Remote jobs are a great way to balance your work with your life by cutting out your lengthy or unsafe commute. They’re even more essential for certain types of people, from young parents to those caring for elderly relatives to anyone with a chronic disability.

All of those people are just as likely to love the billion-dollar gaming industry as the next person. So, for this article, we’ll be highlighting the top companies hiring in today for a fully remote position in gaming.

We won’t sugarcoat it: The games industry is hitting a rough patch right now. Back in June of this year, the number of layoffs across the industry surpassed 10,000 — which means that the industry lost the exact same number of jobs that it lost across all of 2023, but in half the time.

You still have many more options, however, both domestically and internationally. Here are the top positions we were able to dig up, all from companies that are open to hiring remote workers right this second.

Best Remote Gaming Jobs at Sony

With a massive $29.8 billion in revenue, Sony Interactive Entertainment is the biggest video gaming company on the planet. If you’ve heard of a little gaming console called “PlayStation,” you already know why.

Unlike the second biggest company, Tencent, Sony is based out of the United States, making it easy for US residents to land a position at the company, although they have plenty of international offices as well. Plus, while it has a ton of in-person positions in states including California, Washington, and Texas, a number of remote positions are also available across a wide range of experience and focuses.

The jobs listed here include the specific division first, followed by the job title that’s currently open. Every single position is listed as US-based and remote.

• Bend Studio: Surfacing Supervisor
• Bluepoint Games: Lead Technical Artist
• Information Security: Senior Security Incident Response Engineer
• Information Security: Sr Application Security Engineer
• Insomniac Games: Lighting Manager
• Insomniac Games: Senior Designer
• Insomniac Games: Senior Gameplay Animator
• Partner Marketing Intern – Undergraduate
• San Mateo Studio: Director, Development Strategy and Support
• San Mateo Studio: Principal Product Manager
• Software Engineering & Services: Lead Engineer, Mobile SDKs
• Software Engineering & Services: SDET Contractor

If you’re outside the US — or if you want to see your non-remote options — you can find more job listings on the company’s website.

Best Remote Gaming Jobs at Xbox

Xbox Game Studios is a division of Microsoft Gaming, the company behind other top brands including Bethesda Softworks, Activision, and Blizzard Entertainment. Xbox alone has plenty of positions open right now, however, and that includes a handful of remote options.

There’s a catch, though: The Microsoft job site only offers positions that are “up to 100% work from home,” and you’ll likely be asked to come into the physical office once in a while — possibly even a few days a week. That means that the exact location of each position still matters.

We’re including international positions as well. If you’re a digital nomad software engineer who loves video games, these positions could be just the ticket. Here are a few of the open remote positions for team Xbox:

• Software Engineer II-Xbox (multiple locations: Chile, Mexico; Colombia; Costa Rica)
• Principal Software Engineer – Gaming (Redmond, Washington, US)
• Strategic Partner Associate – Xbox (Tokyo, Japan)
• Senior Data Scientist (Redmond, Washington, US)
• Senior Labor Relations Manager (Multiple Locations, US)
• Senior Mixed-Signal Intellectual Property Register Transfer Level Engineer (Austin, Texas, US)
• Principal Software Engineer – Hardware Security (Redmond, Washington, US)
• Machine Learning Engineer (Redmond, Washington, US)

You can head over to the official Microsoft jobs board here to search through the rest of the positions. They have Sony beat, however: All the results for Xbox-related remote positions add up to 62 openings, so there are many dozens more to consider.

Best Remote Gaming Jobs at Wizards of the Coast

Wizards of the Coast owns both Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons. Naturally, it’s a great company brand name to boast on your resume, and there are plenty of open positions that can help you do just that.

That said, they’re on the smaller side compared to giants of the gaming industry like Sony and Xbox, and they’re not a video gaming company — D&D titles such as Baldur’s Gate are created under a license by different studios. Still, they’re looking for a handful of remote positions, for everything from Content QA to full stack engineers.

Here are all eight of the company’s open remote positions:

• Sr Game Designer – Card Design – Magic: The Gathering – Arena Alchemy
• Content QA Specialist (Contract/Temporary) – D&D Beyond
• Sr Full Stack Software Engineer II- Contract/Temporary
• Principal UX Designer
• Associate QA Analyst
• Director, Global Franchise Strategy
• Software Development Engineer
• Full Stack Software Engineer II – D&D Beyond

You can check out all other open positions now by heading over to the company’s job site to view all 98 openings.

Best Remote Gaming Jobs at Keywords Studios

The video game industry services company Keywords Studios has a long history in the business. It launched in 1998, and initially handled localization services for business software before pivoting to video games.

If you want to keep your finger on the pulse of the behind-the-scenes logistics that go into video game creation, this studio is a great place to land a position. Plus, they’re large enough that they have more than enough remote positions available, which isn’t always the case for many companies in the industry.

Here are a selection of the best open and fully remote positions at Keywords, no matter where you are in the world:

• Accounts Receivable Technician (Mexico City, Mexico)
• AI Prompt & Language Specialist (Spanish) (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)
• Associate Design Director – Electric Square, UK (Brighton, England, UK)
• Audio Development Project Manager ZH/EN (3 Month Contract) (US)
• Business Development Manager/Director – Localization Services (UK)
• Combat Designer Freelance (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)
• Employment Counsel (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)
• Game Engineering, Programming & Tech Art – Talent Community (US)
• Game Server Programmer, (Tokyo, Japan)
• Group Sustainability Manager (UK)
• Partner Activation Specialist – Outbound Licensing (Alabama, US)
• Research Intern – AI Start-up (San Francisco, California, US)

You can check out the entire list, which includes an impressive 75 remote positions, over here.

Going Deeper to Find Remote Work at Gaming Companies

The openings we’ve listed above are just scratching the surface. The truth is that gaming can be a gruelling industry, and its seen far more than its fair share of layoffs recently.

Not every company is easy to apply to, either. Take Electronic Arts as an example: They currently have all job applications and postings rendered unavailable until November 12, since they’re overhauling their recruiting system.

Other companies just aren’t remote-friendly enough to pass muster: Top brands like Roblox Corporation or Epic Games, the company behind monster hit Fortnite, won’t even let job seekers search for remote positions on their sites. Ubisoft does a little better, with exactly three remote positions.

If you’re open to hybrid positions, more options open up. Nexon has six open positions, and all of them are listed as hybrid.

If you’re really committed to finding or continuing a career in the industry — and you don’t have to be! — you may need to look at small, independant studios in order to get the best fit for you. OtherSide Entertainment, the company behind Thief, Deus Ex, and others, currently has two fully remote positions listed on its site: “World Builder / Level Designer,” and “Gameplay AI Engineer.”

Keep your ear to the ground and set up plenty of Google alerts to stay aware of the next opening at any gaming company that you’re interested in.

Landing a Remote Tech Position

While you’re waiting for the dream job to open up, you can do a few more things to position yourself for success. We’ve previously shared our guides to creating the perfect remote work resume, and for how to answer all the most common job interview questions.

Other job-seeking advice might include deciding if you want to send a “thank you” email after your interview, or if you’re open to remote-friendly fields like data entry. Some states will even pay you to move to them, which might be an attractive option for a remote worker with few ties to their current location.

Remote work isn’t for everyone. But the more companies offer it, the more flexibility we all have to find a the exact work-life balance we need. Here’s hoping the gaming industry keeps adding more remote positions for a long time to come.

After the fuss last month that greeted the release of Google’s experimental AI podcast generator NotebookLM, it is no great surprise to see fellow tech giant Meta release its own alternative product.

Like its forebearer, NotebookLlama from Meta enables users to convert a text file – such as a PDF or Word file – into a fully formed, AI generated podcast with multiple ‘hosts’ carrying out a discussion on its contents.

Although early reports suggest that the end result produced by NotebookLlama doesn’t sound as polished as NotebookLM’s output, the major difference between the two is that Meta has made its version open-source.

Creating Drama With NotebookLlama

Meta shared files relating to NotebookLlama on GitHub, together with a full tutorial and ‘PDF to Podcast’ workflow.

The page says that the tool can be used by anybody as it “assumes zero knowledge of LLMs, prompting and audio models”. All the instructions and knowhow are contained in the notebook.

