Humanwashing
Big AI Is Trying To Seem Like They're On Our Side
I’ve written before about how in an age of commoditized intelligence, human variance — weirdness — becomes the new differentiator.
New signals will evolve to replace those that are no longer useful. Networking rises in value, as does any demonstration of intelligence done in public so as to remove the influence of AI (public speaking, performing, etc.). If online dating has led to looksmaxxing and style-over-substance, then real world displays of boldness and charm only rise in value. And if everyone’s social media persona is anodyne and the real action happens in the group chat, the people who bring the group chat vibes1 to the main timeline will stand out.
Comparing the new success profile to the old one, you’ve gone from a world of optimized resumes, optimized essays, and optimized dating profiles to one of human connection, public displays of virtue, bold action, charming repartee, and authentic expression in spite of Longhouse oppression. While the removal of friction may have made it more difficult for the average person to seem more than, it has vastly raised the returns on being a truly above-average specimen of humanity.
Leaning into being a person is the new Learn to Code
Jasmine Sun, whom I’ve written about before, recently said much the same thing.
There’s this saying that I was told when I once asked a senior media person whether I should take a staff job at a big publication. It was not The New Yorker, to be clear, but he told me that The New Yorker “makes bad writers good, good writers good, and great writers good.” When I wrote for the New York Times business section, I felt like I was basically outputting code syntax. It felt totally LLM-ful. The reporting was not. Again, I’m very bullish on reporting—but the writing style itself was basically like you could shove that through Claude and be like, “Go figure it out.” And that was a little bit demoralizing, because I like writing and I like style.
The thing that’s really great, though, is that what every Substacker is already really good at is having a very distinct voice that their readers really feel a connection with. I think that your readers probably don’t mind that there are typos. They don’t mind that you get stuff wrong. That is what the AIs cannot do: being able to talk in the first person, being able to be provocative versus hedging every single little thing.
One thing that a lot of my AI and tech friends don’t really understand is that trust is not about information and its quality alone. It’s about the messenger. And so when they talk about having AGIs that do super-persuasion by writing the most persuasive sentence in the world, I think: I don’t think you understand trust, because it’s not about the sentence. It’s about who says it and their track record and what they’ve told me before. And the stronger your individual brand, the trust you build, the voice you have, the track record that is just yours, the better off you’ll be.
So it was interesting to see an interview with the New Yorker writer Adam Iscoe in Emily Sundberg’s Substack.
As you can tell from the headline, he is taking a job with an AI company (though Notion, which is the software platform in which I vibecoded my CRM for my day job, isn’t really an AI company in the same way OpenAI or Anthropic is). The reason is, according to him, because:
I don’t think many people really understand what’s going on with artificial intelligence. I think people are scared, and it makes sense. The world is changing—it’s changing faster than it’s ever changed before, and the pace of change is only increasing—but I don’t think we need to consign ourselves to doom. And I don’t think it helps when you have corporate executives proclaiming that A.I. will wipe out millions of white collar jobs, or that it will become difficult for a substantial part of the population to really contribute to the economy.
I’m not some crazy techno-optimist. At times, I find myself deeply, deeply skeptical about the promise of large language models. But I’m also a reporter, so I’m very committed to investigating what’s happening. I just want people to have a better sense of what’s going on. And I don’t think people understand what’s happening at the fabs or in the data centers or even at the labs—and I certainly don’t think people understand the application layer and what’s increasingly possible not just for banks and giant corporations but also for small businesses and the rest of us. I’m the first to admit: I’m new to all this, but my sense is, just like the photo camera and the telegraph and the telephone and the personal computer and the internet, artificial intelligence can be a good thing. I’m not interested in a vision of the economy in which everyone is forced into some kind of universal basic income because recursive self-improving A.I. has made them obsolete.
This, like OpenAI’s acquistion of the tech media company TBPN, is humanwashing. It’s trying to apply the veneer of humanity to a fundamentally antihumanist technology by taking a uniquely human voice in the vein that I and Jasmine describe and associating that humanity to the technology brand. It’s this.
I don’t blame the writers — Sam and Dario, I’ve got mouths to feed and so am available — and it’s a good move for the tech companies too. You should ask yourself, though, why, if technological progress is such an unalloyed good, they feel the need to do this?
