Christopher Mims

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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

Christopher Mims reposted
kate conger @kateconger.com

I wrote about what's happening to the web now that everything is A.I. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/t...

nytimes.com
AI Weekly's analysis
  • Cloudflare data shows AI-training crawlers hit 52% of crawler requests by June 2026, up from 22% in spring 2025.
  • Google still supplies roughly 88% of referral traffic, but is answering more queries in-place via AI Overviews and AI Mode.
  • Human traffic to the most heavily crawled categories, including software, IT, retail and finance, has fallen as much as 40% in under a year.
Read full analysis →
View on Bluesky →

“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 · 58d ago

I used to think ”spending on AI infrastructure could be the fuse that ignites the bomb that is the massive global debt bubble“ was paranoid fantasy, on the grounds that Big Tech was paying for it all out of cash on hand, but no, pretty clear that’s where we are www.nytimes.com…

nytimes.com
View on Bluesky · ♥ 135 ↻ 44 ↩ 9 · 4 from the directory shared this · 10d ago

HUGE news from China last night, and I have a comprehensive analysis of its implications for the AI bubble this morning. Xi Jinping has more or less declared war on OpenAI and Anthropic and any U.S. tech firm that insists on closed, proprietary AI models. 🎁🔗: www.wsj.com/tech/…

wsj.com
View on Bluesky · ♥ 275 ↻ 99 ↩ 9 · 2 from the directory shared this · 11d 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 · ♥ 305 ↻ 71 ↩ 12 · 2 from the directory shared this · 22d 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
View on Bluesky · ♥ 545 ↻ 123 ↩ 40 · 2 from the directory shared this · 60d ago

I've seen some folks try to frame OpenAI's unreleased model hacking a company that tests its abilities as a cynical marketing ploy but reporting says that absolutely was not the case: This was a real-deal escape of an AI agent that could have done vastly more damage. www.wsj.c…

wsj.com
View on Bluesky · ♥ 151 ↻ 28 ↩ 31 · 2 from the directory shared this · 5d ago

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

View on Bluesky · ♥ 1289 ↻ 176 ↩ 65 · 51d ago

OpenAI (unprofitable) is burning investor cash to prop up Oracle (down 35% with debt at nearly “junk” status) while Anthropic (profitable but possibly because of sweetheart deals on compute) is doing the same for SpaceX (no earnings, PE ratio ♾️) — have I got all this right?

View on Bluesky · ♥ 356 ↻ 92 ↩ 12 · 10d ago

There is a civil war happening in tech over Chinese / free to use / open weights AI? At least on X. I realize no one else cares, but this is my World Cup. tl;dr a former Trump official joined OpenAI, said some stuff about open models he's since walked back, everyone is losing their minds

View on Bluesky · ♥ 305 ↻ 49 ↩ 22 · 9d ago

This morning my AI powered fitness band was like “why don’t you go for a run??” and I was like “actually dangerous air quality” and it was like “good decision!!” Anyway do not take health advice from AI ever

View on Bluesky · ♥ 326 ↻ 24 ↩ 11 · 11d ago

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.

View on Bluesky · ♥ 146 ↻ 19 ↩ 20 · 41d ago

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

View on Bluesky · ♥ 112 ↻ 6 ↩ 16 · 67d ago

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 · 29d 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

View on Bluesky · ♥ 94 ↻ 11 ↩ 10 · 55d ago

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"

View on Bluesky · ♥ 65 ↻ 11 ↩ 4 · 69d ago

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

View on Bluesky · ♥ 45 ↻ 2 ↩ 20 · 22d ago

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