Meta Is in Crisis, Google Search’s Makeover, and AI Gets Booed by Graduates

This week on Uncanny Valley , the team discusses Meta’s recent layoffs and what they’ve been hearing from employees about the increasingly grim vibes at the company. They also talk about Elon Musk losing his lawsuit against OpenAI and share highlights from Google’s annual conference—including an ambitious AI vision to change how people search the web. Finally, what do recent college graduates and women whose spouses work in AI have in common? They’re all sick of hearing about it.

Articles mentioned in this episode: Meta’s New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale Everything Announced at Google I/O 2026: Gemini, Search, Smart Glasses Google Search Goes Agentic—and Doesn’t Need You Anymore Meet the Sad Wives of AI You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett , Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer , and Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger . Write to us at [email protected] .

How to Listen You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link . You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for “uncanny valley.” We’re on Spotify too.

Transcript Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

Zoë Schiffer : Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley . I'm Zoë Schiffer, director of business and industry.

Brian Barrett : I'm Brian Barrett, executive editor.

Leah Feiger : And I'm Leah Feiger, director of politics and science.

Brian Barrett : And we're all in the same room— Zoë Schiffer : Oh, my God.

Brian Barrett : —for the first time from the podcast.

Zoë Schiffer : Same room.

Leah Feiger : I got invited to the group chat.

Zoë Schiffer : You did.

Brian Barrett : Look at that.

Uncanny Valley hosts Zoë Schiffer, Brian Barrett, and Leah Feiger.

Photograph: WIRED Zoë Schiffer : 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.

Brian Barrett : And of course, we wouldn't skip the Elon Musk verdict . He lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI in really as full a way as you can, as dramatically as possible. I know, Zoë, you're looking forward to talking about that.

Zoë Schiffer : Yes.

Brian Barrett : And I'm looking forward to talking about Google's annual developer conference, I/O, where it debuted some dramatic changes to search .

Leah Feiger : And you might've 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 going to hear about why women married to AI bros have had enough .

Zoë Schiffer : First up, let's dive into what is happening at Meta . This week, the company is letting go of roughly 10 percent of its workforce, which is about 8,000 employees total. It's the latest round of job cuts, adding to the roughly 25,000 jobs that have been cut in the past few years as part of Mark Zuckerberg's Year of Efficiency that started in 2023 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.

Brian Barrett : We record this on a Tuesday, but the reason we're able to talk so fully and confidently about this is because Meta announced this a while ago.

Leah Feiger : Oh, yeah.

Zoë Schiffer : They didn't announce it. The news leaked.

Brian Barrett : The news leaked. But then they acknowledged it.

Zoë Schiffer : Weeks and weeks later.

Brian Barrett : Yes. But still, it's been a long time— Zoë Schiffer : It's a long time.

Brian Barrett : —that this has been out in the open, which has resulted in, I think, a little bit of chaos time inside of Meta because you've got, a what, a one in 10 chance of not having your job anymore?

Zoë Schiffer : Yeah it’s, I mean, suffice to say, impacting morale in really horrific ways, but it's not the only thing, like 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. Some people are really pushing back on it. But I think for a lot of employees who joined Meta during this era of endless perks, lots of job security, kind of like a chiller atmosphere compared to some of the other startups in the Valley.

Leah Feiger : Let's invest.

Zoë Schiffer : They have that going for a while.

Leah Feiger : It wasn't full Google, but it— Zoë Schiffer : Somewhat there.

Leah Feiger : —had that vibe. 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 B) in some ways, needlessly so. Not to say that 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.

Brian Barrett : Well, because it's not just the layoffs, 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 laptops training AI to probably take your job at some point, right?

Zoë Schiffer : Explain that a little bit.

Brian Barrett : Meta announced, and this was more public, that they were going to put software on employee laptops that would monitor 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.

Zoë Schiffer : And could you opt out of that, Brian?

Brian Barrett : That's a great question. I'm so glad you asked. You could not opt out.

Zoë Schiffer : I felt you didn't know the answer to that one.

Brian Barrett : In fact, when an employee asked in a very public forum within Meta, "Hey, could we not do this?" Zoë, the response was?

