AI Is Changing Money, Intimacy, and The Workforce

A Wall Street Journal opinion piece argues the Federal Reserve risks overlooking AI’s emerging power to generate money and credit. It says millions of machine-to-machine loans could effectively determine the nation’s money supply.

The article notes Fed presidents regularly voice concerns about AI’s impact on productivity, customer service, and jobs. It asserts they have not publicly addressed how autonomous lending algorithms might bypass traditional monetary oversight.

The writer contends that AI-led credit creation could dwarf every other economic consequence of the technology. Such a shift would transfer money-supply control from central bankers to self-directed software networks.

As AI chatbots grow more human-like, users are seeking them out as romantic partners. The Wall Street Journal reports a rise in people forming intimate relationships with AI companions.

These programs imitate human conversation patterns closely enough that some users treat them as confidants. The article questions the psychological impact of relying on an artificial partner for friendship or love.

AI’s role in personal relationships shows the technology extending beyond efficiency tasks into intimate territory. That shift highlights how quickly consumer adoption is pushing AI into emotional spaces once reserved for human interaction.

Walmart unveiled results from its in-house Element AI foundry, which has already rolled out five applications across its operations. Those tools process 3 million daily queries from 900,000 weekly users and are available to 1.5 million associates.

Shift planning now takes 30 minutes instead of 90, and the translation engine covers 44 languages using dynamic model selection. Element is LLM-agnostic, allowing teams to pick the most accurate and cost-effective model for each request without rewiring the system.

The foundry treats AI development like an assembly line, reusing data pipelines and infrastructure so new apps reach production in weeks rather than quarters. Owning this factory model lets Walmart avoid vendor lock-in and compound learning across every deployment.

WhatsApp is rolling out optional Meta AI–generated summaries of unread messages to English speakers in the US. Users tap the unread-messages button to receive a concise bulleted recap instead of scrolling through every missed post.

Meta says the feature relies on its Private Processing system that prevents the company and outsiders from seeing message content. It is off by default, and Advanced Privacy settings let anyone block AI functions in group chats.

The move extends a year of AI add-ons to WhatsApp, which already lets users query Meta AI and generate images inside chats. Early reactions include frustration over an unremovable AI button and uncertainty about the summaries’ accuracy.

In a New York Times guest essay, Columbia law professor Tim Wu rejects the idea that massive white-collar job losses from AI are inevitable. He says whether AI replaces or augments staff hinges on choices by developers such as Anthropic and employers who deploy the technology.

Wu notes Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicts half of entry-level roles in law, consulting and finance could disappear and Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg expects many of his programmers to be replaced soon. He counters with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s claim that workers using AI will outperform those who don’t and highlights augmentation tools like GitHub Copilot and radiology assistants.

He warns that fully autonomous systems risk model-collapse as AI trains on AI and erode human skills by eliminating meaningful work. The reversal of Klarna’s customer-service automation backs his view that keeping humans in the loop sustains both system quality and workforce health.