Most American workers are not embracing AI chatbots in their jobs, with 55% rarely or never using these tools and 29% completely unfamiliar with them, according to a Pew Research Center survey released Tuesday. Only 16% of workers report regular use of AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot. Adoption is highest among younger workers (23% of those aged 18-29) and those with post-graduate degrees (26%). Among users, research (57%), editing content (52%), and drafting reports (47%) top the list of applications. While 40% find chatbots extremely or very helpful for working faster, just 29% say they significantly improve work quality. For the majority who don't use AI chatbots, 36% cite lack of relevance to their job as the primary reason. Employer attitudes remain largely neutral, with half neither encouraging nor discouraging usage. The technology sector leads in workplace adoption, with 36% of employers actively promoting chatbot use, followed by financial services (24%).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Our World in Data: To decarbonize road transport, the world must move away from petrol and diesel cars and towards electric vehicles and other forms of low-carbon transport. This transition has already started. In fact, global sales of combustion engine cars are well past the peak and are now falling. As you can see in the chart, global sales peaked in 2018. This is calculated based on data from the International Energy Agency. Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates this peak occurred one year earlier, in 2017. Sales of electric cars, on the other hand, are growing quickly.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A New York law mandating low-cost broadband is inspiring similar legislation across multiple states, despite industry opposition. The law requires ISPs with over 20,000 customers to offer $15 plans with 25Mbps speeds or $20 plans with 200Mbps to income-eligible residents. Vermont, Massachusetts, and California legislators have introduced comparable bills following New York's success. Vermont's proposal mirrors New York's pricing structure, while Massachusetts goes further by requiring 100Mbps speeds for the $15 tier. AT&T responded by withdrawing its 5G home internet service from New York rather than complying with the mandate. Industry lobby groups continue fighting these regulations, with USTelecom warning that state-level price controls will "undermine connectivity progress" and "discourage investment."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Andrew Ferguson urging the FTC to require that companies admit when you're not really buying an ebook or video game. From a report: Wyden's letter, shared with The Verge, requests guidance to "ensure that consumers who purchase or license digital goods can make informed decisions and understand what ownership rights they are obtaining." Wyden wants the guidance to include how long a license lasts, what circumstances might expire or revoke the license, and if a consumer can transfer or resell the license. The letter also calls for the information "before and at the point of sale" in a way that's easily understandable. "To put it simply, prior to agreeing to any transaction, consumers should understand what they are paying for and what is guaranteed after the sale," Wyden says.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Google has launched a free version of Gemini Code Assist, offering developers substantially higher usage limits than competing services. From a report: The AI coding assistant, powered by the fine-tuned Gemini 2.0 model, allows up to 180,000 code completions monthly -- 90 times more than GitHub Copilot's free tier limit of 2,000. The release comes just one day after Anthropic introduced Claude Code, underscoring intensifying competition in AI-powered development tools. Gemini Code Assist integrates with popular environments including Visual Studio Code, JetBrains IDEs, and GitHub, where it performs code reviews on both public and private repositories. Google's offering features a 128,000-token context window, enabling developers to work with larger codebases. The service supports all public domain programming languages and requires only a Gmail account to register, with no credit card needed. According to Ryan Salva, Google Cloud's senior director of product management, more than 75% of developers now rely on AI in their daily work, with over 25% of new code at Google being AI-generated. For developers wanting advanced features like private repository integration or Google Cloud service connections, premium tiers remain available.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Activision has finally admitted to using AI-generated content in its games and Call of Duty players aren't the least bit surprised. [...] After years of suspicions from the CoD community, it's now been confirmed by Activision directly that AI-generated content has indeed been featured throughout the FPS franchise. Upon visiting the Black Ops 6 Steam page, fans will notice a new change. Activision has now been forced to disclose its use of Artificial Intelligence in the game's creation. "Our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets," Activision said in a statement provided to the platform.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek is speeding up the release of its R2 model following the success of January's R1, which outperformed many US competitors at a fraction of the cost and triggered a $1 trillion-plus market selloff. The Hangzhou-based firm had planned a May release but now wants R2 out "as early as possible," Reuters reported Tuesday. The upcoming model promises improved coding capabilities and reasoning in multiple languages beyond English. DeepSeek's competitive advantage stems from its parent company High-Flyer's early investment in computing power, including two supercomputing clusters acquired before U.S. export bans on advanced Nvidia chips. The second cluster, Fire-Flyer II, comprised approximately 10,000 Nvidia A100 chips. DeepSeek's cost-efficiency comes from innovative architecture choices like Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) and multihead latent attention (MLA). According to Bernstein analysts, DeepSeek's pricing was 20-40 times cheaper than OpenAI's equivalent models. The competitive pressure has already forced OpenAI to cut prices and release a scaled-down model, while Google's Gemini has introduced discounted access tiers.