For some, AI can help remove the drudgery from daily work. For many others, though, AI is not an assistant. For some, AI can help remove the drudgery from daily work. For many others, though, AI is not an assistant. Forget the AI job apocalypse.

McDonald's boss on abuse claims: 'I don't want to talk about the past' The boss of McDonald's UK and Ireland has said she doesn't want to talk about the past when asked about allegations of abuse at the fast-food chain. Lauren Schultz told the BBC what had happened in recent years was unacceptable but said we have drawn a line under it. A BBC investigation in 2023 heard from more than 100 McDonald's workers in the UK claiming they faced a toxic culture of sexual assault, harassment, racism, and bullying. Last year, staff said they still faced sexual abuse and harassment. The UK equality watchdog agreed tougher measures with the company to protect staff in November, including new sexual harassment training.

Increased use of AI and automation in businesses is increasingly replacing'low-complexity, transactional roles', the survey showed. Increased use of AI and automation in businesses is increasingly replacing'low-complexity, transactional roles', the survey showed. Survey reveals'mismatched AI expectations' between views of employers and staff over impact on careers More than a quarter (27%) of UK workers are worried their jobs could disappear in the next five years as a result of AI, according to a survey of thousands of employees. Two-thirds (66%) of UK employers reported having invested in AI in the past 12 months, according to the international recruitment company Randstad's annual review of the world of work, while more than half (56%) of workers said more companies were encouraging the use of AI tools in the workplace. This was leading to "mismatched AI expectations" between the views of employees and their employers over the impact of AI on jobs, according to Randstad's poll of 27,000 workers and 1,225 organisations across 35 countries.

Policymakers are being urged to nudge companies to put checks in place on powerful AI tools. Policymakers are being urged to nudge companies to put checks in place on powerful AI tools. Tech could lose its social acceptance unless it makes people's lives better - and trade unions want an urgent conversation "Who wouldn't want a robot to watch over your kids?" Elon Musk asked Davos delegates last week, as he looked forward with enthusiasm to a world with "more robots than people". Not me, thanks: children need the human connection - the love - that gives life meaning. As he works towards launching SpaceX on to the stock market, in perhaps the biggest ever such share sale, the world's richest man has every incentive to talk big.

Did Women Really Ruin the Workplace? On Thursday, November 6, the New York published an op-ed video criticizing the effects of feminism on institutions and warning of the dangers of "toxic femininity." It briefly ran with the title "Did Women Ruin the Workplace?" I can answer that question: yes. Specifically, me--I'm the woman who ruined the workplace.

A degree in computer science used to promise a cozy career in tech. Now, students' ambitions are shaped by AI, in fields that blend computing with analysis, interpretation, and data. In the early 2010s, nearly every STEM -savvy college-bound kid heard the same advice: Learn to code . Python was the new Latin. Computer science was the ticket to a stable, well-paid, future-proof life.

Discrete choice models (DCMs) have long been used to analyze workplace location decisions, but they face challenges in accurately mirroring individual decision-making processes. This paper presents a deep neural network (DNN) method for modeling workplace location choices, which aims to better understand complex decision patterns and provides better results than traditional discrete choice models (DCMs). The study demonstrates that DNNs show significant potential as a robust alternative to DCMs in this domain. While both models effectively replicate the impact of job opportunities on workplace location choices, the DNN outperforms the DCM in certain aspects. However, the DCM better aligns with data when assessing the influence of individual attributes on workplace distance. Notably, DCMs excel at shorter distances, while DNNs perform comparably to both data and DCMs for longer distances. These findings underscore the importance of selecting the appropriate model based on specific application requirements in workplace location choice analysis.

There's Never Been a Worse Time to Be Authentic at Work Workers have been told to bring themselves to work, only to be disappointed time and time again, argues author Jodi-Ann Burey in her new book. Jodi-Ann Burey was only two weeks into her new role as an inclusion marketing manager for an outdoor retail company when she was accused of having a "race agenda." Burey, who is Black, was no stranger to workplace hypocrisy; as she sees it, the office is a petri dish where the knotty dynamics of society are concentrated. At the time of the accusation in February 2020, however, all she could do was laugh. "I was like, you knew who I was before you poached me. This is exactly what you wanted me to do," she says over Zoom.

Digital clones--AI models that replicate a specific person--package together a few technologies that have been around for a while now: hyperrealistic video models to match your appearance, lifelike voices based on just a couple of minutes of speech recordings, and conversational chatbots increasingly capable of holding our attention. But they're also offering something the ChatGPTs of the world cannot: an AI that's not smart in the general sense, but that'thinks' like you do. Could well-crafted clones serve as our stand-ins? I certainly feel stretched thin at work sometimes, wishing I could be in two places at once, and I bet you do too. To find out, I tried making a clone of myself.

Australia must "lean in hard" to the benefits of artificial intelligence or else risk ending up "on the end of somebody else's supply chain", according to the new industry and science minister, Tim Ayres, with the Labor government planning to further regulate the rapidly evolving technology. Ayres, a former official with the manufacturing union, acknowledged Australians remained sceptical about AI and stressed that employers and employees needed to have discussions about how automation could affect workplaces. The minister said Australia had "no alternative" but to embrace the new technology and seek to become a world leader in regulating and using AI. "It's the government's job to lean into the opportunity to outline that for businesses and for workers, but also to make sure that they are confident that we've got the capability to deal with the potential pitfalls," Ayres told Guardian Australia. "I think the Australian answer has got to be leaning in hard and focusing on strategy and regulation that is in the interest of Australians."