🔮 Sunday edition #539: Canaries in the bullpen. DeepSeek strikes again. Africa's solar revolution. Human agency, Grok Code, how FAANGs vibe-code ++

“I became a member when I started work on a project that needed combination of technical skills, wide vision, common sense and integrity. It is more efficient for me to rely on one main source for AI and you are the best.” – Johnny, a paying member

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Hi all,

Welcome to our Sunday edition, where we explore the latest developments, ideas, and questions shaping the exponential economy, including:

• How PwC’s 32% junior hiring cut reveals AI's workplace revolution

• DeepSeek’s clever workaround to build sovereign Chinese AI

• Africa’s silent solar boom

• and fifteen other morsels…

Enjoy the weekend reading!

Azeem

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Canary in the bullpen

We now have stronger evidence that AI is biting into youth employment. Since late 2022, early-career workers have seen employment fall by 13% compared to older cohorts in the same roles, whose employment grew by 6–9%. The decline in employment for the youngest workers shows up only where AI automates rather than augments work. It isn’t causal proof, but

Erik Brynjolfsson

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Bharat Chandar

and Ruyu Chen used ADP payroll data across tens of thousands of firms to rule out obvious alternatives: pre-AI trends, Covid-19, education gaps, and firm or industry shocks. The most likely explanation is AI.

This study adds some weight to what we’ve believed for some time – as AI enters the workforce, experience and judgment are being re-evaluated and valued.

AI is taking over the production side of the equation. LLMs operate at scale, drafting 30% of Microsoft’s code, processing billions of lines a day (Cursor) and generating BCG’s slides. [...] The model of junior workers generating and senior workers judging is no longer the reality.

Erik and his co-authors refer to this as “a canary in the coal mine” for broader AI disruption of the labor market. It could be, but we don’t know whether these results point to lasting change or just a transitional pause as firms figure out where AI fits. In uncertain times, it’s easier to slow youth hiring and lean on experience.

So we need to read these results with nuance. It’s a canary, not a smoking gun. I explore how I think about it here.