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple Fellow Phil Schiller testified in court Monday that he initially objected to the company's plan to charge a 27% commission on purchases made outside the App Store, court documents showed. Schiller, who oversees the App Store, warned the fee would create an "antagonistic relationship" with developers and transform Apple into "some kind of a collection agency" that might need to audit developers for nonpayment. "I had great concerns about the collections of funds from developers," Schiller said, worrying about "how all of those things change the relationship between Apple and developers in a way I thought would be detrimental." Despite these objections, a pricing committee including CEO Tim Cook ultimately approved the commission structure. The 27% fee resulted from the 2021 Epic Games ruling that required Apple to allow developers to link to external payment options, slightly lower than the standard 30% in-app purchase commission. Internal documents revealed Apple analyzed how a "less seamless experience" of web-based payments would affect transaction completion rates.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Online-education company Chegg said it is conducting a business review and exploring alternatives such as selling the company or taking it private as it continues to lose subscribers to artificial-intelligence-enabled rivals. From a report: Chegg and other virtual-learning companies have ceded ground to generative-AI companies such as ChatGPT, which provides free alternatives to the homework help that Chegg charges $19.95 for to its subscribers. Although Chegg built its own AI products, the company has faced scores of canceled subscriptions. The business review comes as the company swung to a loss in the fourth quarter, with revenue falling 24%, and guided for lower-than-expected revenue for the first quarter. In November, Chegg said it would cut its workforce by an additional 21%. Chegg's shares have fallen 99% since its peak in 2021.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chegg has filed suit in federal district court against Google, claiming that AI summaries of search results have hurt the online education company's traffic and revenue. From a report: The legal move come nearly two years after former CEO Dan Rosensweig said students engaging with OpenAI's ChatGPT assistant were cutting into Chegg's new customer growth. Chegg is worth less than $200 million, and in after-hours trading Monday, the stock was trading just above $1 per share. Chegg has engaged Goldman Sachs and will look at strategic options, including getting acquired and going private, President and CEO Nathan Schultz told analysts on a Monday earnings call. Chegg's shares have fallen 99% since its peak in 2021.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The U.K. government is pushing forward with plans to attract more AI companies to the region through changes to copyright law that would allow developers to train AI models on artists' content on the internet -- without permission or payment -- unless creators proactively "opt out." Not everyone is marching to the same beat, though. On Monday, a group of 1,000 musicians released a "silent album," protesting the planned changes. The album -- titled "Is This What We Want?" -- features tracks from Kate Bush, Imogen Heap, and contemporary classical composers Max Richter and Thomas Hewitt Jones, among others. It also features co-writing credits from hundreds more, including big names like Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn, Billy Ocean, The Clash, Mystery Jets, Yusuf / Cat Stevens, Riz Ahmed, Tori Amos, and Hans Zimmer. But this is not Band Aid part 2. And it's not a collection of music. Instead, the artists have put together recordings of empty studios and performance spaces -- a symbolic representation of what they believe will be the impact of the planned copyright law changes. "You can hear my cats moving around," is how Hewitt Jones described his contribution to the album. "I have two cats in my studio who bother me all day when I'm working." To put an even more blunt point on it, the titles of the 12 tracks that make up the album spell out a message: "The British government must not legalize music theft to benefit AI companies." [...] The solution, say the artists, is to produce work in other markets where there might be better protections for it. Hewitt Jones -- who threw a working keyboard into a harbor in Kent at an in-person protest not long ago (he fished it out, broken, afterwards) -- said he's considering markets like Switzerland for distributing his music in the future.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

All 50 U.S. states have now introduced some form of right to repair legislation, marking a significant milestone that "shows the power of the grassroots political movement," reports 404 Media. From the report: Thursday, Wisconsin became the final state in the country to introduce a right to repair bill. So far, right to repair laws have been passed in Massachusetts, New York, Minnesota, Colorado, California, and Oregon. Another 20 states are formally considering right to repair bills during this current legislative session. The rest have previously introduced bills that have not passed; so far we have seen that many states take several years to move a given right to repair bill through the legislative process. iFixit's Kyle Wiens said covering the entire map is a "tipping point" for the movement: "We've gone from a handful of passionate advocates to a nationwide call for repair autonomy. People are fed up with disposable products and locked-down devices. Repair is the future, and this moment proves it."