
Google rolls out Deep Think to AI Ultra subscribers.
The advanced problem-solving model, first announced at I/O in May, is now available in the Gemini app for anyone signed up to Google's $250 per month plan.
The version rolling out is a variant on the model that recently picked up Gold at the International Mathematical Olympiad. While that version took hours to solve complex math problems, the wide release is apparently much faster, but Google estimates it could still get Bronze. Try Deep Think in the Gemini app
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Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
When workers' lives outside work are more fulfilling, it benefits employers too
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As a psychologist who studies workplace performance and well-being, I've seen abundant evidence that overworking employees can actually make them less productive. Instead, research shows that when employees have the time and space to lead a fulfilling life outside work, such as being free to spend time with their families or pursue creative hobbies, it improves their performance on the job. Falling prey to the 'focusing illusion' For example, a team of researchers reviewed 70 studies looking at how managers support workers' family lives. They found that when supervisors show consideration for workers' personal roles as a family member, including providing help to workers and modeling work-family balance, those employees are more loyal and helpful on the job and are also less likely to think about quitting. Another study found that workers who could take on creative projects outside of work became more creative at work, regardless of their own personalities. This was true even for workers who didn't consider themselves to be very creative to start with, which suggests it was the workplace culture that really made a difference. When employers become obsessed with their workers' productivity, they can get hung up on tracking immediate goals such as the number of emails sent or sales calls made. But they tend to neglect other vital aspects of employees' lives that, perhaps somewhat ironically, sustain long-term productivity. Daniel Kahneman, the late psychologist whose research team won a Nobel Prize in economics, called this common misconception the 'focusing illusion.' In this case, many employers underestimate the hidden costs of making people work more hours than they can muster while maintaining some semblance of work-life balance. Among them are mental health problems, burnout and high turnover rates. In other words, overly demanding policies can ultimately hinder the performance employers want to see. Taking it from Simone Biles Many top performers recognize the value of work while also valuing the time spent away from it. 'At the end of the day we're human too,' said Simone Biles, who is widely considered the best gymnast on record. 'We have to protect our mind and body, rather than just go out there and do what the world wants us to do.' Elite athletes like Biles require time away from the spotlight to recuperate and hone their skills. Others who are at the top of their professions turn to hobbies to recharge their batteries. Albert Einstein's passion for playing the violin and piano was not merely a diversion from physics – it was instrumental to the famous and widely beloved scientist's groundbreaking scientific insights. Einstein's second wife, Elsa Einstein, observed that he took short breaks to play music when he was thinking about his scientific theories. Taking a break I've reviewed hundreds of studies that show leisure time isn't a luxury − it fulfills key psychological needs. Taking longer and more frequent breaks from your job than your workaholic boss might like can help you get more rest, recover from work-related stress and increase your sense of mastery and autonomy. That's because when employees find fulfillment outside of work they tend to become better at their jobs, making their employers more likely to thrive. That's what a team of researchers found when they studied the workforce at a large city hospital in the U.S. Employees who thought their bosses supported their family life were happier with their jobs, more loyal and less likely to quit. Unsurprisingly, the happier, more supported workers also gave their supervisors higher ratings. Researchers who studied the daily leisure activities of 100 Dutch teachers found that when the educators could take some of their time off to relax and engage in hobbies outside work, they felt better and had an easier time coping with the demands of their job the next day. Another study of German emergency service workers found that not having enough fun over the weekend, such as socializing with friends and relatives, can undermine job performance the following week. Finding the hidden costs of overwork The mental health consequences of overwork, spending too many hours on the job or getting mentally or physically exhausted by your work are significant and measurable. According to the World Health Organization, working more than 55 hours per week is associated with a 35% higher risk of having a stroke and a 17% higher risk of developing heart disease. Working too many hours can also contribute to burnout, a state of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion caused by long-term work stress. The World Health Organization officially recognizes burnout as a work-related health hazard. A Gallup analysis conducted in March 2025 found that even employees who are engaged at work, meaning that they are highly committed, connected and enthusiastic about what they do for a living, are twice as likely to burn out if they log more than 45 hours a week on the job. Burnout can be very costly for employers, ranging anywhere from US$4,000 to $20,000 per employee each year. These numbers are calculated from the average hourly salaries of employees and based on the impact of burnout on aspects such as missed workdays and reduced productivity at work. That means a company with 1,000 workers could lose around $4 million every year due to burnout. Ultimately, employers that overwork their workers have high turnover rates. One study found that the onset of mandatory overtime for South Korean nurses made more of them decide to quit their jobs. Similarly, a national study of over 17,000 U.S.-based nurses found that when they worked longer hours, turnover increased. This pattern is evident in many other professions besides health care, such as finance and transportation. Seeing turnover increase Conservative estimates of the cost of turnover for employers ranges from 1.5 to two times an employee's annual salary. This includes the costs of hiring, onboarding and training new employees. Critically, there are also hidden costs that are harder to estimate, such as losing the departed employee's institutional knowledge and unique connections. Over time, making workers work extra hours can undercut an employer's performance and threaten its viability. Abundant evidence indicates that supporting employees' aspirations for happier and more meaningful lives within the workplace and beyond leaves workers and their employers alike better off. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Louis Tay, Purdue University Read more: Trump administration's lie detector campaign against leakers is unlikely to succeed and could divert energy from national security priorities US workers with remote-friendly jobs are still working from home nearly half the time, 5 years after the pandemic began Remote work has made developing relationships with colleagues harder – here's what workers and bosses need now Louis Tay is affiliated with ExpiWell, a mobile-first tech startup that enables researchers to capture momentary experiences of people. Solve the daily Crossword

Engadget
an hour ago
- Engadget
Google is testing customizable calling cards for Android that show up when your friends call
Google has started rolling out customizable calling cards for the beta versions of its Android Contacts and Phone apps. Android Authority found clues that the company was working on the feature back in July when it did an APK teardown. Now, you can give it a try if you decide to install the beta versions of the apps. As the publication notes, Google's implementation is the direct opposite of Apple's. On iOS, your set your own photo and name that you want to show up on other people's phones when you call them. You cannot alter other people's Contact Posters, as Apple calls the feature. Meanwhile, on Android, you can't make your own calling card. The feature instead gives you a way to set a photo and a name for your contacts that show up on your screen when they call you. If you do have access to the beta Contacts app for Android, you'll now see a note that says "Try adding a calling card" when you view a contact's details. From there, you can choose a photo you have of that contact from your gallery or take a new one of them with your camera. You can also adjust the font type and color for their name. Whenever they call, that calling card will take over your phone screen. If this sounds nothing new to you, it may be because Samsung has had a profile card feature for a while now that works just like Google's implementation. It's already widely available and accessible from your contacts' profile pages.


