Friday Debrief [042]

Happy Friday. Four things this week: AI and jobs, a letter from Jensen Huang (and his first Tweet, a podcast that will make you feel better about your neighbors (and yourself), and my thought for the weekend.

AI impact on Jobs

For years, the story was always, at least from the perspective of those spending hundreds of billions on frontier models, AI means fewer jobs. The Journal reported this week that the story may be, as expected, a bit of a stretch. Booz Allen’s COO told investors they need to accelerate hiring because they are behind. CSX, Snap-on, Alphabet and ServiceNow all say they are adding staff. And, weekly jobless claims just hit their lowest level since 1969.

The journal article, in addition to a recent report by Revelio Labs and Ramp looked at companies' real spending on AI tools versus their workforce data. The core finding was that High-intensity AI adopters are growing their workforces significantly faster than non-adopters, not replacing them. Companies making the largest sustained investments in AI grew their employment by roughly 10% on average over the 24 months following adoption. Low-intensity adopters saw no statistically significant change. Jensen Huang has been one of the few who had a different view, as I did, that AI won’t take your job, but failing to understand and use the tool will. Don’t miss the sub-plot here: investment in AI does appear to be driving top-line growth.

Read more: Big Companies Are Starting to Hire Again, WSJ, July 26, 2026 https://www.reveliolabs.com/news/ai-and-work/greater-ai-investment-more-hiring

Tech and AI

Jensen Huang made his first post on X on July 24 to publish a letter called Open Weights and American AI Leadership. There are more than a hundred companies signed on, including Microsoft, Meta, IBM, Google, Palantir, and Hugging Face. Interesting that Anthropic and Amazon didn't sign the letter. The argument is openness is not the enemy of security, concentration is. Put every critical system in the country behind three closed models and you have built three single points of failure. For most leaders, this is not a policy question; it is a strategy and perhaps survival question. You are about to have a real choice between renting intelligence and owning it.

There's a lot going on in this space, and I'll have a long-form piece on all the implications of open-weight/open-source AI models. This is why I've been building my own AI system using open-source models, including Jensen's nemotron-3-super:120b model, to understand this space better. I'll be sharing that with you shortly.

Meanwhile, the first major (American) shot has been fired in the open-source AI model wars.

Read more: Huang’s open weights letter, July 24, 2026. Full letter is in the folder.

Podcast of the week

Mike Rowe (the Dirty Jobs guy) had Todd Rose on The Way I Heard It (one of my favorite podcasts), episode 495, titled One Good Thing. Rose runs Populace, wrote Collective Illusions, and has spent years documenting a serious problem in American society today. More than seventy percent of Americans say they want to contribute to their community, only about thirty percent feel they actually do. His new project, Be the People, is a ten-year effort to get more Americans engaged in their local community. It's an inspirational effort, and I think fascinating to think about the art of the possible if we could remobilize our communities. Well worth a listen on your morning walk or a drive. Check out the website. What they're doing can make a difference.

Listen: The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe, #495. More on Be the People

Advice from the smartest people who ever lived

“In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business.” - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.51

One of the most important things we can do as leaders is focus our minds and create a personal operating system that balances action, self-knowledge, and your whole life.

Finally, a quick thank you to all of you who have watched and followed my Lead with Purpose™ podcast. We passed 10,000 followers on YouTube this week after less than 100 days, which is about 9,900 more than I ever expected! Thanks! A special shout-out to “producer John”; great job!

I hope you have an amazing weekend,

Ron