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In France, rightsholders have taken legal action to compel large VPN providers to support their pirate site blocking program. The aim is to reinforce existing blocking measures, but VPN providers see this as a dangerous move, leading to potential security issues and overblocking. As a result, some are considering leaving France altogether if push comes to shove. [...] Earlier this month, sports rightsholders Canal+ and LFP requested blocking injunctions that would require popular VPNs to start blocking pirate sites and services. The full requests are not public, but the details available show that Cyberghost, ExpressVPN, NordVPN, ProtonVPN, and Surfshark are listed as respondents. [...] The blocking request has yet to be approved and several of the targeted VPN providers have reserved detailed commentary, for now. That said, the VPN Trust Initiative (VTI), which includes ExpressVPN, NordVPN and Surfshark as members, has been vocal in its opposition. VTI is part of the i2Coalition and while it doesn't speak directly for any of the members, the coalition's Executive Director Christian Dawson has been in regular discussions with VPN providers. From this, it became clear that VPN providers face difficult decisions. If VPN providers are ordered to block pirate sites, some are considering whether to follow in the footsteps of Cisco, which discontinued its OpenDNS service in the country, to avoid meddling with its DNS resolver. Speaking with TorrentFreak, VTI's Dawson says that VPNs have previously left markets like India and Pakistan in response to restrictive requirements. This typically happens when privacy or security principles are at risk, or if the technical implementation of blocking measures is infeasible. VTI does not rule out that some members may choose to exit France for similar reasons, if required to comply with blocking measures. "We've seen this before in markets like India and Pakistan, where regulatory requirements forced some VPN services to withdraw rather than compromise on encryption standards or log-keeping policies," Dawson says. "France's potential move to force VPN providers to block content could put companies in a similar position -- where they either comply with measures that contradict their purpose or leave the market altogether." "This case in France is part of a broader global trend of regulatory overreach, where governments attempt to control encrypted services under the guise of content regulation. We've already seen how China, Russia, Myanmar, and Iran have imposed VPN restrictions as part of broader censorship efforts." "The best path forward is for policymakers to focus on targeted enforcement measures that don't undermine Internet security or create a precedent for global Internet fragmentation," concludes Dawson. "As seen in other cases, blanket blocking measures do not effectively combat piracy but instead create far-reaching consequences that disrupt the open Internet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft has updated its CPU compatibility list for Windows 11 24H2, excluding pre-11th-generation Intel processors for OEMs building new PCs. The Register reports: Windows 11 24H2 has been available to customers for months, yet Microsoft felt compelled in its February update to confirm that builders, specifically, must use Intel's 11th-generation or later silicon when building brand new PCs to run its most recent OS iteration. "These processors meet the design principles around security, reliability, and the minimum system requirements for Windows 11," Microsoft says. Intel's 11th-generation chips arrived in 2020 and were discontinued last year. It would be surprising, if not unheard of, for OEMs to build machines with unsupported chips. Intel has already transitioned many pre-11th generation chips to "a legacy software support model," so Microsoft's decision to omit the chips from the OEM list is understandable. However, this could be seen as a creeping problem. Chips made earlier than that were present very recently, in the list of supported Intel processors for Windows 11 22H2 and 23H2. This new OEM list may add to worries of some users looking at the general hardware compatibility specs for Windows 11 and wondering if the latest information means that even the slightly newer hardware in their org's fleet will soon no longer meet the requirements of Microsoft's flagship operating system. It's a good question, and the answer -- currently -- appears to be that those "old" CPUs are still suitable. Microsoft has a list of hardware compatibility requirements that customers can check, and they have not changed much since the outcry when they were first published.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Chegg has filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the tech giant of using AI-generated overviews to undermine publishers by reducing site traffic and eroding financial incentives for original content. Chegg claims this practice violates antitrust laws and threatens the integrity of the online information ecosystem. Reuters reports: This will eventually lead to a "hollowed-out information ecosystem of little use and unworthy of trust," the company said. The Santa Clara, California-based company has said Google's AI overviews have caused a drop in visitors and subscribers. Chegg was trading at around $1.63 on Monday, down more than 98% from its peak price in 2021. The company announced it would lay off 21% of its staff in November. Nathan Schultz, CEO of Chegg, said on Monday that Google is profiting off the company's content for free. "Our lawsuit is about more than Chegg -- it's about the digital publishing industry, the future of internet search, and about students losing access to quality, step-by-step learning in favor of low-quality, unverified AI summaries," he said. Publishers allow Google to crawl their websites to generate search results, which Google monetizes through advertising. In exchange, the publishers receive search traffic to their sites when users click on the results, Chegg said. But Google has started coercing publishers to let it use the information for AI overviews and other features that result in fewer site visitors, the company said. Chegg argued the conduct violates a law against conditioning the sale of one product on the customer selling or giving its supplier another product.