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The & Report #2

I hope your first full week of 2026 was a good one. Rested up after the holidays and getting ready for an exciting, if turbulent year with technology, the economy, and the global order.

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In this, the 2nd weekly issue of The & Report, I'd like to cover some on the major news in tech, and thoughts on what it might mean for you.

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(No AI was used in the production of this report, and all the typos and grammatical errors are mine.)

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Let's get started.

1. CES & The latest job's report

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The annual Consumer Tech Exhibition took place in Las Vegas. It's where tech enthusiasts gather to see the latest in home entertainment and gadgetry, and tech companies preview their latest developments.

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AI and Robots were the main takeaway from the week.

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& the latest US Labor jobs report came out.

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Hiring is slowing, unemployment is disproportionally harder for non-white and younger workers. AI has not been listed as major factor, however companies are hesitant to hire in light of expected development in AI.

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"The labor market has deteriorated over the past year, in particular, for new graduates and others who are looking for work. And people with jobs are hanging onto them tight. Nearly every week, data on new jobless claims across all 50 states has shown that firings remain low."

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"Health care and social assistance continued to lead the way for payroll growth."

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"The persistent reduction in job openings and the increase in the long-term unemployed over the past year “suggest the weakest labor market since mid-2017,” said Ernie Tedeschi, the chief economist at Stripe"

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2. Elon's interview with Peter & Dave

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Elon Musk was interviewed by Peter Diamandis and Dave Blundin from Moonshoots this week. It was far-ranging and unusual conversation. Whether you like Elon or not, there were some interesting topics discussed.

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Speaking personally I was surprised at how idiotic Elon can be; he has the humor of crude teenager, and yet can be a deep thinker. The recent problems with Grok are an example of his twisted mind.

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I used a cool tool from DIA (https://www.diabrowser.com/), an AI-native web browser, to process the video after I'd watched it.

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Here's DIA's AI summary:

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Elon Musk forecasts near-term AI upheaval: massive job disruption, compute race, and hopeful abundance.

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Main points from the interview

  • Musk’s near-term worry is the transition, not the distant future: the next 3–7 years will be “bumpy,” with AI handling most white‑collar tasks and no “on/off switch” to slow acceleration. He frames the challenge as steering toward Star Trek, not Terminator.

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  • He expects China to far exceed the world in AI compute at current trends, arguing national leaders should urgently plan for energy, fabs, and infrastructure; otherwise the US risks falling behind.

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  • Work impact: “anything short of shaping atoms” is increasingly automatable; AI can already do half or more of those jobs. He floats ideas like universal high income and emphasizes that truthful, curious, beauty‑aligned AI values are key to a good outcome.

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  • Energy and chips are gating factors: sustained progress needs huge power and semiconductor capacity; Musk is personally focused on chip design and rapid model upgrades (e.g., Grok 4.2 → 5 in Q1).

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  • Societal mood is anxious: surveys show many would “rather live in the past,” shaped by Hollywood’s dystopias. The hosts argue optimism plus practical planning is essential to avoid a confidence crisis.

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Best‑guess implications for work and life over the next 3 years

  • Jobs and skills: Knowledge work will compress. Expect rapid adoption of AI agents that draft, analyze, code, design circuits, and manage workflows, reducing headcount in back‑office functions and raising expectations for output per person. Roles that “shape atoms” (field work, physical trades, robotics techs, bio‑wet lab, advanced manufacturing) gain relative resilience, but tools will augment them.

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  • Pay and safety nets: Income volatility rises. Companies and some governments trial stipends or “universal high income” pilots tied to productivity and retraining programs. Benefits and severance norms evolve toward longer transitions.

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  • Compute and energy arms race: US, China, and hyperscalers accelerate datacenter build‑outs, power procurement, and chip programs. Local shortages of power or GPUs become recurring bottlenecks affecting product launches and regional competitiveness.

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  • Everyday life: Personal AI companions become standard, handling scheduling, purchasing, research, and health triage. Reliability improves with multimodal models; truthfulness and transparent provenance become a consumer priority as agents act on your behalf.

