Technology & innovation
A ZipRecruiter survey of 1,500 employed U.S. workers found 53% say AI has made their work more enjoyable, compared with 6% who say the opposite. At the same time, 42% worry AI will make their job or skills obsolete.
77% of senior leaders say AI has improved their work satisfaction, compared with 40% of entry-level employees.
Job postings that call for AI capabilities are up 159% from a year earlier and now make up over 4% of all listings.
39% of workers say their employer actively encourages AI use, but only 29% say they receive enough training.
50% report higher productivity expectations, and 45% say AI is making technical skills outdated faster.
25% plan to leave their jobs due to AI-related concerns, and 31% want their next role to involve less AI.
Currently, there is a sizable gap between how much employers want their workforce to leverage AI, and the training they are providing workers to do so.”
Read more via Business Wire
Three-quarters of board members expect AI to deliver productivity and cost savings, according to Gartner’s HR practice. Almost no organizations are getting there.
Thirty-eight percent of companies are over budget on AI, and 85% plan to spend even more next year.
A July 2026 survey of 297 CHROs found 78% of leaders have no alignment on where AI creates value.
A second-quarter survey of 1,865 employees found only 21% of time freed up by AI was redirected into more innovative work.
Only 9% of CEOs in a separate study said AI agents had been transformational, while 43% reported moderate impacts with targeted use cases.
Eighty-four percent of those CEOs still call AI a top investment priority over the next three years.
Read more via Gartner, HR Dive
Every major workplace technology, from the telephone switch to the PC, has reshaped women’s jobs, and AI is likely next.
The International Labour Organization concluded that nearly 1 in 10 women in high-income countries work in occupations at the highest risk from AI.
An estimated 75,000 telephone operator jobs vanished after the automated switch was popularized, and many operators ended up in lower-paying jobs or left the workforce.
The next generation of women fared better, with researchers finding they often took similar-quality jobs in other fields.
Nearly 4.7 million Americans worked as secretaries, stenographers and typists in 1980, and more than 98% of them were women.
A 2022 paper found that when companies adopted software for office and administrative work, employment in the sector fell 1% while wages rose 3% for college graduates.
AI is focused on routine tasks and numbers and finding patterns, and those types of jobs are the clerical, administrative jobs that a lot of women hold.”
Read more via CNBC
Startups are building semi-autonomous AI agents for roles like executive assistant and chief of staff. Some employees call a high ratio of agents to humans a status symbol.
About 40% of large organizations used AI agents in some capacity between May 2025 and June 2026, up from 27% the year before, according to McKinsey.
Boston Consulting Group found companies expect to scale back their workforce by 10% to 15% over the next few years as they delegate more work to AI.
Lindy laid off a third of its staff, now has about 20 employees, and has filled many open roles with agents.
Anything, an AI startup, has 15 human employees and roughly 150 agents.
One startup chief of staff says he spent most of his time undoing agents’ mistakes after letting them run recruiting.
Read more via The Guardian
A Justice Department settlement over AI-written job ads shows employers are responsible for what their tools publish, according to an immigration attorney writing in Bloomberg Law.
A Virginia-based IT services company used an AI tool to write ads telling applicants that only H-1B, OPT or H-4 visa holders need apply.
The company agreed to pay $9,460 in civil penalties, train its staff, revise its policies and stop running ads that exclude protected workers.
DOJ said it does not matter whether an employee, a recruiter or an AI tool wrote the ad.
Protected individuals include U.S. citizens and nationals, certain lawful permanent residents, refugees and asylees.
DOJ’s current enforcement focus under its Protecting US Workers Initiative is postings that favor visa holders over U.S. workers.
Read more via Bloomberg Law
David Durman, an administrator at the University of Kentucky, was granted an exemption in September under Title VII, the federal civil rights law that bars workplace discrimination and allows employees to request religious accommodations. He argues that using AI at work conflicts with his beliefs as a humanist.
Durman says outsourcing thinking tasks to chatbots would undercut his ability to develop as a moral person.
The American Humanist Association helped him apply and says he is the first humanist it knows of to receive an AI exemption.
Humanism is not an organized religion, but it qualifies as a religion under federal law.
A North Carolina software engineer who is a Unitarian Universalist received a similar exemption this summer.
The process and work involved in thinking through situations, through my work, through my ethics, through the way I handle other people, is a key component in being able to develop myself as a moral person.”
Read more via Futurism, Religion News Service
A San Francisco startup is paying people $20 an hour to walk robot dogs. Dimensional posted the ad in a Bay Area Jobs Facebook group, asking for four to six hours of walking and comfort handling equipment weighing about 33 pounds, since the robots can overheat mid-walk and need to be carried home. The walks are meant to teach AI agents to navigate city streets, and the founder says the experiment showed agents are still very bad at controlling hardware and that humans are still needed in the loop. (The New York Times)
Americans will let AI help with holiday shopping, but 41% would not tell the recipient. A Visa and Morning Consult survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults found 65% are willing to use AI for holiday shopping, with price comparison (61%), checking availability (59%) and finding discounts (57%) topping the list. Only 23% would trust AI to handle the actual payment, and Gen Z is the most open, with 73% willing to let AI suggest gift ideas. (USA TODAY)
China’s first fully AI-generated theatrical film is bombing at the box office. “Sanxingdui: Future Past” has earned about $181,000 since opening Oct. 23 on more than 10,000 screens, against a reported budget of $1.5 million. Meanwhile, a $200 animated film made by a mother and son, “Niu Lai,” has pulled in nearly $10 million, in part because audiences liked its clunky sincerity. (Futurism)
