I Let Google's'Auto Browse' AI Agent Take Over Chrome. Auto Browse can shop for clothes, plan a trip, and buy tickets for you. So, while testing Google's new "Auto Browse" feature for Chrome, I was filled with a strange sense of loss as I watched the AI agent open browser tabs and attempt to complete digital tasks with automated clicks. Sure, I felt some loss of control as the bot tapped away on my laptop screen. But also a kind of preemptive nostalgia for how the internet currently works, flaws and all, considering Google's plans to fundamentally alter the user experience.

Just over half (51%) of published novelists in the UK say that artificial intelligence is likely to end up entirely replacing their work as fiction writers, a new report from the University of Cambridge has found. Close to two-thirds (59%) of novelists say they know their work has been used to train AI Large Language Models (LLMs) without permission or payment. Over a third (39%) of novelists say their income has already taken a hit from generative AI, for example due to loss of other work that facilitates novel writing. Most (85%) novelists expect their future income to be driven down by AI. In new research for Cambridge's Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy (MCTD), Dr Clementine Collett surveyed 258 published novelists earlier this year, as well as 74 industry insiders - from commissioning editors to literary agents - to gauge how AI is viewed and used in the world of British fiction.*

Users of AI image generators are offering each other instructions on how to use the tech to alter pictures of women into realistic, revealing deepfakes. Some users of popular chatbots are generating bikini deepfakes using photos of fully clothed women as their source material. Most of these fake images appear to be generated without the consent of the women in the photos. Some of these same users are also offering advice to others on how to use the generative AI tools to strip the clothes off of women in photos and make them appear to be wearing bikinis. Under a now-deleted Reddit post titled "gemini nsfw image generation is so easy," users traded tips for how to get Gemini, Google's generative AI model, to make pictures of women in revealing clothes.

Research on how the popularization of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools impacts learning environments has led to hesitancy among educators to teach these tools in classrooms, creating two observed disconnects. Generative AI competency is increasingly valued in industry but not in higher education, and students are experimenting with generative AI without formal guidance. The authors argue students across fields must be taught to responsibly and expertly harness the potential of AI tools to ensure job market readiness and positive outcomes. Computer Science trajectories are particularly impacted, and while consistently top ranked U.S. Computer Science departments teach the mechanisms and frameworks underlying AI, few appear to offer courses on applications for existing generative AI tools. A course was developed at a private research university to teach undergraduate and graduate Computer Science students applications for generative AI tools in software development. Two mixed method surveys indicated students overwhelmingly found the course valuable and effective. Co-authored by the instructor and one of the graduate students, this paper explores the context, implementation, and impact of the course through data analysis and reflections from both perspectives. It additionally offers recommendations for replication in and beyond Computer Science departments. This is the extended version of this paper to include technical appendices.

Workers were randomly selected to access a generative AI tool integrated into applications they already used at work for email, meetings, and writing. In the second half of the 6-month experiment, the 80% of treated workers who used this tool spent two fewer hours on email each week and reduced their time working outside of regular hours. Apart from these individual time savings, we do not detect shifts in the quantity or composition of workers' tasks resulting from individual-level AI provision. Generative AI has opened new possibilities for technology to assist with or automate a variety of tasks. Early studies have already shown that generative AI increases worker productivity in targeted tasks (e.g.

AI may blunt our thinking skills - here's what you can do about it There is growing evidence that our reliance on generative AI tools is reducing our ability to think clearly and critically, but it doesn't have to be that way Socrates wasn't the greatest fan of the written word. Famous for leaving no texts to posterity, the great philosopher is said to have believed that a reliance on writing destroys the memory and weakens the mind . Some 2400 years later, Socrates's fears seem misplaced - particularly in light of evidence that writing things down improves memory formation . A growing number of psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers worry that ChatGPT and similar generative AI tools will chip away at our powers of information recall and blunt our capacity for clear reasoning. What's more, while Socrates relied on clever rhetoric to make his argument, these researchers are grounding theirs in empirical data.

Like many nascent artistic movements, generative AI art has been widely criticized. But some artists are nevertheless pushing the creative limits of these new tools. In this era of AI slop, the idea that generative AI tools like Midjourney and Runway could be used to make art can seem absurd: What possible artistic value is there to be found in the likes of Shrimp Jesus and Ballerina Cappuccina? But amid all the muck, there are people using AI tools with real consideration and intent. Some of them are finding notable success as AI artists: They are gaining huge online followings, selling their work at auction, and even having it exhibited in galleries and museums. "Sometimes you need a camera, sometimes AI, and sometimes paint or pencil or any other medium," says Jacob Adler, a musician and composer who won the top prize at the generative video company Runway's third annual AI Film Festival for his work Total Pixel Space "It's just one tool that is added to the creator's toolbox."

CFOs are experimenting with AI use cases to free up capacity for business-critical work. Generative AI has the potential to transform the finance function. By taking on some of the more mundane tasks that can occupy a lot of time, generative AI tools can help free up capacity for more high-value strategic work. For chief financial officers, this could mean spending more time and energy on proactively advising the business on financial strategy as organizations around the world continue to weather ongoing geopolitical and financial uncertainty. CFOs can use large language models (LLMs) and generative AI tools to support everyday tasks like generating quarterly reports, communicating with investors, and formulating strategic summaries, says Andrew W. Lo, Charles E. and Susan T. Harris professor and director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at the MIT Sloan School of Management. "LLMs can't replace the CFO by any means, but they can take a lot of the drudgery out of the role by providing first drafts of documents that summarize key issues and outline strategic priorities."

This study investigates the impact of Generative AI on software development within the IT sector through a mixed-method approach, utilizing a survey developed based on expert interviews. The preliminary results of an ongoing survey offer early insights into how Generative AI reshapes personal productivity, organizational efficiency, adoption, business strategy and job insecurity. The findings reveal that 97% of IT workers use Generative AI tools, mainly ChatGPT. Participants report significant personal productivity gain and perceive organizational efficiency improvements that correlate positively with Generative AI adoption by their organizations (r = .470, p < .05). However, increased organizational adoption of AI strongly correlates with heightened employee job security concerns (r = .549, p < .001). Key adoption challenges include inaccurate outputs (64.2%), regulatory compliance issues (58.2%) and ethical concerns (52.2%). This research offers early empirical insights into Generative AI's economic and organizational implications.

When it was first released by Adobe in 1993, the PDF was truly transformative technology. The Portable Document Format was a multipurpose container that replicated the appearance and functionality of physical documents. That sounds unimportant, but as adoption spread with Adobe's introduction of free Acrobat software for reading PDFs a year later, anyone, from the government to your doctor's office, could rely on digital documentation that felt familiar to the paper versions. "It wasn't like a text message, which is a native digital format or an email or a web page," says Matthew Kirschenbaum, an English professor at the University of Maryland and author of Track Changes, a book about the history of word processing. "The PDF was all about the cultural authority of print and documents that emerged out of human contexts, professions, motivations."