AI isn’t killing jobs—copycat layoffs are

Blaming AI for mass layoffs has become common, as companies like Oracle, Meta and Amazon point to increased efficiencies and the need for new investments as reasons for slashing headcount. Yet, that narrative is facing increasing pushback. Industry analyst Josh Bersin, for instance, says companies are miscalculating by focusing on cost reduction over performance improvement, while Wharton’s Peter Cappelli recently wrote for HR Executive that most companies are choosing layoffs to fund data centers or manage financial troubles.

Nobel Prize-winning economic Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google’s DeepMind, an Alphabet subsidiary, has also chimed in. Cutting humans out of the workforce to make way for AI—instead of finding new opportunities for their talent—shows a “lack of imagination,” he recently said. READ MORE

Will Tesla Be Acquired by SpaceX?

Now that SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) has successfully gone public, there is speculation that the company could acquire fellow Elon Musk-back company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA). Prediction market Kalshi already places the odds of it happening before May 1, 2027, at 54%, while SpaceX President Gwynn Shotwell has also floated the idea, saying it "might make Elon's life a little easier."

The two companies already share resources and personnel and buy products from each other. This includes SpaceX buying nearly $700 million in Tesla Megapack energy storage systems in 2024 and 2025 and $131 million in Cybertrucks. They also have closely aligned boards, and Musk holds 85% of SpaceX's voting power. Musk is also set to develop a giant chip manufacturing facility in conjunction with Intel to produce AI chips for both Tesla and SpaceX. READ MORE

What has SpaceX become?

SpaceX had its initial public offering last week. Now Elon Musk is a trillionaire on paper. But what is SpaceX? On one level, of course, SpaceX is a company that builds rockets and spacecraft and launches them into space. (Occasionally the rockets explode.) It is also the company that birthed Starlink, a satellite-internet business that generated more than $11 billion in revenue last year. READ MORE

X tells 'neglected' Meta employees that it is hiring and will 'exceed any snack budget offer'

Two tech titans are now competing on another battlefield: Employee snacks.

Earlier this month, Meta CTO Andrew "Boz" Bosworth said the company would be taking steps to improve employee morale after successive waves of layoffs and AI strategy pivots. One of those steps, he said in a memo, would be improving the snacks and drinks in its office kitchens. READ MORE

Why Uber is cutting nearly 1/4 of its HR team

Uber is eliminating 23% of the jobs in its People and Places division, which covers human resources, recruitment, workplace facilities and culture. The restructuring is designed to create a “more connected, modern, operationally excellent organization,” according to Jill Hazelbaker, who was promoted to president and chief corporate affairs officer of the ride-sharing service last month.

“As we’ve grown, parts of the organization have become too complex and fragmented, with overlapping responsibilities, unclear ownership and teams operating too far from the businesses and partners they support,” she wrote in a memo to the affected employees. READ MORE

Workers turn to social media for AI training as employers lag

Most U.S. workers using AI on the job are not getting their training from their employer, according to new research. Instead, they are learning from social media, news articles and conversations with friends.

Nexthink data, drawn from 4.9 million sessions per day across 3.4 million employees, found GenAI users average 10 interactions a day and nearly four hours a week using these tools, and that they save roughly the same amount of time in return. READ MORE

The Next Civilization Will Not Be Built on Ownership.

𝗜𝘁 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗕𝗲 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽. The most dangerous illusion of our economy is that ownership equals responsibility. It does not. We have built a civilization where the highest reward often goes to those who control the most, not to those who preserve the most. We call land an asset. We call knowledge intellectual property. We call infrastructure a revenue stream. We call nature a resource. We call attention inventory.

Then we act surprised when the world becomes exhausted, fragmented, polluted, over-monetized, and psychologically unstable. This is not just a failure of economics. It is a failure of civilizational design. A society based on ownership trains people to ask one primitive question: “What can I claim?” A more advanced civilization must ask a different question: “What am I qualified to care for?” READ MORE

Nvidia's new RTX Spark 'superchip' is designed to put AI power into laptops and desktops

Nvidia unveiled its long-rumored RTX Spark “superchip” during its Computex event in Taipei on Monday. Packing up to 128GB of memory, the chip is designed to allow power users to incorporate AI into their workflows. It aims to replace the traditional way users interact with their computers using a mouse and keyboard by instead allowing them to speak directly with an AI agent right on their local machine, instead of in the cloud.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the chip changes the personal computer from “tool to teammate.” “The PC is being reinvented,” said Huang. He said the Spark brings everything NVIDIA has built “into a single superchip. Local agents. Frontier models. Creative workflows. RTX games. All on a laptop. This is the new PC. The personal AI computer.” READ MORE

CEOs are losing confidence

The CEOs of the world's biggest companies lost confidence in the economy this month as the Iran war dragged on, a new survey finds.

Why it matters: Business leaders who lack confidence tend to pull back on hiring and investment, weighing further on the economy.

Zoom in: CEO confidence fell 12 points in the second quarter of the year to 47, per the survey from The Conference Board, a nonpartisan think tank, and The Business Council, an association of CEOs. READ MORE

Lockheed Martin CEO unveils AI-powered warfare tech built to stop drone swarms

A top U.S. defense contractor pulled back the curtain on next-generation AI-powered systems designed to hunt down and destroy swarms of enemy drones as the U.S. rapidly expands its next-generation warfighting capabilities.

"We are inserting technology of all types into our systems," Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet told FOX Business on Thursday, detailing the company's AI-powered counter-drone system, Sanctum.

Taiclet said the system uses artificial intelligence to detect incoming drones, determine whether they pose a threat and predict where they are headed before they can be intercepted or disabled. READ MORE

AI sets up white-collar versus blue-collar jobs duel

In the new world of generative artificial intelligence, jobs have become a critical topic. A debate is being held on whether a large number of white-collar employees will find themselves out of work or if the seemingly unquenchable need for new data centers could keep phalanxes of people in skilled trades busy.

The truth is partly there, but the details are messy, according to various experts who spoke with GlobeSt.com. READ MORE

Why do middle managers stop advancing?

Middle management is one of the most important transition points in the leadership pipeline, where organizations turn capable employees into future senior leaders. These internal pipelines deliver significant value, because leaders developed inside the business can apply existing organizational knowledge and relationships immediately, without the cost and time often required to bring external hires up to speed. Yet when senior leadership roles open, many organizations find they have too few internal candidates ready to step into them. READ MORE

Trump Admin Takes Equity Stake in IBM

After taking equity stakes in chipmakers and rare-earth element miners, the Trump administration has a new industry on its radar: quantum computing.

On Thursday, the Department of Commerce announced that it was investing more than $2 billion in nine quantum computing companies. In turn, it’ll receive “a minority, non-controlling equity stake” in each. READ MORE

CEO walks back comments about replacing 'lower-value human capital' with AI

Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters on Wednesday walked back comments he made at an investor event Tuesday when he said the bank plans to cut thousands of jobs as it replaces what he called "lower-value human capital" with tech powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

Winters wrote a memo to the bank's employees on Wednesday in which he sought to address concerns that arose following his comments on Tuesday, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. READ MORE