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Elon Musk and X reach settlement with axed Twitter workers

Elon Musk and X reach settlement with axed Twitter workers The BBC has contacted X - formerly called Twitter - and the lawyers representing the employees for comment. Some workers sued the company over their terminations and severance packages, after some 6,000 staff - more than half its workforce - were sacked as part of a cost-cutting measure after Musk took over the company in 2022. The parties reported the deal in a court filing on Wednesday, jointly requesting the US appeals court in San

Bank forced to rehire workers after lying about chatbot productivity, union says

As banks around the world prepare to replace many thousands of workers with AI, Australia's biggest bank is scrambling to rehire 45 workers after allegedly lying about chatbots besting staff by handling higher call volumes. In a statement Thursday flagged by Bloomberg, Australia's main financial services union, the Finance Sector Union (FSU), claimed a "massive win" for 45 union members whom the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) had replaced with an AI-powered "voice bot." The FSU noted tha

Bank forced to rehire workers after lying about chatbot productivity, union says

As banks around the world prepare to replace many thousands of workers with AI, Australia's biggest bank is scrambling to rehire 45 workers after allegedly lying about chatbots besting staff by handling higher call volumes. In a statement Thursday flagged by Bloomberg, Australia's main financial services union, the Finance Sector Union (FSU), claimed a "massive win" for 45 union members whom the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) had replaced with an AI-powered "voice bot." The FSU noted tha

The Open-Office Trap (2014)

In 1973, my high school, Acton-Boxborough Regional, in Acton, Massachusetts, moved to a sprawling brick building at the foot of a hill. Inspired by architectural trends of the preceding decade, the classrooms in one of its wings didn’t have doors. The rooms opened up directly onto the hallway, and tidbits about the French Revolution, say, or Benjamin Franklin’s breakfast, would drift from one classroom to another. Distracting at best and frustrating at worst, wide-open classrooms went, for the m

The Open-Office Trap

In 1973, my high school, Acton-Boxborough Regional, in Acton, Massachusetts, moved to a sprawling brick building at the foot of a hill. Inspired by architectural trends of the preceding decade, the classrooms in one of its wings didn’t have doors. The rooms opened up directly onto the hallway, and tidbits about the French Revolution, say, or Benjamin Franklin’s breakfast, would drift from one classroom to another. Distracting at best and frustrating at worst, wide-open classrooms went, for the m

Microsoft employees occupy headquarters in protest of Israel contracts

is The Verge’s senior AI reporter. An AI beat reporter for more than five years, her work has also appeared in CNBC, MIT Technology Review, Wired UK, and other outlets. On Tuesday, a group of current and former Microsoft employees, as well as community members, took over a plaza at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, as part of a No Azure for Apartheid protest. They declared the area a “Liberated Zone” encampment and said they had changed its name from East Campus Plaza to “The Mar

I'm Worried It Might Get Bad

I'm starting to worry things might get very bad, very soon. Not like in a year or two, but maybe in a few months. As in spontaneous recession type of thing. In the US mostly, but perhaps globally. It sounds irrational to me as well as I think it or type it. But I can't shake the feeling, so I want to try to write it all down to see how rational it looks on paper. A list of things that are troubling me ​ In no real order, here are the various things I'm stressing about. I know a ton of reall

Ford throws out Henry Ford’s assembly line to make low-cost EVs in America

Ford said Monday it will invest $2 billion to transform its Louisville Assembly Plant into a factory capable of making a new generation of affordable EVs, starting with a mid-sized pickup truck with a base price of $30,000 that is slated to launch in 2027. This is not a standard factory upgrade. To reduce the cost of manufacturing, Ford has upended the moving assembly line system launched by its founder Henry Ford more than 112 years ago. The automaker’s willingness to change the century-old s

AI Is Making It Nearly Impossible to Find a Well-Paying Job. Is This the World We Want?

What jobs, exactly, is so-called "artificial intelligence" supposed to revolutionize, and for whose benefit? The answers to those rarely-asked questions have become increasingly clear in recent months, as the looming threat of AI automation appears to be taking a concrete toll on the workforce. The bombshell July jobs report has finally confirmed what many US workers have been feeling for months: it's almost impossible to find meaningful employment anymore. With just 73,000 nonfarm jobs added

Leak Reveals the Workaday Lives of North Korean IT Scammers

Job hunting is a fresh kind of hell. Hours are wasted sifting through open roles, tweaking cover letters, dealing with obtuse recruiters—and that’s all before you get started with potential interviews. Arguably, some of the world’s most prolific job applicants—or at least most persistent—are those of North Korea’s sprawling IT worker schemes. For years, Kim Jong Un’s repressive regime has successfully sent skilled coders abroad where they’re tasked with finding remote work and sending money back

