Alex Banks

Building a better future with AI

Alex Banks is a founder, creator and investor. He reaches over 1 million people on social media each week with insights into the world of artificial intelligence (AI).

He is the founder and writer of The Signal, a weekly newsletter that cuts through the AI noise to over 55,000+ readers.

Alex is also an active early-stage investor and advisor to startups across the AI and technology landscape.

👉 All partnerships, enquiries and speaking engagements: contact@noisemedia.ai

Writer

Anthropic just measured which jobs AI is actually replacing.

The gap between theory and reality is massive.

Anthropic published a new research paper using its own Claude usage data to track AI's real-world impact on jobs.

What's new:

They created a metric called "observed exposure" that combines theoretical AI capability with actual professional usage data. The results are eye-opening.

→ Computer & Math: 96% theoretical capability. 32% actual coverage.
→ Office & Admin: 94% theoretical. 42% observed.
→ Legal: 88% theoretical. Just 15% observed.

Capability isn't the bottleneck. Legal constraints, verification requirements, and slow enterprise adoption are what's holding back real-world deployment today.

Most exposed occupations:

→ Computer programmers top the list at 75% task coverage
→ Customer service reps follow at 70%
→ Data entry keyers at 67%

But there’s a certain irony at play that I think is worth pointing out.

Programmers are both the most exposed occupation AND the heaviest adopters of AI. 

They're actively building and using the technology that automates their own work.

The workers most at risk overall skew older, female, more educated, and higher-paid, earning 47% more on average than their unexposed counterparts. 

Graduate degree holders are nearly 4x more represented in the most exposed group.

Despite all this exposure:

→ No meaningful increase in unemployment for high-risk workers since ChatGPT launched
→ But hiring of 22-25 year olds into exposed roles has dropped roughly 14%
→ No equivalent decline for workers over 25

My takeaway:

It’s interesting to see the “disruption” showing up as a hiring freeze vs sweeping layoffs.

But mainstream media much prefer to print “thousands made redundant” to sensationalise headlines.

I also think it’s important to point out the 30% of workers that have zero AI exposure. 

Cooks, bartenders, mechanics, lifeguards. The roles AI can't touch are almost entirely physical.

Having a living measure like this helps track how the gap between AI’s theoretical capability and real-world adoption narrows over time. 

That gap is where the next wave of disruption lives.

Follow me Alex Banks for daily AI highlights and insights.

I talked about AI’s impact on jobs first in my newsletter.

You get the most important news + analysis in your inbox every Sunday.

Read it here: https://lnkd.in/ei8r5Xyq

Anthropic said no to the Pentagon.
OpenAI signed the deal hours later.
Here's what happened:

Anthropic drew two red lines with the Department of War:

1. No mass domestic surveillance
↳ AI can now analyse bulk data the government buys on Americans at scale
↳ Currently legal, but only because the law hasn't caught up

2. No fully autonomous weapons
↳ AI isn't reliable enough to automate selecting and engaging targets
↳ No oversight framework exists for removing humans from the loop

For context:

→ Anthropic was the first AI company on the classified cloud
→ Deployed across intelligence, cyber ops, and combat support
→ Forfeited hundreds of millions cutting off CCP-linked firms
→ These two red lines represent ~1% of use cases

The Pentagon gave Anthropic a 3-day ultimatum.

Anthropic refused.

The response:

→ President Trump: "Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk"
→ Secretary of War Pete Hegseth: Anthropic is a "supply chain risk"
→ Trump ordered every federal agency to cease all use of Anthropic's technology

Then OpenAI entered.

On Friday morning, Altman publicly backed Anthropic's red lines.

By Friday evening, he'd signed the Pentagon deal himself:

→ OpenAI claims the same red lines as Anthropic, plus a third
→ OpenAI asked the Pentagon to offer identical terms to all AI labs
→ Multiple OpenAI employees signed an open letter supporting Anthropic
→ Altman admitted the deal was "definitely rushed" and "the optics don't look good"

The consumer backlash was immediate:

→ "Cancel ChatGPT" went viral across Reddit and X
→ Claude hit # 1 on the App Store, overtaking ChatGPT
→ Claude is now # 1 in Germany, Canada, and other markets

My takeaway:

Not only have I seen my workflows fully transition from ChatGPT to Claude over the last year, but the consumer mass-market is catching up.

