own life, in my own house. So I recently had a baby, so I've been home a lot more and my husband has taken on a very intense job where he's building AI for his company. You know, unfortunately, he married a journalist. so I'm just noticing and studying things and thinking about, you know, if there's anything here to write about because it started to really affect the dynamics of the household. You know, he was totally consumed byy building this AI tool at this company where the demands just seemed out of control. You know, he's up all hours of the night. I'm up all hours of the night with the baby. So it was just like there was this tension in the house and he was increasingly obsessed. And I was just sort of like pulling back less interested in what he was doing because I have to focus on everything else, right Um So I started noticing that this was also happening to friends of mine. You know, I live here in the Bay Area. A lot of people work in tech. and in my friend group, most of those people are actually the male partners, if we're talking about, you know erosexual relationships, which I did for the purposes of this piece And someome of those men work in AI or are trying to work in AI. And they sort of described the same thing that I was experiencing each day and night, just like this sort of obsession. you know, even just like this passion they would say about ode and every iteration of plaogg code, which as we know is every week, just the excitement and sort of like my friends are like dying inside a little bit, right? E Every week was there Super Bowl. Yeah. I loved how you framed it in the article of like, we both have a baby to take care of. Mine is our literal human child and his is an AI tool. We're both passionate about it. Let me tell you I noticed because it was happening to myself, but also friends and then friends of friends. culminating in really When I spoke to my therapist, she had to sort of interrupt me during the session because she was like, o What does your partner do again And, you know, I was like, well, you know he's an AI. he's building an AI tool for his company. And she was like This is This is a phenomenon, actually, she used the word phenomenon that she's based here in the Bay Area. so a lot of her clients, you know, she has kind of a very specific clientele where it's a postpartum therapist. So she works with women that are pregnant or are postpartum. And of course, they're going through kind of this emotional roller coaster themselves, but they the majority of them are partnered with people in tech and particularly that work in AI or adjacent to AI is how she explained it to me. And she's just said it's causing them to be emotionally, mentally, unavailable because they're totally consumed. by what they're doing at work One thing you mentioned Alessander in this story that I thought was alsoso had't I hadn't thought through all the way, but like it's not just people who are sort of being obsessed with this AI world and getting caught up in it. It's also people who've kind of washed out or not been able to get in and who are disappointed and feel like Theyve failed in some way. So there's emotional labor that goes with that along with these sort of actual literal labor that goes along with you know, when they're working long hours, how endemic does that feel at this point? That's sort of just, you know, the many ways that people have to deal with this. Right, That's a good point. And I think, you know, some people, like I've seen some comments that this is maybe like told from a more privileged perspective. But really like this is actually if you're living here in the Bay Area, like I think I can see that this is affecting peopleeople across kind of the economic spectrum, people and even like students, right that are graduating or trying to get a job. And it's a very terrible job market. It's very volatile. So is AI, actually AI industry is very volatile. So people are losing their jobs or they're trying to get these jobs, and it's very competitive because there're supposed to be high salaries and it's supposed to be sort of the unlock to economic success. So that's causing a lot of stress on people, on marriages on families when one person, say, for example, loses their job or is desperately trying to get a job in AI because they think that that's, you know going to them financially or you know, make them rich, to be honest, that's also another component here. Right That was the two part thing that I was thinking about when I was reading it, which is on one level, there are people who are just so excited about the technological innovations and just really nerd out on the releases, like you said. like there's a new model. It's so cool. We can do all these things. You feel like you're using agents and suddenly you have superpowers. But then there's also this factor. and I also live in the Bay Area, so I see this a lot where like a not small number of people have made generational wealth in the last six years. And I think the idea that like, you know, someone who just happened to get in early to one of the labs, obviously maybe very smart, whatever, but like is now a multi multimillionaire and like that could be me, I think that idea feels pretty pervasive, particularly if you're like an engineer of any sort. Yeah, it's FOMo. Yeah, exactly. And I think kind of to take this into like a more historical lens a little bit You spoke with an expert that told you that this is all really a continuation of how tech booms have happened in the past, right? Whether it's the Industrial Revolution or the dot com boom And mainstream figures around these movements have really often been white men, whether that's Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Tim Cook And so they're the ones that are reaping most of the benefits here How would you say that the AI boom compares? What did you find in your reporting Well, it's really interesting because you know, when I spoke with the professor at Rutgers, who really took me through sort of these iterations of the tech boom, which kind of, you know, a lot of this stuff happened in California, right? The gold rush, the dot com and now here we are with the AI boom. This feels bigger is what she said and it's sort of when I spoke with multiple people, that's kind of where everyone landed is that this actually just feels even more seismic and maybe It could also be like the messaging that everybody is receiving, probably from these AI companies that have these sort of enormous valuations that we all have to adopt this technology or we're all going to just know completely combust So What was interesting here is that then so for example, you're in a family unit. There's one person this happened in the gold rush to they go off west and that's usually the man, right to sort of find his fortune leaving the family behind And that's kind of what we're seeing here with this new iteration of a boom, right? is that someone else is leaving the household, whether Maybe they're still working remotely at home so they're in the household, but they're ysically mentally, they're checked out, right? They are so they're focused, they're Hunnel visioned on this sort of quest to make it here have to ask, has anything changed in your own relationship since you embarked upon this reporting? And I guess more broadly, what would you like for AI obsessed Husbands were bros to take away from it You know, I think it's to be just present in the moment. I think we're like looking really far into the future. People are obviously getting excited. peoplee are getting people are afraid because again, this messaging that we have to adopt or die. But I think like