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The New York Times dropped a headline this week that should make every tech worker in Bangalore pause: “India Built the World’s Back Office. A.I. Is Starting to Shrink It.” Dramatic? Sure. Until you look at the numbers — and then it sounds like an understatement. For 25 years, India has been the world’s outsourcing engine. Six million workers. Nearly $300 billion in revenue. Over 7% of GDP. Now AI threatens to do to India what India’s outsourcing model did to Western workers: replace them with something cheaper and faster. ...

Remember your first real job? The one where you learned what “per my last email” actually means, made terrible PowerPoints, and slowly figured out how organizations work? AI is coming for that job. And the consequences run deeper than anyone’s admitting. The Data Is Brutal A Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research study found that workers aged 22 to 25 in AI-exposed occupations saw a 16% relative employment decline compared to peers in less exposed fields like nursing or construction. The hardest-hit roles: software engineering, customer service, financial analysis, content creation — the exact white-collar starter jobs an entire generation was told to pursue. ...

When the Federal Reserve starts war-gaming artificial intelligence, pay attention. Not because central bankers are known for tech hot takes — but because when the people who control interest rates start modeling AI scenarios, the economic establishment has officially stopped treating this as hype. On February 17, Fed Governor Michael S. Barr stepped in front of the New York Association for Business Economics and delivered what might be the most important AI speech to come out of Washington this year. No vague platitudes about “responsible innovation.” Instead, three distinct futures for how AI reshapes work — and one of them should keep you up at night. ...