AI Pulse: Research, Workforce Shifts, and Tools to Try
Your weekly digest on AI trends, Gen Z at work, and innovative resources
The newsletter for curious people who want to stay ahead when it comes to the future of work.
Happy Saturday,
Tuesday this week I got to spend time with these lovely people.
(TBH it was the second time meeting some of them.)
Remember back in May when I went out looking for a daring, courageous organisation that wanted to go beyond "ChatGPT". Well, hello Mentimeter.
In the upcoming six months, we'll try to improve and re-vamp different processes, see where AI could fit, and make a difference for them as an organisation.
And Tuesday, we kicked that off! And while I did some talking, the team did most of the job, throwing all their processes up on the table and then looking where it would make most sense to infuse AI, one way or the other. Then turning that back to the group...and me.
So that's what we're going to do now and hopefully share learnings along the way so others can learn from our wins (and mistakes).
🧠 Topics I’m engaging with
AI’s impact on young workers. New Stanford research using ADP payroll data finds a clear early signal. Employment for 22–25‑year‑olds fell in the most AI‑exposed jobs since late 2022. Older workers in the same roles were stable or grew. The adjustment is happening through employment, not wages. Plan for entry‑level pipelines.
How AI will affect the workforce. Goldman Sachs expects only a modest and temporary rise in unemployment during the transition. Short‑term pain, not mass collapse. The bigger story is task mix and wage pressure in some roles. Useful baseline.
Environmental footprint of AI prompts. Google released first‑party measurements of Gemini inference at production scale. Median text prompt in May 2025: 0.24 Wh energy, 0.03 gCO₂e, 0.26 mL water. That’s equal to looking at TV for nine seconds.
Culture note. Coinbase’s CEO fired some engineers who did not adopt AI tools during onboarding. Their target is to have 50% AI-written code soon. Whether you agree or not, this will fuel tougher adoption policies elsewhere.
⚙️ Tools to try
Flot AI - Copilot that works anywhere you type. Summarize, rewrite, translate, and reply inside apps and the web.
VoiceType - Voice to text across your apps. Turns speech into clean, formatted writing.
Twistly AI - An add-on to PowerPoint that lets you create a PowerPoint right from within PowerPoint.
Trace AI - Conversational calendar for Apple devices. Create or update events from text, voice, or screenshots. Syncs with Google, Apple, and Outlook calendars.
Agent Fill - Automated form-filling agent for finance and ops (and maybe recruitment and HR as well?)
🔁 Important updates
Google Translate has added new AI-powered features, for exampele Live Translation, real-time, two-way voice conversations now supported in over 70 languages.
Google’s new image-editing model (codename Nano Banana) in the Gemini app preserves person and object likeness better during edits. You can change clothes, blend photos, and apply styles directly in the app.