Latest news with #interns
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
College Grads Are Lab Rats in the Great AI Experiment
Companies are eliminating the grunt work that used to train young professionals — and they don't seem to have a clear plan for what comes next. AI is analyzing documents, writing briefing notes, creating Power Point presentations or handling customer service queries, and — surprise! — now the younger humans who normally do that work are struggling to find jobs. Recently, the chief executive officer of AI firm Anthropic predicted AI would wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. The reason is simple. Companies are often advised to treat ChatGPT 'like an intern,' and some are doing so at the expense of human interns.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
We're offloading mental tasks to AI. It could be making us stupid
Koen Van Belle, a test automation engineer who codes for a living, had been using the artificial intelligence large language model Copilot for about six months when one day the internet went down. Forced to return to his traditional means of work using his memory and what he had decades of experience doing, he struggled to remember some of the syntax he coded with. 'I couldn't remember how it works,' Van Belle, who manages a computer programming business in Belgium, told Salon in a video call. 'I became way too reliant on AI … so I had to turn it off and re-learn some skills.' As a manager in his company, Van Belle oversees the work of a handful of interns each year. Because their company has limits on the use of AI, the interns had to curb their use as well, he said. But afterward, the amount and quality of their coding was drastically reduced, Van Belle said. 'They are able to explain to ChatGPT what they want, it generates something and they hope it works,' Van Belle said. 'When they get into the real world and have to build a new project, they will fail.' Since AI models like Copilot and ChatGPT came online in 2022, they have exploded in popularity, with one survey conducted in January estimating that more than half of Americans have used Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. Research examining how these programs affect users is limited because they are so new, but some early studies suggest they are already impacting our brains. 'In some sense, these models are like brain control interfaces or implants — they're that powerful,' said Kanaka Rajan, a computational neuroscientist and founding faculty member at the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University. 'In some sense, they're changing the input streams to the networks that live in our brains.' In a February study conducted by researchers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University, groups of people working with data worked more efficiently with the use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT — but used less critical thinking than a comparator group of workers who didn't use these tools. In fact, the more that workers reported trusting AI's ability to perform tasks for them, the more their critical thinking was reduced. Another 2024 study published last year reported that the reduction in critical thinking stemmed from relying on AI to perform a greater proportion of the brain work necessary to perform tasks in a process called cognitive offloading. Cognitive offloading is something we do everyday when we write our shopping list, make an event on the calendar or use a calculator. To reduce our brain's workload, we can 'offload' some of its tasks to technology, which can help us perform more complex tasks. However, it has also been linked in other research to things like having a worse memory. As a review published in March concluded: 'Although laboratory studies have demonstrated that cognitive offloading has benefits for task performance, it is not without costs.' It's handy, for example, to be able to rely on your brain to remember the grocery list in case it gets lost. So how much cognitive offloading is good for us — and how is AI accelerating those costs? This concept is not new: The Greek philosopher Socrates was afraid that the invention of writing would make humans dumber because we wouldn't exercise our memory as much. He famously never wrote anything down, though his student, Plato, did. Some argue Socrates was right and the trend is escalating: with each major technological advancement, we increasingly rely on tools outside of ourselves to perform tasks we once accomplished in-house. Many people may not perform routine calculations in their head anymore due to the invention of the calculator, and most people use a GPS instead of pulling out a physical map or going off physical markers to guide them to their is no doubt these inventions have made us more efficient, but the concern lies in what happens when we stop flexing the parts of the brain that are responsible for these tasks. And over time, some argue we might lose those abilities. There is an old ethos of "use it or lose it" that may apply to cognitive tasks as well. Despite concerns that calculators would destroy our ability to do math, research has generally shown that there is little difference in performance when calculators are used and when they are not. Some have even been critical that the school system still generally spends so much time teaching students foundational techniques like learning the multiplication tables when they can now solve those sorts of problems at the touch of a button, said Matthew Fisher, a researcher at Southern Methodist University. On the other hand, others argue that this part of the curriculum is important because it provides the foundational mathematical building blocks from which students learn other parts of math and science, he explained. As Fisher told Salon in a phone interview: "If we just totally get rid of that mathematical foundation, our intuition for later mathematical study, as well as just for living in the world and understanding basic relationships, is going to be off.' Other studies suggest relying on newer forms of technology does influence our brain activity. Research, for example, has found that students' brains were more active when they handwrote information rather than typing it on a keyboard and when using a pen and paper versus