The job of the future might already be past its prime. For years, young people seeking a lucrative career were urged to go all in on computer science. From 2005 to 2023, the number of comp-sci majors in the United States quadrupled. All of which makes the latest batch of numbers so startling. This…

Does ChatGPT harm critical thinking abilities? A new study from researchers at MIT’s Media Lab has returned some concerning results. The study divided 54 subjects—18 to 39 year-olds from the Boston area—into three groups, and asked them to write several SAT essays using OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s…

Using AI chatbots actually reduces activity in the brain versus accomplishing the same tasks unaided, and may lead to poorer fact retention, according to a new preprint study out of MIT. Seeking to understand how the use of LLM chatbots affects the brain, a team led by MIT Media Lab research…

Published on 2025-06-20, 5674 words, 21 minutes to read Who will take over for us if we don't train the next generation to replace us? A critique of craft, AI, and the legacy of human expertise. A picture of two patches of wild grass bifurcated by a retaining pond. - Photo by Xe Iaso, Canon EOS R6…

Two businesspeople standing face to face getty Did you know that time spent on workplace conflict has doubled since 2008? That’s according to the most recent Conflict at Work research released by The Myers-Briggs Company. As it turns out, poor communication is the number one cause of conflict.…

The Meta chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, called it “the most intelligent AI assistant that you can freely use”. But Barry Smethurst, 41, a record shop worker trying to travel by rail from Saddleworth to Manchester Piccadilly, did not agree. Waiting on the platform for a morning train that was…

For some people, it seems, AI is an amazing machine which - while fallible - represents an incredible leap forward in productivity. For other people, it seems, AI is wrong more often than right and - although occasionally useful - requires constant supervision. Who is right? I recently pointed out a…

Notes Paris Marx is joined by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna to discuss the harms of generative AI, how the industry keeps the public invested while companies flounder under the weight of unmet promises, and what people can do to push back. Guest Emily M. Bender is a Professor in the Department of…

Gift a 404 Media subscription to a friend. The federal government is working on a website and API called “ai.gov” to “accelerate government innovation with AI” that is supposed to launch on July 4 and will include an analytics feature that shows how much a specific government team is using AI,…

The Japanese word ‘shokunin’ is often translated as ‘artisan’ in English. Although it isn’t incorrect by definition, the translation seems to lose the spirit of what a shokunin does. I’m reminded of this every time I explain the works and lives of shokunin to an overseas audience, which happens to…

Dangerous tipping points Crisis facing the world's marine ecosystems is getting worse. Georgiana Gustin, Inside Climate News – Jun 10, 2025 9:54 AM | 120 Credit: Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images Credit: Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images Story text Size Width * Links *…

Image by Annie Ruygt A heartfelt provocation about AI-assisted programming. Tech execs are mandating LLM adoption. That’s bad strategy. But I get where they’re coming from. Some of the smartest people I know share a bone-deep belief that AI is a fad — the next iteration of NFT mania. I’ve been…

The ancient Greeks used the term “ouroboros” to symbolize the three fundamental phases in the cycle of life: life, death, and renewal. The cycle was visually represented as a serpent swallowing its own tail. As the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs)…

Artificial Intelligence began as a quest to simulate the human brain. Is it now in the process of transforming the human brain’s role in daily life? The Industrial Revolution diminished the need for manual labor. As someone who researches the application of AI in international business, I can’t help…

You’ll have noticed how previously normal people start acting like addicts to their favourite generative AI and shout at you like you’re trying to take their cocaine away. Matthias Döpmann is a software developer. He’s been trying out AI autocomplete for coding. He was very impressed at how good the…

Enormous early-season wildfires have erupted across the prairie provinces of Canada this week, taxing local emergency response and threatening a long stretch of dangerous air quality across eastern North America. The country’s largest fires – the Bird River fire and the Border fire – remain…

Taylor Swift has bought back the master recordings to her first six albums, giving her control over her entire catalogue for the first time. “I almost stopped thinking it could ever happen, after 20 years of having the carrot dangled and then yanked away,” she wrote in a letter to fans. “But that’s…

