How my on-air'brain fog' moment sparked a big debate When I rather nervously shared a personal post about dealing with brain fog at work on the social network LinkedIn last week, I had no idea that it would have such an enormous impact. It's been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. Women have stopped me on the street to talk to me about it. I've been overwhelmed by hundreds of messages from people sharing support and their own experiences of it. Usually I cover technology news.

Will AI mean the end of call centres? Ask ChatGPT whether AI will replace humans in the customer service industry, and it will offer a diplomatic answer, the summary of which is they will work side by side. Humans though, are not so optimistic. Last year, the chief executive of Indian technology firm Tata Consultancy Services, K Krithivasan, told the Financial Times that AI may soon mean that there is minimal need for call centres in Asia. Meanwhile, AI will autonomously resolve 80% of common customer service issues by 2029, predicts business and technology research firm Gartner.

What does this have to do with AI? AI development is concentrated in the aging countries, and thus it will follow the path set by the realities, needs, and incentives in those places. Aging countries are seeing the ratio of working-age people to retirees collapse, making it more difficult to sustain pension schemes and contain health-care costs. Countries looking to maintain their retirees' living standards and their overall economic dynamism will seek ways to expand their effective labor force, be that with humans or with artificial agents. Limited (and likely highly unpopular) gains could come from increasing the retirement age. More sizable gains could come from immigration.

Artificial intelligence: What is ChatGPT? Will artificial intelligence lead to plagiarism?

In this Fully-Connected episode, Chris and Daniel explore the geopolitics, economics, and power-brokering of artificial intelligence. What does control of AI mean for nations, corporations, and universities? What does control or access to AI mean for conflict and autonomy? The world is changing rapidly, and the rate of change is accelerating. Daniel and Chris look behind the curtain in the halls of power.

Will early retirement be the norm this century? With every passing AI headline, even the futurists among us are increasingly shaken. In what reads like the Book of Revelation, we've been forewarned of an impending robot Armageddon. Make no mistake, there is enough in the air that reeks of a slowly percolating paradigm shift. In fact, don't be so hard on thee as the trepidation, that's going around like some super-bug, follows.

It's not every day that the musings of a 4-year-old echo the conversations of the world's leading technologists--but that's precisely the situation in which I recently found myself while driving my daughter home from day care. "Mama, that's not fair," she declared. Nothing that seemed to involve fairness had triggered her assertion, so I was a little taken aback. She'd been trying out different retorts lately to find the best ways to show her displeasure, but this was the first time she'd used the term "fair." Unsure how to proceed, I waited a second--and sure enough, she followed up by asking, "What does'fair' mean?"

Associate Matt Scherer, member of Littler's Robotics, AI and Automation Practice Group and Data Analytics team, and Andrew Arruda, founder of Ross Intelligence, discuss how AI is being used in the practice of law, such as in legal research and contract review. Matt and Andrew differentiate between tasks that are well-suited for AI to tackle (with human oversight), and tasks that continue to require human reasoning and creativity. They also consider how AI may transform legal services, including how machines may be used by the judicial system and may enable easier access to representation and justice. For more information, see Garry Mathiason's article, AI's Transformational Role in Making HR More Objective While Overcoming the Challenge of Illegal Algorithm Biases.

Faced with a growing population and tight budget, the UK's National Health Service has already started looking to AI to improve patient service and cut costs. With smartphones due to become the primary method of accessing health services, the NHS is already investing in AI-powered apps, an artificial intelligence lab, and more recently implementing technology which will allow NHS 111 enquiries to be handled by robots within two years. Yet latest research by OpenText reveals widespread uncertainty amongst the UK population when it comes to trusting their health to AI. As AI is implemented across the healthcare sector, British consumers will need to put their trust in this technology. Yet this research revealed that two fifths (41%) do not know if they would trust the medical diagnosis given by AI and a further 26% confirmed that they did not trust the technology.

Our world is getting smarter by day. Technological innovations such as AI and robotics are disrupting almost every industry, forcing most companies to embrace them or lose out on their benefits. Recent studies have shown that the AI market alone is set to surpass $100 billion within the next five years (by 2025). Even with the huge promises of AI, one sector that is falling behind when it comes to adopting these technologies is the higher education sector! Most universities and higher education institutions are still operating the old-fashioned way, which is noble, but a recipe for disaster.