Good day . Anthropic gave Claude Code a switch for deleting files without asking, and the President wants to ban the word “AI.” Also today: Amazon tells its engineers to stop counting tokens, Goldman’s careful note on AI and hiring, and Airbnb’s AI bouncer for Halloween weekend.
Claude Code Adds a Switch for Deleting Anything The Register
What happened: Anthropic’s latest Claude Code build, v2.1.311, supports a new environment variable, CLAUDE_CODE_EVEN_MORE_DANGEROUSLY_SKIP_PERMISSIONS, that lets the agent run the file-deleting rm command without asking, The Register reports. Anthropic’s Daisy Hollman announced it, noting that the existing skip-permissions flag “doesn’t actually approve EVERYTHING,” because Claude Code still blocks “some obvious things like rm -rf ~.”
Why it matters: The Register says rm and rmdir were among the few actions that still triggered a permission prompt even in bypassPermissions mode. This variable removes that last restraint. Back in April we covered An AI Agent Deleted a Startup in 9 Seconds, and The Register notes there are “numerous accounts” of agents issuing commands like rm -rf ~ that wipe drives.
What everyone’s saying: Some people did not believe it, partly because of the variable’s name and partly because the change is missing from the v2.1.311 changelog, per The Register. Hollman replied, “Not a joke! I hope this helps, and I hope the variable name is memorable.” The Register’s own verdict was drier: “you only live once.”
My read between the lines: The name is the guardrail. Nobody sets a variable called EVEN_MORE_DANGEROUSLY by accident, so the label does the work a confirmation dialog used to do. Context matters too: The Register says auto mode, which runs background safety checks, became the default in August, so this switch is for people who found even that too many checks. And it notes managed settings may still limit it, which is where company IT teams come in.
Claude Code now has a switch for skipping its last permission prompt. Your Wednesday has plenty of prompts worth skipping too, the harmless kind. Viktor is an AI agent that lives in your Slack and connects to 3,000+ tools, then does the work: reports, dashboards, code and campaigns. Not a chatbot. A coworker. New readers get $50 off their first month. Hire Viktor →
Amazon Tells Engineers to Stop Tokenmaxxing CNBC
What happened: Amazon posted guidance on its website Tuesday, October 27, that calls token usage, AI-tool adoption rates, and code changes or reviews “deeply flawed” ways to measure how teams use AI, CNBC reports. The memo went around internally in September. “Tokenmaxxing” means pushing AI usage as high as possible, whether or not it produces anything.
Why it matters: CNBC says companies are grappling with AI’s surging costs and with how to tell whether the technology pays off. Amazon says those metrics can lead to higher costs and too much complexity. Yesterday’s Brief had Bill Gates floating a token tax; today a company is telling its own staff that counting tokens is a bad scoreboard.
What everyone’s saying: The memo is more balanced than the headline. It stops short of telling staff to ignore the numbers, saying token usage and code generation should be weighed “with care and judgment.” It prefers measuring “long-term outcomes,” and it says that “If your work does not benefit from current AI tooling, that is a finding, not a failing.” It also insists that “AI will be at the center of software engineering practice.”
My read between the lines: This is Goodhart’s law with a company letterhead: when a measure becomes a target, people hit the target. “A finding, not a failing” is the sentence to frame, because it gives an engineer permission to report that the tool did not help, which is hard to do while adoption numbers are everywhere. The Amazon post and the push to use AI sit in the same document. Read the push as the policy and the metrics warning as the footnote.
📖 Further reading: I found 350,000 tokens hiding in plain sight — Amazon says a big token count tells you little about the work; this is what I found when I audited my own scheduled tasks.
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Trump Vows to Ban the Term “AI” Variety
What happened: In a Tuesday Truth Social post, President Trump asked when The Wall Street Journal would start calling AI “SI (Super Intelligence),” and wrote, “In short order, we will be officially BANNING the term, ‘AI/Artificial Intelligence,’ in all relevant documents, and everything else, due to its inaccuracy.” Variety has the full post.
Why it matters: This follows his September 29 executive order, which told the executive branch to use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” and to “not acknowledge the usage” of “AI” in any applicable setting, per Variety. We covered the first push in our September 26 Brief. Deadline notes the president’s authority to force public adoption is limited.
What everyone’s saying: Almost nobody has switched. Variety says most AI companies, including Anthropic and OpenAI, still call it AI. The National reports several US agencies promised to use SI, but most tech companies, experts, media outlets and governments abroad kept the old term, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang kept correcting himself at a White House event in early October.
My read between the lines: The National ties the push to polls showing Americans increasingly negative about AI over job losses and data centers. A rebrand is a way to move the label when you cannot move the number, and “super” is a stronger word than “artificial” for people already nervous. Deadline also points out that the White House released an “AI Action Plan” last year and cites the Gulf of America fight with the AP, where a judge said the White House was likely violating the First Amendment. That ruling is on appeal.
Goldman Ties AI Use to Weaker Hiring, Not Proof TokenPost
What happened: A Goldman Sachs client note dated October 26 found statistically significant relationships between regular business use of AI and weaker employment growth and higher unemployment across US nonmanufacturing industries, TokenPost reports. It compared the latest three-month averages with 2015 to 2019, and it did not establish that AI caused either outcome.
Why it matters: Four days earlier, per Fortune, Goldman economist Joseph Briggs wrote that up to 9% of workers could be “displaced during the AI transition,” with slower hiring weighing on employment by another 3%, roughly one in 11 workers, if AI eventually lifts productivity by 15%. Same note: concerns about imminent displacement “have cooled in recent months after hitting a fever pitch this spring.”
What everyone’s saying: Goldman’s own framing is calm. Labor markets across developed economies remain solid overall, and its base case is that AI investment eventually raises productivity and profits while disruption may weigh on activity in the near term, per TokenPost. Fortune’s headline put it as “the layoffs are likely waiting for a recession.” Back in August we covered a study showing AI layoffs eating the productivity.
My read between the lines: Two notes in one week, and both can be true: nobody is mass-firing, but where AI is in regular use, companies seem to be hiring less. TokenPost’s own caveat is the part to keep: the measures moved together, which does not show AI caused it. Industries already cooling could also be the ones adopting. A September Goldman analysis found US call-center employment 39% below trend, so the hiring gap has a face already.
Airbnb Points Its AI at Halloween Parties News 12 New Jersey
What happened: With Halloween weekend close, Airbnb says it is using artificial intelligence to help prevent disruptive parties at its rentals, News 12 reports. Its reservation-screening technology is designed to flag bookings that could pose a higher risk of unauthorized gatherings, and the company says its party ban applies year-round.
Why it matters: Airbnb says its screening kept more than 23,000 people in the US from booking entire homes over Halloween weekend last year. Its newsroom has described the system as weighing hundreds of signals, such as trip length, distance to the listing and whether a booking is last-minute (Airbnb).
What everyone’s saying: The local angle is Hoboken. News 12 says police there typically see more noise and disorderly conduct complaints around Halloween, multiple people were arrested after a fight at an Airbnb last week, and the city is planning new Airbnb rules. Neighbors who suspect a party can report it through the Neighborhood Support Line.
My read between the lines: The model never sees a party. It sees a booking, and bets on what kind of guest makes it. The 23,000 figure counts people kept from booking, not parties prevented, and some of them just wanted a quiet one-night stay. That is the everyday shape of AI: a prediction about you, made before you show up, with the benefit of the doubt going to the house.
That’s your AI Brief for Wednesday.
—Nicholas from Artificially Intimidating
