ClickUp Conducts Massive Layoffs, Replacing Hundreds of Employees with AI Agents

Project management tool ClickUp has reportedly laid off hundreds of employees and brought in thousands of AI agents to replace them. The decision by the nine-year-old startup to replace human workers with AI agents at scale has drawn significant attention as a moment emblematic of AI's impact on the labor market.

According to TechCrunch, ClickUp is framing its shift to AI agents as a strategic decision. Whether this move spreads to other companies, however, depends on how much of the work ClickUp's AI agents can actually take over.

Goldman Sachs CEO Pushes Back on the "AI Job Apocalypse" Narrative

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon argued in a New York Times op-ed that the AI-driven "Job Apocalypse" is overblown.

While acknowledging that AI will indeed bring change to the labor market, Solomon noted that technological innovation has historically created new jobs. Attention tends to focus on short-term job losses, but he suggested that in the long run, the new industries and roles AI creates will prove larger. The ClickUp case illustrates one side of the "AI job apocalypse" story, while Solomon's remarks reflect another side of the picture.

Linus Torvalds Moves to Ban AI-Generated Patches from the Linux Kernel

Linux kernel creator Linus Torvalds has tightened the rules for kernel development in response to a flood of low-quality AI-generated patches.

According to HotHardware, Torvalds is troubled by the surge of mechanically generated patches churned out by AI tools, which has dramatically increased the review burden. Noting that the quality of AI-generated code often falls below the level that humans can meaningfully review, he has moved to overhaul the submission rules.

This move suggests that the debate over how to handle AI-generated code is now in full swing across the open source community. Even as AI's generative capabilities improve, it has become clear that human judgment remains indispensable for large-scale, security-critical projects.

Anthropic Co-founder Argues AI Should Be Guided from Outside Big Tech

Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, speaking at an event held in Rome, argued that the direction of AI should be guided from outside Big Tech. According to Reuters, Olah pointed to the risks of AI development becoming concentrated in a small number of giant corporations, emphasizing that broader participation from society is essential.

Another Anthropic co-founder also attended the same event, joining Pope Leo XIV in warning that AI-driven job loss triggers "a moral imperative of historic proportions." Following the previously reported papal encyclical, it was yet another sign that concern over AI's societal impact is mounting even from inside the tech industry.

Uber COO: AI Investment Becoming Harder to Justify

Uber COO Andrew Macdonald said that spending on AI tokens is becoming harder to justify, according to Business Insider.

Using the term "tokenmaxxing" (overinvestment in tokens), Macdonald pointed out that the balance between the cost of using AI models and the results delivered has broken down. Amid the rush by many companies to adopt AI, it is notable that executives at major tech companies are beginning to call for a cold-eyed assessment of actual ROI.

Hugging Face Tidies Up AI Agent Terminology

Hugging Face has published a guide, "Harness, Scaffold, and the AI Agent Terms Worth Getting Right," that organizes AI agent-related terminology.

As agentic AI has spread, concepts such as Harness and Scaffold have come into use, but their definitions have remained inconsistent across the community. The guide aims to make discussions of agent design more productive by establishing a shared vocabulary.

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