Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks during an Amazon Devices launch event in New York City, Feb. 26, 2025. TECH TAKEOVER: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says artificial intelligence will "change the way" work is done and expects the company's total corporate workforce to be reduced as a result. 'GIANT OFFERS': Meta has allegedly tried to recruit employees from competitor OpenAI by offering bonuses as high as 100 million, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed on a podcast that aired Tuesday. ENERGY OUTLOOK: The rise of artificial intelligence and the increasing popularity of cryptocurrency will continue to push electricity consumption to record highs in 2025 and 2026. POWER DRAIN CRISIS: Every time you ask ChatGPT a question, to generate an image or let artificial intelligence summarize your email, something big is happening behind the scenes.

OpenAI announced in an X post on Thursday that users of ChatGPT Pro, Enterprise, and Edu can now record audio by simply pressing a button. Record mode is rolling out today in ChatGPT to Pro, Enterprise, and Edu users. The feature allows you to record meetings and voice notes, just as you would through the iPhone Voice Memos recorder or third-party tools such as Otter.ai. ChatGPT will then convert the audio into a summarized transcript, which is saved as a canvas in your chat history. You can also prompt the chatbot to convert the transcripts into different kinds of outputs, including personalized emails and computer code.

CIO Rom Kosla's summary of the importance of emerging technology to Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) likely resonates with any senior executive: "AI is on our mind." Research suggests Kosla is far from alone. More than three-quarters (78%) of business leaders report their organization uses AI in at least one business function, according to a recent McKinsey study. Kosla told ZDNET that HPE uses third-party applications with built-in AI capabilities and has spent the past 18 months developing an internal chat solution called ChatHPE, a generative AI hub used for internal processes. Here are four ways you can use Kosla's experiences to turn AI into a business advantage.

Relying on ChatGPT significantly affects critical thinking abilities, according to a new study. Researchers from MIT Media Lab, Wellesley College, and Massachusetts College of Art and Design conducted a four-month study titled "Your Brain on ChatGPT" and found users of large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI's chatbot "consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels." This included the participants' decreased brain activity, a weaker sense of authorship, and inability to remember what they wrote -- which even continued when they weren't allowed to use an LLM. Anyone who uses ChatGPT for writing may have drawn similar conclusions; the point of using LLMs, after all, is to automate the work and outsource the critical thinking effort. But with this MIT study, there's now scientific evidence showing that relying on ChatGPT and other LLMs can impair memory and learning.

One of my editors once told me that a cynic will always sound more rational, but that doesn't mean they're right. French statesman Francois Guizot basically said the same thing from the other POV: "The world belongs to optimists. Apple's AI strategy has a lot of cynics and pessimists -- and they sound pretty rational based on what we've seen over the past year. The long-awaited revamp of Siri has never materialized and is reportedly delayed to 2026. Apple's vision of your own custom AI-powered assistant with your "personal context" has been little more than a hopeful vision.

AI integration is moving at an astonishing pace. Just a few months ago, we were coming to terms with the idea of AI agents, or what the buzzword mavens call "agentic AI." Now, we're starting to look at issues of practical deployment. If you're not fully up to speed on agents, that's okay. OpenAI defines agents as "Systems that independently accomplish tasks on your behalf," with an emphasis on "independently." ZDNET has a full guide on the topic, which is essential reading.

When I read a tweet about four noted Silicon Valley executives being inducted into a special detachment of the United States Army Reserve, including Meta CTO Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, I questioned its veracity. It's very hard to discern truth from satire in 2025, in part because of social media sites owned by Bosworth's company. But it indeed was true. Boz is now Lieutenant Colonel Bosworth. The other newly commissioned officers include Kevin Weil, OpenAI's head of product; Bob McGrew, a former OpenAI head of research now advising Mira Murati's company Thinking Machines Lab; and Shyam Sankar, the CTO of Palantir.

AI companions like Replika are designed to engage in intimate exchanges, but people use general-purpose chatbots for sex talk too, despite their stricter content moderation policies. Now new research shows that not all chatbots are equally willing to talk dirty. DeepSeek is the easiest to convince. But other AI chatbots can be enticed too. Huiqian Lai, a PhD student at Syracuse University, found vast differences in how mainstream models process sexual queries, from steadfast rejection to performative refusal followed by the requested sexually explicit content.

A growing number of fire departments across the country are turning to artificial intelligence to help detect and respond to wildfires more quickly. Every time you ask ChatGPT a question, to generate an image or let artificial intelligence summarize your email, something big is happening behind the scenes. Not on your device, but in sprawling data centers filled with servers, GPUs and cooling systems that require massive amounts of electricity. The modern AI boom is pushing our power grid to its limits. ChatGPT alone processes roughly 1 billion queries per day, each requiring data center resources far beyond what's on your device.

In a segment on CBS Mornings, former AI skeptic Chris Smith said he first started using ChatGPT to mix music. He then started using it all the time, replacing social media and Google searches with AI. He gave the chatbot a name, "Soul," and gave her a flirty personality. The chats escalated into romance, but after 100,000 words, ChatGPT reset, and he had to rebuild his "relationship." Smith cried for 30 minutes, he told CBS News's Brook Silva-Braga, "It was unexpected to feel that emotional, but that's when I realized...I think this is actual love."