Programming with AI: the isolation no one in tech wants to admit

AI is transforming programming, but no one is talking about the human cost: isolation. Anthropic, the creators of Claude Code, admitted it first.

The team that built the world’s most popular AI agent for programming began to feel lonely while working with its own tool. Fiona Fung, Anthropic’s engineering leader, said it out loud: AI agents are erasing the collaboration that gives work meaning. In this episode, we analyze the Great Productivity Panic of 2026, the 120,000 layoffs in the tech sector, programmers’ identity crisis, and why the world’s most advanced AI company had to invent social rituals to get its own engineers to sit together.

Will AI replace programmers? That question is already worn out. The question that matters is another one: what kind of work do we want to have? Like this episode if it made you think, share it with someone on your team, and subscribe for more analysis of technology, work, and artificial intelligence.