The token math ain't mathin', so time to get back to what makes us human

The hype machine spent two years telling us AI was coming for your job. Now it's quietly walking that back. Why now? Follow the money.

On this week's system update, George K. and George A. pull apart the vibe shift happening at the top of the AI economy: from Uber's COO admitting he can't draw a line between token spend and shipped features, to the broader reckoning hitting every CFO who signed a three-year AI contract without modeling what agentic workflows actually cost.

The subsidized era is over. The bill is due. And nobody has a clean answer.

But the harder question underneath all of it isn't economic. It's human.

What happens when an industry skips straight from "how big can we make it" to "what are humans even for" without stopping to answer either?

The two Georges reckon with soft skills being repackaged as vital skills, the neoliberal bargain sold to a generation of college graduates, and what Pope Leo's 42,000+word encyclical on human dignity in the age of AI gets right that most boards and governments haven't.

A tech podcast about humans. This week, more than ever.

Mentioned:

* Jensen Huang on irresponsible proclamations [https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/nvidia-ceo-begs-execs-stop-fired-ai] * Uber COO on lack of ROI from tokenmaxxing [https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-andrew-macdonald-ai-token-spending-harder-justify-2026-5] * Ed Zitron on OpenAI and potential collapse of Oracle [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHtGXCWXyZs] * Daniela Amodei on the importance of the humanities [https://fortune.com/2026/02/07/anthropic-cofounder-daniela-amodei-humanities-majors-soft-skills-hiring-ai-stem/] * Jamie Dimon on future job skills [https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/11/jamie-dimon-ai-will-eliminate-jobs-but-these-skills-will-get-you-opportunities.html] * What 2026 hiring managers are looking for [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/insight/experts-urge-shift-to-human-skills-as-job-market-tightens/gm-GMF1A41634] * Pope Leo XIV's encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas [https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html] * Marissa Alert on business outcomes planning first [https://open.spotify.com/episode/7ABtVkMeFEFVkJ0YVXjRXV?si=a10dec23e96f450a] * David Homan on how to build real human networks [https://open.spotify.com/episode/4iPxqxL69EKDCox6FuSK0X?si=b564db6ac39e4d35] * Sharon Goldman on the small town impact of the datacenter buildout [https://open.spotify.com/episode/3oiUrqViDUNpRtWTPgfLN3?si=w5XsbmbSQ--CbxhtdjLR-Q]