It then gives an example of how a podcast can be created in four steps, together with the specific prompts to use to ‘pre-process’ (i.e. clean up) your PDF, produce an initial transcript, dramatize it and then, ultimately, generate the conversational podcast.

Limitations and Improvements of NotebookLlama

In addition to giving more detailed steps on using NotebookLlama, the GitHub page also lists next steps and improvements for the tool.

These include better prompting, support for ingesting information from other sources (e.g. websites, YouTube videos, etc) and different podcast formats.

Perhaps most crucially in order to match the splash made by NotebookLM, it notes that there is currently a limitation on how natural the speech model sounds and acknowledges that this will probably be improved with “a better pipeline”.

It was the sense of natural, human-like interactions that most wowed the tech community when NotebookLM first surfaced. Meta’s competing tool is a little way behind that for the time being, with commentators noting that the “voices have a robotic quality” and “the AI speakers unintentionally talk over each other“.

Open Source Provides Path Forward

NotebookLlama continues Meta’s commitment to open sourcing its AI technology – it did exactly the same thing when it launched its Llama 2 large language model last year.

Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained in a blog post in July why he believes open-source is the “path forward” for research and development in the area, citing the precedent of Linux’s role in the development in cloud computing and operating systems.

“We’re taking the next steps towards open source AI becoming the industry standard.” – Mark Zuckerberg

In it, he argues that open source AI is good for developers, Meta and the world. “AI has more potential than any other modern technology to increase human productivity, creativity, and quality of life,” he writes.

“Open source will ensure that more people around the world have access to the benefits and opportunities of AI, that power isn’t concentrated in the hands of a small number of companies.”

The internet has won: The majority of US shoppers will be turning to their laptops or phones in order to do most of their gift-buying during the 2024 holiday season.

Specifically, 76% of these consumers say that they’ll do 50% or more of their shopping online. That’s a big shift from past decades, even if it’s not quite a shock, given the ever-increasing dominance of the online realm when it comes to remote work/life balance.

What hasn’t changed? Most people are still waiting until November before they start filling their shopping carts, whether physical or virtual. Plus, we’re seeing a bit of a revival for the power of listening to your friends — not Google — when getting recommendations on where to buy.

55% Will Start Shopping in November

The report, out earlier this month from management consulting firm Bain & Company, found that 55% of all US consumers will wait until November to start shopping for the season (another 19% won’t be shopping at all).

That stat is up a tad from last year, when 53% picked November as their shopping month, but it’s pretty stable.

The 76% of US consumers who are doing at least half of their holiday shopping over the internet is among the highest percentages when compared to other countries that the report checked in with: It matches the 76% of Germans who are will do the same, and it beats plenty of other countries, including the UK (73%), France (62%), and Australia (55%).

Gen Z Isn’t Turning to Google for Recommendations

One of the most interesting revelations from this new holiday shopping trends report? A generational shift in how buyers decide on what to get.

The youngest shopping generation, Gen Z, relies on recommendations from friends as their number one influence on where they shop. That’s the same as the oldest generation polled, Boomers. However, both Millennials and Gen Xers picked “Google or other search engines” as their top answer.

This chart highlights all the sources each generation turns to when picking where to shop. Source: Bain & Company

The report doesn’t weigh in on what might be driving this shift, but it certainly aligns with previous reports that Google is not the unshakable driving force of internet culture that it once was.

Google Is Still Important for Other Generations

What’s the takeaway from this?

For small businesses with ecommerce websites, not a lot has changed: Millennials and Gen Xers still have the most buying power, so Google remains key to keeping your bottom line up.

However, outlets and brands that are aimed at the emerging Gen Z might want to shift their strategy towards social media or other platforms that help directly influence younger shoppers in order to stay top-of-mind.

Interestingly, physical retailer locations are continuing their slow multi-generational decline: Every generation is less interested in using physical locations to determine where they shop than the previous one, including Gen Z.

Perhaps in the future, even more consumers will be shopping entirely from the comfort of their home.

The “Sunday scaries” describes the feeling that employees get when they realize that they’re going to have to go to work when the weekend is over. The feeling is infinitely worse for in-office workers, with long commutes and stagnant office culture exacerbating the dread for many employees.

What if you could get rid of your commute with a remote job? Even better, what if you could find a new job at a reputable tech firm that doesn’t require you to come into the office at all? Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to help you do.

In this guide, you’ll learn about some of the remote positions currently available at Google, as well as some of the benefits of working from home and how you can set yourself up for success as a remote employee.

Fully Remote Jobs at Google for October 2024

Working at Google is already a good gig, but the big tech company also offers a wide range of remote positions that allow you to work from home 100% of the time. In fact, the Google career page features 49 open remote positions as of writing, and you can apply for them right now.

Here are some of the current positions available at Google that are eligible for remote work:

• Datacenter Structural Mechanical Engineer (Sunnyvale, CA, USA)
• Program Manager, Data Center Construction (Tennessee, USA)
• Senior Intelligence Analyst, Mandiant (Germany)
• Senior Account Manager, Google Public Sector (Boulder, CO, USA)
• Logistics Solutions Program Manager, Google Cloud (Mexico)
• AI Sales Specialist III, Healthcare Life Sciences (New York, NY, USA)
• Relationship Manager, Google Public Sector (Missouri, USA)
• Staff Software Engineer, Infrastructure, Google Cloud (Warsaw, Poland)
• Security Sales Specialist III, Google Cloud (Chicago, IL, USA)
• Manufacturing Engineer, Product Lifecycle and Technical Operations (Thailand)
• Manager, Red Team, Mandiant Consulting, Google Cloud (Arkansas, USA)
• Program Manager, Data Center Construction (Ohio, USA)
• Senior Interaction Designer (Western Australia)

You’ll notice above that we’ve included locations along with the job. That doesn’t mean they aren’t eligible for the work-from-home perk. This just outlines exactly where the position is based, which should provide some valuable information in terms of the day-to-day job responsibilities, as time zones will likely need to be at least somewhat coordinated.

The Benefits of Remote Work

When remote work became popular during the pandemic, it was out of necessity. Obviously with a deadly virus out in the world, people had to stay at home and quarantine for fear of spreading it.

Now, though, remote work is a highly sought-after benefit for employees around the world, and it turns out there are a lot of benefits to establish a flexible work schedule.

For starters, remote work is a huge boon for employees. The flexible schedule can lead to improved mental health and better work-life balance, with workers being able to tackle household chores and important errands without worrying about getting fired. On top of that, remote work means no more commute, so you can save a lot of money on everything from car maintenance to public transit fares.

Employees aren’t the only ones that see the benefits, either. According to work from home productivity stats, business owners that implement remote and hybrid work models have found that employees are generally more productive and willing to stay at the company for longer. Heck, some studies show that remote work can indirectly increase revenue, so don’t let those return-to-office mandates fool you.

How to Set Yourself Up for Success as a Remote Employee

If you’ve never worked remotely, you might not realize that it really is a different experience than working in the office. Sure, there’s no more commute, which is nice, but there are some pitfalls of working at home that you may want to consider before applying to any of the jobs listed above.

For one, working at home means that you’ll have to get good at setting boundaries. Whether you’re in a full home with kids and a partner or home alone with a television and your smartphone, you’ll need to limit distractions as best you can, as it can be a little too easy to procrastinate at home than it is the office.

You’ll also want to make sure you specifically clock in and clock out. Given your new workstation is in your home, it can be easy to always be in “work mode,” never giving yourself time to relax. Remote employees should make a concerted effort to do work during work hours, and when the clock strikes 5pm, treat your home like the relaxing respite it’s supposed to be.

One of the biggest remote work advocates has done a complete 180 on its staff, with the CEO of Bolt announcing that the company is ditching its work-from-home policy.

Remote work has become one of the most popular employee perks and benefits in 2024, largely due to the fact that return-to-office policies have become so prevalent.

Now, one of the first companies to make remote work a staple of its core principles is forcing employees back in the office, which just goes to show how rare it has become in the modern era.

Bolt CEO Ends Remote Work

Bolt — the ride sharing company that has admirably competed with Uber over the years — is officially getting rid of its generous remote work policy, which allowed employees the flexibility to work from home whenever they wanted.

The decision comes from Bolt CEO Markus Villig, who had some pretty harsh words for remote work, focusing on how his team had been taking advantage of it over the course of its lifetime.