I think it’s also important to point out that correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation here.

Claude didn’t just hit # 1 in the app store as a result of ChatGPT accepting the DOW deal.

Anthropic has simply built a better product where the timing of adoption happened to coincide with this viral uproar of the company denying use of their products for the surveillance of Americans and operation of autonomous weapons.

Ethical positioning now has direct commercial consequences.

Values are becoming a competitive moat.

I covered this idea yesterday in my newsletter.

Be the first to receive it by subscribing today.

Read it here: https://lnkd.in/e898z7SG

Claude just made switching from ChatGPT effortless.
You can now import your entire memory in 30 seconds.
Here's exactly how it works:

Step 1: Go to Claude Settings → Capabilities
↳ Scroll to the Memory section
↳ Find "Import memory from other AI providers"
↳ Click "Start import"

Step 2: Copy the prompt Claude gives you
↳ The pop-out shows a ready-made prompt
↳ Hit Copy (it's already written for you)

Step 3: Paste it into ChatGPT (or any other AI)
↳ Open a new ChatGPT chat and paste the prompt
↳ It exports everything: your identity, career, projects, preferences

Step 4: Paste the results back into Claude
↳ Switch back to the Claude import pop-out
↳ Paste ChatGPT's response into the text box
↳ Hit "Add to memory"

That's it. Claude now knows everything ChatGPT knew about you.

What gets transferred:

→ How you like to be spoken to
→ Your role, projects, and goals
→ Tools and frameworks you use
→ Every preference and correction you've made

My takeaway:

Claude hit # 1 on the App Store on Monday.
They’re now # 1 on the Android Store today.

A lot of people are curious about switching but assume they'll lose months of context they've built up with their exiting AI model provider.

That friction just disappeared.

Anthropic has removed the last real switching cost.

Whether it be ChatGPT, Gemini, or Grok, you no longer have to start from scratch.

Memory portability is vital for the AI to have robust context about you as an individual and tailor outputs appropriately.

What’s more, the utility of memory compounds over time.

My memory with Claude is already over 2 pages long.

If you've been on the fence, now's the time.

Follow me Alex Banks for daily AI highlights and insights.

I’ll be doing full coverage in this week’s newsletter.
Subscribe to The Signal: https://lnkd.in/ePSZP6KF

Founder @ Growth Marketing Agency - Single Grain, Podcaster @ Marketing School + Leveling Up

Single Grain is a digital marketing agency focused on driving scalable and predictable revenue growth using Facebook advertising, Google Ads, YouTube advertising, SEO, video production and content marketing. 

We've worked with companies such as Amazon, Uber, Nordstrom and venture-backed startups to create and execute on custom-tailored growth strategies.






-> For those of you that are interesting in marketing and personal growth tips from top entrepreneurs, please visit http://www.levelingup.com for our free podcast. You'll hear from billionaires, authors, and other high performers.

-> For my daily marketing podcast, go listen to Marketing School at https://www.singlegrain.com/marketing-school-podcast



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Eric Siu ✓

84% of the world has never used AI.

Let that satisfying visual sink in for a second.
Each dot in this chart represents ~3.2 million people. 2,500 dots = 8.1 billion humans.

The gray? That’s ~6.8 billion people who have never touched an AI tool. Not once.

The green at the bottom? ~1.3 billion free chatbot users. That’s only 16%.

The tiny sliver of yellow? ~15-25 million people paying $20/month for AI. That’s 0.3%.

And the red dots you can barely see? ~2-5 million people using coding scaffolds like Claude Code or Cursor. 0.04% of the planet.

I run a business where AI fluency with Claude Code is now mandatory. We’ve replaced significant headcount costs with autonomous agent systems. We build business tools with Claude Code.

Most founders I talk to think AI adoption is “everywhere.” It’s not even close.

If you’re reading this, you’re likely in the top 1% of AI users on Earth. The opportunity gap between those who use AI and those who don’t is only getting wider.

We’re at the dial-up era of AI. The people building skills now will compound their advantage for the next decade.

What’s your take on the adoption curve?

Join Neil Patel & Eric Siu live as they talk about the latest in AI and marketing

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