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Google dropped a 24/7 agent. Meta dropped 8,000 people

Bezos says AI will cause a labor shortage while 8,000 Meta workers get the boot. Wild week

May 20, 2026

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My fellow AI explorers

While Sundar was on stage in Mountain View showing off a 24/7 personal agent, 8,000 Meta employees were getting layoff emails at 4am their local time. Jeff Bezos went on Squawk Box and casually argued AI will cause a labor shortage (yes, really). A top Google exec quietly told the world that Silicon Valley is overhyping the jobs apocalypse. And Nvidia is set to print a $79B quarter after the bell tonight.

In today’s edition:

We hired one colleague for every department.

Last Tuesday, marketing asked Viktor to write the weekly campaign recap, pull performance from Google Ads and Meta, and format it as a PDF for the exec team. Done in four minutes.

That same afternoon, engineering asked Viktor to review three open pull requests on GitHub, cross-reference with the Linear sprint board, and flag anything blocking the release. Posted to private channel before standup.

At 9pm, ops asked Viktor to draft a vendor contract summary from three Notion docs and send it to the team. It was in #ops by morning.

None of them knew the others were using it.

Same colleague. Three departments. That's what changes when your AI coworker lives in Slack, where your whole company already works. It's not a tool one person logs into. It's a teammate everyone messages.

5,700+ teams. SOC 2 certified. Your data never trains models.

"Viktor is now an integral team member, and after weeks of use we still feel we haven't uncovered the full potential." - Patrick O'Doherty, Director, Yarra Web

Google I/O 2026

🧠 Google's "Beyond Chatbots" Power Move

At I/O 2026 on May 19, Sundar Pichai stopped trying to compete with OpenAI on the chatbot lawn and just bulldozed the lawn.

The keynote wasn't really about a new model. It was about Google quietly trying to become the operating layer of your digital life.

Here's what shipped:

  • Gemini 3.5 (Flash + Pro coming): The new flagship model family, with Pro launching publicly next month. Flash is already powering everything else they announced.

  • Gemini Spark: A "24/7 personal AI agent" that runs on dedicated VMs in Google Cloud, not your laptop. It keeps working when you close your computer. It also supports MCP, and the beta rolls out to Ultra subscribers next week.

  • Gemini Omni: A world model that Pichai literally framed as moving "from predicting text to simulating reality." It combines Veo, Nano Banana, and Genie into one stack. Shipping straight into Search, YouTube, and the Gemini app.

  • Google AI Ultra ($100/mo): A new top tier for power users, devs, and creators. This is the plan that gets you the good stuff, and it’s down from its previous $250 mark.

In a live onstage demo, DeepMind engineer Varun Mohan showed Gemini 3.5 Flash and the Antigravity framework building a functioning operating system from scratch in 12 hours.

Read that sentence again.

The real story isn't Spark or Omni individually. It's that Google is going full vertical: one model family, one agent, one media stack, one subscription, and it’s integrated across Search, YouTube, Gmail, Docs, Chrome, and Android. No competitor has that distribution.

🔮 Prediction: The "ChatGPT vs Gemini" framing is already outdated. The real fight in 2026 is agent + distribution, and Google just put a $100/mo flag in the ground. Expect OpenAI to respond within weeks with their own premium agent tier (Sora, Operator, and ChatGPT bundled).

Big Tech Layoffs

💼 Meta Cuts 8,000. Google Says "Calm Down."

In the most surreal split-screen of the year, Meta started laying off ~8,000 employees on May 20, while a senior Google exec told the press the AI jobs panic is overblown.

Here's the breakdown:

  • 10% of Meta's workforce just evaporated. Notifications started at 4am local time across Singapore, the UK, and the US. The company also cancelled 6,000 open roles, bringing the effective cut to ~14,000 positions.

  • 7,000 more workers are being "redirected" into new AI-focused teams (Applied AI Engineering, Agent Transformation Accelerator, Central Analytics).

  • The kicker: Meta just reported $56.31B in quarterly revenue and $26.8B in profit. Their 2026 capex is now $125B-$145B, more than double 2025.

  • More cuts coming. Sources say Meta is planning additional rounds in August and the fall.

