Moonlighter is a daily, strongly curated briefing about people and AI: your job, earning with AI, and where it’s heading. We pick the best research and news every morning, and ask you one question. Your answers become our research on humans and AI.
Today in work, money and AI
Welcome to the very first Moonlighter. Today: new research on AI and young workers, why restaurant servers now fact-check chatbots, and a small side gig you can start tonight.
The big shift
Economists are now measuring AI’s hit on first jobs
A new NBER working paper by Robert Fairlie and Jane Wu uses US Census survey data (the CPS) to look at how AI is affecting employment for recent college graduates. The authors note there is still no consensus on how big the effect is, or even when it starts. That is exactly why hard data on this group matters: entry-level work is where many expect AI to show up first.
For you: If you’re early in your career, or hiring people who are, watch which beginner tasks AI is quietly taking over, and build skills one step above them.
Read it → via NBER working papers
Your job & AI
Servers are now fact-checking their customers’ chatbots
The Verge talked to restaurant staff who say diners increasingly quote AI answers about allergies and ingredients, sometimes wrongly, and the staff have to sort it out. It’s a preview for many jobs: part of the work becomes correcting what customers’ AI told them.
Read it → via The Verge
Earn with AI
Turn old family photos into a small side service
- Practice on your own old family photos first: scan them at high resolution and try an AI restoration or colorizing tool.
- Show three before-and-after examples to friends and family, and offer to do theirs for a small fee.
- Be clear that the result is AI-enhanced, not the original, and always return the untouched scan too.
Reality check: A popular r/ChatGPT thread shows how moving these images can be. Expect small first jobs, and plenty of competition from free apps; your edge is care and a personal touch.
Source → via r/ChatGPT
Like this? Get it every morning
Free, 3 minutes, plus tomorrow’s poll results. Unsubscribe in one click.
Where it’s heading
The race to be your personal AI agent is on: Wired tried OpenAI’s Dots and Meta’s Muse side by side. The next phone fight may not be about apps, but about which assistant does things for you.
Read it → via Wired
Worth a try
Earlyn
A searchable memory of your screen and meetings, on your Mac. Handy if you keep thinking “what did they say in that call?”; check what it records before using it at work.
Google Guided Vision
New in Gemini Live on compatible Android phones: point your camera at something and get real-time audio descriptions. Useful for reading fine print on labels, forms or contracts on the go.
Quick hits
- The FTC is investigating OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI companies over product risks. → Hacker News
- Google announced Gemini 4 Argon, but for now only trusted cyber defenders can use it. → The Verge
- ChatGPT can now virtually try on clothes using your own photos. → TechCrunch
All relevant news today
A new NBER paper sizes AI’s macroeconomic effect through its impact on software engineering productivity, using financial-market data to build a forward-looking measure.
NBER researchers built an open-source workflow in which an LLM tries to reproduce, improve and extend an economics paper from its replication package. A glimpse of AI doing research work.
Wired reports that nurses and staff at a hospital group and radiology network say a Palantir-based scheduling system is causing errors and frustration: a reminder that rollouts can add work before they save it.
Researchers propose Legal Research Bench to measure end-to-end reliability of AI agents on long, multi-step legal research, one of the most time-consuming parts of a lawyer’s job.
An essay in MIT Technology Review by someone who helped build a famous Go-playing AI argues that today’s language models don’t really reason. Worth reading before you hand them big decisions.
A short personal essay drew 150+ points and 160 comments on Hacker News. The comments are a good snapshot of how people who work with AI every day actually feel about it.
In a 3,000-word blog post, AWS argues that blocking data center projects could harm the US economy and national security, as local pushback grows.
The court acknowledged that AI search has consequences for publishers, but said it’s not an antitrust issue.
The pope says there is an essential difference between human art and what a machine generates from millions of images made by others.
Building something?
Put your product in front of our readers tomorrow, from $29. Write your own mention.
Buy a mentionGet tomorrow’s issue
Free, 3 minutes, plus tomorrow’s poll results. Unsubscribe in one click.