Longevity data from the CDC, why CIOs keep missing AI infra costs, and what agentic AI can actually learn from low-code and fintech failures. Plus: vibe coding’s limits, the end of the AI “free lunch,” and what platform teams can do about it.
Posts in "links"
Enterprise ROI continues to be elusive, but 48% of surveys say they've been cutting humans
AI is still stuck in “efficiency mode.” In many organizations, a technology organization leads AI efforts and is treated as a cost center. Those CIOs are incentivized to optimize for efficiency, not growth. The result is predictable: Tech-led AI strategies deliver productivity improvements, but not transformation. Equally concerning is that technology and AI executives tell us their business partners can’t articulate what they want from AI beyond saving money. That leadership gap bleeds over into the measurement of AI value.
Runciman’s thesis, roughly, is that any given week in a democracy looks like a clown show of dithering, delay, u-turns, squabbling and complacency. But from the longer perspective the chaos is effective – a symptom of democracy’s capacity to criticise itself, to change tack, to spread its bets widely, keep its options open and correct its failures.
Researchers at the University of Manchester followed 25,000 11- to 14-year-olds over three school years, tracking their self-reported social media habits, gaming frequency and emotional difficulties to find out whether technology use genuinely predicted later mental health difficulties.
Participants were asked how much time on a normal weekday in term time they spent on TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and other social media, or gaming. They were also asked questions about their feelings, mood and wider mental health.
The study found no evidence for boys or girls that heavier social media use or more frequent gaming increased teenagers’ symptoms of anxiety or depression over the following year.
🔗 Social media time does not increase teenagers’ mental health problems – study
Google shows that large language models, when paired with traditional tools and validation pipelines, can accelerate enterprise code migrations by 50% or more, unblocking projects stalled for years.
The robot says:
The most dramatic impact occurred in previously stalled migrations, which AI unblocked after years of delay. One migration achieved an 89% estimated time savings, while another processed 149,000+ lines across 5,359 files in three months. Review, not generation, became the primary bottleneck. Google mitigated this by throttling weekly AI-generated changes to avoid overwhelming reviewers.
Related to your interests, Saturday
A collection of articles discusses the importance of optimizing everyday experiences, the rise of region-specific AI, and trends in technology and consumer expectations.
Big Tech, aggregator companies are always trying to steal your customer relationship:
If they can’t generate that experience for the customer, then there isn’t really going to be a sense of loyalty to the retailer. That means retailers face potential disintermediation because AI and the consumers themselves won’t necessarily see strength in your brands.
🔗 As agentic AI ascends, companies are grappling with control
Lots of yes-but’ing here, inc. this gem for y’all security folk:
Wall Street doesn’t understand the reluctance of enterprise CIOs to trust startups with mission-critical data or value the expertise needed to run SaaS reliably at scale as much as the shiny new thing.
Relevant to your interests, Friday
A Coxswain on Your Shoulder - AI as executive coach. Primary tip: listen more before you ask questions. Big Blue Poised To Peddle Lots Of On Premises GenAI - Welcome to the last 18 months of labor-intentive services - “Legacy delivery models focused on bums-on-seats aren’t relevant anymore, and services firms must reinvent themselves to survive. Those who don’t will quickly find themselves obsolete, as 75% of the Global 2000 recently declared in our Pulse Study” Deploying Moltbot (Formerly Clawdbot) - Good round-up of Clawdbot/Moltbot.
AI won’t replace you. Your boss using AI to cut costs will.
Your boss is not incentivized by utopian imagination, he is incentivized by showing his boss a lowering of costs so he can keep his job and lifestyle. The miraculous science fiction future AI shills often proselytize will not be realized in the halls of SaaS companies, because the incentives for that future do not exist in a capitalist framework.