“We are too scattered, people feel disconnected, attrition is too high, and our offices lie empty.” – Markus Villig, CEO of Bolt

Villig also noted that the company needed to “stop the insanity of people working remotely from places like Bali,” in order to regain some of its company culture back.

“That is a vacation, not what we hired them to do.” – Markus Villig, CEO of Bolt

The new policy will go into effect on January 1, 2025, and all employees will have to be in the office at least two times per week and 12 times per month.

Is This RTO Policy Just Layoffs in Disguise?

Given the popularity of remote work, many have speculated that return-to-office policies have become an easy way to lay off employees without all the bad press. And while it’s hard to say if that’s the motivation behind the decision at Bolt, the language within the CEO’s statement certainly isn’t helping him beat those allegations.

“We are absolutely fine if some people decide this is not for them, as the cultural impact far outweighs it.” – Markus Villig, CEO of Bolt

Obviously, there is no way to confirm nor deny the reasoning behind this or any other RTO policy at major companies around the world. But it’s hard to deny the trend.

Bolt’s History with Remote Work

Return-to-office mandates are far from new in 2024. Companies around the world have been nixing the popular employee perk left and right, with substantial backlash from employees and productivity statisticians alike.

The reason it’s so surprising from Bolt is because the company has been a bastion of working from home for a long time now. In fact, the Bolt was able to quickly and efficiently move its employees to remote work during the pandemic, because it had already adopted a hybrid model prior to the lockdown.

All that to say, with return-to-office mandates becoming more and more common, it’s safe to say that no work from home position is safe, no matter how enthusiastic your company was about it before.

What does a baby head grafted on a palte of tacos, a crocodile half-formed out of moss, and a child with a full beard have in common? Two things: None of them exist, and your grandma probably scrolled past them all on her Facebook account this morning.

Generative AI images are all around us. Now, there’s a term to describe the worst of the worst: AI slop.

Here’s why AI slop took over the internet, why Facebook in particular has the biggest problem with the nonsense images, and why so many people are upset about it.

So, What Is AI Slop?

The term “AI slop” largely refers to images created with a free generative AI tool, often the easily accessable Bing AI Image Creator. The slop tends to come with the harsh-lit, overly finely-detailed style that often give an image away as AI-created. Worse, it always features the warped dimensions or impossibly dispreportionate sizes that are an obvious sign that the image wasn’t created by a human.

It’s low effort. It’s low quality. It’s the latest reincarnation of sleazy pop-up ads or the physical junk mail that came before that.

The exact type of low-energy AI image you’ll find on sites like Facebook can vary, but certain themes tend to emerge, like animals, babies, and common types of food. Many images will feature Jesus Christ himself, perhaps as part of an implicit appeal to prove one’s godliness through Facebook likes. Other images might include a “hidden” Jesus face.

Jesus again. But this time with turtles. You should really get that arm checked out, Lady. pic.twitter.com/YPRo6qZpcd

— Kerstin 🌿 (@kxs839) May 14, 2024

Interestingly enough, AI slop has almost single-handedly ended the fear of incredibly realistic deepfake scams plunging the world into chaos: AI slop is nowhere near realistic, and we’re still in chaos over it. AI never needed to be that convincing after all, it turns out.

Why Is AI Slop Huge on Facebook?

Facebook’s user demographic is aging: 45-65 year olds are the fastest growing chunk of monthly active users when broken down by age. They might be less prepared than younger generations for a sudden emergence of realistic images that aren’t real.

However, that’s not the real reason why Facebook is the main pigpen that AI slop winds up in. It turns out Meta is essentially paying people to post AI slop on its platform.

According to an investigation by 404 Media, Facebook’s “Creator Program Bonus” pays participants for viral posts. Influencers across locations including India, the Philippines, and Vietnam are turning to generative AI tools (mostly Bing AI Image Creator) to pump out potentially viral posts in order to cash in.

This is popular enough that some slop-posting influencers are even creating courses on YouTube or Telegram, covering how to create AI images and spreading the word even further. Prompts are copy-and-pasted, or are translated into English, all focusing on best-guess topics for engaging US audiences — which might explain why Jesus, pizzas, and hamburgers are frequent subjects.

Put that all together, and you have a recipe for incredibly odd, off-putting content that keeps getting just enough attention that Facebook will shell out a little money to encourage even more of it.

It extends beyond images, too. AI-generated music is taking over Spotify in a similar manner.

What’s So Bad About AI Slop?

Misinformation and confusion are the biggest problem here. It’s certainly true that AI slop isn’t exactly designed to stand up to scrutiny. But not only do most people rarely scrutinize everything they see online, but they shouldn’t have to, either.

Ultimately, lack of moderation and regulation is the larger problem. Giant social platforms like Facebook have admitted that they’re too big to moderate their content for years and years. Ironically, Facebook’s own algorithm — a different type of AI than the generative tools creating these images — can’t handle moderation. In 2017, they attempted to address the issue by hiring 3,000 editors. Eight years later, they’re still falling down on the job.

Another huge reason why so many people are upset about AI slop is the apparently inescapability of AI generated content today. Google now adds AI results to most searches, with no settings-page option to toggle it off. Yes, users can get rid of it by adding “-ai” to the end of their search, but this little-known trick is hardly a reasonable opt-out solution.

Basic human taste is another good reason to take a stand against AI slop. I mean, look at this:

I don’t know what’s happening here, but I’m scared of it. Source: Threads

The Downsides of Generative AI Go Beyond Slop

AI slop may well be the worst form of AI, but any generative AI tool has yet to overcome a handful of serious red flags, from its high toll on the environment to the copyright concerns that top AI leaders are still hoping to sweep under the rug.

Environmental Impact

Estimations of how much electricity AI uses vary widely, but there’s a general consensus that it’s a lot: One Atlantic article says one ChatGPT search might be equal in power to ten non-AI Google searches, while another report discussing Google’s own AI program says it uses enough electricity in a single second to charge seven electric cars.

Just one Google AI search uses the same electricity that an LED lightbulb in your home needs to burn for a full hour. That’s upsetting to hear when all your Google searches are now AI-powered, with no “off” switch. It’s particularly upsetting when your last Google search was “when will climate change cause societal collapse?”

Potential Copyright and IP Violations

Generative AI needs huge amounts of data to train on, and the biggest models have allegedly trawled the internet to scoop up art, books, and YouTube videos. None of that intellectual property is acknowledged or compensated, despite arguably being reproduced through a type of lossy compression algorithm.

Granted, the questions surrounding the nature of intellectual property law have yet to be answered. As the Harvard Business Review puts it, “does copyright, patent, trademark infringement apply to AI creations? Is it clear who owns the content that generative AI platforms create for you, or your customers?”

One thing seems hard to deny, though: Generative AI models build their value on the hidden work of million of uncompensated creatives.

Poor Business Decisions

Finally, another big reason to question AI is just how useful the tool is for convincing executives and shareholders that they can adapt AI in order to lay off their human workforce without any downsides.

That would be logical, if AI actually could replace humans. However, the non-hyped perspective on AI is that generative AI can offer useful and tangible but not industry-shaking benefits, particularly when it comes to predictive analytics undertaken with the knowledge that AI is far from perfectly accurate.

In contrast, indescriminate use of AI leads to high-profile failures, like a recent movie trailer that included false AI-generated statements.

AI-driven layoffs will lead to a looser labor market, and they’ll make the company worse as well. But most execs won’t listen to that logic — we’ve actually known for decades that layoffs don’t boost stock prices, and that hasn’t stopped them, either.

The Wider World of Slop

Slop isn’t just AI. Any product that does the absolute bare minimum can be slop, and there are plenty to chose from.

The term has been used to refer to middling Netflix movies, clearly made with just enough care to keep viewers watching from a second screen, but not enough to make them actually good.

You might apply the term to uber-cheap Temu clothes and knick-knacks, too. These products won’t last long, but they’re easy in the budget. In the most obvious sign that selling cheap trinkets is increasingly popular, Amazon is moving into the low-price storefront to compete against Temu. According to a new scoop from The Information, Amazon is forcing merchants to sell items with steep caps on pricing, from $20 limits for sofas to $8 limits for jewelery.

Want to combat the slop-valanche? Save up your attention and dollars for the experiences and products that offer more than the minimum. For most of us, that might start with planning out how to spend less time on social media.