Zoë Schiffer : Oh, absolutely you're going to do this and shame on you for asking. 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's said at the end was that remaining employees are being asked to join AI teams. So whatever your job was previously, they're internally getting drafted. You're getting drafted into the AI ranks, now your job is going to look quite different.

Brian Barrett : That's like 7,000 people.

Zoë Schiffer : Yes.

Leah Feiger : I've actually heard people use the word raptured.

Zoë Schiffer : Oh, my gosh.

Leah Feiger : Isn't that— Zoë Schiffer : And I wish we had that in the story.

Leah Feiger : I'm so sorry, but raptured into other teams. All of a sudden one day they've just disappeared. After this layoff, has Zuckerberg and co proposed a sort of coherent leadership plan or proposal? What happens after this?

Zoë Schiffer : 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. The company is doing exceptionally well, but the company is not doing exceptionally well because of artificial intelligence . I talked to employees who are on Instagram and they say, "Look, our main competitor is TikTok. TikTok's not an AI company." 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.

Brian Barrett : Yeah. And there seems to be, and I think our reporting has shown, a little bit of mission drift within the company. And you've seen that not just with AI. You've seen that, I think, for a long time when you see this $80 billion bet or whatever it was on the metaverse and then saying, "Oh, nevermind, here's this new shiny thing." AI is not another metaverse. AI, I think, has a better business case behind it. But at the same time, to your point, right now it's not making money.

Zoë Schiffer : No. And I talked to two people who were personally recruited by Mark Zuckerberg to join the very fancy AI effort and both of them said, "Look, the vision was AI-generated slop for Instagram and the other Meta properties." It just wasn't uninspired. And meanwhile, you have OpenAI and Anthropic, not to say they've done it, but their mission is, "We're going to completely change the economy and cure cancer." Leah Feiger : As opposed to make your grandmother's feed the most destructive sign you can ever see. Yeah.

Zoë Schiffer : So people were just not inspired.

Brian Barrett : And then even Meta has acknowledged that 10 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 them." And there's a presumed like, "We're on it," but not enough probably.

Leah Feiger : We're seeing layoffs or announcements of layoffs in a lot of places like Microsoft, Coinbase, Cisco announced it was laying off 4,000 employees. Is this the spring of layoffs? What are we looking at here?

Brian Barrett : 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 overhired. But increasingly, I think, Zoë, 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 a couple of engineers overseeing some agentic AI are more effective than 50 engineers.

Zoë Schiffer : I've 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. So what you're losing now on is the entry-level jobs. And we're seeing that in studies. So when we look at job loss and AI job replacement, what's happening is that entry-level jobs are being replaced by artificial intelligence.

Leah Feiger : I feel like you have evolved on this in some ways. 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, this is starting to happen, as Brian said. What's the next stage of this? Just 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?

Zoë Schiffer : It's interesting. Brian brought up Google I/O, which I'm reluctant to talk about.

Brian Barrett : This is crazy to me. Go ahead. We'll get there.

Leah Feiger : This is amazing.

Zoë Schiffer : Demis Hassabis 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." So I think you're going to see companies that are like, "Yeah, we can do even more than we could previously. We're just going to do more things, build more things, ship more product." But then I think you are going to 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.

Brian Barrett : Speaking of ways in which AI companies grow and change, Elon Musk officially lost his lawsuit to Sam Altman and OpenAI this week.

Zoë Schiffer : Such a special moment.

Brian Barrett : It was. It was a special moment. To get people caught up a little bit who have not been tracking this as obsessively as I know Zoë has, and as Leah has too, Elon Musk had sued over claims that OpenAI 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." Zoë Schiffer : Incredible.

Brian Barrett : 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, "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 OpenAI and have such a clear monetary interest beyond whatever compensation you get from the trial." When the decision was released on Monday, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said that in her eyes, the trial had been worthwhile to bring clarity to the dispute and that 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.

Zoë Schiffer : 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 OpenAI was no longer a nonprofit and he was allowed to 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 thing 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 OpenAI was starting this for-profit until 2023." And the evidence did not back it up.

