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Is your job safe? Microsoft lists 40 professions chatbots could replace

Is your job safe? Microsoft lists 40 professions chatbots could replace

India Today3 days ago
A new Microsoft study has spotlighted the types of jobs most likely to be reshaped by generative AI tools, raising fresh questions about how automation could transform the modern workplace.The research, based on more than 200,000 anonymised interactions with Microsoft's Copilot chatbot in the US, examined which professions overlap most with the capabilities of AI. The findings suggest that roles heavily dependent on processing, analysing, and communicating information may see the greatest impact.advertisementWHO'S TOP THE LIST?Topping the chart are interpreters and translators, scoring 0.49 on AI applicability, closely followed by historians (0.48), passenger attendants (0.47), and service sales representatives (0.46). Writers and authors (0.45), customer service executives (0.44), CNC tool programmers (0.44), and telephone operators (0.42) also ranked high.
Other roles flagged by the study include ticket agents, radio hosts, telemarketers, news analysts, political scientists, editors, PR professionals, and even data scientists. With scores ranging between 0.34 and 0.49, these careers stretch across diverse fields from education and communication to finance, hospitality, and technology, showcasing the far-reaching influence of generative AI.WHY THESE JOBS ARE AT RISK?Researchers noted that many of these positions involve repetitive tasks that AI can readily replicate, such as drafting content, summarising large amounts of information, or responding to routine queries. Tools like Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT are already performing such functions in various industries.Interestingly, the report stops short of predicting whether these jobs will be lost altogether. Instead, it emphasises that while AI adoption is increasing rapidly, its effects will likely depend on how workplaces adapt. Experts remain divided: some warn of significant white-collar job displacement, while others believe AI will ultimately enhance productivity and pave the way for new career opportunities.For now, the message is clear: even for those in high-risk professions like translators, there's no cause for panic but adaptability will be key. As AI becomes a more integral part of daily work, learning how to collaborate with these tools may prove just as valuable as the skills they're designed to support.- EndsMust Watch
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'Got Humbled': Vibe Coder Caught Using AI By Boss Gets Schooled
'Got Humbled': Vibe Coder Caught Using AI By Boss Gets Schooled

NDTV

time3 hours ago

  • NDTV

'Got Humbled': Vibe Coder Caught Using AI By Boss Gets Schooled

For a long time, writing code meant that software engineers sat long hours in front of a computer, typing out lines of instructions in a programming language. But in recent times, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has allowed anyone to 'vibe code', meaning the technology churns out the code after a user feeds it what they want. Now, an intern working at two places who used a similar modus operandi has revealed how the vibe conding tactic backfired for them. As per the now-viral post, the user said they were using Cursor/GPT to ship the product quickly whilst working at two companies. "I'm currently interning at 2 companies SRE at one, and SDE at a very early-stage startup (like 20 employees). At the startup, it's just me and the CTO in tech. They're funded ($5M), but super early," wrote the user in the r/developersIndia subreddit. While all was going well, the CTO of one of the companies started asking them in-depth questions about their code and this is where things turned pear-shaped. "The CTO started asking deep dive questions about the code. Stuff like, "Why did you structure it this way?" or "Explain what this function does internally." The code was mostly AI-generated, and I honestly couldn't explain parts of it properly." "He straight up told me: "I don't mind if you use AI, but you have to know what your code is doing." Then he started explaining my code to me. Bruh. I was cooked." The OP said the entire experience was 'super humbling' as he had been vibe coding without really understanding the "deeper stuff like architecture, modularisation, and writing clean, production-level code". 'How did you even...' As the post went viral, garnering hundreds of upvotes, social media users agreed with the CTO's remarks, while others questioned how the OP had landed the internship without knowing what the code meant. "I am working as QA, and you can't replace experience. You will have to learn over time. But asking questions is also a good approach. Why and how," said one user while another added: "Get to know your application's core system design. Decide your architecture which can scale in production later. Now use this as a knowledge base in Cursor/ChatGPT." A third commented: "If you can't say what that code is doing by looking at it, then how did you even get 2 internships?" A fourth said: "Best way to learn how to write clean code is reading open source project code. Hands down its the best way to learn plus have a curious mind." Notably, the term vibe coding has been popularised by Andrej Karpathy, who has worked with companies like Tesla and OpenAI.

