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Today's topics:

Gen Z mood shifts on AI - A new Walton Family Foundation–GSV Ventures–Gallup survey shows Gen Z uses AI frequently but is growing more skeptical, with workplace risk perceptions rising and trust in school norms weakening.

AI as productivity aid and addiction - A personal essay connects task paralysis and ADHD-like symptoms with heavy generative AI use, highlighting productivity gains alongside token-spend temptation and habit-forming feedback loops.

AI cheating and lost agency in Go - A LessWrong essay argues post-AlphaGo Go has normalized AI assistance, fueling online cheating and “gradual disempowerment,” with weak enforcement accelerating dependence over learning.

Copilot billing shock and local inference - A critique of GitHub Copilot’s move toward usage-based billing frames cheap AI as subsidy-to-dependence, while explaining why local LLM inference is still bottlenecked for fast coding workflows.

Big Tech layoffs amid AI capex - Cloudflare’s large layoffs framed as ‘agentic AI’ preparation and Meta’s planned cuts tied to massive AI infrastructure spend illustrate a wider shift: optimizing for compute and margins over headcount.

Open-source licensing under AI pressure - Developers report AI coding agents changing open-source economics by making forks easier and faster, renewing interest in copyleft like AGPL and raising questions about sustainable maintenance.

Persistent memory layers for agents - YourMemory proposes a local, MCP-compatible long-term memory layer for AI agents using vector search plus graph retrieval and decay-based pruning, aiming to reduce token bloat and improve recall.

US–China AI rivalry and norms - The Economist highlights AI as a top strategic issue for the US and China ahead of a Xi–Trump meeting, with a Cold War-style tension between racing for advantage and avoiding destabilizing risks.

-Survey Finds Gen Z Growing Angrier About AI as Workplace and Classroom Concerns Rise
-Essay: Using AI to Break Task Paralysis Comes With an Addiction Risk
-Essay Says Go’s AI Era Is Fueling Cheating and Quiet Player Disempowerment
-Copilot’s Usage Billing Spurs Push for Local AI Inference Hardware
-Critic Says Cloudflare’s AI-Justified Layoffs Mask Margin and Reliability Risks
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