“Growth mindset” refers to the belief that one’s intelligence, abilities, and talent can grow over time, as opposed to remaining the same, in a “fixed” mindset. It’s part of embracing changes in the workplace, from adapting remote or hybrid perks to considering four-day work weeks.

Plus, a huge number of executives everywhere see this mindset as key to success. Specifically, an impressive 96% of execs say they have a growth mindset, a new report has found.

The report also details how to define the concept, what benefits it offers, and more — including the much lower percentage of employees who actually agree with their bosses’ self-assessment of their own mindsets.

Growth Mindset: Most Employees Don’t See It in Their Workplace

The report, out from online learning software provider TalentLMS, surveyed 1,000 employees and 300 executives in the US across different industries.

In addition to the 96% who said they had a growth mindset, 90% of executives said they “believe that leading by example is key to creating a growth mindset culture.”

The catch? A full 54% of the employees said they don’t see much evidence of that lauded growth mindset culture within their own workplace. Another 24% of employees went so far as to state that their company leaders “rarely or never” demonstrated that mindset.

Judging from that disparity, it sounds like a genuine growth mindset is tough to cultivate. But how would you go about creating one from scratch?

Key Traits? Open-Mindedness, Adaptability, and Learning

The report also looked into the traits that signify growth mindset, identifying these seven examples:

• Continuous learning
• Resilience
• Positive outlook
• Courage
• Open-mindedness
• Persistence
• Adaptability

The executives who were polled also had some thoughts on the value that comes from a great growth mindset culture, as well: Higher productivity was at the top of the list, closely followed by a healthier workplace and better employee engagement.

Higher productivity is the one benefit that the most executives agree emerges from a growth mindset culture. Source: TalentLMS

Change Is Hard

These new statistics are a great reminder that it’s easy to say you support embracing change and taking risks. It’s a lot harder to actually do it.

And that’s never more true than for those in a high-profile leadership role within a corporation — where the downside of failure can look a lot worse than the safer going-along-with-the-crowd choice.

Still, change is inevitable, and the companies that embrace it will come out ahead in the long run. For every giant tech corporation that’s pulling hard for a full return to the office, there are a dozen tiny startups with fully distributed workforces.

The Donald Trump-Elon Musk love affair continues. Since throwing his lot in with the presidential hopeful a few months ago, the controversial tech magnate has been a fixture at rallies and town halls, jumping excitedly, doling out novelty checks, and blasting Democrats with bogus claims.

His X account has become a mouthpiece for Trumpian sentiment, sharing AI-generated images of Kamala Harris and attacking the mainstream media. Behind the scenes, his America Pac has contributed funding to the tune of $75 million. Billionaires have stumped for presidential candidates in the past, but Musk has taken it to another level.

Observers think Musk has designs on a place in Trump’s cabinet. The former president, meanwhile, is keen to find a place for his biggest fan. A potential role as chief government auditor has been floated, which Musk has, unfunnily, labeled the Department of Government Efficiency – or DOGE, a reference to a well-known meme and, later, a cryptocurrency.

But what would that role actually entail? In this article, I’ll be poring over the evidence and piecing together what a Musk role in Trump’s government would look like.

The Trump/Musk Relationship

From fairly acrimonious beginnings, Trump and Musk’s relationship has undergone a sizable thaw. Trump has stated: “I respect Elon a lot. He respects me,” and “Elon more than almost anybody I know, he loves this country, he loves the concept of this country, but like me, he says this country is in big trouble,” as reported by BBC.

It is this apparently shared worldview which has carved out a Musk-shaped hole in Trump’s plans. In August, the two men took part in a calamitous webchat, during which the South African-born businessman called for a “government efficiency commission.” Said the billionaire: “I think we need…to say like ‘Hey, where are we spending money that’s sensible? Where is it not sensible?’ We need to live within our means.”

Clearly, Trump liked the idea, telling the Economic Club of New York in September that he would create the commission, and Musk would be appointed to carry out a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government,” with “recommendations for drastic reforms.”

Elsewhere, Musk has moved to deny reports that he is being fitted up for a border security advisory role, despite advocating for tighter borders on several occasions. He recently told a crowd at Milken Institute: “I’m a big believer in immigration, but to have unvetted immigration at large scale is a recipe for disaster,” as per Los Angeles Times.

Efficiency Commission in Action

So, what would a government efficiency commission do?

During his remarks to the Economic Club of New York, Trump shed some light on what people could expect: “As the first order of business, this commission will develop an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months. This will save trillions of dollars,” CNN reports.

You can’t fault the ambition – even if you can question the wisdom. Fraud costs the federal government up to $521 billion every year, totaling around $4,000 for every US citizen. With the rapid advancement of AI, this threat will only become more pronounced. Here, a Musk appointment makes some sense. His AI startup, xAI, could be tasked with navigating new cybersecurity challenges – and potentially saving the taxpayer millions.

Musk has also expressed an eagerness to cut government red tape. He is an outspoken critic of regulation, which he regards as an impediment to progress. Adopting what CNN has termed a “deploy-first-and-fix-it-later approach,” the billionaire has pushed self-driving technology to the top of Tesla’s agenda – in spite of multiple government warnings and high-profile accidents. SpaceX, meanwhile, has faced several lawsuits from unhappy California residents, where he tests his rockets, and the company is currently mired in legal proceedings against a state regulator.

Under Trump, it’s highly likely that Musk would slash federal spend by taking aim at governmental agencies that he regards as a surplus to requirements. That this represents a massive conflict of interest hasn’t escaped numerous journalists’ attention, but the pair have, as yet, failed to offer comment.

Free Speech Under the Spotlight

The elephant in the room is free speech. As a self-proclaimed champion of the 1st Amendment, and steward of the “global town square” that is X, Musk occupies a uniquely privileged position in US democracy.

This is another area where he and Trump share common ground. The tech mogul is currently engaged in a war of words with the British government, attacking what he perceives as “two-tier policing” in the aftermath of a series of riots which rocked parts of the UK and Ireland earlier this year. Trump, of course, is no stranger to the censorship debate. He brought class action, unsuccessfully, against the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in 2021, having been blacklisted from the platforms in response to the January 6 Capitol riot.

If Trump retakes the Oval Office on 5 November, many fear that he will set out to punish his enemies. With Musk in his corner, he has ready access to a powerful tool to silence his critics – and circulate his own version of truth.

Video giant YouTube contains the most AI content compared to any other social media site – that’s according to a new report that has analyzed AI-related hashtags on the planet’s most popular platforms.

With nearly 1.8 million searches, YouTube leads the way by some distance from X, formerly Twitter, with just over 600,000. The Meta-owned Instagram and Facebook are next, followed by Pinterest, TikTok and LinkedIn.

The research also gathered information on the most searched AI-related hashtags, with #deepfake at the top, while also finding the likes of Khloé Kardashian and Shakira among the celebrities posting the most AI-altered images on Instagram.

#deepfake Most Popular AI-Related Hashtag

Image and photography platform Freepik searched the seven social media sites for the most popular AI-related hashtags to identify which platform had the most mentions.

YouTube was far and away the leader, with a volume of 1.79 million. Over half of that came from the search #deepfake (0.97 million), followed closely by #aiimages (0.79 million).

With X, Instagram, and Facebook only featuring around 1.5 million of these searches between them, Freepik put this massive disparity down to the fact that YouTube has only just implemented AI detection tools. Before these were released, it didn’t have a way for users to report AI-generated content and so many AI videos on the site went viral.

“As YouTube is very video content-focused and has many users globally, the platform gives AI models the ability to understand a vast amount of topics and content,” Álex Góngora, Chief Marketing Officer at Freepik, told us.

“YouTube’s popularity and simplicity ensure that AI-generated content can reach large audiences from all around the world, which provides valuable insights for further improvement when it comes to engagement.” – Álex Góngora, Freepik

Keeping Up With the Kardash-AI-ns

As part of its study, Freepik also also searched the 100 most followed Instagram pages to identify how much of their recent content (10 pictures) is potentially AI-generated using an AI image analyzer.

It found that more than a quarter of Khloé Kardashian’s posts had been altered by AI in some manner, with the reality TV star topping the list. Her sister Kim, on the other hand, was among the lowest with only 0.47% of her content tweaked.

