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- Snap Cut 1,000 Jobs. Stock Rose.
Snap Cut 1,000 Jobs. Stock Rose.
AI news, leaders, business insights and more
Dr. Ayesha Khanna
April 23, 2026 • Reading Time: 2 minutes
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Hi! Here are today’s top AI stories:
Snap Cut 1,000 Jobs. Stock Rose.
Would You Tell Your AI "Surprise Me"?
Data Breaches Around the World
NEWS YOU CAN’T MISS
Snap Cut 1,000 Jobs. Stock Rose
We don’t know the full picture, but filings in Washington State show a heavy concentration of technical roles: software engineers, ML engineers, data scientists, product managers. Snap says AI now generates more than 65% of new code and is explicitly pitching “small teams + AI agents” as its operating model
Why they laid off people is debatable – cost pressure, failed bets, AI, or all of the above – but one thing is clear: in a world of AI agents, engineering value is moving away from activity and towards accountability for real‑world outcomes. And most professions will follow.
That’s why accountability matters. The scarce skill is no longer “I can produce lots of lines,” but “I can be trusted with the loop from idea to measurable impact.”
High‑performing teams are already shifting metrics from story points and lines of code to cycle time, deployment frequency, change failure rate, and business KPIs like activation or cost‑to‑serve.
In my experience, engineers are great partners in designing customer solutions, challenging assumptions, and delivering business results. They’ve just seldom been given the chance.
It’s not an easy transition, but it’s a necessary one—for engineers, and for all of us as we learn to work with AI agents rather than just measure activity around them.
Would You Tell Your AI "Surprise Me"?
"Chatbots give up. Agents improvise," says Peter Steinberger, founder of the viral AI agent OpenClaw in a must-watch TED talk.
He shares his a-ha moment where his agent, faced with an audio file format it wasn't programmed to handle, autonomously figured it out and replied in just 9 seconds.
It didn't ask for permission.
Steinberger then added a "heartbeat" feature to the agent so it no longer waits for a prompt; it wakes up periodically to check his emails, review his calendar, and follow up on loose ends.
Since then, it has become viral across the globe, is the fastest-growing open source project in history and NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has called it, "the new computer." 🦞
But this autonomy comes with a sharp edge. Steinberger notes that no large company would ever ship a feature like this, but because he is a "random builder" without a corporate legal department, he built it and even gave it the initial, somewhat scary prompt: "surprise me".
It is a transition that stands as both a great boon for productivity and a dangerous Pandora’s box of unmonitored execution.
To understand the shift, definitely have a listen to the TED talk.
Would you let an AI agent run wild with a "surprise me" prompt? |
Data Breaches Around the World
Netherlands - Rituals, a cosmetics giant, confirms customer data breach. The Dutch beauty retailer said hackers siphoned names, birth dates, addresses, and phone numbers from its 41M-member loyalty database, affecting shoppers across Europe, the UK, and the US — the latest retailer after Co-op and M&S to see membership data weaponized for ransom.
UK - 100 countries now armed with phone-hacking spyware. The UK's National Cyber Security Centre, Britain's top cyber defense authority, warns that over half of the world's governments can now deploy tools like Pegasus or Graphite, up from 80 nations in 2023 — with targets expanding from dissidents to bankers and business elites.
France - ANTS, the national ID agency, breached with 19M citizen records up for sale. Agence Nationale des Titres Sécurisés, which issues French national IDs and passports, confirmed attackers stole names, birth details, addresses, and phone numbers - and a hacker is already advertising a 19-million-record database on a cybercrime forum.
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Until next time!
Amplify Team ❤️
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