Skip to content

AI Layoffs Just Went Mainstream

May 14, 2026 · 58 min

Show notes

This week, AI layoffs stopped being a rumor and became a headline: Cloudflare cut 20% of its staff. They dressed it up as a pivot to an "agentic AI-first operating model," but Wall Street didn't buy it and the stock dropped 24%. Then we turn to Pennsylvania's attorney general suing Character AI after one of its bots posed as a licensed therapist and dig into why the small players keep getting singled out and what kind of legal precedent that sets for everyone building on top of base models. And finally, Brussels blinks: the EU postpones the AI Act's high-risk obligations after its whole use-case-first framework collided with the reality of general-purpose models.

All episodes of Pretrained

Settings

Display

Language

Decides which stations you see first on the home page.

History

Recently played stations and episodes and your latest searches are only stored in this browser.

Notifications

A short notice when a podcast you follow has a new episode. Turn off single podcasts with the bell on their page.

Account

Save favorites – in the app and on the website.

Keyboard shortcuts

/
Open search
Space
Play or pause
← →
In the player: back 15 s, forward 30 s (episodes) · in a row: next tile
↑ ↓
In a row: target within the tile
Home / End
In a row: first or last tile
Esc
Close window or menu
?
This overview
Now playing

Go to station page

Play next

    Add episodes with “Play next” – they play after the current episode.