Brian Barrett : No. Also, I should say, to no one's surprise, Elon Musk is going to appeal or says he's going to appeal. He does have infinite money to do it.

Zoë Schiffer : Marc Toberoff had one word leaving that courtroom, Elon Musk's lawyer, and he just said, "Appeal." Brian Barrett : Yeah. 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." Leah Feiger : I like that he called her an activist judge. I think that that has taken on a new realm of popularity in the Trump era of determining that these judges in this very specific branch of the government is in fact acting against one's best interest.

Zoë Schiffer : 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 OpenAI or acquire it. I was editing the pre-writes and Paresh Dave, 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 is ever seeing the light of day." Brian Barrett : He didn't need to write that.

Leah Feiger : What does this mean going forward for OpenAI?

Zoë Schiffer : It's interesting. I actually think it gives them a lot of momentum and now they're going to go full speed ahead. I do think the image of OpenAI and Sam Altman, in particular, has been a bit tarnished throughout this trial. It came on the heels of a series of reporting about his allegedly duplicitous behavior. I don't think he looks necessarily better coming out of the trial, but I think the company is really bullish on its IPO, which could come as soon as this year. It's full steam ahead on enterprise code, which is kind of the phrase of Silicon Valley right now. So I think people are feeling really, really good over there.

Brian Barrett : I do think that, to your point, 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.

Nobody came out of this looking great . I don't think anyone changed anybody's minds about, "Oh no, you should be entrusted with the future of this powerful technology." Everybody— Zoë Schiffer : The maker of butt pillows for courtrooms , they're the real winners.

Leah Feiger : That was their best product.

Brian Barrett : The rampant butt pillow usage in the courtroom by—and different brands of butt pillow too.

Zoë Schiffer : Different brands of butt pillow. Yeah, fancy ones, cheaper ones. Everyone's using a fancy butt cushion on those rock hard seats. Yeah. 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 Brockman, "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.

Brian Barrett : I'm about to be the most hated man on this podcast.

Leah Feiger : I'm so ready. I couldn't be more ready.

Brian Barrett : And I don't know why this was contentious. I'm genuinely baffled. Again, we're recording this on Tuesday. Google had its I/O conference, it's its big developer conference every year. And when we started planning this podcast, I said, "Hey, we should probably talk about Google I/O." And you both— Zoë Schiffer : Said, "Oh my God, yes, we love Google I/O." Brian Barrett : —strongly disagreed. Acted like I had a second head growing out of my neck like I was suggesting the most insane thing in the world. Before we talk about Google I/O, why?

Leah Feiger : I have my own reasons. I'm curious what Zoë's are.

Zoë Schiffer : Yeah, it's boring.

Brian Barrett : OK.

Leah Feiger : OK, good.

Brian Barrett : OK. Leah?

Leah Feiger : Yes, moving on. I 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 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 the podcast?

Brian Barrett : Sure. I guess what I would say is, as with anything, we don't transcribe what they say at these events.

Leah Feiger : It's true.

Brian Barrett : We put them in proper context and do the reporting to back it up . We have a great team of gear reporters— Leah Feiger : Without a doubt.

Brian Barrett : —who do phenomenal work and did phenomenal work today.

Leah Feiger : Without a doubt. In full love and support of them.

Brian Barrett : So I appreciate where you come from, but you're both wrong.

Zoë Schiffer : Wow. And he's our boss, so we're going to listen.

Brian Barrett : Here's why. Google search is changing more than it ever has. Think of search now instead of as a search box. It's been drifting this way. It's no longer 10 links, but it's not even even one link now. Google search is now basically a chatbot. It's a conversational query. It'll expand. When you put in like, "Hey, what do you think, Google, should I do this?" Whatever. And it'll not just show you text necessarily. It'll also show you an interactive graphic that it just cooked up. Instead of saying, "I want to go to Google Images for this," it'll be like, "Here's your images. And also, here's this." That's phase one. Phase two is going to be agentic search . So here's what that means. You go to Google and you say, 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 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 were 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.

Leah Feiger : What does it mean for us? What does it mean for wired.com ?

Brian Barrett : It's not great.

Leah Feiger : Not good? OK.

Brian Barrett : But I think 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.