This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. Virtually all of the top officials at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have departed the agency or will do so this month, according to an email obtained by Cybersecurity Dive, further widening a growing…

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who helms the company behind ChatGPT rival Claude, has warned that artificial intelligence could wipe out a staggering 50% of all entry-level white collar jobs, while spiking unemployment by up to 20% in the next five years, in a new interview with Axios. Amodei…

There is an 80% chance that global temperatures will break at least one annual heat record in the next five years, raising the risk of extreme droughts, floods and forest fires, a new report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has shown. For the first time, the data also indicated a small…

If and when AI will start replacing human labor has been the subject of numerous debates. While it’s still hard to say with certainty if AI is beginning to take over roles previously done by humans, a recent survey from the World Economic Forum found that 40% of employers intend to cut staff where…

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This might be the highest leverage period for AI security in our generation New technology paradigms emerge faster than security can clean up their mess; consider the rise of personal computing and the Internet, where security fought a rear-guard action during and after mass adoption (and is still…

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When Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification,” a useful, new word for the way online platforms decay, or decline into unusability, he not only gave us the word of the year, at least according to the American Dialect Society and, later, the Australian Macquarie Dictionary. He gave us…

To accomplish its mission of increasing the health security of the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that it "conducts critical science and provides health information" to protect the nation. But since President Trump's administration assumed power in January, many of the…

And yet, one of the first studies to look at AI use in conjunction with employment data finds the technology’s effect on time and money to be negligible. “AI chatbots have had no significant impact on earnings or recorded hours in any occupation,” economists Anders Humlum and Emilie Vestergaard…

Published May 16, 2025 | Comments (208) | © Alex Wong/Getty Images Thanks to a new breed of chatbots, American stupidity is escalating at an advanced pace. The AI industry has promised to “disrupt” large parts of society, and you need look no further than the U.S. educational system to see how…

Almost half of young people would rather live in a world where the internet does not exist, according to a new survey. The research reveals that nearly 70% of 16- to 21-year-olds feel worse about themselves after spending time on social media. Half (50%) would support a “digital curfew” that would…

For the first time, the growth in China’s clean power generation has caused the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fall despite rapid power demand growth. The new analysis for Carbon Brief shows that China’s emissions were down 1.6% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025 and by 1% in the…

The latest fad amongst tech CEOs is no longer "founder mode", or taking drugs that they would fire you for taking, or telling everybody to return to the office — it's demanding that all work be AI-first! This is a great idea if you think nobody at your company is great at what they do. It may…

Illustration by Monty Vaz Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. In 2021, Zia graduated from the University of Michigan–Dearborn with a degree in software engineering. With an internship under his belt, he had no…

Subscribe to Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At Get the free version of my newsletter. No spam ever, unsubscribe anytime. Fair warning: this is the longest thing I've written on this newsletter. I do apologize. Soundtrack: EL-P - $4 Vic Listen to my podcast Better Offline. We have merch. Last week,…

The new hire had a simple task. All they had to do was assign people to work on a new web development project based on the client's budget and the team's availability. But the staffer soon ran into an unexpected problem: They couldn't dismiss an innocuous pop-up blocking files that contained…

Violent tornado outbreaks, like the storms that tore through parts of St. Louis and London, Kentucky, on May 16, have made 2025 seem like an especially active, deadly and destructive year for tornadoes. The U.S. has had more reported tornadoes than normal – over 960 as of May 22, according to the…

AI’s integration into our lives is the most significant shift in online life in more than a decade. Hundreds of millions of people now regularly turn to chatbots for help with homework, research, coding, or to create images and videos. But what’s powering all of that? Today, new analysis by MIT…

Table of Contents The feeling If you’re like me, you’ve had this strange, uneasy feeling about the job market for a few years now. It’s like a splinter in the brain. We know something is deeply broken about the whole system, but it’s impossible to grasp or articulate. I’m writing this because I…