Elizabeth Power

AI policy | formerly @BearstarCA

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

- 45yo patient complains of difficulty breathing
- X-ray and ECG don't point to clear diagnosis
- he's sent home
- AI-enabled scan detects severe heart damage
- follow-up echocardiogram shows severe heart problems
- doctors perform heart transplant, conclude he might have died suddenly

Great story.

Unlike many promises in AI and medicine—many of which are either over-sold or hard to evaluate, bc AI-enabled drug discoveries can take years for clinical trials to establish efficacy—AI-enhanced diagnostics feels like more of a right-here/right-now phenomenon. The success stories are rare enough for now that most of them get written up in Nature and the NYT, but I think this is a great early frontier for AI and medicine, despite the risks of false positives, over-scanning, over-spending on safe edge cases, etc

[“paula” @paularambles]

if fable 5 agrees to do your work instead of downgrading you to opus, you’re in the permanent underclass

[Andrew Ng @AndrewYNg]

One of the new, buzzy jobs in Silicon Valley is the AI Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE), an engineer who is embedded within a client organization to help customize solutions, such as building and tuning agentic workflows that suit the client’s particular needs. I’ve heard from people who are wondering anew about the FDE career path since OpenAI and Anthropic started building new teams to place FDEs within client organizations.

The rise of FDEs for AI workloads is one way AI is creating new jobs (and why the jobpolcalypse narrative of upcoming job market collapse is false -- there will be many AI and non-AI jobs). However, I believe there will be far more AI Engineer jobs than FDEs, as I explain below.

The FDE role was pioneered about two decades ago by Palantir, which sent engineers to government locations to work on secure, air-gapped networks. In addition to having good technical skills, FDEs need communication skills and sometimes business skills. For example, they may need to speak with clients to understand their needs, formulate a strategy to prioritize projects, explain complex technology, and respectfully push back if a client asks for something unrealistic. They’re enjoying a resurgence because of the amount of work involved in taking an off-the-shelf LLM and building it into a custom agentic workflow that fits particular business needs.

However, I believe the number of AI Engineer jobs will be far larger. A company might accept a few FDEs to be embedded within its organization. But most companies will want far more of their own employees working on their projects. While my organizations do hire FDEs, we hire far more AI Engineers! Also, a common client concern is that it is hard to find vendor-neutral FDEs — they are, after all, there to deeply integrate a particular vendor’s product into a company. In this moment when it’s hard to predict which AI service will be the best one in a year’s time, optionality (the ability to pick whatever vendor turns out to fit best in the future) is very valuable. In contrast, letting FDEs tightly bind a company’s processes significantly reduces optionality.

Right now, I see surging demand for AI Engineers who can build software applications using AI software components (like LLM prompting, agentic frameworks, evals, etc.) and effectively use AI coding agents (like Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity CLI, and OpenCode). As the AI Engineer role matures, I expect it to fragment into more specialized roles, like the generic Software Engineer role from decades ago fragmented into frontend, backend, mobile, data engineering, devops, and so on.

What will be the future, specialized AI engineering roles? I don’t know. Perhaps there will be AI FDEs, LLMOps Engineers, Evals Engineers, AI Data Engineers, Harness Engineers, and other roles we don’t have names for yet. But for now, I see a lot of AI engineers who are generalists create a lot of value. Skilled AI Engineers are in very high demand! As our field continues to mature over the coming decade, I look forward to new specializations within AI Engineering that create even more job opportunities.

[Original text: The Batch newsletter]

[Drew Pusateri @drewpusateri]

Since joining OpenAI the amount of congressional staffers that've (very kindly and politely) reached out abt careers in AI/tech from offices whose Reps/Senators rail against AI/tech/infra is...notable.

Tbc, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that and I'm always happy to chat and help people connect with opportunities/networking etc. I didn't agree with the electeds I worked for on everything either, but the divisions there feel a lot wider than on most issues.

[Joshua Kushner @JoshuaKushner]

at a moment when so much of the discourse around technological progress centers on the risks it may create, this mission offers a glimpse of what the future could look like if humanity gets it right

[Andrew Ng @AndrewYNg]

There will be no AI jobpocalypse.

The story that AI will lead to massive unemployment is stoking unnecessary fear. AI — like any other technology — does affect jobs, but telling overblown stories of large-scale unemployment is irresponsible and damaging. Let’s put a stop to it.

I’ve expressed skepticism about the jobpocalypse in previous posts. I’m glad to see that the popular press is now pushing back on this narrative. The image below features some recent headlines.

Software engineering is the sector most affected by AI tools, as coding agents race ahead. Yet hiring of software engineers remains strong! So while there are examples of AI taking away jobs, the trends strongly suggest the net job creation is vastly greater than the job destruction — just like earlier waves of technology. Further, despite all the exciting progress in AI, the U.S. unemployment rate remains a healthy 4.3%.

Why is the AI jobpocalypse narrative so popular? For one thing, frontier AI labs have a strong incentive to tell stories that make AI technology sound more powerful. At their most extreme, they promote science-fiction scenarios of AI “taking over” and causing human extinction. If a technology can replace many employees, surely that technology must be very valuable!

Also, a lot of SaaS software companies charge around $100-$1000 per user/year. But if an AI company can replace an employee who makes $100,000 — or make them 50% more productive — then charging even $10,000 starts to look reasonable. By anchoring not to typical SaaS prices but to salaries of employees, AI companies can charge a lot more.

Additionally, businesses have a strong incentive to talk about layoffs as if they were caused by AI. After all, talking about how they’re using AI to be far more productive with fewer staff makes them look smart. This is a better message than admitting they overhired during the pandemic when capital was abundant due to low interest rates and a massive government financial stimulus.