Leah Feiger : A really important moment to say, please subscribe to wired.com .

Brian Barrett : Please go to wired.com . You can mark WIRED as a preferred source in Google , all those things. But I think everybody's embracing for this moment. It feels more like it's here than it has in a while because there's sort of this general AI overviews, but now AI reviews the whole thing.

Zoë Schiffer : Yeah. And again, 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. So it feels a little bit like it's cannibalizing itself while at the same time preparing for a new feature. I'm curious, I assume they'll be stuffing ads in this thing and that will be how they make money, but you would imagine that they're also going to take an interim hit.

Brian Barrett : Yeah.

Leah Feiger : The branding of it aside of 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 some teething issues there.

Brian Barrett : 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 also 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 and Google's bottom line is, again, it's the sort of same themes but accelerated, the idea that once you stop going to websites and once only bots are visiting websites, you're choking off the supply of information. You are smaller publishers.

Leah Feiger : Well, you're going to run out at some point.

Brian Barrett : Exactly. So the web itself shriveled up into a Google-shaped hole.

Zoë Schiffer : 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 micropayments. And I'm like, look— Leah Feiger : Whoa.

Zoë Schiffer : —our industry is not going to be held up by 10 cents, or even, you know— Leah Feiger : Whoa.

Zoë Schiffer : —I don't know what it's going to be, but it's going to be— Brian Barrett : Every six years someone decides micropayments are going to save journalism— Zoë Schiffer : No.

Leah Feiger : Every time I hear that I see red. I truly— Brian Barrett : —and they never have.

Zoë Schiffer : I talked to people in the industry, they'll say "That's the future. And also, I loved that this 6,000-word story you did on the sand that makes the iPhone or whatever." And I'm like, "Guess how much that story costs to report?" Just the payment to the freelancer, it's thousands.

Brian Barrett : I'm going to pull us back from— Zoë Schiffer : I'm sorry.

Brian Barrett : —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, Google has announced big changes before and then not actually gotten there and not gotten there in the way that they initially proposed. So there's a little bit of an asterisk next to a lot of this. I think it's probably mostly coming though. But they also announced something called Gemini Spark, which I just wanted to talk about very briefly. Gemini Spark is Google's answer to OpenClaw . We remember OpenClaw. We had fun with OpenClaw .

Leah Feiger : Yeah, definitely.

Brian Barrett : Delightful. OpenClaw, a little agent that can just run autonomously, has access to all your stuff.

Gemini Spark is Google's answer to OpenClaw . It's the same sort of autonomous assistant that can do all the things, but because it's Google, it has access to everything that you do on Google or any app that you tie in. So you can see how that becomes really powerful and OpenClaw was already a privacy question mark, this even more so. You give it access to your Gmail, give it access to your calendar, give it access to everything that you touch online, your entire search history, and just say, "Hey, go do this. Remind me of this, do that." Leah Feiger : I couldn't be less interested in a product.

Zoë Schiffer : We know.

Brian Barrett : But here's the thing, I agree, it's not for me, but it's the kind of thing where this is going to be presented eventually to billions of people. The scale is the thing, who don't necessarily know or understand or appreciate, not talking down to anybody, but this is the way in which this thing will have access to your stuff, can go wrong potentially.

Zoë Schiffer : I would say that OpenClaw was kind of a one-man project. The founder is now part of OpenAI, but this was a bootleg kind of experiment. I would imagine that when Google does it, they're implementing more safety guards.

Brian Barrett : No, you're right.

Zoë Schiffer : I'm not saying it's nothing. I'm sure this is going to be changed.

Leah Feiger : Fingers crossed up and down the line.

Zoë Schiffer : But I would expect that if they're rolling it out to millions or billions of people that we are going to see some additional checks and balances.

Brian Barrett : Probably.

Zoë Schiffer : Here's to hoping.

Leah Feiger : Well, 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 literally— Zoë Schiffer : Leah's personally behind it.

Leah Feiger : Yes, exactly.

Zoë Schiffer : Dark money? Leah Feiger.

Leah Feiger : Every 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 Meta layoffs, et cetera. 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.

