How Anthropic and The Washington Post are double trouble

New Delhi: So far, the future of business has been clearly a man versus machine debate. Will AI effectively take over human employment and render millions of us jobless?  The developments of this week, however, clearly indicate that both man ( in power) and machine ( empowered) are equally capable of threatening livelihoods, the former potentially more sinister than the latter.

Jeff Bezos-owned The Washington Post laid off 30% of its workforce, the newsroom itself losing 300 staff members from an 800-strong contingent. Prima facie, to facilitate a focus on national news and politics, as well as business and health. A war correspondent on the Ukraine front was disengaged on the beat, while the entire staff photographer cohort was wiped out.

Bernie Sanders, the firebrand senator, has highlighted the recent profligacy of Bezos as a compelling counter-narrative—USD 750 million spent on the movie 'Melania' and USD 500 million blown on a luxury yacht.

These seem to be in rather poor taste, given the Stalinist purge in the iconic media brand, citing profitability as the key operating reason. Surely, the deep-pocketed Bezos could have sanctioned a much-needed lifeline while charting a growth and reinvention path.

While all of this was breaking news, Anthropic, the B2B AI specialist, quietly launched 11 starter plug-ins under its Claude Cowork umbrella. These include AI solutions for Sales, Marketing, Finance and Data Analytics, but most dramatically, for legal services.

As a knee-jerk outcome, Software, Legal Tech and Financial Services stocks lost more than USD 285 billion in valuation. NASDAQ was down by 1.4%, while the ADRs of Infosys and Wipro shrunk by 5.4% and 5%, respectively.

Under a severe cloud is the seat-based billing protocol of the Software Industry, thus upsetting a profitable juggernaut. While the creators have reiterated the undeniable efficacy of human supervision, the panicked jury is in no mood to agree.

2026 seems to be a year of both inflexion and reckoning for many established industry structures, and Indians clearly will be in shooting range.

While fundamentally unconnected, the developments at the media giant and Dario Amodei's AI rockstar are interlinked. As they both represent an irrevocable momentum to reduce or replicate the human workforce, with every collateral outcome.

There will be a telling impact on the community, as the needs and indulgences of an 8 billion global population are being taken care of by far fewer humans, leading to a telling societal disequilibrium.

More interestingly, while the Anthropic wave is reasonably autopilot, as is most of technological evolution, the human-orchestrated 'human' depletion needs a fresh dose of regulation. 

The timeless virtues of corporate governance build bridges with the freshly minted values of effective altruism. Where generation of productive, profitable and sustainable employment, in large numbers, becomes a measurable goal of business leaders, from operating models to long-term vision. As 'complementary' to tech-driven efficiencies, no debate on that, but designed to fulfil the unique acumen of the human race and ensure the continuity of civilisation.

The Washington Post is a fine use case of what not to do. When specialised jobs are eliminated, whether photographer or foreign correspondent, some scalable version of AI is lurking in the shadows to take over. Sharp human insight replaced by ChatGpt 'median-ness', content standardised to levels of pleasing mediocrity. In such a scenario, the Watergate Scandal, unearthed by Bernstein and Woodward of this publication, will certainly never see an encore.

Bezos and his super-wealthy ilk must be forced to have a change of plan in terms of wealth reapplication, not charity or redistribution. Wherein exceptional largesse, generated from business, must be reapplied for business, most specifically, for the purpose of building a human-machine handshake, without adding muscles to further de-humanisation. This is where new age policy must come to the party, the next frontier beyond environment and sustainability, showing up as the 'quadruple' bottom line.

India, with a legacy value system and a high-value population, can well take a lead in shaping this brand-new win-win ecosystem. Where man and machine bring out the best in each other, for both the needy today and the greedy tomorrow.