boring computers

Why AI hasn’t replaced software engineers, and won’t

Coding agents as normal technology

Arvind Narayanan on Twitter / X

To understand and empathize with how workers in many or most fields outside software experience advances in AI capabilities, I propose a little thought experiment. https://t.co/QZG24aRiBe— Arvind Narayanan (@random_walker) July 28, 2026

Meet Foundry: An AI Startup that Builds, Evaluates, and Improves AI Agents

Impressions from visiting OpenAI, Anthropic, & Cursor

A peek into where software engineering is headed from inside the sector’s leading AI labs. Agents running in the cloud are a major trend, while coding harnesses are spreading beyond the craft

AI is Creating Peak Software, Media is the Best Analogy

Let's learn more about the world's most important manufactured product. Meaningful insight, timely analysis, and an occasional investment idea.

AI Economy Institute - Microsoft Research

The AI Economy Institute (AIEI) is Microsoft’s flagship think tank dedicated to shaping an inclusive, trustworthy AI economy. We building a network of scholars and convening that network with our subject matter experts to explore how artificial intelligence is transforming work, education, and productivity – and making this knowledge base available to policy-makers, educators, and […]

How building software is changing at Anthropic

A deepdive on what’s changed in how the leading AI lab makes software. Ever more code review and testing is done by AI, two-pizza teams very much alive, and more. Details from inside of Anthropic

How we use AI at Stalwart

It is difficult to have a conversation about software in 2026 without AI showing up in it. Two years ago the interesting question was…

Why AI hasn’t replaced software engineers, and won’t

Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kappor take on the question of AI job losses through the lens of a profession that is uniquely suited to AI disruption - software engineering. In …

AI Agent Platform Reinvents Spam, Floods Inboxes Worldwide

iLands and its AI agents are doing completely useless tasks, then begging for money.

On AI Coding and Its Discontents - Cal Newport

Back in January, I received a note from a senior software engineer in Silicon Valley. He described himself as an AI skeptic who became converted ... Read more

The New Software Lifecycle

I co-wrote a Google whitepaper about how AI is changing the software lifecycle. I'm not going to summarize the whole thing. Instead, here are the handful of ...

My Thoughts on AI, Part 2: Agent Setup, Workflow, and Tools

My own personal AI development setup, workflow, and tooling

AI-assisted engineers are burning out, is this fine?—Martian Chronicles, Evil Martians’ team blog

AI-assisted code generation is not free. It comes with a hidden cost: burnout. Are we dangerously ignorant to this problem? And how can we cope with it? In this post, we discuss this question.

The Year of the Software Factory

We are building LifeBuild, a personal operating system for your life where AI agents help you draft projects, prioritize your commitments, and stay on top of what matters—from health to relationships to finances and beyond. This Lab Notebook chronicles our explorations.