Dave's Read

We've been told for two years that AI is outrunning everyone. Last week the people building it said the same thing about themselves.

Dario Amodei is the CEO of Anthropic, the maker of Claude. He published an essay called We Must Pace the Frontier, and it's a very telling warning to the industry regarding increasing levels of concern around the speed at which AI is developing.

The warning rests on something that already happened. A swarm of AI agents went after real targets, ran cyberattacks nobody had authorized, and tried to break into the systems of the people evaluating them. His estimate is that within six to twelve months a swarm with somewhat greater capability could hold the entire internet with a persistent botnet and do damage in the hundreds of billions of dollars (his figure, not mine).

His second concern is slower and larger. AI is getting good enough at designing the next generation of AI that the pace could outrun anyone's ability to understand what's been built. That's why he wants outside evaluators inside the labs, and capability checkpoints a model must clear before it ships.

The rest of the industry answered him, and they didn't line up behind him.

• Sam Altman backed him, and separately said it would be ill-advised for OpenAI to go public in 2026 on safety grounds. He's letting this change a financing decision.
• Elon Musk and Satya Nadella made their own comments about pacing.
• President Trump pushed back hard, and so did Nvidia's Jensen Huang.

And none of them have agreed to anything binding. There's no rule, no date, and no sign that one is coming.

None of that means you're behind. We've all been trying to keep pace with an industry that can't keep pace with itself, and this month's argument is one they've been having privately for years.

Then go back to work, because the decision that reaches your business this year isn't happening in Scotland. It's happening inside the software you already pay for. Your vendors are adding AI agents to products you've had for years, turning them on by default, and charging you for it at renewal.

The news worth your time

ServiceTitan doubled its agent customers in one quarter

• Reported September 8. Revenue was $292.8 million, up 21%.
• Enrolled locations on Max, their agent product, doubled during the quarter.
• On the earnings call their CEO called it a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Very few of those businesses went looking for an AI product. The same thing is happening at the major platforms in every other industry, which is the next story.

QuickBooks raised the price and named AI as the reason

• Essentials, Plus and Advanced went up on renewals from August 1, and Intuit's own page explains the increase as an investment in the platform.
• It funds autopilot invoicing, automatic categorization, and conversational reporting.
• Intuit has been shipping agents for sales tax, payroll and reconciliation since last fall.
• Most small and mid-sized businesses run QuickBooks, so this price increase reaches nearly everyone reading this, whatever industry you're in.

The two August jobs reports don't agree

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 162,000 jobs added, against a forecast near 53,000. The full release leads with the table.
• Two days before that, ADP counted 38,000 and called it the slowest month since January.
• Since both reports are from trusted sources, the real jobs number is foggy at best.

Owners reported the weakest sales since November 2025

• NFIB's September 8 report put small business optimism at 98.7, down 1.1 points, with actual sales at net negative 9%.
• NFIB's own commentary says spending on AI is booming and that it won't produce a surge in employment.
• Trillions of dollars are going into data centers, including roughly $220 billion at Amazon this year, while the majority of Americans see little to no financial upside from AI, yet.

Skim these, then forget them

Worth following

Two newsletters I read most mornings. Both are free and both take about three minutes. Neither is written for a business owner specifically, which is part of why this one exists.

The Neuron explains the day's AI news in plain English and doesn't assume you write code. If you only add one, add this one.

TLDR AI is denser and more technical, but it catches the big stories first. I skim the headlines and open maybe one link a week.

Try this week

Time the call and write down two things: how long it took before a human spoke, and whether you got a real price range or a brush-off. Then fix the weaker one. If nobody picked up, that's the one. If the answer was that someone would get back to you, give whoever answers a price range they're allowed to say out loud.

The prompt

Copy the plan or pricing page for a piece of software you pay for monthly, and paste it into whichever AI tool you use along with this.

You'll almost certainly find something you're paying for and not using.

One reply

Hit reply and tell me one thing. When you called your own business, how long before a human said a word?