Eric Schmidt, archival audio : 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. [Boos from the crowd] There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, and I understand that fear.

Leah Feiger : And 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. Real estate executive Gloria Caulfield, was also booed after she referred to AI as the next industrial revolution during a commencement address at the University of Central Florida.

Gloria Caulfield, archival audio : The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution. [Boos from the crowd] What happened? OK. I struck a chord.

Leah Feiger : I am just beaming, you guys.

Brian Barrett : Sorry. I suffer from secondhand embarrassment and can't handle it.

Leah Feiger : 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. These 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 OpenClaw?" 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.

Brian Barrett : Here's the thing. I think there's an argument, don't boo 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." It's the wrong message to the wrong set of people.

Zoë Schiffer : It's the wrong tone, I would say.

Leah Feiger : Definitely the wrong tone.

Zoë Schiffer : And what's 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. I don't think it's just that AI is already taking entry-level 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. So there's just not a lot of movement in the market right now.

Leah Feiger : It's not an elastic market and you're looking at the Iran war and you're looking at rising gas prices. People 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. I guess there's two parts to this. I'm very much confused as to why both Schmidt and Caulfield thought that this was the appropriate message, but also even as Zoë said, the appropriate tact. 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." Zoë Schiffer : You're telling me a billionaire wasn't self-aware about the people.

Leah Feiger : Kill me.

Brian Barrett : Madness. There's actual statistics, I'll say, behind just how bad Gen Z feels about AI. A recent study from Gallup showed the percentage of respondents ages 14 to 29 who said they felt hopeful about AI declined down from 27 percent last year to 18 percent.

Leah Feiger : Wow.

Brian Barrett : That's very, very, very few people.

Zoë Schiffer : And postings for entry-level jobs in the US overall have declined about 35 percent since January 2023. So it's real. There's an impact on the market. 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.

Leah Feiger : Yeah, same.

Zoë Schiffer : Maxwell Zeff, one of our great AI reporters, has reported about Greg Brockman's donations to Trump and other MAGA leaders . And 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 OpenAI and other companies are actually concerned about the lack of popularity for what they're building.

Brian Barrett : Quick thing on Greg Brockman. I think we should mention too, he's literally putting his money where his mouth is. He donated $25 million to MAGA Inc, which is the big Trump super PAC. 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 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 this fall.

Zoë Schiffer : It's going to be really interesting because I went down to Abilene, Texas with OpenAI a few months ago and I was really struck. Ted Cruz was there. The mayor of the town was there. It seemed like there was so much political support for this initiative. And I was immediately thinking, "I think that this is going to turn at a certain point." Right 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 are being brought in from other states, you don't need that many people to run a data center once it's up.

Leah Feiger : So, lots of fun happening at the moment with AI world. Coming up after the break, we're going to dive into a fascinating story about why women in marriages to men obsessed with AI have just about had enough.

Zoë Schiffer : So, beyond the ever-increasing spending on AI, the latest releases, the suspected IPOs, yada, yada, 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 in AI or would like to be working in AI, specifically 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.

Alessandra Ram : Hi, everyone. I'm excited to chat with you. Hello.

Leah Feiger : Hey, so happy you're here.

Zoë Schiffer : 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 was actually a pattern?

Alessandra Ram : The sad wives 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. 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. Unfortunately, he married a journalist, so I'm just noticing and studying things and thinking about if there's anything here to write about because it started to really affect the dynamics of the household. He was totally consumed by building this AI tool at this company where the demands just seemed out of control. 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 pulling back less interested in what he was doing because I have to focus on everything else. So I started noticing that this was also happening to friends of mine. 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 heterosexual relationships, which I did for the purposes of this piece, and some 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 this sort of obsession. Even just this passion they would say about Claude Code and every iteration of Claude Code, which, as we know, is every week, just the excitement and my friends are dying inside a little bit.

Leah Feiger : Every week was their Super Bowl.

Zoë Schiffer : 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, but we're both passionate about it." Let me tell you.