Meanwhile, Google SVP James Manyika was telling Platformer that Silicon Valley keeps overestimating how fast labor markets actually move. His McKinsey research famously found that ~50% of tasks are automatable, but only ~10% of occupations are fully automatable. He talks about "two speeds" running in parallel: the tech is accelerating, the economy is not.

So who's right?

Both, and that's the uncomfortable part. Forrester forecasts that only 6% of US jobs will be automated by 2030 and predicts that more than half of AI-attributed layoffs in 2026 will be quietly reversed. They have a name for what Meta is arguably doing: "AI washing." Using AI as PR cover for financially-driven cuts the company wanted to make anyway. Even Sam Altman recently confirmed this is happening.

🔮 Prediction: The 2026 layoff narrative is going to flip by Q4. Expect a wave of "quiet rehiring" stories as companies discover that GPUs don't actually do the jobs of mid-level PMs, recruiters, and ops people. Companies that confuse capex reallocation with operational redesign are going to regret it loudly.

30-Second AI Play

🎬 Make a Cinematic Video From a Single Sentence With Gemini Omni

Omni rolled out today to all Google AI Plus, Pro, and Ultra subscribers globally. It's the fastest way right now to turn a rough idea into a watchable clip without touching a timeline editor.

Here's how to test it in under 30 seconds:

  1. Open the Gemini app (web, iOS, or Android).

  2. If you have AI Plus/Pro/Ultra, you'll see a new "Create with Omni" entry point. If not, upgrade to Plus ($20/mo) for access.

  3. Type a one-line prompt like: "A drone shot over a foggy Tokyo skyline at dawn, neon signs flickering, camera pulls back to reveal a single figure on a rooftop."

  4. Optionally drop in a reference image or short clip from your camera roll.

  5. Hit generate. Omni now does physics, motion, and camera logic, not just frame interpolation.

  6. Use natural-language edits (like "make it golden hour instead," or "remove the figure") to iterate without ever opening a real editor.

💡 Pro tip: Omni's killer feature is the AI avatar mode. You can create a version of yourself that looks and sounds like you, then drop it into any scene. Founders are already using this for LinkedIn videos, course intros, and async team updates. The quality jump from Veo 3 to Omni is the biggest single leap in video AI since Sora dropped.

Other Relevant AI News!

📈 Nvidia reports Q1 FY27 earnings May 20 after the bell, with Wall Street expecting $79.2B in revenue (+80% YoY) and EPS of $1.78. The real story isn't Q1, it's Q2 guidance and data center margins, which will tell us if the AI infrastructure cycle is still accelerating.

🕶️ Samsung's "Intelligent Eyewear" glasses launched at I/O with full Gemini integration baked in, shipping this fall and going directly at Meta Ray-Bans and Apple's Vision Pro line.

🛒 Google's new "Universal Cart" uses AI to track deals and shop across apps, basically turning Search into your personal shopper and a fresh nightmare for Amazon's retail moat.

🧬 Sam Altman just publicly confirmed "AI washing" is real, admitting some companies are blaming unrelated layoffs on AI for PR cover. The first time a top AI lab founder has said it out loud.

📊 Blind ratings for Meta employees just dropped 25% from their 2024 peak, with culture scores down 39% per internal data. Employees built three internal countdown websites tracking the layoff date. One was called "Big Beautiful Layoff."

💰 Jeff Bezos went on Squawk Box on May 20 and argued AI will cause a labor shortage (not unemployment), called for zero income tax on the bottom 50% of US earners, and he said he sees no AI bubble forming yet, the exact opposite posture from Zuckerberg's playbook this week.

Golden Nuggets

  • 🧠 Google's I/O 2026 wasn't a chatbot release. It was a bid to own the agent layer, the video layer, and the $100/mo premium AI tier all at once.

  • 💼 Meta is paying $145B for AI infrastructure while firing the humans, while Bezos says AI will cause a labor shortage. Both can't be right.

  • 🤖 "AI washing" is now confirmed by Sam Altman himself. Watch for the quiet rehiring wave by Q4.

  • 📈 If Nvidia guides Q2 above ~$85B tonight, the AI infrastructure cycle has another full year of runway. If they guide flat, we have our first real warning signal.

Would love to hear your thoughts! Send me your thoughts by replying to this email (yes, I read them all :)

Until our next AI rendezvous,

Anthony | Founder of Uncover AI