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  • Culture and mindset: Anxiety persists, but visible gains in healthcare access, translation, education, and logistics nudge sentiment toward cautious optimism. People who lean into AI literacy, data hygiene, and toolchains see step‑change gains; those who avoid it face widening opportunity gaps.

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In short, prepare for faster workflows, fewer pure clerical roles, more agentic tools, and a premium on energy, chips, and values alignment to keep progress humane.

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You can watch this full video here - it's about 2-hours long, get the popcorn and throw it at Elon every time he makes an inappropriate joke!


3. ChatGPT & Health

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Some background on OpenAI. Sam Altman and Elon are fighting it out in court. Long story short. They started OpenAI together in what was meant to be a non-profit AI company focused on helping humanity.

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They fell out when Altman created a separate for-profit company to monetize products from OpenAI. Altman argued they need the revenue to keep up in the AI race. Elon left and sued.

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Now Altman is releasing as many products as he can to continue funding their developments.

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Case in point - another new OpenAI product.

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OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health, a new dedicated space where users can have separate conversations with the AI about their health and wellness questions without mixing them into regular chats.

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The feature can connect with apps like Apple Health, Function, and MyFitnessPal to pull in personal medical records and wellness data, and OpenAI says it won't use Health conversations to train models.

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OpenAI's own terms of service say the AI is "not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of any health condition," and large language models remain prone to hallucinations and lack understanding of truth.

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4. China Wars & Who's winning?

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As you can hear in the Elon interview above, China is currently way ahead of the US in energy, solar power, and AI... and PhDs.

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After the Trump tariffs China has pursued a policy of eliminating any dependency on the US for tech parts. They are now starting to build their own chips for their CPUs.

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China's plan is the flood the world with cheaper, faster and smarter models than the US LLMs. They use open weight models, in comparison to the proprietary models the US companies are building. -as reported via techpresso.

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Their models are available in the US and are currently being used by companies, researchers, and the general public here.


5. I'll be hosting the second Zoom session of 2026 on Friday, Jan. 16th at 12 noon, EST.

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This session will include -

  • AI and Tech News updates.

  • A look at some AI tech features.

  • Giving away the Prompt Engineering Accelerator GPT, a 30-day learning program that covers how to effectively prompt Chat GPT and other LLMs.

  • A review of how the GPT works.

  • An open discussion of what future learning courses you'd like to see.

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I'll be adding a guest speaker every other month, or so, and would love to hear what topics you'd be interesting in learning about.

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Note: A change I'd like to make with the release of the training GPTs.

I plan to keep launching a new GPT each month, and will add a brief quiz during each week's session to see how well the week's learning went. I hope this will also help keep you on track with the 30-day course material.

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6. Some other interesting news.

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The Singularity is starting to make the Manhattan Project look like a rounding error. In 2025, US AI infrastructure capex reached 1.9% of GDP, making the buildout more than three times larger than the Apollo Project (0.6%) and nearly five times larger than the Manhattan Project (0.4%).

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From Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwg/. Follow him on LinkedIn for his daily updates.

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India AI Impact Summit 2026 is confirmed to bring together over 100 global CEOs and leaders — including Sam Altman and NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang — to shape international cooperation on AI innovation and policy.

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AI in 2026: Shift from Hype to Real‑World Value

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella states 2026 will mark a turning point where practical, everyday usefulness of AI — not just powerful models — becomes the priority for business adoption.

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& Lastly

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New AI Concept: “Intelition”

Experts suggest we may need a new term — “intelition” — to describe the next stage of AI where humans and AI continuously co‑create decisions and workflows, moving beyond traditional prompt‑and‑response AI usage.


7. & this....

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Yesterday was the final Open Mic at the West Park Presbyterian Church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The church was built in the late 19th Century, but constructed with a poor choice of materials - sandstone, instead of brick. As a result years of storms and acid rain, along with a declining congregation, the unstable building is now closed, pending a sale.

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The Open Mic has been running there for the last 12 and 1/2 years. I got to perform one last time. All good things........

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Hope you can join me at next Friday's Zoom Sessions of the year, on January 16th.


 
 
 

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