u/AITakeoverTracker

They blew through their 2026 budget in just 4 months so they've started canceling Claude Code licenses.

This is just 6 months after they started encouraging developers to use Claude Code.

It's funny we're seeing a paradox, companies like Disney, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft, have been pushing employees to "tokenmaxx." Many are actively monitoring employee AI usage and some even created leader boards.

Last week Amazon employees admitted to burning tokens on trivial stuff just to get their numbers up.

Now we're seeing companies like Microsoft end up with eye-watering bills and they're starting to pull back.

First covered in the takeover tracker newsletter.

On Friday, the BLS released the Occupational Employment and Wages News Release. Previously, the BLS identified these jobs as AI exposed:

• Paralegals and legal assistants
• Graphic designers
• Broadcast announcers and radio disc jockeys
• Technical writers
• Interpreters and translators
• Insurance sales agents
• Sales representatives of services, except advertising, insurance, financial services, and travel
• Sales representatives, wholesale and manufacturing, technical and scientific products
• Sales representatives, wholesale and manufacturing, except technical and scientific products
• Models
• Sales engineers
• Procurement clerks
• Credit authorizers, checkers, and clerks
• Customer service representatives
• Executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants
• Legal secretaries and administrative assistants
• Medical secretaries and administrative assistants
• Secretaries and administrative assistants, except legal, medical, and executive

In the release:
Employment overall was up 0.8%, but for the jobs listed above employment was down 0.2%.

The data is from May 2025. We've seen significant improvements in AI capability since then. Also, many anecdotal stories of automation.

The largest occupation overall was home health and personal care aids at 4.3 million people.

The second largest was a tie between retail sales and fast food workers at 3.9 million each.

Average US wage was $69,770.

First reported in the newsletter.

Job postings up 700% vs last year with some salaries pushing $300K.

If you've been following the newsletter this is no surprise as we've been talking about it for months now. There's been a significant gap between what AI is capable of doing vs how companies are using AI.

FDEs are customer/business facing roles to help companies implement AI effectively.

Way, way too many companies have taken a top down, "just add AI" approach. Last year MIT found around 95% of companies who implemented AI found no measurable business impact.

A common story we keep hearing: the CEO gets an AI demo or uses AI for a specific task. CEO is blown away and directs the company to use AI with little to no training. The AI fails to provide value and often even increases work for employees.

We've talked about how this story has been shifting over the last month. Companies are starting to figure it out. FDEs are becoming part of the solution.

AI moves so fast and the landscape changes so much that you can really need a dedicated full time person to keep up with everything. Often, until you get your hands dirty with a new model or tool, you can't really know how good it is at a specific task.

The positions are primarily showing up at the model providers right now (Google, Anthropic, OpenAI). But consulting firms are also adding FDEs and some companies are hiring in house.

This subreddit is 1 month old today. We started this as a place to discuss AI job displacement. No hype or doomerism. Just what's actually happening with AI and the job market.

1 month in we have 485 members. Many are professionals in different industries that are adding insight beyond what the headline says.

The top posts

1. AI slop is flooding academic journals... - Several commenters from research/academia confirmed they are seeing this play out in real time.

2. College graduates can't find entry-level roles - Comments confirmed this first hand. There was also a fight in the comments about if trade school was worth it over college.

3. Gen Z is sabotaging AI implementations - we've seen several stories about CEO pushing AI where it doesn't work and workers not happy

Favorite comment of the month

u/isthereadrwho - If every job is an AI job then every skill is an AI skill. So what's the point of Skilling up. You make no sense

Trends we're seeing

Over the last month our team has read thousands of articles and spoken to professionals across a wide array of industries. Themes we notice:

1. AI implementation struggles - CEOs are generally much more optimistic about AI than workers. It's two fold, workers don't want to be replaced, but also workers actually see how it fails. AI also creates more work for many tasks than it can automate. However, the vibe does seem to be shifting in the last week about what AI can realistically do right now.

2. Companies wait-and-see - Hiring freezes, temporary workers, not back-filling positions. Even if AI can't do a task today, maybe it can a year from now. Companies are increasingly hesitant to hire permanent employees.

3. Slop is a drag - From the application process to bosses and coworkers sending reports, AI slop is everywhere. There are some legitimate use cases where AI can automate tasks. A lot actually. But reports keep showing no net benefit to AI. We think slop is the problem.

We started a daily newsletter to share the best things we find day to day. Get it here: https://aitakeovertracker.com/news

Our plan is to continue tracking the reality of where AI is. Feel free to share what you're seeing, good and bad. The more data we have the better!

I was just reading this article about court decisions regarding AI chats : https://natlawreview.com/article/ai-chats-are-discoverable-and-trigger-preservation-obligations

The punchline is your AI chats are discoverable in a legal context.

So not only can they find your chats if a legal issue comes up, but you/your company have a legal obligation to preserve your chats.

That can get tricky for companies because employees could be using their own personal AI tools and chats to discuss business matters.

Even though AI is a new technology, courts are not creating new rules. Instead they are treating AI similar to email or slack messages.

It gets worse when you consider how easy it is to just ask ChatGPT or Claude a legal question vs running it by a lawyer (assuming you have access to one). But the AI models are agreeable so you can lead them to answer pretty easily. Then you find yourself in court with your exact legal strategy discussion handed to judge and jury.

More of my thoughts including the relevant court cases here: https://aitakeovertracker.com/blog/ai-chats-are-discoverable-in-court

DQ is the latest fast food company to test AI drive thrus. So far the AI has been 90% accurate at taking orders.

The USDA National Proving Grounds Network for AgTech (NPG-Ag) was recently launched to allow farmers to efficiently test AI tools. Forbes did an article about it recently.

One of the main goals was "reduced labor demands."

There's currently around 2.6 million agriculture workers in the US.

At the same time companies like Microsoft and SAP are dumping billions into AI directly targeting agriculture.

Total spend was almost $7 Billion in 2025 but expected to triple in the next 7 years.

They are moving away from bolt on AI tools to software platforms integrated with AI. Investments are rapidly increasing as companies look to "win" the agriculture AI market.

The AI promises to improve planting accuracy, manage input variability, monitor crop health, and make other decisions autonomously.

You can see our full breakdown here: https://aitakeovertracker.com/blog/the-seeds-of-automation-how-government-and-private-capital-are-cultivating-an-ai

A corporate meal delivery platform saw orders after 6 PM up over 50% versus last year. Weekend orders have doubled. AI is likely a key contributor.

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