The Verge
an hour ago
- The Verge
I talked to Sam Altman about the GPT-5 launch fiasco
On Thursday, I had dinner with Sam Altman, a few other OpenAI executives, and a small group of reporters in San Francisco. Altman answered our questions for hours. No topic was off limits, and everything, with the exception of what was said over desert, was on the record. It's uncommon to have such an extended, wide-ranging interview with a major tech CEO over a meal. But there's nothing common about the situation Altman finds himself in. ChatGPT has quickly become one of the most widely used, influential products on earth. Now, Altman is plotting an aggressive expansion into consumer hardware, brain-computer interfaces, and social media. He's interested in buying Chrome if the US government forces Google to sell it. Oh, and he wants to raise trillions of dollars to build data centers. But first, he's focused on the response to last week's rollout of GPT-5. 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'There are the people who actually felt like they had a relationship with ChatGPT, and those people we've been aware of and thinking about. And then there are hundreds of millions of other people who don't have a parasocial relationship with ChatGPT, but did get very used to the fact that it responded to them in a certain way, and would validate certain things, and would be supportive in certain ways.' 'You will definitely see some companies go make Japanese anime sex bots because they think that they've identified something here that works,' he said in a not-so-subtle dig at Grok. 'You will not see us do that. We will continue to work hard at making a useful app, and we will try to let users use it the way they want, but not so much that people who have really fragile mental states get exploited accidentally.' Altman wants ChatGPT to feel as personal as possible but not necessarily play to a specific ideology or political view. 'I don't think our products should be woke. I don't think they should be whatever the opposite of that is, either. I think our product should have a fairly center of the road, middle stance, and then you should be able to push it pretty far. If you're like, 'I want you to be super woke,' it should be super woke. And if you're like, 'I want you to be conservative,' it should reflect you.' ChatGPT has roughly quadrupled its user base in a year and is now reaching over 700 million people each week. 'Pretty soon, billions of people a day will be talking to ChatGPT,' Altman said. 'We're the fifth biggest website in the world right now. I think we're on the clear path to the third.' (That means beating Instagram and Facebook.) 'Then it gets harder. For ChatGPT to be bigger than Google, that's really hard.' For its operation to keep scaling, OpenAI needs a lot more GPUs. This is one of Altman's top priorities. 'You should expect OpenAI to spend trillions of dollars on data center construction in the not very distant future,' he confidently told the room. 'We have to make these horrible trade-offs right now,' he said. 'We have better models, and we just can't offer them because we don't have the capacity. We have other kinds of new products and services we'd love to offer.' He also thinks we're in an AI bubble. 'When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth,' he explained. 'If you look at most of the bubbles in history, like the tech bubble, there was a real thing. Tech was really important. The internet was a really big deal. People got overexcited. Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes.' He confirmed recent reports that OpenAI is planning to fund a brain-computer interface startup to rival Elon Musk's Neuralink. 'I think neural interfaces are cool ideas to explore. I would like to be able to think something and have ChatGPT respond to it.' Does Fidji Simo joining OpenAI to run 'applications' imply there will be other standalone apps besides ChatGPT? 'Yes, you should expect that from us.' He hinted at his social media ambitions: 'I am interested in whether or not it is possible to build a much cooler kind of social experience with AI.' He also said, 'If Chrome is really going to sell, we should take a look at it.' While Altman has a lot of interests, it's not actually clear that running OpenAI over the long run is one of them. 'I'm not a naturally well-suited person to be a public company CEO,' he said at one point. 'Can you imagine me on an earnings call?' I then asked if he would be CEO in a few years. 'I mean, maybe an AI is in three years. That's a long time.' Here are some other things Altman said: Interesting career moves this week: More to click on: If you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe to The Verge, which includes unlimited access to Command Line and all of our reporting. As always, I welcome your feedback. You can respond here or ping me securely on Signal. Thanks for subscribing. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Alex Heath Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All AI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Command Line Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All OpenAI Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Tech