AI researchers are negotiating $250 million pay packages, just like NBA stars
AI researchers are negotiating $250 million pay packages, just like NBA stars

Time of India

time3 hours ago

  • Time of India

AI researchers are negotiating $250 million pay packages, just like NBA stars

Academy Empower your mind, elevate your skills Over the summer, Matt Deitke got a phone call from Mark Zuckerberg Meta 's chief wanted Deitke, a 24-year-old artificial intelligence researcher who had recently helped found a startup, to join Meta's research effort dedicated to "superintelligence," a technology that could hypothetically exceed the human brain. The company promised him around $125 million in stock and cash over four years if he came offer was not enough to lure Deitke, who wanted to stick with his startup, two people with knowledge of the talks said. He turned Zuckerberg Zuckerberg personally met with Deitke. Then Meta returned with a revised offer of around $250 million over four years, with potentially up to $100 million of that to be paid in the first year, the people said. The compensation jump was so startling that Deitke asked his peers what to do. After many discussions, some of them urged him to take the deal -- which he Valley's AI talent wars have become so frenzied -- and so outlandish -- that they increasingly resemble the stratospheric market for NBA AI researchers are being recruited as if they are Steph Curry or LeBron James, with nine-figure compensation packages structured to be paid out over several years. To navigate the froth, many of the 20-somethings have turned to unofficial agents and entourages to strategize. And they are playing hardball with the companies to get top dollar, much as basketball players shop for the best deals from difference is that unlike NBA teams, deep-pocketed AI companies like Meta, OpenAI and Google have no salary caps. (Curry's most recent four-year contract with the Golden State Warriors was $35 million less than Deitke's deal with Meta.) That has made the battles for AI talent even the past few weeks, recruiting AI free agents has become a spectacle on social media, much like the period before a trade deadline in sports. As Meta, Microsoft, Google and OpenAI have poached employees from one another, job announcements have been posted online with graphics resembling major sports trades, made by the online streaming outlet TBPN , which hosts an ESPN-like show about the tech and business world."BREAKING: Microsoft has poached over 20 staff members from DeepMind over the last six months," read one recent TBPN post about Microsoft's hiring from Google's DeepMind Hays, a co-host of TBPN, said that as tech and AI have gone mainstream, more people are following the recruitment fray "the way our friends from college obsess over sports -- the personalities, the players, the leagues."On Wednesday, Zuckerberg said Meta planned to continue throwing money at AI talent "because we have conviction that superintelligence is going to improve every aspect of what we do." Superintelligent AI would not just improve the company's business, he said, but would also become a personal tool that "has the potential to begin an exciting new era of individual empowerment."A Meta spokesperson declined to comment. Deitke did not respond to a request for job market for AI researchers has long had parallels to professional sports. In 2012, after three academics at the University at Toronto published a research paper describing a seminal AI system that could recognize objects like flowers and cars, they auctioned themselves off to the highest corporate bidder -- Google -- for $44 kicked off a race for talent across the tech industry. By 2014, Peter Lee, Microsoft's head of research, was likening the market to that for up-and-coming pro football players, many of whom were making about $1 million a year."Last year, the cost of a top, world-class deep learning expert was about the same as a top NFL quarterback prospect," Lee told Bloomberg BusinessWeek at the time, referring to a type of AI specialist. "The cost of that talent is pretty remarkable."The leverage that AI researchers have in negotiating job terms has only increased since OpenAI released the ChatGPT chatbot in 2022, setting off a race to lead the technology. They have been aided by scarcity: Only a small pool of people have the technical know-how and experience to work on advanced artificial intelligence because AI is built differently from