TL;DR — What You Need to Know

• Duolingo is cutting contractors and ramping up AI use, shifting towards an “AI-first” strategy.
• Journalists link this to a broader, creeping jobs crisis in creative and entry-level industries.
• It’s not robots replacing workers — it’s leadership decisions driven by cost-cutting and control.

Are We at the Brink of an AI Jobs Crisis

AI isn’t stealing jobs — companies are handing them over. Duolingo’s latest move might be the canary in the creative workforce coal mine.

Here’s the thing: we’ve all been bracing for some kind of AI-led workforce disruption — but few expected it to quietly begin with language learning and grammar correction.

This week, Duolingo officially declared itself an “AI-first” company, announcing plans to replace contractors with automation. But according to journalist Brian Merchant, the switch has been happening behind the scenes for a while now. First, it was the translators. Then the writers. Now, more roles are quietly dissolving into lines of code.

What’s most unsettling isn’t just the layoffs — it’s what this move represents. Merchant, writing in his newsletter Blood in the Machine, argues that we’re not watching some dramatic sci-fi robot uprising. We’re watching spreadsheet-era decision-making, dressed up in futuristic language. It’s not AI taking jobs. It’s leaders choosing not to hire people in the first place.

In fact, The Atlantic recently reported a spike in unemployment among recent college grads. Entry-level white collar roles, which were once stepping stones into careers, are either vanishing or being passed over in favour of AI tools. And let’s be honest — if you’re an exec balancing budgets and juggling board pressure, skipping a salary for a subscription might sound pretty tempting.

But there’s a bigger story here. The AI jobs crisis isn’t a single event. It’s a slow burn. A thousand small shifts — fewer freelance briefs, fewer junior hires, fewer hands on deck in creative industries — that are starting to add up.

As Merchant puts it:

So now we have to ask: if companies like Duolingo are laying the groundwork for an AI-powered future, who exactly is being left behind?

Are we ready to admit that the AI jobs crisis isn’t coming — it’s already here?

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TL;DR — What You Need to Know

• Former OpenAI insiders say the company is straying from its nonprofit mission — and that could be dangerous.
• A legal letter urges US states to stop OpenAI’s transformation into a fully commercial venture.
• Critics argue the new structure would weaken its duty to humanity in favour of shareholder profits.

OpenAI For-Profit Transition: Could It Risk Humanity?

Former employees and academics are urging US courts to block OpenAI’s shift to a for-profit model, warning it could endanger humanity’s future.

The Moral Compass Is Spinning

OpenAI was founded with a mission so lofty it sounded almost utopian: ensure artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. But fast forward to 2025, and that noble vision is under serious legal and ethical fire — from the very people who once helped build the company.

This week, a group of former OpenAI staffers, legal scholars, and even Nobel Prize winners sent an official plea to California and Delaware attorneys general: don’t let OpenAI go full for-profit. They claim such a move could put both the company’s original mission and humanity’s future at risk.

Among the voices is Nisan Stiennon, a former employee who isn’t mincing words. He warns that OpenAI’s pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) — a theoretical AI smarter than humans — could have catastrophic outcomes. “OpenAI may one day build technology that could get us all killed,” he says. Cheery.

At the heart of the complaint is the fear that OpenAI’s transition into a public benefit corporation (PBC) would legally dilute its humanitarian responsibilities. While PBCs can consider the public good, they’re not required to prioritise it over shareholder profits. Todor Markov, another ex-OpenAI team member now at Anthropic, sums it up: “You have no recourse if they just decide to stop caring.”

This all adds up to a dramatic ethical tug-of-war — between commercial growth and moral responsibility. And let’s not forget that CEO Sam Altman has already weathered a scandal in 2023 involving secret updates, boardroom drama, and a five-day firing that ended with his reinstatement.

It’s juicy, yes. But also deeply important.

Because whether or not AGI is even technically possible right now, what we’re really watching is a battle over how much trust we’re willing to place in companies building our digital future.

So here’s the question that matters:

If humanity’s safety depends on who’s in control of AGI — do we really want it run like just another startup?

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TL;DR (What You Need to Know in 30 Seconds)

• Perplexity’s CEO Aravind Srinivas is shifting from fighting Google’s search dominance to building an AI-first browser called Comet — betting browsers are the future of AI agents.
• Motorola will pre-install Perplexity on its new Razr phones, thanks partly to antitrust pressure weakening Google’s grip.
• Perplexity’s strategy? Build a browser that acts like an operating system, executing actions for users directly — while gathering the context needed to out-personalise ChatGPT.

The Browser Wars Are Back — But This Time, AI Is Leading the Charge

When Aravind Srinivas last spoke publicly about Perplexity, it was a David vs Goliath story: a small AI startup taking on Google’s search empire. Fast forward just one year, and the battle lines have moved. Now Srinivas is gearing up for an even bigger fight — for your browser.

Perplexity isn’t just an AI assistant anymore. It’s about to launch its own AI-powered browser, called Comet, next month. And according to Srinivas, it could redefine how digital assistants work forever.

This vision pits Perplexity not just against Google Search, but against Chrome itself — and the entire way we use the internet.

Fighting Google’s Grip on Phones — and Winning Small Battles

Google’s stranglehold over Android isn’t just about search. It’s about default apps, browser dominance, and OEM revenue sharing. Srinivas openly admits that if it weren’t for the Department of Justice (DOJ) antitrust trial against Google, deals like Perplexity’s latest partnership with Motorola might never have happened.

Thanks to that pressure, Motorola will now pre-install Perplexity on its new Razr devices — offering an alternative to Google’s AI (Gemini) for millions of users.

Still, it’s not easy. Changing your default assistant on Android still takes “seven or eight clicks,” Srinivas says — and Google reportedly pressured Motorola to ensure Gemini stays the default for system-level functions.

Why Build a Browser?

It’s simple: Control.

• On Android and iOS, assistants are restricted.
• Apps like Uber, Spotify, and Instagram guard their data fiercely.
• AI agents can’t fully access app information to act intelligently.

But in a browser? Logged-in sessions, client-side scraping, reasoning over live pages — all become possible.

“Answering questions will become a commodity,” Srinivas predicts. “The real value will be actions — booking rides, finding songs, ordering food — across services, without users lifting a finger.”

Perplexity’s Comet browser will be the launchpad for this vision, eventually expanding from mobile to Mac and Windows devices.

And yes, they plan to fight Microsoft’s dominance on laptops too, where Copilot is increasingly bundled natively.

Building the Infrastructure for AI Memory

Personalisation isn’t just remembering what users searched for. Srinivas argues it’s about knowing your real-world behaviour — your online shopping, your social media browsing, your ridesharing history.

ChatGPT, he says, can’t see most of that.
Perplexity’s browser could.

By operating at the browser layer, Perplexity aims to gather the deepest context across apps and web activity — building the kind of memory and personalisation that other AI assistants can only dream of.

It’s an ambitious bet — but if it works, it could make Perplexity the most indispensable AI in your digital life.

New Frontiers (and Old Enemies)

Beyond Motorola, Perplexity is eyeing deals with telcos, laptop manufacturers, and OEMs globally. They’re cutting deals with publishers to avoid scraping lawsuits. They’re investing heavily in infrastructure, data distillation, and frontier AI models.

They even flirted with a bid for TikTok, though Srinivas admits ByteDance’s reluctance to part with its algorithm made it a long shot.

What’s clear is that scale, distribution, and control are the new prizes. And Perplexity is playing a long, tactical game to win them.

What do YOU think?

If browsers become the new battleground for AI, will Google lose not just search — but its grip on the entire internet? Let us know in the comments below.

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