US executive branch agencies will use ChatGPT Enterprise for just $1 per agency

OpenAI announced an agreement to supply more than 2 million workers for the US federal executive branch access to ChatGPT and related tools at practically no cost: just $1 per agency for one year. The deal was announced just one day after the US General Services Administration (GSA) signed a blanket deal to allow OpenAI and rivals like Google and Anthropic to supply tools to federal workers. The workers will have access to ChatGPT Enterprise, a type of account that includes access to frontier

Raven Software gets its union contract with Microsoft three years after voting to organize

Benefits include a 10-percent wage increase over two years and the elimination of crunch time. Employees at Raven Software, known for its work on the Call of Duty franchise, finally have a union contract with Microsoft . This happened nearly years after quality assurance (QA) workers at the company voted to unionize . Workers voted unanimously to ratify the first contract between the company's Game Workers Alliance-CWA (GWA-CWA) members and Microsoft. This contract includes a guaranteed 10-per

North Korean spies posing as remote workers have infiltrated hundreds of companies, says CrowdStrike

Researchers at security giant CrowdStrike say they have seen hundreds of cases where North Koreans posing as remote IT workers have infiltrated companies to generate money for the regime, marking a sharp increase over previous years. Per CrowdStrike’s latest threat hunting report, the company has identified over 320 incidents over the past 12 months, up by 220% from the year earlier, in which North Koreans gained fraudulent employment at Western companies working remotely as developers. The sc

“No tax on tips” is an industry plant

In 2021, an amendment to raise the federal minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour and phase out the subminimum wage for tipped workers was attached to President Joe Biden’s pandemic-relief package. But the Senate parliamentarian removed the proposal from the bill, on procedural grounds. Bernie Sanders, then the Budget Committee chairman, forced a vote on the bill anyway, with the provision included. This decision sparked a furor among supposedly liberal lawmakers, according to Ari Rabin-Havt, S

The End of Work as We Know It

For centuries, work has defined us. It has given us identity, purpose, and status in society. But what happens when work, our source of income, itself begins to disappear? Not because of war, depression, or outsourcing, but because of algorithms. What does it mean to work in an AI-driven economy? I spent this month of July interviewing several experts from diverse corners of the labor landscape. Through these conversations, a complex and often contradictory picture emerges, one filled with both

New Study Bolsters Public Health Case for a Four-Day Work Week

For many of us, Monday is the start of yet another dreary and long work routine. But new trial research out today might highlight a healthier approach to performing our jobs: a permanent four-day workweek. Scientists at Boston College led the study, published Monday in Nature Human Behavior. For six months, the researchers tracked the outcomes of nearly 3,000 workers at 141 businesses after they switched to a four-day workweek with no pay reduction; they also compared them to similar workers at

Microsoft is saving millions with AI and laying off thousands - where do we go from here?

Drew Angerer/Getty Images Last week, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft shared internally that it had saved $500 million in call center costs, thanks to AI -- shortly after the company laid 9,000 people off, the third round in a series of layoffs totaling 15,000. What does this mean for the tech industry -- and job security for humans -- at large? Also: 60% of managers use AI to make decisions now, including whom to promote and fire - does yours? Microsoft's layoffs, despite huge profits Acc

Bernie Sanders Issues Warning About How AI Is Really Being Used

Senator Bernie Sanders is, like most of us, worried about how AI is going to affect our future — but he's not convinced that the mainstream conversation is capturing the dynamics of how the tech is really affecting the labor market. In an interview with Gizmodo, the Vermont legislator revealed that in the wake of his call for AI to aid in the establishment of a four-day work week, he has taken to speaking with AI experts and CEOs about the technology. Though Sanders refused to name names, the

Bernie Sanders Reveals the AI ‘Doomsday Scenario’ That Worries Top Experts

Artificial intelligence promises a future of unprecedented productivity and wealth, but for Senator Bernie Sanders, the crucial question isn’t if the technology will change the world, but who will benefit from that change. As a lifelong champion for workers’ rights, Sanders sees the rapid advancement of AI not just as a technological revolution, but as the next major battleground in the fight against corporate greed and inequality. In a conversation with Gizmodo, the Vermont senator, who reveal

At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says

At least 13 postal workers in Britain died by suicide amid a post office scandal in which about 1,000 postal workers were wrongfully prosecuted for theft and other crimes, according to a report released this week as part of an inquiry into the scandal. Wyn Williams, the retired high court judge who is leading the inquiry, wrote in the report, published on Tuesday, that by his estimation, more than 10,000 people were eligible for some kind of redress and that he expected that number to grow. Th