traditional software. These systems learn by analyzing enormous amounts of digital data. Few researchers have experience with the most advanced systems, which require giant pools of computing power available to only a handful of result has been a fresh talent war, with compensation soaring into the hundreds of millions of dollars a year, from millions of dollars a April, Zuckerberg -- whose company was struggling to advance its AI research -- dived in by sending personal messages to potential recruits, offering them larger and larger approach was similar to that of sports franchise owners, two Meta employees said. Even if the offers seemed absurd, if the new hires could help increase revenue by even half a percent -- especially for a company that is closing in on a $2 trillion market capitalization -- it would be worth it, the people said."If I'm Zuck and I'm spending $80 billion in one year on capital expenditures alone, is it worth kicking in another $5 billion or more to acquire a truly world-class team to bring the company to the next level?" Hays said. "The answer is obviously yes."Meta's initial offers to engineers varied but hovered in the mid-tens of millions of dollars, three people familiar with the process company also offered recruits something that was arguably more attractive than money: computing power. Some potential hires were told they would be allotted 30,000 graphical processing units, or GPUs, for their AI research, one of the people said. GPUs, which are powerful chips ideal for running the calculations that fuel AI, are highly has hired with the help of the List, a document with the names of the top minds in AI, two people familiar with the effort said. Many on the List have three main qualifications: a doctorate in an AI-related field, experience at a top lab and contributions to AI research breakthroughs, one of the people Wall Street Journal previously reported some details of the researchers on the List have created chat groups on Slack and Discord to discuss offers, two people in the groups said. When someone lands an offer, they can drop the details in the group chats and ask peers to weigh in. (AI is a tight-knit field where people often know one another.) They trade information about which companies to approach for another offer so they can build up their price, the people with friends can be just as important as the money. After a researcher joins a new lab, the first thing that person often does is try to recruit friends, two people familiar with the process talent wars have started causing pain. OpenAI has changed its compensation structure to account for the shift in the market, employees at the company said, and is asking those approached by competitors to consult executives before immediately accepting offers."Are we countering? Yes," Mark Chen, OpenAI's chief research officer, said at a company meeting this month, according to a recording reviewed by The New York Times. But he added that OpenAI had not matched Meta's offers because "I personally think that in order to work here, you have to believe in the upside of OpenAI."OpenAI declined to comment. (The Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming copyright infringement in relation to news content related to AI systems. The two companies have denied the claims.)Not all of Meta's overtures have succeeded. The company has been rebuffed by some researchers, two people said, partly because Zuckerberg's vision for artificial intelligence was unclear compared to those at other the frenzy has allowed even little-known researchers like Deitke to chart their own who recently dropped out of a computer science Ph.D. program at the University of Washington , had moonlighted at a Seattle AI lab called the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. There, he led the development of a project called Molmo, an AI chatbot that juggles images, sounds and text -- the kind of system that Meta is trying to November, Deitke and several Allen Institute colleagues founded Vercept, a startup that is trying to build AI agents, which can use other software on the internet to autonomously perform tasks. With about 10 employees, Vercept has raised $16.5 million from investors such as former Google chief executive Eric came Deitke's back-and-forth with Zuckerberg. After Deitke accepted Meta's roughly $250 million four-year offer, Vercept's CEO posted on social media, "We look forward to joining Matt on his private island next year."

