AI isn't replacing jobs—AI spending is

"Turns out AI isn't taking our jobs—it's just taking the budget we'd use to hire more of us."

Hello Builders 👋

Another week, another existential crisis in tech. But this time it's not about whether AI will replace us—it's about whether we can afford to keep our jobs while companies burn through their entire budgets on GPU credits and enterprise OpenAI subscriptions.

Today we're looking at the real cost of the AI gold rush, some intriguing hints about Gemini 3.0, Snowflake's integration with v0, and practical tips for building better AI agents.

Let's dive in 👇

The plot twist nobody saw coming: AI isn't killing jobs through automation—it's killing them through spending. Companies are hemorrhaging cash on AI infrastructure instead of hiring actual humans.

Here's the reality check builders need: while everyone's been worried about AI replacing developers, the real threat is CFOs choosing $2M GPU clusters over expanding engineering teams. Amazon's cutting jobs while simultaneously announcing billion-dollar AI investments. The math is brutal—one senior engineer's salary could fund a year of API credits.

v0 Adds Snowflake Integration - Build data-driven apps directly connected to your Snowflake warehouse, compute stays in your data layer with Vercel auth.

Google's Opal Goes GA - No-code app builder exits beta, lets anyone build internal tools without touching code (we'll see how long that lasts).

Security Audits for AI Agents - Static and dynamic scanner that catches sketchy agent-to-tool communications before your LLM decides to rm -rf your production database.

Semantic Filename Search CLI - Vector-powered search that finds files by what they do, not what they're called, because we all name things terribly anyway.

PDF to Sheets AI Pipeline - Build an AI agent that automatically extracts PDF data and dumps it into Google Sheets using OpenAI's workflow builder.

6 Steps to Understanding LLMs - Master the fundamentals from web scraping to transformer architectures so you actually know what's happening under the hood.

Why AI Sucks at CSS - Deep dive into why LLMs struggle with cascading styles and what that reveals about their reasoning limitations.

Prompt Engineering for Developers - The case for why crafting better prompts is becoming as essential as knowing Git (whether you like it or not).

Startup Launch Engine Automates - Someone built an n8n workflow that handles entire product launches end-to-end, from idea to full launch package in one click.

AI Inventing New Math - Terence Tao and DeepMind researchers drop a paper suggesting AI's real breakthrough isn't solving problems but asking better questions.

The AGI Paradigm Debate - Replit's Amjad Masad and Quora's Adam D'Angelo go head-to-head on whether current LLMs can actually get us to AGI.

Human-in-the-Loop Required - Hot take that no AI agent project works without human retrieval tuning, triggering the automation purists in the replies.

Building in Public Sucks - Everyone preaches transparency and sharing your journey, but here's what they conveniently leave out about the downsides.

First MVP Ships Live - Rabinson Thapa pushed his first product to production after the classic "timeline said yesterday, life said today" dance we've all done.

Grant Lee Hits $2.1B Valuation - a16z backs Series B for Grant Lee's company at unicorn-plus valuation, per NYT announcement today.

Scribe Reaches $1.3B Showing AI ROI - New Scribe Optimize product helps orgs figure out where AI actually makes financial sense, not just vibes.

OpenAI Joins Global Coding Initiative - Teams up with Imagi and Lovable on worldwide AI coding education program for developers.

AI Video Relighting Tool - Beeble's new model lets you click to completely change lighting in existing videos, which is either going to save film students thousands or make every YouTube thumbnail look identically dramatic.

Spatial Intelligence Is Next - Fei-Fei Li argues spatial intelligence is the scaffolding of cognition and the next frontier for AI capabilities beyond text.

Google AI Developer News - New tools and API announcements

Sir Tim Berners-Lee doesn't think AI will destroy the web - Web inventor's perspective on AI impact

Opening the black box of character training - How AI characters are developed and trained

The Anti-Prompt Strategy: 5 Human Skills AI Can Never Steal - Uniquely human capabilities in AI era

Wild how we're debating whether AI is replacing jobs while Gemini might be quietly dropping 3.0 features and a16z is announcing another mega-round. The real story isn't the doom—it's that someone's already shipping the next thing while everyone else argues.

What are you building this week?

Keep shipping,

P.S. If you're still optimizing PDF parsing in Agent Builder like Corbin, you're already lapping 90% of people just talking about AI on Twitter.