Pop stars Shakira (15.3%), Beyonce (14.2%) and Katy Perry (12.23%) all feature in the top ten, while actor Chris Hemsworth (14.25%) and footballer Cristiano Ronaldo (12.45%) are also present.

Intriguingly, Joko Widodo – whose 10-year tenure as president of Indonesia ended last Sunday – comes second with 15.35% of his content affected.

The Furore Over Deepfakes

As more sophisticated and greater numbers of AI video generators and image creators become available, social media platforms have a battle on their hands to ensure that content produced by such tools isn’t used to the detriment of their users.

“AI can be misused to enhance the creation of content such as deepfakes, or to spread misinformation and false narratives.” – Álex Góngora, Freepik

With that most used YouTube hashtag in mind, it’s probably no great surprise that the US government is already moving to curtail misuse of deepfake technology – the senate recently voted unanimously to pass anti-deepfake laws that will give victims the right to sue creators.

The use of artificial intelligence has been a running theme of this year’s presidential election race. A deepfake of Kamala Harris shared by Elon Musk on X in July courted controversy, while Donald Trump falsely claimed Taylor Swift endorsed his presidency bid after AI-generated content suggested she supports the Republican candidate.

If you logged in to your LinkedIn account on Tuesday and were aghast that your network had inexplicably shrunk, then don’t worry. You’ve not been cancelled, and the platform hasn’t purged your connections.

LinkedIn has confirmed that there is no foul play at large and that the issue has now been resolved, with connection and follower accounts returning to normal.

That’s a relief for anybody who relies on their LinkedIn profile to stand out to employers or has monetized the community by becoming a LinkedIn Influencer.

LinkedOut?

LinkedIn confirmed that there was no need for panic in a post on X from its @LinkedInHelp on Tuesday.

We heard some members may have seen a change in their connection and follower count. Our team quickly looked into this. We’re happy to report this has now been resolved.

— LinkedIn Help (@LinkedInHelp) October 22, 2024

It also confirmed that it had resolved the issue on its Status Page, closing the ticket seven hours after it had originally been opened for investigation.

Find out how to secure a job on LinkedIn here

LinkedIn Rumor Mill Churns

That may have been a fairly speedy conclusion to the tale, but still gave users on the platform ample opportunity to posit their own thoughts on what may have caused the drop off.

Theories generally followed a similar theme – that LinkedIn was purging connections that it thought were with invalid profiles or had been made through the means of spamming.

“LinkedIn is canceling nontrustworthy profiles and connections, which is good,” suggested one. “This time, it did not go well, and it also disconnected a lot of real people.

“Turns out, some profiles have thousands of fake followers, and LinkedIn is actively removing them to help us engage more authentically with the real people in our networks,” speculated another.

‘Armies of Bots’

If such conjecture is correct (and don’t expect LinkedIn to be anything other than tightlipped on the matter), the platform certainly wouldn’t be the first to actively remove users’ followers.

Since taking control of X, Elon Musk has been on a mission to eliminate bots and keep the social media platform more secure. Indeed, it’s the reason that he gave when explaining why he’d consider making everyone pay to use X.

“It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots,” he reasoned.

The Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram have also removed accounts in the past that it deems inactive or suspicious.

Meta has banned a series of accounts that track the movements of private jets belonging to some of the world’s wealthiest people, including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump.

The accounts, which are run by 21-year old college student Jack Sweeney, were removed from Threads and Instagram on Monday, with their Facebook counterparts also scheduled for deletion. Sweeney has previously irked Musk and pop megastar Taylor Swift, who both threatened to take legal action against the student.

Censorship has emerged as one of the biggest political issues of the post-Trump era, and will prove a key battleground as the clock counts down to the 2024 Presidential Election. By the same token, climate change has divided the US along partisan lines for decades. Meta’s intervention marks a significant foray into this complex arena – and shows that social media has become a modern kingmaker.

Meta Bans Jet-Tracking Accounts

On Monday, Meta announced that social media accounts tracking private jets belonging to the likes of Trump, Musk, Zuckerberg, and more, had been permanently removed. Citing “a risk of physical harm” to the individuals in question, the company claimed that the accounts violated its privacy policy, TechCrunch reports.

In response, Sweeney posted “today feels like December 15th 2022” from his personal account, referencing the time that Musk suspended his @ElonJet account, which was dedicated to tracking the tech mogul’s jet activity. Memorably, Musk had tweeted: “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk” on November 6 – only to reverse his decision a month later.

Visitors to the Instagram and Threads account were greeted by an error message on Monday night, which read: “The link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed.” Other celebrities whose movements have been publicized by Sweeney include Kim Kardashian, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Kylie Jenner, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Jet Tracker Not Remorseful

Sweeney previously defended his accounts during a Signal conversation with NBC News, stating: “It has journalistic value, reveals obviously many parts of a CEO’s work or what partnerships may occur. Now not only that, but also it brings awareness to the very fact they are flying and the climate side.”

The student has ruffled more than a few feathers in recent years. As mentioned, Musk banned one of his accounts in 2022, while lawyers representing Swift threatened legal action earlier this year, asserting that the tracking amounts to “stalking.”

Then, in May, President Biden signed a bill that gives private jet owners the right to anonymize their registration information. Much to Swift and co’s chagrin, however, their aircrafts can still be tracked relatively easily. On the legislation, Sweeney remarked: “It’s kind of annoying, but it’s not a big deal,” drawing attention to other “clues” that “aviation-savvy” people can piece together.

Social Media Now the Engine of Partisan Politics

This story exists at the intersection of two of the most divisive issues of our time – free speech and climate change – played out on the stage of social media.

Several high-profile bodies have moved to block the spread of misinformation ahead of the imminent election. In September, for example, TikTok overhauled its Election Center,  while Vice President Harris has pushed for regulation to combat a surge in AI-generated “deepfakes.”

Two weeks ago, the White House turned to Reddit to share critical survival information in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene – with X proving a hotbed of conspiracy theorizing. Whatever the outcome on November 5, it’s now an inescapable fact that social media is shaping the US landscape – for the better and worse.

Meta’s messaging platform WhatsApp has made a change to the way new contacts are added, finally dealing with an issue that has long frustrated and puzzled its users.

Until now, anybody wanting to add a new person to their contacts list had to first put their cell details in their phone’s main directory.

This week’s update means that new contacts can now be added directly and exclusively through WhatsApp, without any requirement for that person to also feature among the phone’s main contact list. In addition to convenience, the company says that this – along with a newly announced encryption storage system – will help preserve your privacy.

Easier to Add and Manage WhatsApp Contacts

WhatsApp announced the change in a blog post titled: ‘Making it Easier to Add and Manage Contacts’.

“Until now, the only place you were able to add contacts was from your mobile device, by either typing in a phone number or scanning a QR code,” the post explains.

“Soon, you’ll be able to add and manage contacts from the comfort of your keyboard on WhatsApp Web and Windows – and eventually other linked devices.”

Crucially, it also confirms that you’ll have the option to make any contacts added directly through the app appear exclusively in WhatsApp. So, unless you want them to, they won’t also appear locally in your phone’s main contact list.

“Contacts you save to WhatsApp will be restored in case you ever lose your phone or change devices.” – WhatsApp

What’s(app) in a (User)name?

In addition to the main new feature announcement, WhatsApp’s post also revealed plans to allow contacts to be saved with a username.

This, it says, will “add an extra degree of privacy” as users will no longer have to share their phone number when messaging somebody.

On top of privacy, it remains to be seen whether the application of usernames instead of phone numbers could also help to reduce the growing proliferation of WhatsApp scams – the blog made no comment on this possibility.

Nor did it reveal a launch date of this feature.

WhatsApp’s Solution to Lost Devices

The main feature announcement links through to a more detailed post on the ‘Engineering at Meta’ blog about WhatsApp’s new encrypted storage system called Identity Proof Linked Storage (IPLS).

Acknowledging that, previously, losing your phone would also mean losing your contact list, IPLS will allow you to save contacts directly through WhatsApp. In turn, this will also let you restore them to a new device if your smartphone vanishes.

“IPLS is a novel system at WhatsApp that allows users to store their contact names in an encrypted way. IPLS allows the client device to save the contact information using a strong encryption key generated on the client device. Its retrieval is based on the client authenticating its primary device identity.” – Meta

It’s part and parcel of WhatsApp’s continuing pursuit of user security, which has previously included adding end-to-end encryption to backups and integrating support for passkeys.