News Scan
Iran Strikes Kuwait International Airport; US Retaliates on Qeshm Island — Ceasefire in Free-Fall
Source: Al Jazeera, CNN, The National, NPR
Date/Time: June 3, 2026
Iranian drones and ballistic missiles struck the passenger terminal at Kuwait International Airport in the most severe attack on civilian Gulf infrastructure since the conflict began — killing one person, wounding several, and forcing Kuwait to suspend all commercial flight operations; Iran simultaneously launched ballistic missiles at Bahrain, though US and Bahraini air defense forces intercepted the bulk of the assault; the US military responded with self-defense strikes on an IRGC communications and ground-control station on Qeshm Island, Iran’s main oil hub near the Strait of Hormuz; Iran’s Foreign Ministry condemned the US strikes as “acts of aggression” violating the ceasefire, while Iran’s IRGC said it targeted “headquarters of the 5th Fleet and US military facilities” in an unnamed country — confirming it intended to hit Kuwait’s US-hosted facilities; the exchange marks a structural escalation from the stalled-talks phase of the past week into active physical strikes on civilian infrastructure in neutral Gulf states, effectively collapsing any near-term ceasefire extension; Brent crude extended its third consecutive day of gains toward $97-98, and Trump’s assertion that a Hormuz MOU is reachable “within a week” looks increasingly difficult to sustain given the breakdown in communications between Tehran and Washington’s ceasefire mediators.
Al Jazeera live blog
Gulf Arab States Issue Collective Warning After Kuwait Attack — UAE: ‘This Aggression Targets All of Us’
Source: The National, NPR
Date/Time: June 3, 2026
A senior UAE diplomat declared that the Iranian strike on Kuwait’s airport “does not target a specific state, but rather all of us,” calling for “a firm, unified, and cohesive Gulf position,” while Kuwait’s foreign ministry demanded that Iran and its proxies “cease all hostilities against Gulf Arab states” — signaling that the conflict is shifting from a bilateral US-Iran confrontation toward a broader Gulf-wide standoff that implicates the GCC’s own security posture; this diplomatic shift matters because GCC member states — Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain — account for a substantial share of global oil production, hold significant US Treasury reserves, and collectively serve as the logistical backbone of US Fifth Fleet operations; if the GCC moves from a posture of anxious neutrality toward active alignment against Tehran, it dramatically raises the probability of a wider regional war that would threaten oil production far beyond the Hormuz shipping lane and could trigger OPEC+ compliance breakdowns as member states prioritize domestic security over production agreements.
The National
BOJ Governor Ueda Signals June Hike Imminent as Yen Returns to 160
Source: Bloomberg, Reuters, Japan Times
Date/Time: June 3, 2026
BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda delivered a pre-meeting speech on Wednesday — just 12 days before the June 15-16 policy meeting — maintaining a positive stance toward raising rates while acknowledging Middle East uncertainty, and the yen briefly touched 160 per dollar for the first time since April 30, the level that triggered Japan’s record ¥11.73 trillion ($73.6 billion) intervention in May — meaning the world’s largest single-month currency intervention in history has failed to hold the line; Ueda stopped short of an explicit pre-commitment, but the April 28 board vote split 6-3 to hold (the widest division under Ueda’s tenure), three board members pushed openly for an immediate hike, and US Treasury Secretary Bessent has signaled Washington’s support for BOJ rate normalization; markets are pricing a move from 0.75% to 1.00% at June 15-16, which would be Japan’s highest rate since 1994 and a structural shift in the global rates outlook given Japan’s role as the world’s largest net creditor — with higher domestic returns the yen carry trade unwinds further, compressing the dollar-funded liquidity that has supported global equity multiples; the yen at 160 despite a record intervention round is a stark signal that the market expects the BOJ to act, and failing to do so risks an acceleration of yen weakness that forces an emergency inter-meeting hike.