Treasury sanctions North Korean over IT worker malware scheme

The U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned cyber actor Song Kum Hyok for his association with North Korea's hacking group Andariel and for facilitating IT worker schemes that generated revenue for the Pyongyang regime. Considered a sub-cluster of the Lazarus group linked to North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau, the Andariel state actor is focused mostly on financially-motivated operations like ransomware (Maui, Play) and cryptocurrency heists. Song Kum Hyok has been identified as a

Heavy AI use at work has a surprising relationship to burnout, new study finds

Alexmia/Getty Images The adoption of AI tools in the workplace is making employees more productive, but new research from freelance hiring firm Upwork suggests it might also be hurting their mental health. Following a survey of 2,500 workers (including executives, full-time employees, and freelancers) across multiple countries, the research showed that the most devoted users of AI tools, including agents, are also 88% more likely to experience burnout and twice as likely to quit, compared to t

I want to leave tech: what do I do?

Let’s say you’re working in tech and you have a technical role: you’re a programmer, a graphic or UI/UX designer, a sysadmin, maybe even a product manager. Let’s say you want to leave, change career, and do something more meaningful with your skills. Your motivations may vary: you feel the tech industry produces nothing of value, or maybe you have the legitimate suspicion that what you build helps bomb innocent people somewhere. You might want to leave because of the individualistic culture tha

Uber drivers in British Columbia, Canada have unionized

Uber drivers in British Columbia, Canada have joined a union and are now seeking the first collective deal for ride-share drivers in the country, according to Bloomberg. Drivers from Greater Victoria, in particular, have joined UFCW 1518, the province's largest private sector union, which currently represents over 28,000 workers across multiple sectors. "The organizing victory represents a new chapter for app-based workers, demonstrating that all workers deserve a voice in their working conditio

Amazon Reaches Automation Milestone by Deploying Its Millionth Robot

Amazon's fleet of warehouse robots just hit a new milestone. The company announced Monday that it deployed its millionth bot to begin operations at a fulfillment center in Japan. Amazon's ambitions for robot use have long surpassed the company utilizing them for delivery service. The business juggernaut is the world's leading manufacturer of mobile robotics, and aims to sell them to you for use at home as well -- if you have $1,600 to spare. The robotic workers operate in over 300 Amazon wareh

US disrupts North Korean IT worker "laptop farm" scheme in 16 states

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced coordinated law enforcement actions against North Korean government's fund raising operations using remote IT workers. North Korean workers use stolen or fake identities created with the help of AI tools to get hired by more than 100 companies in the U.S., believing they employed experts from other Asian countries or the U.S. Their salaries are usually sent to the DPRK regime. According to court documents, two individuals, Kejia Wang and Zhenxing

Business leaders continue to push workers toward daily use of AI

ismagilov/Getty Images Daily AI usage for desk workers has grown by 233% since the beginning of the year, according to Salesforce's latest Slack Workforce Index based on a survey of 5,000 desk workers globally. AI now helps to create a competitive advantage by providing 64% more productivity and 81% more job satisfaction for those who use AI versus colleagues who don't. And the benefits of AI go far beyond task automation. Since November 2024, AI adoption among workers has risen 50%, with 60%

Bernie Sanders says AI's "productivity boost" should mean 4-day workweeks, not layoffs

A hot potato: AI companies never shut up about how their technologies are making everyone super productive, supposedly allowing us to do more in less time. But Senator Bernie Sanders says if this really is the case, we should all be working 4-day weeks. During a recent interview on the Joe Rogan Experience, Sanders pointed out that the extra time that workers save through the use of AI tools should be given back to them – not filled with extra work. "Technology is gonna work to improve us, not

Bernie Sanders says productivity-boosting AI should mean 4-day workweeks, not layoffs

A hot potato: AI companies never shut up about how their technologies are making everyone super productive, supposedly allowing us to do more in less time. But Senator Bernie Sanders says if this really is the case, we should all be working 4-day weeks. During a recent interview on the Joe Rogan Experience, Sanders pointed out that the extra time that workers save through the use of AI tools should be given back to them – not filled with extra work. "Technology is gonna work to improve us, not

Bernie Sanders: If AI Is Doing Such Amazing Work, Everyone Should Get a Four-Day Workweek

In 2025, we're constantly told, artificial intelligence is bringing about a workplace revolution. Countless billionaires have waxed poetic about the "coming recession" and "unemployment crisis" that their hyped up AI chatbots are sure to bring. Bernie Sanders, the progressive senator from Vermont, has been listening. Calling the US tech industry on its AI hype — which mostly involves generating shareholder value — Sanders recently posed a rhetorical question on the Joe Rogan podcast: if AI is

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