Oscar winning actors, Nobel laureates, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, best selling authors and knights of the realm are among the thousands of signatories to an open statement about the threat of AI to the creative arts.

A list of more than 13,500 (and counting) figures in the creative industries have put their names to the statement that calls the unlicensed use of creative works to train generative AI models a “major, unjust threat” to livelihoods.

Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus sits at the top of the list, with Radiohead front man Thom Yorke, actors Julianne Moore and Kevin Bacon, and writers Sir Kazuo Ishiguro and Harlan Coben among the most prominent names.

“Major, Unjust Threat”

The website aitrainingstatement.org simply features the 29-word statement at the top, followed by a list of its signatories.

The statement in full reads:

“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”

There are also fields for other people to add themselves, asking for their name, profession and email address for the sake of verification.

Paranoid About the Androids

There’s perhaps no surprises that Thom Yorke and his Radiohead bandmates feature prominently on the list of names expressing their concern about the creep of this technology.

Other stars of the music world include Björn Ulvaeus of Abba, Robert Smith of the Cure, Geoff Barrow of Portishead, Nitin Sawhney and composers Sir John Rutter and Max Richter.

Author Sir Kazuo Ishiguro – who has dabbled in the science fiction of AI and the future of tech, most recently in his novel Klara and the Sun – leads a who’s who of authors that also features Sir Ian Rankin, Lady Antonia Fraser, James Patterson, William Boyd, Val McDermid and Harlan Coben.

With AI technology being used increasingly in movies, Oscar-winners Julianne Moore and F. Murray Abraham are among a multitude Hollywood names who have signed the statement. Along with the likes of Kevin Bacon, Kate McKinnon, Rosario Dawson and Sean Astin.

Poets, painters, playwrights, producers and many more are also among the growing the list.

Not OK, Computer

Organizations such as the Songwriters Guild of America, The Society of Authors, Penguin Random House, and the Sony, Universal and Warner music groups have also signed the statement, that has been put together by Ed-Newton Rex.

The CEO of Fairly Trained – a non-profit that certifies generative AI companies for training data practices that respect creators’ rights – said that creators and their work are being dehumanized.

“There are three key resources that generative AI companies need to build AI models: people, computers, and data,” he told The Guardian newspaper.

“They spend vast sums on the first two – sometimes a million dollars per engineer, and up to a billion dollars per model. But they expect to take the third – training data – for free.”

“When AI companies call this ‘training data’, they dehumanise it. What we’re talking about is people’s work – their writing, their art, their music.” – Ed Newton-Rex, Fairly Trained

While individual users can take steps to stop ChatGPT training on their data, this is much harder for creators to do en masse with work that is in the public domain.

With the US Presidential election drawing nearer and nearer, the world waits to see if the Democrats will prevail with bated breath – or if former President Donald Trump reclaims his seat in the Oval Office.

This is set to be one of the most landmark elections in modern US history, with Democratic nominee Kamala Harris currently edging her Republican rival by the narrowest of margins. November 5th promises more than just a leadership contest – it’s a referendum on two vastly different approaches to government.

The outcome will also have massive implications for the technology industry, but to what end? Concluding my two-part series, I’ll be unpacking what a Donald Trump presidency could mean for the sector.

Tech During Trump’s First Term

Given that Trump’s political career started relatively late in life, there is little to no information available on his relationship with the tech sector prior to taking office. Therefore, my predictions will be informed by that turbulent first term and the years that followed.

Trump’s shock election win in 2016 was met with a collective intake of breath. Most onlookers – not to mention millions of voters – expected Hillary Clinton to cruise to a routine victory. They were to be surprised by one of the biggest upsets in US political history – which promptly set the tone for what would come next.

Like many of his policies, his approach to tech was predicated on championing domestic innovation, while trying to reduce the country’s reliance on outside influence. When it came to 5G, for instance, he was determined to lead the way, declaring in 2019: “The race to 5G is on and we must win,” Brookings reports.

To his credit, the former president was instrumental in pushing the issue to the top of the federal agenda. Later, in March 2020, he signed the “Secure 5G and Beyond Act” into law, which called for the development of a strategy to secure and protect 5G technology.

Many of Trump’s biggest contributions to the tech sector were borne out of his paranoia around China. In 2019, he moved to quickly see off competition from the superpower by designating AI as a “national research and development” priority. He claimed: “This is not an option. This is a necessity,” Pelican Institute reports.

Elsewhere, the former president imposed severe restrictions on Huawei, cutting off access to US technology and preventing the telecommunications company from accessing critical components for its production. At the time, Huawei threatened to supersede Samsung as the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer – in response, it has drastically overhauled its business practices.

Prompted by fears over national security, Trump also set the long-gestating TikTok ban into motion in 2020. To prevent this from happening, parent company ByteDance agreed to divest the platform. Four years later, however, TikTok is on the cusp of a complete ban, with a crucial bill passed in the House earlier this year. Somewhat ironically, Trump has since done a total 180 on TikTok, and has promised to reverse the intended ban, should he secure the presidency.

Trump’s War on Social Media

As a self-avowed businessman, many expected President Trump to look favorably on the tech sector. As his tenure went on, however, he began a vicious campaign against Silicon Valley, with social media platforms the main target of his wrath. In 2020, he attempted to punish the likes of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram over perceived censorship. The Republican went after a 1996 bill that had enshrined wide-ranging protections for Big Tech companies. He failed.

Following the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, and his subsequent blacklisting on Twitter and Facebook, Trump, again, rounded on the space: “I think that Big Tech is doing a horrible thing for our country and to our country, and I believe it’s going to be a catastrophic mistake for them. They’re dividing and divisive,” Reuters reports.

His agenda continued in July that year, when he brought class action against Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, alleging that he and other high-profile conservatives were subject to unfair censoring. He vowed: “We’re going to hold Big Tech very accountable,” as per AP News.

After several months of screaming into the void on challenger platform Truth Social, Trump was reinstated to Twitter in 2023 – now called X and headed up by the controversial Elon Musk. Musk has since aligned himself with the former president, with many suspecting that the tech mogul might be positioning himself for a potential future role in Trump’s cabinet.

What Can We Expect from a Trump Presidency?

It’s expected that Trump would favor a more hands-off approach to AI regulation than his Democrat rival. Throughout his first term in the White House, he was eager to push the technology its full potential, with little care paid to the consequences. In recent months, he has pledged to repeal “Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence,” sweeping legislation enacted by the Biden-Harris Administration last year which seeks to limit the potential dangers posed by AI.

Trump’s laid back approach to AI can be seen in his own use of it, when he recently posted an AI image of Taylor Swift, falsely claiming that she was voting for him.  It was a move that ultimately resulted in Swift coming out in favor of Harris.

Reportedly, Trump plans to make space for Musk in some capacity. Their courtship appears to have begun in earnest a few months ago, when the X CEO publicly declared his support for the Republican. Since then, the presidential hopeful has mentioned Musk 82 times and counting, as per analysis conducted by Bloomberg, compared to five times in the previous six months.

In that period, various roles have been mooted. Among them, head of a “government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government,” Forbes outlines. For his part, Musk has claimed he “can’t wait” and that there is “a lot of waste and needless regulation in government that needs to go.”

However this particular subplot shakes out, I can say with a degree of certainty that Trump would seek to put America firmly back on the map with regards to technology. Expect a lighter regulatory touch – with a no-holds-barred approach to AI.

The US Government is proposing new rules that would stop companies selling data about its citizens to “countries of concern”.

The proposal specifically targets what the Justice Department terms “sensitive personal data” and, when enacted, will prevent companies sharing this data to ventures in six countries.

Both Russia and China are on the list reflecting a wider crackdown on companies from those countries who have been deemed as poising a national security risk – Kaspersky and TikTok among them.

Blacklisted Countries by US

As well as China and Russia, Iran, The DPRK (North Korea), Cuba, and Venezuela have all been blacklisted.

In a press statement, the justice Department says that these countries “…can use their access to these types of data to engage in malicious cyber-enabled activities and malign foreign influence activities, bolster their military capabilities, and track and build profiles on U.S. individuals (including members of the military and other Federal employees and contractors) for illicit purposes such as blackmail and espionage.”