Bloomberg
Trump Proposes 10–12.5% Tariffs on 60 Trading Partners Under Section 301 — New Legal Vehicle After Supreme Court Ruling
Source: CNBC, Bloomberg, CBS News
Date/Time: June 2–3, 2026
The Trump administration’s USTR Jamieson Greer proposed tariffs of 10% on imports from Canada, Mexico, the EU, UK, Taiwan, and select others, and 12.5% on China, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil, citing those economies’ failure to ban imports made with forced labor — an assertion most economists regard as a pretext, but one anchored in Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a legal authority the Supreme Court has not yet struck down (unlike the emergency powers approach the Court invalidated in February); the tariffs still require a public comment period before taking effect, but this announcement is structurally significant because it represents the administration’s first successful deployment of a durable alternative legal vehicle to rebuild the tariff wall, potentially covering essentially all US major trading partners and functioning as additive levies on top of any existing tariff structures; coming on the same week as the Kuwait airport attack (which is already pushing import costs higher via energy prices), additional tariff-driven cost inflation would compound the stagflation signal already visible in manufacturing prices data, tighten Fed policy optionality further, and create a fresh round of trade retaliation risk at the worst possible moment for global growth, given the EZ and UK are already in services contraction.
CNBC
ISM Manufacturing May: 54.0%, Prices Paid 82.1% — Strongest Expansion Since May 2022
Source: ISM, prnewswire, CNBC
Date/Time: June 2, 2026
The ISM Manufacturing PMI rose to 54.0% in May — up 1.3 percentage points from April, the highest reading since May 2022, and above both expectations and the prior reading — with New Orders expanding for the fifth consecutive month (56.8%), suggesting front-loading and precautionary inventory building driven by war-related supply uncertainty rather than purely organic demand; the Prices Paid index registered 82.1%, down from April’s 84.6% but still near multi-year highs and firmly in the territory that historically correlates with upstream producer price inflation feeding into PPI/CPI with a 3-6 month lag; this data pattern is the classic fingerprint of a war-driven stagflation mechanism — supply-chain insecurity drives inventory accumulation (boosting output), while import-cost pass-through embeds in manufacturing input prices that will eventually reach consumers; combined with markets pricing a 60% probability of a Fed December hike (up from near-zero a month ago), this ISM print provides the hard-data foundation for the rate-cycle inflection thesis and strengthens the case that Warsh’s June 16-17 meeting language will lean hawkish.
ISM press release
JOLTS April: 7.62 Million Job Openings — Professional Services Leads; Labor Market Resilience Intact
Source: BLS, Yahoo Finance
Date/Time: June 3, 2026
The April 2026 JOLTS report showed 7.62 million job openings, with professional services leading the sectoral breakdown in a sign of continued labor market resilience — relevant because JOLTS is the vacancy component of the V/U ratio (vacancies to unemployed workers), a key labor-market tightness indicator the Fed has cited as a primary gauge of whether the labor market has loosened sufficiently to warrant policy normalization; 7.62 million openings in April implies a V/U ratio still comfortably above pre-pandemic norms (~7 million openings at full employment pre-2021), meaning the labor market has not yet loosened to a level that would justify rate cuts under the current framework; professional services leading the openings data matters specifically because that sector drives white-collar wage growth, and sustained white-collar wage pressure feeds directly into the services inflation that ECB and BOE officials have flagged as the most persistent inflation risk in their own economies — any sustained services wage-price dynamic in the US would shift the Fed’s reaction function toward explicit tightening rather than just extended hold; the JOLTS data lands ahead of Friday’s May payrolls report and Wednesday’s ADP and ISM Services prints (both also released today), framing the labor picture as resilient heading into Warsh’s June 16-17 debut.
Yahoo Finance jobs live
Eurozone Composite PMI May Final: 48.5 — Second Consecutive Month of Contraction; Input Costs at 3.5-Year High
Source: HCOB / S&P Global, Sharecast, InvestingLive
Date/Time: June 3, 2026
The final S&P Global/HCOB Eurozone Composite PMI for May came in at 48.5 (revised up from the 47.5 flash estimate but below April’s 48.8), with the Services PMI at 47.7 (revised up from 46.4 flash), marking the second straight month that the EZ private sector contracted and the lowest composite reading in 18 months; input costs rose at the sharpest pace in three-and-a-half years and charge inflation hit a 38-month high, meaning businesses are simultaneously contracting output and raising prices — the clearest definition of stagflation — just eight days before the ECB’s June 11 meeting where a 25bp hike to 2.25% (DFR) is already priced at effectively 100%; the strategic dilemma for the ECB is now explicit: the EZ economy appears to be sliding into a Q2 recession while energy-driven inflation is accelerating, and hiking into this environment risks a deeper contraction than the data already implies, but not hiking into 3.2% headline HICP (with services at 3.5%) risks de-anchoring expectations — the ECB is effectively choosing between two bad outcomes, and the PMI data confirms the hard trade-off is not hypothetical.