a stylus and a tablet. Research also shows that 'use it or lose it' is somewhat true in the context of the skills we learn. New neurons are produced in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for learning. However, most of these new cells will die off unless the brain puts effort and focus into learning over a period of time. People can certainly learn from artificial intelligence, but the danger lies in forgoing the learning process to simply regurgitate information that it feeds us. In 2008, after about two decades of the public internet, The Atlantic published a cover story asking "Is Google making us stupid?" Since then, and with the emergence of smart phones and social media, research has shown that too much time on the internet can lower our ability to concentrate, make us feel isolated and lower our self-esteem. One 2011 review found that people increasingly turn to the internet for difficult questions and are less able to recall the information that they found on the internet when using it to answer those questions. Instead, participants had an enhanced ability to recall where they found it. 'The internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves,' the authors concluded. In 2021, Fisher co-authored research that also found people who used internet searches more had an inflated sense of their own knowledge, reporting exaggerated claims about things they read on the internet compared to a control group who learned things without it. He termed this phenomenon the 'Google effect.' 'What we seem to have a hard time doing is differentiating where our internally mastered knowledge stops and where the knowledge we can just look up but feels a lot like our knowledge begins,' Fisher said. Many argue that AI takes this even further and cuts out a critical part of our imaginative process. In an opinion piece for Inside Higher Education, John Warner wrote that overrelying on ChatGPT for written tasks 'risks derailing the important exploration of an idea that happens when we write.' 'This is particularly true in school contexts, when the learning that happens inside the student is far more important than the finished product they produce on a given assignment,' Warner wrote. Much of the energy dedicated to understanding how AI affects our brains has been focused on adolescents because younger generations use these tools more and may also be more vulnerable to changes that occur because their brains are still developing. One 2023 study, for example, found junior high school students who used AI more had less of an ability to adapt to new social situations. Another 2023 paper also found that students who more heavily relied on AI to answer multiple choice questions summarizing a reading excerpt scored lower than those who relied on their memory alone, said study author Qirui Ju, a researcher at Duke University. 'Writing things down is helping you to really understand the material,' Ju told Salon in a phone interview. 'But if you replace that process with AI, even if you write higher quality stuff with less typos and more coherent sentences, it replaces the learning process so that the learning quality is lower.' To get a better idea of what is happening with people's brains when using large language models, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology connected 32-channel electroencephalograms to three groups of college-age students who were all answering the same writing prompts: One group used ChatGPT, another used Google and the third group simply used their own brains. Although the study was small, with just 55 participants, its results suggest large language models could affect our memory, attention and creativity, said Nataliya Kos'myna, the leader of the 'Your Brain on LLM' project, and a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab. After writing the essay, 85% of the group using Google and the group using their brains could recall a quote from their writing, compared to only 20% of those who used large language models, Kos'myna said. Furthermore, 16% of people using AI said they didn't even recognize their essay as their own after completing it, compared to 0% of students in the other group, she added. Overall, there was less brain activity and interconnectivity in the group that used ChatGPT compared to the groups that used Google or their brains only. Specifically, activity in the regions of the brain corresponding to language processing, imagination and creative writing in students using large language models were reduced compared to students in other groups, Kos'myna said. The research team also performed another analysis in which students first used their brains for the tasks before switching to performing the same task with the large language models, and vice versa. Those who used their brains first and then went on to try their hand at the task with the assistance of AI appeared to perform better and had the aforementioned areas of their brains activated. But the same was not true for the group that used AI first and then went on to try it with just their brains, Kos'myna said. 'It looks like the large language models did not necessarily help you and provide any additional interconnectivity in the brain,' Kos'myna told Salon in a video call. 'However, there is potential … that if you actually use your brain and then rework the task when being exposed to the tool, it might be beneficial.' Whether AI hinders or promotes our capacity for learning may depend more on how we use it than whether we use it. In other words, it is not AI that is the problem, but our overreliance on it. Van Belle, in Belgium, now uses large language models to write social media posts for his company because he doesn't feel like that is where his skills are most refined and the process can be very time-consuming otherwise. 'I would like to think that I would be able to make a fairly decent LinkedIn post by myself, but it would take me an extra amount of time,' he said. 'That is time that I don't want to waste on something I don't really care about.' These days, he sees AI as a tool, which it can be — as long as we don't offload too much of our brain power on it. 'We've been on this steady march now for thousands of years and it feels like we are at the culmination of deciding what is left for us to know and for us to do,' Fisher said. 'It raises real questions about how best to balance technology and get the most out of it without sacrificing these essentially human things.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trivago watched its revenue forecast plummet from $1 billion to nearly zero—so the company tapped a set of former interns to turn it around
