Christopher Mims

WSJ tech columnist. Author of How to AI, a bullshit-free guide to what AI is actually good for -- and also how our overestimation of its abilities can lead us astray.

Articles & links

“The largest IPO of all time also means we will possibly see the biggest flop of all time. If SpaceX fails, the people who get hit are not the wised-up early investors but basically a bunch of normal people, the ones who can least afford it.” — @lopatto.bsky.social www.theverg…

The SpaceX IPO is great for Elon Musk and terrible for you theverge.com
View on Bluesky · ♥ 87 ↻ 26 ↩ 7 · 3 from the directory shared this · 38d ago

CEOs are backpedalling en masse on claims that AI will take jobs; one survey suggests adoption correlates with more hiring. “They may have realized it was simply bad business to say that your great new product will destroy the economy.” www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-w...

wsj.com
View on Bluesky · ♥ 304 ↻ 71 ↩ 12 · 2 from the directory shared this · 2d ago

Axios is reporting that a company 'accidentally' spent $500 million in one month on AI after failing to establish usage limits for its employees. www.axios.com/2026/05/28/a...

axios.com
AI Weekly's analysis
  • A single enterprise client burned $500 million in one month after implementing no usage controls on employee AI licenses.
  • Microsoft canceled most internal Claude Code licenses, marking the clearest enterprise-scale AI spending pullback so far in 2026.
  • Four named friction points stall enterprise AI ROI: strategic misalignment, routine query cost spiral, adoption lag, and proprietary data reluctance.
Read full analysis →
View on Bluesky · ♥ 545 ↻ 123 ↩ 40 · 2 from the directory shared this · 40d ago

here's a counter-narrative I hope reaches enough people before it's too late: Companies that lean too hard into AI right now are going to go out of business. Some firms "behind" in AI adoption now will weather the coming storm precisely because they are. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/wh…

What AI Experts Say About When Not to Use AI - WSJ wsj.com
View on Bluesky · ♥ 134 ↻ 30 ↩ 9 · 2 from the directory shared this · 17d ago

News of AI cracking a famous problem in mathematics should give us all pause: This is less a technology that is "dumb and useless" than one that is dumb and useless when misapplied to the wrong areas of human endeavor. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-m...

wsj.com
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America’s Data Center Build-Out Is Way Behind Schedule * 60% of 2027 capacity isn't even under construction yet * Supply-chain backlogs, permitting fights, scarce electricity * Unclear how tens of billions in fresh investment in AI can be put to use www.wsj.com/tech/ai/amer...

wsj.com
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Recent commentary

the following are all probably true and not in the least contradictory: 1. There's a huge bubble in AI investment, the crash is going to be bad 2. A majority of the tasks we've been promised AI will "take over," it will not 3. AI will completely transform coding

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The more I talk to folks trying to implement AI in small and medium size businesses the more apparent it is that what they really need to do is figure out their internal IT stuff & create streamlined systems for the humans already doing the work. Can't even begin to bring in AI until this is done.

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my most cancelable take is that AI-inspired layoffs are a temporary realignment that doesn't make them good, that doesn't make them any less painful, it just means that any narrative that's like "AI will lead to permanently less jobs" is pretty silly

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I do not think the average American has the slightest sense the sheer scale of the current AI / stock market bubble. It doesn't mean it will pop in a way that's as dramatic or catastrophic as 2001 or 2008 -- we could get what Gary Marcus calls a "great fizzle" -- but a big trough is coming.

View on Bluesky · ♥ 98 ↻ 20 ↩ 7 · 9d ago

Between the over-spending on AI capex, all these IPOs and stock offerings of unprecedented size, strain in the private debt markets, waves of inflation that could be arriving in the coming months on account of energy shocks, the stagnant job market etc. I'm feeling queasy

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today I was trying to explain to someone how toxic it is to a brand when they want to lead with how their product uses AI and what I landed on was "it's like saying you made your product out of forever chemicals and built it with child labor"

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anyone else haunted by the degree to which AI could become the most powerful surveillance technology ever invented?

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The tragedy of AI in the workplace is the confusion of signals of work being done with actual work being done. Writing, code, etc. used to be honest signals of the real work being done: Figuring out and implementing solutions to problems. Turns out the real work wasn't the outputs.

View on Bluesky · ♥ 47 ↻ 5 ↩ 8 · 21d ago

one type of AI slop we don’t talk about enough is when you see a particularly cringe-worthy phrase on a graphic tee and you can instantly tell the wearer got a micro-targeted ad for it on Instagram and just couldn’t resist

View on Bluesky · ♥ 52 ↻ 6 ↩ 4 · 22d ago

If you ever feel conflicted about how AI is affecting your cognition, here's an interesting experiment: Learn to use an abacus. I'm dead serious. I do think we lost something when we stopped doing arithmetic with our bodies. But in other ways we gained a lot. Technology is tradeoffs!

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In Christopher Mims's orbit

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