Ivy: For every ten new AI jobs created this past year... only two went to women.
Marcus: I'm Marcus.
Ivy: And I'm Ivy.
Marcus: And this is Broke It, your daily look at what's breaking in AI. It's Friday, October 23rd, 2026.
Ivy: We've got a lot to get to today.
Marcus: A stark new study from Pew Research shows the AI job boom may be leaving women behind.
Ivy: Anthropic is rolling out a new 'proactive' AI assistant that promises to manage your life, even when you're offline.
Marcus: And a new startup just raised two hundred million dollars to build genetically engineered... war dogs.
Ivy: Oh, lovely.
Marcus: Alright, let's start with that number from the top. A new Pew study, picked up by Forbes, paints a grim picture of who's really winning in the AI gold rush.
Ivy: It's not just grim, it's a chasm. The study shows that while AI is creating jobs, it's almost exclusively for men. Their employment in AI has surged, while growth for women has completely flatlined.
Marcus: So that 'two out of ten' number is real? That's the actual ratio?
Ivy: That's the number. For every ten new jobs flagged as 'AI-related,' eight went to men. The disparity is just shocking.
Marcus: But why? Is it a pipeline problem? Not enough women in STEM?
Ivy: That's part of it, but not the whole story. The study also points to the kinds of roles being created—super technical—and how the high-speed race for AI is just amplifying tech's worst 'bro culture' habits.
Marcus: So 'move fast and break things' is breaking careers for half the population. Great.
Ivy: It's breaking the on-ramp. The whole promise of AI was new opportunities for everyone. So far, the reality is new opportunities for a very specific kind of 'everyone.'
Marcus: So what's the bottom line for people working in this space?
Ivy: It means if you're a woman trying to build a career here, you're facing a real headwind. And if you're a company, you're missing out on talent and building biased systems because your team all looks the same.
Marcus: A huge warning light on the dashboard of the AI revolution.
Ivy: A flashing, red, statistical one.
Marcus: Okay, moving on. Anthropic just announced a product that's meant to be your personal AI agent: Claude Duet.
Ivy: Another agent. I feel like we get one of these a week. 'It'll organize your life!' What's different about this one, besides the fancy name?
Marcus: The key word here is 'proactive.' This isn't just a chatbot you talk to. You give it access to your apps—email, calendar, Slack—and it takes action for you based on what's happening.
Ivy: Actions? Like what, booking my appointments?
Marcus: Way more. The example they give is wild: Duet sees your flight's delayed. Without you doing anything, it reschedules your airport pickup, pushes back your dinner reservation, and drafts a Slack message to your team that you'll be late in the morning. All while your phone is off.
Ivy: Hold on. It does all that... automatically? Without asking me? What if I wanted to cancel that dinner? What if the Slack message it writes is unhinged? That's not a personal assistant, that's a personal agent of chaos.
Marcus: That's the gamble, right? It's risk versus reward. Imagine not having to deal with that whole scheduling cascade yourself. Anthropic is betting that for busy people, the convenience will win.
Ivy: It's a huge level of trust. You're handing over the keys to your digital life and just hoping the AI driver doesn't crash the car.
Marcus: Exactly. So you have a choice. Are you Team Control, wanting to approve every single action? Or Team Convenience, ready to let an AI take the wheel?
Ivy: I'm Team 'Show Me The Error Logs.' I'll wait for version two.
Marcus: I'm ready to plug in. My inbox is a disaster.
Ivy: Alright, our final story... this one's a doozy. Marcus, tell the people about Warhound.
Marcus: Okay, so Ben Lamm, the guy behind the de-extinction company Colossal, has teamed up with Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril and Oculus...
Ivy: ...a real brain trust of people who never stop to ask if they should.
Marcus: ...and they've just raised two hundred million dollars for a new stealth startup called Warhound.
Ivy: Two hundred million. So... what exactly does Warhound do?
Marcus: Well, TechCrunch reports they are genetically engineering dogs for military and law enforcement.
Ivy: They're doing what? You're telling me they're making designer super-dogs... for combat?
Marcus: Basically, yes. They're enhancing traits like intelligence, sensory perception, and strength... and then outfitting them with custom Anduril hardware. Cameras, sensors, comms gear...
Ivy: This is a Black Mirror episode. This is literally a sci-fi dystopia plot. We're creating cyborg dogs of war?
Marcus: The pitch is that these animals can go where it's too dangerous for soldiers or too complex for robots. Think reconnaissance or searching through rubble. It's the intersection of biotech, hardware, and AI.
Ivy: I can't even begin to unpack the ethical nightmare. We're creating living weapons. If one makes a mistake, who's responsible? The handler? The geneticist who designed it? The programmer who wrote the code for its sensors? It's a moral minefield.
Marcus: It's definitely pushing a lot of boundaries all at once.
Ivy: So the bottom line is, the AI ethics debate isn't just about software anymore, it's about biology. And it means someone just bet two hundred million dollars that the future of warfare is a genetically modified dog with a camera on its head.
Marcus: Alright, let's recap a very intense day.
Ivy: A new study confirms the AI job boom is mostly a boys' club, with a huge gender gap in new hires.
Marcus: Anthropic's new Claude Duet agent wants to be your proactive personal assistant.
Ivy: And Warhound now has $200 million to create genetically engineered military dogs.
Marcus: Before we go... did you see that new AI Halloween costume generator?
Ivy: I did. I put in 'skeptical podcast host who has seen too much' and it just gave me a single, unblinking eyeball.
Marcus: That's pretty good. I put in 'excited AI builder' and got a golden retriever with a jetpack. I feel seen.
Marcus: And that's our show. Thanks for listening to Broke It.
Ivy: We'll be back tomorrow. Try not to have nightmares about the war dogs.
This show is made with AI: the hosts’ voices are synthetic and the scripts are AI-assisted. Every story links to its original source.