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Elizabeth Holmes' fraud conviction has been upheld by a federal appellate panel," writes Slashdot reader ClickOnThis. MSNBC reports: A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday affirmed the convictions, sentences and nine-figure restitution ordered against both Holmes and Theranos president, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani. [...] Theranos was supposedly going to revolutionize medical laboratory testing with the ability to run fast, accurate and affordable tests with just a drop of blood from a finger prick. "But the vision sold by Holmes and Balwani was nothing more than a mirage," 9th Circuit Judge Jacqueline H. Nguyen wrote (PDF) for the panel, adding that the "grandiose achievements touted by Holmes and Balwani were half-truths and outright lies." Holmes was convicted of crimes related to fraud against investors while the jury acquitted her or hung on other counts. Balwani was convicted on all counts at his trial. The federal panel rejected a slew of arguments from both defendants, including that their trials featured improper testimony from Theranos employees. While the ruling is a major setback for the defendants, they can further appeal to a fuller panel of 9th Circuit judges and the Supreme Court, which generally has broad discretion over whether to accept cases for review.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Cloud communications software firm Bird, one of the Netherlands' most prominent tech startups, plans to move most of its operations out of Europe, its CEO said, citing restrictive regulations and difficulties hiring skilled technology workers. "We are mostly leaving Europe as it lacks the environment we need to innovate in an AI-first era of technology," CEO Robert Vis told Reuters on Monday. "We foresee that regulations in Europe will block true innovation in a global economy moving extremely fast to AI," he said in a text message response to Reuters queries. Bird's operations in future will be mostly split between New York, Singapore and Dubai, he said. Vis first announced the move abroad in a LinkedIn post over the weekend. Bird, formerly known as Message Bird, was founded in Amsterdam in 2011. It is a competitor of U.S.-based Twilio in the market for helping companies manage their communications with consumers across digital mediums such as messaging, email and video apps. It says it has developed an AI-powered platform that automates and streamlines business operations across entire organizations including tech leaders.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AI-powered search engine Perplexity is developing its own web browser named Comet. "Just like Perplexity reinvented search, we're also reinventing the browser," a Perplexity spokesperson told TechCrunch. "Stay tuned for updates." From the report: In a post on X on Monday, the company launched a sign-up list for the browser, which isn't yet available. It's unclear when it might be -- or what the browser will look like, even. But we do have a name: Comet. [...] Perplexity may be betting that it can leverage its search engine user base to quickly ramp up and make some sort of a dent in the space with Comet.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AT&T and Verizon have successfully completed their first cellphone-to-satellite video calls using AST SpaceMobile's satellites, marking a significant step toward commercial satellite networks. The Verge reports: Verizon has completed its first cellphone-to-satellite video call, while AT&T has completed its first using satellites that will be used as part of a commercial network. [...] Verizon pulled off "a live video call between two mobile devices with one connected via satellite and the other connected via Verizon's terrestrial network connection," according to a company press release. In AT&T's case, "AT&T and AST SpaceMobile have successfully completed another video call by satellite to an everyday smartphone over AT&T spectrum," per AT&T's press release. Both phone companies relied on AST's constellation of five BlueBird satellites that were launched last September for the tests. AT&T's initial video call test happened in June 2023.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company founded by exiles from OpenAI, has introduced the first AI model that can produce either conventional output or a controllable amount of "reasoning" needed to solve more grueling problems. Anthropic says the new hybrid model, called Claude 3.7, will make it easier for users and developers to tackle problems that require a mix of instinctive output and step-by-step cogitation. "The [user] has a lot of control over the behavior -- how long it thinks, and can trade reasoning and intelligence with time and budget," says Michael Gerstenhaber, product lead, AI platform at Anthropic. Claude 3.7 also features a new "scratchpad" that reveals the model's reasoning process. A similar feature proved popular with theChinese AI model DeepSeek. It can help a user understand how a model is working over a problem in order to modify or refine prompts. Dianne Penn, product lead of research at Anthropic, says the scratchpad is even more helpful when combined with the ability to ratchet a model's "reasoning" up and down. If, for example, the model struggles to break down a problem correctly, a user can ask it to spend more time working on it. [...] Penn says that Claude's reasoning mode received additional data on business applications including writing and fixing code, using computers, and answering complex legal questions. "The things that we made improvements on are ... technical subjects or subjects which require long reasoning," Penn says. "What we have from our customers is a lot of interest in deploying our models into their actual workloads." Anthropic says that Claude 3.7 is especially good at solving coding problems that require step-by-step reasoning, outscoring OpenAI's o1 on some benchmarks like SWE-bench. The company is today releasing a new tool, called Claude Code, specifically designed for this kind of AI-assisted coding. "The model is already good at coding," Penn says. But "additional thinking would be good for cases that might require very complex planning -- say you're looking at an extremely large code base for a company."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.