Apple CEO Tim Cook tells staff AI is ‘ours to grab' in hourlong pep talk
Apple CEO Tim Cook tells staff AI is ‘ours to grab' in hourlong pep talk

Time of India

time4 hours ago

  • Time of India

Apple CEO Tim Cook tells staff AI is ‘ours to grab' in hourlong pep talk

Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook , holding a rare all-hands meeting following earnings results, rallied employees around the company's artificial intelligence prospects and an 'amazing' pipeline of products. The executive gathered staff at Apple's on-campus auditorium Friday in Cupertino, California, telling them that the AI revolution is 'as big or bigger' as the internet, smartphones, cloud computing and apps. 'Apple must do this. Apple will do this. This is sort of ours to grab,' Cook told employees, according to people aware of the meeting. 'We will make the investment to do it.' The iPhone maker has been late to AI, debuting Apple Intelligence months after OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Microsoft Corp. and others flooded the market with products like ChatGPT. And when Apple finally released its AI tools, they fell flat. But Cook struck an optimistic tone, noting that Apple is typically late to promising new technologies. 'We've rarely been first,' the executive told staffers. 'There was a PC before the Mac; there was a smartphone before the iPhone; there were many tablets before the iPad; there was an MP3 player before iPod.' But Apple invented the 'modern' versions of those product categories, he said. 'This is how I feel about AI.' An Apple spokesperson declined to comment on the gathering. The hourlong meeting addressed a range of topics, including the retirement of operating chief Jeff Williams, increasing Apple TV+ viewership and advances in health care with features like the AirPods Pro hearing-aid technology. It also touched on donations and community service by Apple employees, the company's goal to become carbon neutral by 2030, and the impact of regulations. 'The reality is that Big Tech is under a lot of scrutiny around the world,' Cook said. 'We need to continue to push on the intention of the regulation and get them to offer that up, instead of these things that destroy the user experience and user privacy and security.' Cook often holds town hall-style chats when visiting Apple's offices around the world, but companywide meetings from the Steve Jobs Theater at headquarters are unusual. The remarks followed a blockbuster earnings report, with sales growing nearly 10% during the June quarter. That beat Wall Street expectations and eased concerns about iPhone demand and a slowdown in China. Apple still faces myriad challenges, including Trump administration tariffs and a regulatory crackdown on its business practices. The company said Thursday that tariffs would bring a $1.1 billion headwind this quarter, though Apple was upbeat about sales growth. It also said that App Store revenue rose by a percentage in the double digits last quarter, despite efforts in the EU and elsewhere to further restrict that business. Echoing comments he made during the earnings conference call, Cook told employees the company is investing in AI in a 'big way.' He said 12,000 workers were hired in the last year, with 40% of the new hires joining in research and development roles. Apple's chip development efforts, led by executive Johny Srouji, are key to the company's AI strategy, Cook said. Apple is working on a more powerful cloud-computing chip — code-named Baltra — to power artificial intelligence features, Bloomberg News has reported. It's also setting up a new AI server manufacturing facility in Houston. The meeting included Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering, who discussed the future of Apple's Siri voice assistant. The company had planned to roll out a Siri overhaul as part of Apple Intelligence earlier this year, adding the ability to tap into user data to better fulfill requests. It was delayed, spurring management changes for the company's AI work. Federighi explained that the problem was caused by trying to roll out a version of Siri that merged two different systems: one for handling current commands — like setting timers — and another based on large language models, the software behind generative AI. 'We initially wanted to do a hybrid architecture, but we realized that approach wasn't going to get us to Apple quality,' Federighi said. Now, Apple is working on a version of Siri that moves to an entirely new architecture for all of its capabilities. That iteration is slated for as early as spring, Bloomberg News has reported, though Apple executives haven't confirmed a timeline other than a release next year. 'The work we've done on this end-to-end revamp of Siri has given us the results we needed,' the engineering executive told employees. 'This has put us in a position to not just deliver what we announced, but to deliver a much bigger upgrade than we envisioned. There is no project people are taking more seriously.' Federighi cited leadership changes, including putting Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell and his headset software leadership team in charge of Siri, as a driving force in improving the product. He said Rockwell and his group have 'supercharged' the company's work in the area. In his speech, Cook also pushed employees to move more quickly to weave AI into their work and future products. 'All of us are using AI in a significant way already, and we must use it as a company as well,' Cook said. 'To not do so would be to be left behind, and we can't do that.' Employees should push to deploy AI tools faster, and urge their managers and service and support teams to do the same, he said. Cook also addressed the company's retail strategy, stressing that the current plan is to focus on opening new stores in emerging markets and upping the investment in Apple's online store. The iPhone maker is opening outlets in India, the United Arab Emirates and China this year, and is preparing to add its first location in Saudi Arabia next year. 'We need to be in more countries, and you'll see us go into more emerging markets in particular,' Cook said. That doesn't mean Apple will ignore other places, he said, but a 'disproportionate amount of growth' will be in new areas. The CEO also shared his enthusiasm about upcoming products, though he didn't get specific. 'I have never felt so much excitement and so much energy before as right now,' he said. Bloomberg News has previously reported that Apple plans to launch its first foldable iPhone next year and is also working on a stream of smart home devices. New headset products, smart glasses, a push into robotics and a redesigned iPhone for the two-decade anniversary are also underway. 'The product pipeline, which I can't talk about: It's amazing, guys. It's amazing,' Cook said. 'Some of it you'll see soon, some of it will come later, but there's a lot to see.'

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