Interns are often brushed off for being at the bottom of the totem pole, but at some companies, it's become a part of the secret recipe for landing a gig in the C-suite. Trivago is part of a list of companies, including Nike, HP, and EY, that have promoted former coffee-fetchers to the top of the corporate ladder. In the matter of a month during the pandemic, travel planning company Trivago's revenue forecast plummeted from $1 billion to virtually zero. It was a 'near-death experience' that resulted in a 'deep winter' for the company, according to CEO Johannes Thomas. Actual revenue sank 70% to 249 million euros in 2020 from 839 million euros in 2019, the latter equivalent to about $940 million at the time. But even as restrictions were lifted and travel surged back, Trivago still had not recovered—and thus it was time for a shake-up in the C-suite. 'After you have a near-death experience and three years of depression, you have a team that doesn't believe anymore,' Thomas, who was brought in as CEO to turn the company around in 2023, tells Fortune. But for Thomas and other executives, what's notable about their experiences is not their most recent roles—it's how they started their careers. Thomas first joined Trivago in 2011 as an intern working in online marketing, and he's quietly assembled other former interns, including Chief Financial Officer Wolf Schmuhl and Chief Marketing Officer Jasmine Ezz. Thomas says having leaders who understand the business and its culture from the ground up are key to returning the company to its former glory. And while Trivago's revenue for 2024 was still half what it was five years ago in 2019, first quarter 2025 revenues increased by 22% to $124 million. While retirees are often known for traveling frequently, one of Trivago's focuses is on young people—and it makes sense considering Gen Z's spending habits. The generation was the only group that reported an increase in year-to-year travel spending between 2023 and 2024, according to Berkshire Hathaway's State of Travel Insurance Report. The average trip was over $11,000. '(We're) trying to build an ecosystem—a culture and environment where young people can grow and where people can thrive,' Thomas says. That's another reason why Trivago's C-suite is not stacked with Gen Xers, but instead millennials who understand how young people think, spend, and travel. According to Thomas, the average Trivago customer is 34 years old, and 20% have families. By focusing on young people as a company, Trivago not only is able to tap into a customer market, but also an employee talent market. 'You get rock stars on the senior level football team,' Thomas says. 'And then you have a second team of young talents that have a chance to grow in this combination we try to execute on.' Trivago is not the only company that realized that those with the strongest roots to their company are the best leaders. Last year, Nike became the latest Fortune 500 company to name a former intern as a CEO. Elliot Hill began at the sports-gear giant at age 19 as an apparel sales intern and has only ever had one company at the top of his paychecks. In a statement last year, Hill said Nike has 'always been a core part of who I am.' HP CEO Enrique Lores, Principal Financial Group CEO Deanna Strable, and EY CEO Janet Truncale all similarly went from fetching coffees as an intern to being promoted to the corner office. And while focusing on hard work as an intern may set your path in motion to one day become chief executive, Lores admits that there's also an element of luck. 'You can be very smart or very good,' he previously told Fortune. 'But you also need to be lucky, and that's a very important thing for all of us to accept.' This story was originally featured on
News.com.au
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
‘What?': 19-year-old's comment to 23-year-old at work unearths wild trend
A young woman is going viral for sharing the comment made to her at work that left her saying, 'What?' US worker Francesca, 23, went viral after she shared a comment from an intern at work that left her floored. She complained that after telling a 19-year-old intern her age, the intern replied, 'You look good for your age'. Francesca was shocked and took to social media, adding, the comment made her say, 'Babe what?' Francesca's viral post prompted other workers to share their horrifying encounters with interns or anyone under 21 years old. What became abundantly clear is the younger Gen Zers are turning on the older Gen Zers. So even if you're part of the youngest working generation you can still be made to feel old at work. No one is safe …. And let's not even start on how Millennials are getting treated. 'Try being 27. They act like I'm their mother's age,' one warned. Someone else shared that she gets told she 'looks so young,' which makes her mad because she considers herself young. 'I would have called HR,' another joked. 'That is a fireable offence,' one claimed. 'Wait till you hit 29, and people tell you, 'OMG, you don't look 29. You look so young,' another shared. 'Imagine being 29, they act like I'm on the brink of death,' someone else echoed. 'I'm 28 they call me grandma,' someone else confessed. A 24-year-old said she'd been made to feel 'ancient' lately because of a gaggle of 19-year-old interns. A 28-year-old man said that when he shared his age at work, his younger co-worker looked genuinely sad for him. 'I told my co-worker I was turning 28 he looked back at me and said 'no' with the saddest face as if I was going to die right then and there,' he said. Someone else shared a harrowing tale of overhearing an intern describe someone as 'old' when he was only 24. 'I had to walk away. These interns are something this year,' she admitted. Someone else said the whole encounter was 'low-key concerning' and not great for society. 'Why is the age that's considered old getting younger and younger? The implications this has is potentially devastating,' they claimed.