To be clear, I recognize that AI is causing a lot of people’s work to change. This is hard. This is stressful. (And to some, it can be fun.) I empathize with everyone affected. At the same time, this is very different from predicting a collapse of the job market.

Societies are capable of telling themselves stories for years that have little basis in reality and lead to poor society-wide decision making. For example, fears over nuclear plant safety led to under-investment in nuclear power. Fears of the “population bomb” in the 1960s led countries to implement harsh policies to reduce their populations. And worries about dietary fat led governments to promote unhealthy high-sugar diets for decades.

Now that mainstream media is openly skeptical about the jobpocalypse, I hope these stories will start to lose their teeth (much like fears of AI-driven human extinction have).

Contrary to the predictions of an AI jobpocalypse, I predict the opposite: There will be an AI jobapalooza! AI will lead to a lot more good AI engineering jobs, and I’m also optimistic about the future of the overall job market. What AI engineers do will be different from traditional software engineering, and many of these jobs will be in businesses other than traditional large employers of developers. In non-AI roles, too, the skills needed will change because of AI. That makes this a good time to encourage more people to become proficient in AI, and make sure they’re ready for the different but plentiful jobs of the future!

[Original text in The Batch newsletter.]

[Lis Smith @Lis_Smith]

BREAKING: New poll shows @DanielLurie is the most popular American mayor.

Key findings:
- 74% of SF voters approve of him
- Majorities support his handling of public safety, downtown revitalization, neighborhood cleanliness
- He earns support from across the political spectrum

[a16z @a16z]

The majority of new jobs created since 1940 didn’t even exist in 1940.

There is no fixed "lump of labor". Again and again, new technologies create new jobs.

a16z's David George dismantles the "AI job apocalypse" myth: https://t.co/0gL5mdffKD

[Lady Gaga @ladygaga]

Tuning in now to the California governor debate on CNN, if you vote in California I urge you to tune in and learn more about our candidates with me!

[Elizabeth Power @ElizabethDPower]

https://t.co/kU6CWPJUyS

[Elizabeth Power @ElizabethDPower]

🎯 @ezraklein

[Sheel Mohnot @pitdesi]

Everyone is getting this wrong:
The politicians in California are pretty terrible, but you can't blame them for the wealth tax... they actually killed the idea 2 years ago.

Our uniquely bad form of direct democracy is the actual culprit.

Democratic Socialist assemblyman Alex Lee introduced the wealth tax in Sacramento (AB 259) 2 years ago. It was not popular, it actually did not even make it to a vote. It was deemed too leftist even for the California legislature.

So why is it back?

California's uniquely bad form of direct democracy lets you bypass the legislature if you get enough signatures... You can put almost anything on the ballot if you get signatures.

That is what the SEIU-UHW, the healthcare workers union did. Union leadership spearheaded this initiative and funded the campaign directly to collect signatures for the wealth tax. They collected signatures by going around asking if people want more money from billionaires to fund hospitals, healthcare, food aid, and schools... naturally people said yes without realizing the consequences.

The only major currently elected official from California that supports it is Ro Khanna. My guess from seeing his support on twitter is that Ro decided to support it without understanding it and then dug his heels in for some stupid reason (he actually acknowledged that it is bad as written).

Tom Steyer and Saikat Chakrabarti who are running for office also support it (we need to do everything we can to oppose them).

I can't believe I'm defending California politicians, but remember - they actually rejected a wealth tax. This is a union-backed ballot initiative trying to go around them.

[POLITICO @politico]

Jeffries says AI data centers will be Dem priority https://t.co/YvFYzAzEqG

[Rob Flaherty @Rob_Flaherty]

Yes, precisely this:

"A moratorium springs from the desire to stop the concentration of wealth, but ironically, it is likely to exacerbate it. It’s a massive strategic blunder for the Left, and we should think through the global justice implications and follow-on effects."

https://t.co/kCEjzVFvwc

[mark pincus @markpinc]

I share this view that AI is and will be the biggest job generator the world has ever seen. The internet expanded economic oppty and opened jobs to many more. AI will be 100x that.

Google enables a Vegas taylor to have a global biz. Ebay and Craigslist did kill the classifieds/newspapers while creating economic oppty/access and cheaper products that continues to lift millions.

Uber and Airbnb unlocked the gig economy for millions too.

GPT and Anthropic enable anyone with an idea to launch a new business in a day. We cant imagine today what this will mean but i’m betting on the creativity of you fellow humans to make the dooms-dayers look like myopic morons!

[roon @tszzl]

it’s “everyone moves to San Francisco” season

[TBPN @tbpn]

BREAKING: Thrive is acquiring a stake in the San Francisco Giants

[Justine Moore @venturetwins]

Crazy how you can just...ship a model without a giant PR campaign to scare the shit out of everyone first

[Igor Bobic @igorbobic]

AI is so hot rn — especially among Dems on Capitol Hill who are using it for work and personal tasks.

Schiff used it to make a living trust. Schatz used it to review grants. Kelly has tried it to build his own apps. One Dem even uses it to read his kids bed time stories.

But it’s not just for kids.

82-year-old Angus King used Claude to help him grill a Trump admin official during a hearing this week:

“It’s very useful. I use it all the time”

[Governor Newsom Press Office @GovPressOffice]

With 2/3s of our power coming from clean energy and one of the world’s largest economies, California proves climate action and economic strength go hand-in-hand.

In 2025, California’s grid ran on 100% clean electricity for an average of 7 hours a day.