The & Report #3

In this issue of The & Report, I'd like to cover some on the major news in tech during the week Jan. 10th - Jan. 16th, 2026, and thoughts on what it might mean for you.

1. The End of Programming, or Programmers? Claude leads in coding.

Claude Code is getting better at Agentic AI and Orchestration. Claude Code is an agentic coding assistant that automatically pulls context into prompts.

​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RpGVqgqLaE​

​https://venturebeat.com/orchestration/claude-code-just-got-updated-with-one-of-the-most-requested-user-features​

The Rise of "Vibe-Coding" and Syntax Abstraction Coding is becoming obsolete as syntax is replaced by intent. Linus Torvalds’ use of "Google Antigravity" to build the AudioNoise project confirms that even the world’s most technical architects now prefer "vibe-coding"—describing a desired outcome in natural language and letting an agent handle the implementation.

Recursive self-improvement. Anthropic has confirmed that Claude Code wrote the entire new Claude Cowork desktop app in just 1.5 weeks

Human Judgment as the Primary Hiring Filter As AI generates 3 million lines of code in seconds, the value of a "creator" is plummeting. McKinsey’s new hiring protocols, which test candidates on their ability to filter "synthetic slop" and exercise judgment, indicate that your primary professional asset is no longer what you can make, but what you can curate and validate.

2. Workforce changes

The Transition from Individual Contributor to "Agent Manager" Knowledge work is shifting from execution to orchestration. Also at McKinsey, a decision to count AI agents as "people" in their headcount and Salesforce’s release of "out-of-the-box employee agents" for Slack signal a future where your career success depends on your ability to manage a digital workforce rather than performing tasks yourself.

The "Job Singularity" and Single-Person Unicorns The traditional corporate structure is under threat as "Job Singularity" approaches. With AI teams like "Atoms" capable of building entire businesses autonomously, we are entering the era of the $1B single-person company, where a lone founder uses a swarm of specialized agents to compete with global enterprises.

3. Math Breakthroughs

Formal Reasoning and the "End of Guesswork" The success of models like Aristotle and GPT-5.2 Pro in solving century-old Erdős problems signifies that AI has moved beyond probabilistic text generation into formal, verifiable logic. For knowledge workers in law, finance, and engineering, this means a shift from "creating drafts" to "verifying proofs" in Lean-verified environments.

4. Also in the news

Ambient Personal Intelligence and Private Data Integration AI is moving from a tool you "visit" to an ambient layer of your life. Google’s "Personal Intelligence" for Gemini integrates private data from Drive and Photos to act as a proactive chief of staff. This turns your personal digital history into a real-time, actionable asset, making "context-switching" a thing of the past.

Google has launched the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard allowing AI agents to interact, negotiate, and transact across the entire shopping journey, effectively building TCP/IP for the agentic economy. This is accompanied by "Direct Offers" in AI Mode, allowing brands to inject discounts directly into conversations, and a Business Agent that lets brands chat autonomously with shoppers.

News has compiled from the following primary sources:​

ChatGPT - https://chatgpt.com/​

Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross - https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwg/​

Techpresso - https://www.dupple.com/techpresso​

5. I'll be hosting the third Zoom session of 2026 on Friday, Jan. 23rd at 12 noon, EST.

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.

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.

6. & this....

Commercials on LLMs!

I've been averse to commercials my whole life. On the Radio, Over the Air TV, then when I move to Cable, commercials followed soon after. Now in the world Streaming, commercials are perversive.

OpenAI to add commercials to the Free and Go tiers of ChatGPT!

​https://openai.com/index/our-approach-to-advertising-and-expanding-access/​

There're no places left to hide from commercials!

Hope you can join me at next Friday's Zoom Sessions of the year, on January 23rd.

All the best,

Pat