Forbes
7 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Visa Pause Could Leave U.S. With Fewer New Doctors Amid Shortage
About a quarter of doctors currently in practice were educated in foreign medical schools and the United States faces a growing physician shortage. Newly-minted M.D.s are among the thousands of students, trainees, teachers and exchange visitors put in limbo after the Trump State department hit pause on new visa appointments last week, as it develops a plan to vet visa candidates' social media. For foreign-born and educated doctors who haven't snagged an appointment yet, the timing couldn't be worse—most medical residencies officially begin July 1, with orientations for the newest M.D.s (known as interns or P.G. 1s) starting some time in June. International medical graduates without visas could miss their start date, putting their positions at risk and leaving hospitals in the lurch, since interns provide hands-on medical care under the supervision of more experienced doctors. According to the American Medical Association, about a quarter of doctors currently in practice in the U.S. were educated in foreign medical schools and the nation faces a growing physician shortage. But before a foreign-educated doctor can be licensed to practice medicine in the United States, they must complete a U.S. residency, making these programs crucial to keeping the needed supply of foreign doctors flowing. In March, in what's known as the 'main residency match,' 37,677 graduates of medical schools and schools of osteopathy were placed into first year jobs. Of those, 6,653 were foreign-born students who graduated from a non-U.S. medical school per data from the National Resident Matching Program. (Another 3,108 were U.S. citizen graduates of foreign medical schools.) These figures don't include the 2,374 positions that were initially unfilled in the March match; 300 of those jobs later went to foreign-born and educated students. 'Some people are saying, 'Oh, maybe [foreign doctors] are taking all the spots,' says Sebastian Arruarana, a resident physician at the Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. 'But no, they're not taking the spots—there's a bigger number of positions to be filled than the number of medical students graduating here.' Most international medical graduates (who aren't U.S. citizens) come to the United States on J-1 visas, which are reserved for exchange visitors participating in teaching, research and other training. Many of this year's incoming interns have already made their visa appointments, but about 5%—or more than 300 doctors—have not, estimates Zain Abdin, a Chicago-based physician and founder of the international medical graduate support organization IMG Helping Hands. Arruarana, who is also a social media influencer focused on international medical graduate issues, has been hearing from some of those doctors stuck in limbo. 'We are stuck and we are helpless,' one international medical graduate who matched at a Texas medical center said in a message to Arruarana. The new resident's orientation program began on June 3, which is on the early side. 'I don't know what to do in this position.' 'I just got matched on May 23 after so many challenges and against all odds,' another messaged Arruarana. 'My program just started the J1 visa sponsorship process, so I don't have an interview slot.' Some residencies start later in the year, explains Abdin, primarily in September. Those residents, on the whole, are more likely to be impacted by this visa hold. Big states like New York and Florida—where 1,592 and 698 foreign-born international medical graduates matched this March, respectively—are home to the most foreign medical residents, according to NRMP data. But they represent only 24% and 19% of residents. Less populous states like North Dakota, Wyoming and Arkansas—all of which supported Trump in the last election—rely more on foreign medical residents, with foreign-born and educated medical graduates making up 38%, 33% and 32% of their incoming residents, NRMP data shows. The ongoing appointments pause affects all student visa types, including F-1 visas, primarily issued to foreign undergraduates and graduates at colleges and universities, and M-1 visas, issued most often to foreign students studying at trade schools or in non-academic programs like flight school. State department correspondence said the scheduling pause would stay in place until further guidance is issued 'in the coming days,' Politico reported last week. In the meantime, leadership from the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG), which essentially serves as a gatekeeper for foreign medical graduates entering the U.S., is attempting to gain an exception for physicians, according to Arruarana, who says he spoke with a staffer there. An email from the ECFMG warned current residents who need to renew their visas not to travel outside the U.S. until the pause is ended. The ECFMG did not return Forbes' request for comment. More From Forbes