Sharecast
UK Services PMI May Final: 49.3 — Services Enter Contraction for First Time Since April 2025
Source: S&P Global / CIPS, InvestingLive
Date/Time: June 3, 2026
The final UK S&P Global/CIPS Services PMI for May came in at 49.3 (revised up from the 47.9 flash estimate but still below the 50 expansion threshold), down sharply from April’s 52.7 and the first outright services contraction since April 2025 — driven by war-related fuel cost surges squeezing hospitality and transportation margins, professional services firms citing rising client risk aversion, and subdued domestic and overseas demand for consumer-facing services; the UK is now in a textbook stagflation configuration: services inflation remains elevated from war energy pass-through while the sector itself contracts, leaving the BOE’s Bailey in a position where his stated gating variable — the absence of second-round wage effects — is being undercut not by wage spirals but by direct cost-push from fuel and energy costs that operate independently of the wage channel; UK manufacturing (53.9 final) continues to outperform services, creating the same inventory-building vs. consumer-squeeze divergence visible in US data, and the combined picture complicates the BOE June 18 meeting where one further hike has historically been priced but the growth deterioration now argues for an extended hold.
InvestingLive
Australia Q1 GDP: +0.3% QoQ (Miss vs. +0.5% Expected) — AI Import Surge and War Fuel Costs Drag on Growth
Source: Bloomberg, CNBC, Investing.com
Date/Time: June 3, 2026
Australia’s Q1 2026 GDP grew 0.3% quarter-on-quarter (well below the 0.5% consensus) and 2.5% year-on-year (missing 2.7% expected), with net trade subtracting 0.8 percentage points from quarterly growth as imports surged — driven by two distinct categories: data centre equipment (AI capex cycle) and fuel (war-driven energy cost inflation); this is the first clear instance of the AI capex supercycle producing visible macroeconomic consequences through a country’s current account, as the global build-out of GPU infrastructure requires hardware imports that drag on GDP via the net trade line even as private investment rises; the RBA has already raised rates 75 basis points in 2026, and the softer-than-expected growth print will likely damp expectations for additional near-term tightening — but the structural tension remains: the RBA is hiking into a war-cost energy squeeze while AI investment-driven import demand simultaneously weakens the current account, a pattern that will affect every AI-importing G10 economy as the data centre build-out intensifies through 2026-2027.
Bloomberg
China Caixin Services PMI May: 54.4 — Fastest Expansion in Three Months; Deflation Exit Broadens to Services
Source: VT Markets, Caixin, FastBull
Date/Time: June 3, 2026
China’s Caixin Services PMI surged to 54.4 in May (vs. 52.3 consensus and 52.6 prior), the strongest reading in three months, bolstering the yuan and China-linked commodities on the release; combined with the prior session’s Caixin Manufacturing PMI beat (51.8), the May data shows China’s private sector accelerating across both manufacturing and services simultaneously — a combination that represents meaningful progress toward escaping the deflationary spiral that has characterized the post-pandemic Chinese economy; the significance for the global macro picture is that China’s deflation exit is broadening from goods (where it had already shown early signs via rising export prices) into services, meaning the disinflationary tailwind that China provided to the global supply chain throughout 2022-2025 is definitively reversing — services inflation in China feeds domestic wages, which feeds through to exported manufactured goods prices, which then lands in global CPI; this structural shift, if sustained, removes one of the key disinflationary forces that central banks had been counting on to bring inflation back to target without aggressive tightening, and it does so at the exact moment that war-driven energy costs and new US tariffs are adding additional inflationary pressure from separate directions.
VT Markets
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