It adds that data could be gathered on “activists, academics, journalists, dissidents, political opponents, or members of nongovernmental organizations or marginalized communities” and then weaponized “to intimidate them, curb political opposition, limit freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly, or association, or enable other forms of suppression of civil liberties.”

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking specifically talks about personal data and the need to protect it. The information covered in the proposed legislation includes sensitive information such as Social Security numbers driver’s licenses, location data, biometric information and more.

Exceptions to New Proposal

The statement from the Justice Department is clear, though, that there are exceptions to this rule. Telecoms services are not impacted nor is clinical trial data, which organizations in the US need for FDA applications or research approval.

This ban is also not a trade embargo, the statement clarifies. It explains that it “…does not broadly prohibit US persons from engaging in commercial transactions, including exchanging financial and other data as part of the sale of commercial goods and services with countries of concern or covered persons.”

The proposed rule is also hoped to serve as a bit of a wakeup call to companies dealing with businesses in the six countries listed.

As an official from the Justice Department told Techradar: “Under the proposed rule, US persons transacting in these kinds of data…will need to understand the kinds and volumes of data they transact, who they are doing business with and how that data is being used, and the safeguards they use to control access to that data.”

In other words, be careful because it is more than your business that’s at risk if this data falls into the wrong hands.

Google’s AI technology might be put in the spotlight as the Department of Justice decides on how to tackle the company’s monopoly in the search space.

US District Judge Amit Mehta has been asked to give a view as to whether Google needs to hand over the details of its AI technology, Gemini, to be considered in this landmark antitrust case.

The case centers upon what the DoJ has termed “pernicious” anticompetitive conduct from the technology giant; and the illegal monopoly that it was ruled to have in August.

Breaking up a monopoly

The paperwork filed with the DC District Court highlighted four areas where it believes Google has illegally maintained a monopoly, including user data and pre-installation of its browsers and first party apps on new devices.

The Justice Department proposed solution “appropriately and meaningfully addresses the harms resulting from Google’s unlawful conduct in the context of current market realities.” But now AI is an area that might also be scrutinized.

Does Google’s AI Boost Its Monopoly?

What has now been put to a judge is whether Google’s AI technology needs to be considered as part of the process for creating a “remedy” for the monopoly. This is not least because the technology has moved on during the time this antitrust case has been heard.

“Generative AI is changing how users interact with and access search. As the court is aware, by the time the court hears evidence related to remedies, it will have been almost three years since liability discovery closed. During this time, the features and services associates with Google’s search product have continued to evolve, even as harm related to Google’s conduct continues.” – the Justice Department

Push Back

Google has, predictably, pushed back at the prospect of its business being broken up.

“The government seems to be pursuing a sweeping agenda that will impact numerous industries and products, with significant unintended consequences for consumers, businesses, and American competitiveness.” – Lee-Anne Mulholland, vice president of regulatory affairs in a blog post

Its response to this latest request for information has also been salty. It is arguing that the request is simply too wide as it uses AI for everything from translating on Pixel smartphones to Google Maps. Google is also arguing that the request also breaches discovery rules.

Google has, however, handed over 130 agreements now but the Justice Department is continuing to fight for more.

The Department for Justice will finalize its proposal by November 20 and Google is scheduled to respond a month later.

Nearly two thirds of US employers have lost out to competitors as their staff have opted to move to companies with more flexible work policies.

Not only this, but remote and flexible work benefits are polling high on employee’s wish lists, so companies with strict mandates are putting prospective employees off.

This research has hit desks at the same as Amazon’s beleaguered employees are hitting back yet again at CEO Andy Jassy’s strict RTO mandates with nearly three quarters admitting they are considering leaving.

Mass Dissatisfaction

The Amazon poll, carried out by Blind and reported on by Forbes, revealed the extent of the anger among employees.

It shares: “…four out of five Amazon professionals polled by Blind said they knew someone at the company who was considering looking for another job because of the in-office work policy, and 32% said they knew someone who had already quit in response.”

Jassy has taken a hardline in response to the concerns of his employees about the five day RTO mandate. Despite huge unrest, legal action, and even walkouts, Jassy is pushing hard ahead and has suggested that those who don’t want to toe the line should look for another job.

Looking for Better Options

The 2024 Global Workforce Report from Remote.com reveals that employees are actively seeking out companies with flexible work strategies. And it is a worldwide trend.

The survey took place across ten different countries and found that 73% of employers have moved on from jobs because they didn’t like their employer’s work policy.

Boon for Companies With the Right Policies

However, there are companies who are happy to maintain flexibility and they are enjoying a raft of talent banging on their door.

The survey revealed that 71% of the employers they interviewed were enacting remote policies when expanding their global workforce, and 25% had agreed to hybrid-working set ups.

They also said that these policies were having a positive impact, including almost 37% reporting higher productivity levels. Nearly 40% of hiring executives added that their flexible policies had positively impacted the work/life balance enjoyed by their employees. Increased employee engagement and reduced absenteeism were also flagged.

Voting With Their Feet

The CEOs of the big tech companies are barreling ahead with mandates even though they don’t seem to have any research evidence that productivity will go up. There is also compelling evidence that these policies are hitting morale – as the C-Suite at Dell have seen (and chosen to ignore).

Employees may start showing their displeasure by heading to new pastures. This is, however, also a time of mass lay-offs. Will employees be nervous of moving and will there be the jobs out there for them?

No one wants to be left in the dust when the latest technology rolls out, particularly if your job security depends on it. If you’re one of the many white collar or blue collar workers who can’t avoid learning what the deal is with AI, you’ve come to the right place.

The bad news is that AI isn’t going away. It’s arguably been hyped up a little too high — we haven’t seen it destroy entire industries just yet — but there’s no denying that most business leaders will require their staff to understand how the tech works in the very near future.

The good news? Thanks to the internet, you have plenty of free video lessons to chose from when trying to get up to speed on how you can use AI bots such as ChatGPT. In fact, you can even go more in-depth with courses that explore the nitty-gritty of coding programs that interact with generative AI on a practical level.

Here, we present the latest AI training courses to know about in October 2024, along with some explanation of what they cover and how long they’ll take to complete.

Microsoft: Responsible use of artificial intelligence in education

Length: ~3 hours

Microsoft is an AI heavy-hitter, with multi-millions invested in bet-hedging deals with OpenAI, the French AI Mistral, and its own in-house Large Language Model, MAI-1. In other words, it’s one of the biggest companies in the business, and certainly the one with the longest track record of success in computing.

The company also offers a range of free online courses covering everything to do with its suite of business and education software platforms. When it comes to LLMs, it has plenty of training courses, naturally, and this time we’re highlighting one aimed at K-12 educators.

The collection of learning modules takes viewers through Microsoft’s “Responsible AI framework,” teaching the fundamentals behind the ethics related to AI development and application, including: “fairness, reliability & safety, privacy & security, inclusiveness, transparency, accountability, and practical usage.”

The full course takes just three hours, making it one of the more simple offerings in this list, and you can check it out now by heading over to the Microsoft Learn portal to sign in and sign up.

NVIDIA: AI Infrastructure and Operations Fundamentals

Length: 9 hours

NVIDIA hasn’t been around nearly as long as Microsoft, but its AI successes have propelled it to sky high valuations and media darling status. Now, you can learn the foundational concepts behind AI operations straight from them, with this course.

“AI Infrastructure and Operations Fundamentals” is designed for beginners, and takes three weeks to complete at just three hours for each week. The course tackles concepts including: Machine Learning, Deep Learning, training and inference, deep learning frameworks, the AI software stack, and the role of GPUs in AI tech advancement. The training sessons will give users a framework for understanding how to deploy AI workloads on various types of data centers, too.

You can head over to Coursera to get started for free today.

Google: Google AI for Anyone

Length: 12 hours

Another introductory course, this lesson plan is a great starting point for those who need the absolute basics: What is AI? What isn’t AI? Why do articles like this one keep throwing around concepts like “deep learning” or “machine learning”?

Once you have a handle on the current AI landscape, you’ll be exposed to more complicated concepts, from the benefits of AI programming to the basics of forward and backward propagation within neural networks. The course makes a point to highlight that generative AI models are by no means completely accurate, due in part to the errors and biases that are often embedded in the data available to train them on. This isn’t always clear to many people, who use ChatGPT in inappropriate contexts like legal briefs or fact-checking.

