February 27, 2026: Jack Dorsey cuts 40% of Block's workforce — 4,000 jobs — credits AI, and predicts most companies will follow within a year. We do a deep dive on whether this is genuine AI transformation or a compelling narrative layered on top of a management mistake, and why the answer might be both.

Plus: Anthropic draws a hard line against the Pentagon, refusing to allow Claude to be used in autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance — and faces threats of being labeled a national security risk. OpenAI closes the largest private funding round in tech history at $110 billion and an $840 billion post-money valuation. And despite all the doom headlines, computer science graduates are on track to earn $81,500 starting salaries in 2026 — up 7% from last year.

February 26, 2026: Engineers are facing a productivity panic as coding agents accelerate output — and pressure — at the same time. Nvidia just posted a staggering quarter, underscoring how fast the infrastructure buildout is moving compared to the human transition. Reuters reports nearly one million young people in the UK are now "NEET" (not in employment, education, or training), a flashing warning light for the entry-level pipeline. Burger King is rolling out an AI assistant that listens in, coaches, and scores worker performance in real time. And Rolex's ultra-competitive trade school is producing graduates positioned for $95,000 jobs — a counter-narrative to the idea that all opportunity lives in knowledge work.

February 25, 2026: This week Anthropic — one of the companies most associated with responsible AI — gutted the safety commitment it made in 2023. The same week the Pentagon gave its CEO a Friday ultimatum: allow military use of your AI or lose a $200 million contract. Meanwhile Jamie Dimon went on record at a JPMorgan investor meeting and confirmed something most CEOs won't say out loud: AI is already displacing his workers, their redeployment infrastructure can't keep up with the pace of it, and society needs to start thinking seriously about what comes next. I also cover why Big Tech is paying up to $1.2 million for communications talent — and what that says about which human skills are becoming most valuable — plus Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank deploying AI to surveil their own traders in real time, and LinkedIn's 2026 Skills on the Rise report, which tracks which skills are actually converting to job offers.

February 24, 2026: Five major stories broke in the last 24 hours at the intersection of AI and the future of work — and they're all in conversation with each other.

Anthropic launched Claude directly inside Excel, PowerPoint, and Slack, making its biggest move yet into everyday knowledge work. A Federal Reserve governor said on the record that if AI drives unemployment, interest rate cuts — the government's go-to economic tool — may not be able to fix it. Goldman Sachs revealed that despite hundreds of billions in AI investment, it may have contributed almost nothing to U.S. economic growth last year. Yale's Budget Lab pushed back on the AI productivity revolution narrative, saying the data simply doesn't support it yet. And a financial research firm's fictional scenario set in 2028 went so viral it triggered a major market selloff.

Many companies try to solve low morale with simple perks like wellness apps, but workers often care more about real pay and career growth. The big challenge today is keeping frontline employees happy while the world worries about AI impact and high turnover. What could be the most substantial, meaningful investments leaders can make that truly build real loyalty? In this episode, Paul Marchand, EVP and CHRO of Charter Communications, more popularly known as Spectrum, discusses how to invest in people to create a better customer experience. He explains the strategy behind helping a 95,000-person workforce through absorbing rising benefit costs and programs like frictionless, prepaid tuition reimbursement and a unique employee stock purchase plan designed to build an owner mindset. Paul shares how "open mic" sessions at Charter improve their employee retention, and the way Spectrum GPT is being used to make HR more efficient. We also explore the 'high school pathways' initiative, upcoming M&A integration with Cox Communications, and how HR role evolution is turning leaders into Chief Future of Work Officers, going far beyond traditional employee management. This episode shows CHROs how to use a people-first strategy to build a resilient and competitive workforce.

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Feb 20, 2026: AI is already deciding who gets hired, promoted, and fired — and there are almost no rules governing how it does any of that.

In this episode, I'm building those rules. I call them the Five Laws of AI in the Workplace, constructed in the spirit of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics — rigorous enough to pressure-test, honest enough to admit where they fall short.

We cover the Law of Transparency — why 30 million job applicants in 2024 were evaluated by algorithms they never knew existed. The Law of Human Primacy — why a human rubber-stamping an AI decision isn't the same as a human making one. The Law of Honest Attribution — why AI washing is one of the most underreported forms of corporate dishonesty happening right now. The Law of True Cost Accounting — why the real costs of workforce cuts don't disappear, they just move to taxpayers and communities. And the Law of Reversibility — the full Klarna story, and why 31% of companies that made AI-driven layoffs ended up worse off than if they'd never done it.

February 19, 2026: AI is rapidly becoming a career requirement and the workforce is splitting into those who can adapt and those who get squeezed.

In today's episode, I cover 5 stories that reveal what's changing right now:

1. The best AI job risk analysis I've seen: who's exposed, who can adapt, and which roles are most vulnerable

2. Accenture reportedly tying promotions to AI tool adoption—what this signals and why it can backfire

3. Why the "AI will replace you" narrative is dangerous—and how fear distorts leadership decisions

4. Walmart's approach: training 1.6 million workers on AI instead of using AI as a reason to cut headcount

5. Google + Ipsos data: only 5% of workers are AI fluent—and the gap is already linked to raises and promotions

I also share the bigger takeaway: the future isn't just "learn AI." It's building adaptive capacity, creating real mobility pathways, and upgrading people at scale while keeping human judgment and accountability at the center.

If you lead people, culture, or strategy, this episode will help you see what's happening—and what to do next.

The U.S. economy is creating wealth… but not many jobs. At the same time, AI is spreading across the workplace, yet most employees still don't trust it to run without human oversight.

In today's episode of Future Ready Today, I break down the signals behind the "jobless boom," what the Federal Reserve is warning leaders about, why the job-switching pay premium is collapsing, and the rise of AI agents that can literally hire humans to do real-world work.

Stories covered:

• Only 17% trust workplace AI without human oversight

• The shrinking job-hopping premium and the loyalty tax

• The Fed's three AI labor-market scenarios (including a "jobless boom")

• Growth without jobs: investment, output, and the widening GDP–jobs gap

• AI agents hiring humans: the rise of the "Human API" economy