Some companies are "stuck in neutral" in their approach to artificial intelligence, according to Microsoft's UK boss, who said a significant number of private and public sector organisations lack any formal AI strategy. A Microsoft survey of nearly 1,500 UK senior leaders across public and private sectors, as well as 1,440 employees, found that more than half of executives feel their organisation has no official AI plan. Roughly the same proportion report a growing gap in productivity – a measure of economic efficiency – between employees who use AI and those who do not. "Some organisations appear to be stuck in neutral, caught in the experimentation phase, rather than in the deployment [of AI]," said Darren Hardman, the tech company's UK chief executive. Microsoft, the biggest financial backer of the ChatGPT developer, OpenAI, has been pushing AI's deployment in the workplace through autonomous AI agents – tools that can carry out tasks without human intervention.

Researchers, industry executives, and government officials have long puzzled over how self-driving cars might change the planet. If you could do something else while stuck in traffic, would it change the way you use your car? Would you be willing to live farther from work? Alternatively, would the advent of shared self-driving cars prod you to ditch your personal vehicle for shared Ubers, making trips more efficient? Self-driving cars aren't here yet, and it will likely be years, or decades, before most Americans have access to the technology, which is still in development.