You can get started with your AI basics today by heading over to edX and signing up for this free course.

LinkedIn Learning: Complete Guide to Generative AI for Data Analysis and Data Science

Length: 11 hours

Data scientists take note! Instructor Dan Sullivan leads this intermediate level course, which addresses the impact generative AI is making on one career path in particular: Data analysis.

The course covers data management in general as well, with a focus on addressing the “three pillars” of success in data analysis: “problem solving skills, an understanding of statistics and machine learning, and practical experience with data management procedures.”

Once you have that knowledge down, you’ll be able to learn more about the intersection of data and LLMs, with modules covering predictive modeling, machine learning, and interpreting and reporting on your results.

It’s all available through LinkedIn. Technically, it’s not free, but the platform has a generous month-long free trial, so if you sign up today, you’ll have plenty of time to get through the 11-hour course.

Lund University: AI, Business & the Future of Work

Length: 11 hours

Let’s be honest: Most people learning about AI are really just trying to bolster their credentials at work, shoring up their job security while learning a few things about the latest buzzy tech. They might be best served by this course, given its focus on the future of the workplace.

With this Lund University training course, you’ll learn how AI tools can help you make better decisions by giving you better information, how AI can automate processes at your workplace, and how you can “avoid the pitfalls” of AI within your industry.

Once you’re done, you’ll even get a shareable certificate that you can show off on LinkedIn. In short, this course is the perfect starting point for those who really need to know about AI only in the context of how it relates to their own industry and career.

Head over to Coursera to enroll today for free.

Getting Rolling With AI Tools

Generative AI might seen intimidating to an outsider, but the latest models represent ground-breaking technology. The upside to new technology is that it’s new for everyone, novices and experts alike, which can put them all on relatively even ground.

Once you get a certification or two under your belt — and some of them will just take you a single afternoon — you might not feel like that much of an expert, but you’ll genuinely be ahead of most people. You can uses your new skills to negotiate your next raise or to launch your search for a fully remote job.

Another day, another company taking a dramatic U-turn in its approach to remote working.

This time it is industrial conglomerate, 3M, which has around 85,000 employees worldwide.

The company’s new CEO has decided that all managers need to come in from Tuesday to Thursday but this mandate is mild compared to many of the big tech companies who want five days in the office and no less.

Slow Return to Office Rollout

Bill Brown took over as chief executive in May and has now issued his mandate that his directors and above be in the office three days a week. However this is an expectation not a requirement.

It is also not going to be a requirement for staff under director level. Staff on the production lines have always worked to different policies as they need to be present in the facility.

The first employees expected to comply will be those living within 50 miles of the company’s Minnesota headquarters. However, the policy will then be applied globally over time.

Roll Back on Previous Remote Working Policy

While 3M’s return to office (RTO) mandate is far less stringent than many others – including Amazon and Dell – it is still a far cry from the “Work Your Way” policy that the company made a splash about in 2021.

The company’s execs might well be cringing when they read the gushing statements about “3M’s trust-based approach that lets employees create a schedule that helps them work when and where they can most effectively”.

Aman Gupta, vice president of Enterprise Workplace Strategy said at the time: “It is about getting your work done and delivering results. Not about where you sit and what time you logged on.”

Not so anymore, says Bill Brown, who insists that these mandated “collaboration days” are needed to “reinvigorate the 3M innovation machine”.

Why are RTO Mandates Happening Everywhere?

Despite evidence that RTO policies can actually have a negative impact on employee efficiency, companies are pushing hard to get employees back into their offices.

Bloomberg points to the heritage of 3M – a company that was founded in 1902, as a reason why it values presenteeism; as research suggests older companies prefer staff at their desks. But this doesn’t explain the dramatic U-turn.

For Amazon, the RTO mandate seems to be driven by CEO Andy Jassy’s dislike of remote working. He is pushing ahead and has made it clear that anyone who doesn’t like the policy can look elsewhere for employment. At least the 3M employees have some agency over their work schedule…at the moment.

The production company behind the TV series, Blade Runner 2049, is suing Tesla for copyright infringement and false endorsement.

The legal wrangle has been launched following Tesla’s all-singing launch of its Robotaxis and Robovans where the production company says its brand was used for promotion without permission.

But very specifically, Alcon Entertainment has stated that it does not want to be associated in any way with Tesla’s owner, Elon Musk, and his “extreme political and social views”.

Blade Runner Copyright Quarrel

The lawsuit, which was filed on Monday in California, accuses Musk and co of using stills from the the film, Blade Runner 2049, without permission.

It claims that Tesla then used these images by prompting an AI image generator to create replicas, says the production company’s legal team.

They honed in on one specific image, says Hollywood Reporter. As Musk reached the stage at the Warner Bros’s Studio after his ride in a robotaxi, an image flashed on screen “…of a male figure wearing a trench coat as he surveys the abandoned ruins of a city bathed in a misty, orange light. In the upper left corner, the words “Not This” appear superimposed on part of the sky.”

The complaint reads that this was “clearly intended to read visually” as a still from Blade Runner 2049′s sequence when Ryan Gosling’s character explores a ruined Las Vegas.

Indeed, Musk even referred to the film franchise in his presentation. “You know, I love Blade Runner, but I don’t know if we want that future,” he said. “I believe we want that duster he’s wearing, but not the, uh, not the bleak apocalypse.”

Musk’s Collaboration with Warner Bros

There is some confusion in the lawsuit though as Musk had teamed up with Warner Bros for the launch and it was the domestic distributor for the 2017 release of Blade Runner 2049.

There was a licensing agreement between Tesla and Warner Bros but Alcon says it didn’t know about this deal nor do Warner Bros’ rights cover this image usage.

Alcon says that it was contacted in the lead up to the event because Musk wanted to use a still from the film. However, this emergency request for clearance was refused by the producer, which is when, the lawsuit alleges, Tesla used AI image generation.

Musk’s Erratic Behavior

While the copyright infringement is the crux of the case, the language of the lawsuit makes it very clear that it is an unauthorized connection to Elon Musk that the production company is baulking at most.

The wording is brutal. “Any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account,” states the complaint. “Alcon did not want BR2049 to be affiliated with Musk.”

Musk’s views and lack of filter has also seen advertisers leave X in their droves, spooked by exactly what the platform’s owner is going to do or say next.

Alcon is seeking unspecified damages and also wants a court order to bar Tesla from using disputed promotional materials in the future.

Perhaps Musk will just use stills from I, Robot as that production company has grumbled but is yet to sue.

In a story that will fan the flames of concern about the safety of generative AI, TikTok’s parent company has admitted some of its training models have been sabotaged by one of its interns.

ByteDance went on the record with the news, after rumors of potential disruption hit Chinese news outlets.

ByteDance is currently in the firing line over the alleged impact its platform has on younger users; and has also announced it is moving towards AI-only moderation – which, coupled with this latest news, will have naysayers questioning the safety of its content.

Malicious Interference

The details are scant but the intern behind the alleged sabotage was fired in August. The company said in a statement on its news aggregator service, Toutiao, that the student was on the commercial technology team.

ByteDance says: “The intern involved maliciously interfered with the model training tasks of the commercial technology team’s research project.” It added that the intern’s university and industry associations had been informed about their conduct.

Quashing Rumors

The statement, reported on by The Guardian, adds that news reports have exaggerated the impact. Claims have been made that 8000 GPUs were impact and the sabotage caused tens of millions of dollars in costs.

Not so, says ByteDance, sharing that the attack “…did not affect the formal commercial projects and online business, nor did it involve other businesses such as ByteDance’s large models.”

ByteDance’s AI Ambitions

PC magazine adds that ByteDance currently has “11 different open-source AI models including an audio generator, a fast text-to-video generator, and a higher-resolution video generator.”

The company launched an AI creative assistant feature earlier this year.

AI Under Scrutiny

The news of the sabotage comes as the AI industry faces more scrutiny – and this is aside from the national security concerns ByteDance alone has garnered.

Last month, Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, blocked what would have been one of the first regulations on AI in the US.

However, there is a groundswell of support for AI regulations from both those in government and those working in AI. The fact that this sabotage was carried out not only by an insider, but also a student will strengthen the argument for frameworks and safeguards.