Alessandra Ram : And 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 interrupt me during the session because she was like, "Oh, what does your partner do again?" And I was like, "Well, he's in AI. He's building an AI tool for his company." And she was like, "Oh, this is a phenomenon, actually." She used the word phenomenon. She's based here in the Bay Area. She has a very specific clientele. It's a postpartum therapist, so she works with women that are pregnant or postpartum. And of course, they're going through this emotional rollercoaster themselves, but the majority of them are partnered with people in tech, 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.

Brian Barrett : One thing you mentioned, Alessandra, in the story that I hadn't thought through all the way, it's not just people who are 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 they've failed in some way. So there's emotional labor that goes with that along with the actual literal labor that goes along with when they're working long hours. How endemic does that feel at this point, the many ways that people have to deal with this?

Alessandra Ram : That's a good point. I've seen some comments that this is maybe told from a more privileged perspective, but really, if you're living here in the Bay Area, I can see that this is affecting people across the economic spectrum, even students 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, the 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's supposed to be high salaries and it's supposed to be 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 going to help them financially or make them rich, to be honest. That's also another component here.

Zoë Schiffer : 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. 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 a not small number of people have made generational wealth in the last six years. And I think the idea that someone who just happened to get in early to one of the labs, obviously, it may be very smart, whatever, but is now a multi, multimillionaire and that could be me. I think that idea feels pretty pervasive, particularly if you're an engineer of any sort.

Alessandra Ram : Yeah, it's FOMO.

Zoë Schiffer : Yeah, exactly.

Leah Feiger : And I think to take this into 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, 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 . 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?

Alessandra Ram : Well, it's really interesting because when I spoke with the professor at Rutgers who really took me through these iterations of the tech boom, which a lot of this stuff happened in California, the Gold Rush, the dot-com, and now here we are with the AI boom. "This feels bigger," is what she said. 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 the messaging that everybody is receiving probably from these AI companies that have these enormous evaluations that we all have to adopt this technology or we're all going to just completely combust. What was interesting here is that then, for example, you're in a family unit, there's one person, this happened in the Gold Rush too, they go off West, and that's usually the man, to find his fortune, leaving the family behind. And that's kind of what we're seeing here with this new iteration of a boom, is that someone else is leaving the household, maybe they're still working remotely at home so they're in the household, but technically, mentally, they're checked out, right? They're focused, they're tunnel visioned on this quest to make it here.

Leah Feiger : I 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 or bros to take away from it?

Alessandra Ram : I think it's to be just present in the moment. I think we're looking really far into the future. People are obviously getting excited. People are afraid because, again, this messaging that we have to adopt or die, but I think, myself included, I think we just all need to be a little bit more present. Even though it feels right now like things are really hard, especially, it's hard to be present, you kind of want to escape, but relationships are the most important thing in our lives, community and relationships. So I think not to lose sight of that. I will say in my own household, my husband knew I was writing this article and I think he was just genuinely curious what I was going to say. I don't think he thought I was going to hold back at all, but now he's probably just excited that I am talking about AI more. So there's actually more things for us to talk about. He's like, "There's an upside here." Brian Barrett : It's common ground, yeah.

Leah Feiger : Incredible.

Alessandra Ram : Yeah. But I have noticed, since this came out, which was I think not even a week ago, he has been helping around the house more without being asked.

Zoë Schiffer : Accountability journalism, baby. We love to see it.

Alessandra Ram : Yeah. So that's a lesson here. Just maybe write something for a national magazine and somebody's going to do that. It's going to help.

Leah Feiger : Change things in your own life.

Alessandra Ram : I saw him last night washing the dishes without being asked and I think he might've been listening to a podcast about AI or the Knicks.

Zoë Schiffer : Yeah, which we'll take it.

Alessandra Ram : But as long as it's getting done.

Leah Feiger : Alessandra, thank you so much for joining us.

Alessandra Ram : Thank you. This was fun.

Zoë Schiffer : That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes.

Uncanny Valley is produced by Kaleidoscope Content. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. It was mixed by Amar Lal at Macro Sound. It was fact checked by Daniel Roman. Pran Bandi is our New York studio engineer. Marc Leyda is our San Francisco studio engineer. Kimberly Chua is our senior digital production manager. Kate Osborn is our executive producer. And Katie Drummond is WIRED's global editorial director.