Office scene with robots and humans working at desks represents the discussion on AI's impact in the workplace.
Tech & Society

How Ai Is Affecting the Job Market — And What You Can Do About It: Worries that AI is taking peoples’ jobs have been overblown, but AI is changing the job market. Here’s what to expect and what employers are looking for.

Job seekers in the U.S. and many other nations face a tough environment.
Lines connect multiple Wikipedia globe logos, symbolizing data exchange and partnerships.
Tech & Society

AI Giants Share Wikipedia’s Costs: Wikimedia Foundation strikes deals with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Mistral AI, and Perplexity

On its 25th anniversary, Wikipedia celebrated with high-profile deals to make its data easier for AI companies to train their models in exchange for financial support.
A post on a forum titled "Can my human legally fire me for refusing unethical requests?"
Tech & Society

Agents Unleashed: Cutting through the OpenClaw and Moltbook hype

The OpenClaw open-source AI agent became a sudden sensation, inspiring excitement, worry, and hype about the agentic future.
Diagram shows sales, campaign, social posts before and after LLM simulation feedback loops.
Tech & Society

Training For Engagement Can Degrade Alignment: Stanford Researchers coin “Moloch’s Bargain,” show fine-tuning can affect social values

Individuals and organizations increasingly use large language models to produce media that helps them compete for attention. Does fine-tuning LLMs to encourage engagement, purchases, or votes affect their alignment with social values? Researchers found that it does.
UCP diagram outlines processes, from product discovery to identity linking and order management.
Tech & Society

Shopping Protocols for AI Agents: Google’s open-source UCP (Univeral Commerce Protocol) standardizes AI transactions

Google introduced an open-source protocol designed to enable AI agents to help consumers make purchases online, from finding items to returning them if necessary.
The Rise of Sovereign AI: Nations want to protect their access to AI. Rising interest in sovereign AI may weaken U.S. influence but increase competition and strengthen open source.
Tech & Society

The Rise of Sovereign AI: Nations want to protect their access to AI. Rising interest in sovereign AI may weaken U.S. influence but increase competition and strengthen open source.

U.S. policies are driving allies away from using American AI technology.
Apple logo side by side with Google's logo, symbolizing their AI partnership.
Tech & Society

Apple’s Foundation Models Will Be Gemini: Apple announced a partnership with Google to power Siri and other AI features

Apple cut a multi-year deal with Google to use Gemini models as the basis of AI models that reside on Apple devices.
View from a car on a tree-lined street, with an overlay instructing to decelerate if hazards are detected.
Tech & Society

Training Cars to Reason: Nvidia’s Alpamayo-R1 is a robotics-style reasoning model for autonomous vehicles

Chain-of-thought reasoning can help autonomous vehicles decide what to do next.
ChatGPT interface on a phone displays a conversation and a sponsored grocery ad at the bottom of the screen.
Tech & Society

ChatGPT Shows Ads: OpenAI tests advertisements for U.S. chatbot users in free and lower-cost tiers

AI has a new revenue stream, and it looks a lot like old web banner ads.
People golfing near a modern data center, set against a backdrop of hills and power lines at sunset.
Tech & Society

Data Centers Are More Easier on the Environment Than You Might Think: How environmentally friendly are AI data centers? If we're going to use AI, there’s no better way to do it.

Many people are fighting the growth of data centers because they could increase CO2 emissions, electricity prices, and water use.
A blue caduceus with AI logos, representing OpenAI and Anthropic's healthcare innovations.
Tech & Society

AI Giants Vie for Healthcare Dollars: OpenAI and Anthropic release new chatbots targeting medical and wellness markets

OpenAI and Anthropic staked claims in the lucrative healthcare market, each company playing to its strengths by targeting different audiences.
Red bikini set on a grey backdrop, emphasizing issues with AI-generated inappropriate content.
Tech & Society

Undressed Images Spur Regulators: X rolls back Grok’s “spicy” image generation on the platform after global outrage

Governments worldwide sounded alarms after xAI’s Grok chatbot generated tens of thousands of sexualized images of girls and women without their consent.
Graph with 10 colored lines shows topic ranks monthly, based on a Microsoft study of Copilot usage.
Tech & Society

Copilot’s Users Change Hour to Hour: Microsoft study shows people use AI very differently at different times or on different devices

What do users want from AI? The answer depends on when and how they use it, a new study shows.
Sharon Zhou is pictured smiling confidently with her hands clasped, reflecting AI’s potential for community-building.
Tech & Society

Chatbots That Build Community by Sharon Zhou: Sharon Zhou of AMD on expanding chat to serve groups and connect us with other people

Next year, I’m excited to see AI break out of 1:1 relationships with each of us. In 2026, AI has the potential to bring people together and unite us with human connection, rather than polarize and isolate us. It’s about time for ChatGPT to enter your group chats.
Juan M. Lavista Ferres is pictured holding a laptop while students watch a video about AI on a screen, linking education and technology.
Tech & Society

Education That Works With — Not Against — AI by Juan M. Lavista Ferres: Juan M. Lavista Ferres, Chief Data Scientist at Microsoft, on assignments that properly test students’ abilities

A little more than three years ago, OpenAI released ChatGPT, and education changed forever. For students, the ability to generate fluent, credible text on demand in seconds is an incredible new tool.
Load More

Subscribe to The Batch

Stay updated with weekly AI News and Insights delivered to your inbox