2025 is the breakthrough year for Generative Enterprise — and partnering with a capable services partner is critical - “[S]pending on GenAI is rising (HFS data suggests enterprise investment is rising by more than 25% on average into 2025), we start from a low base. We estimate enterprise spending on GenAI in 2024 accounted for less than 1% of global IT services spending. This is just one illustration of how far we still have to go.” // Plus, a whole bunch of commentary in enterprise AI.

Inside Oracle’s New AI Agents - Moor Insights & Strategy - Getting the robot to do annual performance reviews: “Oracle is also leveraging AI to improve the performance review process itself. By aggregating and distilling information from check-ins, feedback and goal progress throughout the year, the AI agent can generate a first draft of a performance review. This should save managers time and effort while fostering a more comprehensive assessment of employee performance.” // Performance review are notoriously bullshit in the first place. What’d be interesting here is to have the robot go over the past five years and make a performance review and then compare it to what the human managers did. Which ones are (1) more correct, and, (2) better connect employee performance to organization goals (profit, growth, customer service, productivity/lower cost, etc.)

No Rules Are Implicit Rules - The European view on enlightened American management policy: “Greg, I hate to bring it to you, but working for ten fucking hours a day is not the normal hour. I don’t care if you live in America or not. The section continues with other “grand” examples of managers taking “up to” 14 days a year off to show their employees they should to so too. Let’s assume the best here: 14 workdays are almost three weeks. A year. The statutory minimum for full-time employees working a forty-hour week is 20 (thus 4 weeks) in Belgium. Oops."

AI Agents and the CEOs - “At the risk of saying the quiet part out loud, the way CEOs are talking about agents sure sounds like how they talk about employees–only cheaper!” // “Companies are dedicating significant spend to AI–approximately 5% of the revenue of large enterprises (revenues over $500 million) according to one survey by Boston Consulting Group, and yet only 25% claim they are seeing value from their AI investment."

Semiconductors, Security, and the DeepSeekFreak, along with Ass Semiotics

In this episode: AI eschatology, assology, and a deep, intellectual commitment to hating mayonnaise. Tariff trouble, security panic, and NVIDIA shrugging off DeepSeek. Young voters shift rightward, no one agrees on ‘medium roast,’ and Hollywood still relies on glue to critique its own youth obsession. Wastebook“immanetize the AI eschaton,” Charlie Stross. “The ass is a very strong symbol of how our body is not neutral in the public space. How our body is constantly scrutinized, has been shaped to please the man’s eyes, has been seen as a body part that was objectified, that was detached from the person who was simply bearing it.

A head full of bologna

Lots of links and stuff this episode: AI isn’t a coworker, it’s just automation wrapped in hype. Tech moves fast, but nothing lasts—except bad takes, questionable business models, and the creeping realization that managers just want fewer humans to manage. Meanwhile, we live like kings and don’t even notice. Put it on iceGood episode of Software Defined Talk this week, especially the opening moment of absurdity where we, yet again, try to solve Europe’s ice problem.