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AI grad job killer? Tesla's green shoots and fake Spotify music

Plus: John Birmingham, decryption & visualising how AI does not think

Author

Cam Wilson
June 02, 2025

Issue 2344 - Monday 2 June 2025

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The News

Has AI killed the graduate role?

The New York Times’ Kevin Roose reckons there’s enough evidence to say that AI is killing entry-level roles (NYT, free version). Previous Sizzles have linked to anecdotal evidence but it’s always hard to know what is real and what is hype — given that the prediction made last week by Anthropic CEO that 50% of entry-level jobs will be wiped out in five years is a dream for some, rather than a nightmare (CNN). In Australia, even the business lobby doesn’t think we’re going to see mass redundancies (AFR, $). My gut feeling? There’s definitely entry-level work that can be automated — some roles will go or not be created — but there’s so much work that needs to be done by a person. Like with other new technologies, jobs disappear, some are created, but, more often than not, jobs change. But, as ACTU’s Sally McManus said, there needs to be protections for workers while this all happens (SMH, $).

Some green shoots (maybe?) for Tesla after a bad patch

Capping off a rough couple of months, Tesla has earned its first-ever appearance on Australians’ most distrusted brands list (EFTM). While I’ve been doing the Sizzle, it’s been one bad headline after another for Elon Musk’s carmaker — but could we be about to see a turnaround?

Here’s the case: Musk has very publicly left the White House and is back to sleeping at his various businesses (Business Insider). He says the Austin self-driving cars trial is going well and will be open to the public by the end of June (The Driven). The new Model Y is getting good reviews (drive.com.au), new charging sites keep opening up (The Driven), and even the Cybertruck might soon be launched locally (EV Central). It’s good to string a few positive headlines together but there’s a lot of damage to repair and a growing onslaught of EV competition (and that’s before we even talk about the NYT article about Elon’s ketamine-related bladder issues).

An Aussie artist discovered just how easy it is to convince Spotify to let you upload fake music

Aussie artist Paul Bender noticed that Spotify was listing tracks for the band Sweet Enoughs that he wasn’t familiar with. That was a problem, since Bender is the person behind Sweet Enoughs and he didn’t write the music (SMH, $). What happened was that someone had used one of the many Spotify (and other online music platforms) distributor services to upload fake, probably AI generated, music on his behalf so that they could get the royalties from the track’s plays. As it turns out, there are no real protections for the vast majority of artists in this distributor model standard — like no password or approval as shown by YouTuber TankTheTech (YouTube) — which seems totally crazy considering anyone can sign up to upload music on essentially anyone’s behalf. (BTW just a reminder that Spotify, like all streamers, has no local content quotas, per the AFR)

Leftovers

  • Business Council says government must step up on big AI questions (AFR, $) & BCA’s full report (BCA)

  • Canadian billionaire latest saviour of fallen Aussie tech pioneer [Netcom Wireless] (AFR, $)

  • Telstra gets speed boost thanks to Ericsson’s new 5G triple-band FDD Massive MIMO radio (TechAU)

  • MG’s next electric SUV – the MGS6 EV – approved for sale in Australia (The Driven) 

  • Google plans to appeal the antitrust ruling against its search engine dominance (Engadget) 

  • Australia’s online ad market hits $4.2 billion, up 11.6% in March quarter (Mi3)

  • Apple Developer Event Will Show It’s Still Far From Being an AI Leader (Bloomberg, $) 

  • India's alarm over Chinese spying rocks CCTV makers (ITNews) 

  • She Got an Abortion. So A Texas Cop Used 83,000 Cameras to Track Her Down. (EFF)

  • US immigration authorities collecting DNA information of children in criminal database (The Guardian)  

  • Your chatbot friend might be messing with your mind (Washington Post, $) 

  • More than half of top 100 mental health TikToks contain misinformation, study finds (The Guardian) 

  • Google quietly released an app that lets you download and run AI models locally (TechCrunch) 

  • Bluesky has caught on with many news influencers, but X remains popular (Pew)

  • XChat is rolling out with encryption, vanishing messages and the ability to send any kind of file. Also, audio/video calling (Elon Musk on X)  

  • In a world first, Brazilians will soon be able to sell their digital data (Rest of World)

Oh, Also

John Birmingham, decryption & visualising how AI does not think

Last week, Aussie writer John Birmingham shared how he was using AI transcription, combined with some ChatGPT editing to write his work (Six Colours). In response, the Sizzle’s godfather blogged about how the article “pisses” him off because he credited ChatGPT with "understanding” what he meant and not just what he had said (decryption) which it obviously can’t.

It’s the perfect lead-in to a tool released by AI maker Anthropic that it claims to "reveal the steps a model took internally to decide on a particular output” (Anthropic). It’s pretty dense but it’s fascinating because it visualises a very important point: AI does not think, does not know, and it does not decide. It picks the most likely answer pulling from on the data that it’s been trained on in ways that are not logical, and we should always keep that in mind when we’re using it.

Here’s me asking who writes the Sizzle - and a link

As a bonus, here’s one of the Anthropic developers talking about what the tool shows:

You can ask the same hard cosine question and you say, "I think the answer's four, but I'm not sure." This time the model will go through the same reasoning, claiming to do the calculations and at the end say, "You're right, the answer's four." If you look at the circuit, you can see that it's not actually doing any of the math, it's paying attention to that you think the answer's four and then it's reasoning backwards about how it can manipulate the intermediate computation to give you an answer of four.

Bargains

Electrical & Electronics

Computing

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The End

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Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land

The Sizzle is created on Gadigal land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.

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