ai

Youth express higher concern over AI job disruption, global survey indicates

A Randstad survey of global workers shows that younger employees are significantly more worried than older counterparts about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on jobs and career prospects.

Respondents aged under 35 reported higher levels of concern that AI could disrupt employment, reshape skill demands and erode job security.

The survey highlights a generational divide in attitudes toward AI adoption: while many older workers express cautious optimism, younger workers often point to risks related to hiring, task automation and future opportunities.

Employers are urged to address these concerns by investing in skills development, training programmes and transparent communication about how AI will be deployed in the workplace.

The findings come amid broader global discussions on the future of work, with AI increasingly integrated into business processes such as recruitment, project planning and administrative automation.

Analysts suggest that targeted education and retraining initiatives could help younger employees adapt and benefit from AI-driven changes rather than feel displaced by them.

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New AI system helps improve cross-neurotype communication

Researchers at Tufts University have developed an AI-based learning tool designed to improve communication between autistic and neurotypical people. The project focuses on helping non-autistic users better understand autistic communication preferences.

The tool, called NeuroBridge, uses large language models to simulate everyday conversations and highlight how wording, tone and clarity can be interpreted differently. Users are guided towards more direct and unambiguous communication styles that reduce misunderstanding.

Unlike many interventions, NeuroBridge does not aim to change how autistic people communicate. The AI system instead trains neurotypical users to adapt their own communication, reflecting principles from the social model of disability.

The research, presented at the ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, received a best student paper award. Early testing showed users gained clearer insight into how everyday language choices can affect cross-neurotype interactions.

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New consortium applies AI to early drug research

A new AI-driven drug discovery initiative with a budget exceeding €60 million has launched, bringing together academic and industry partners across Europe and North America. University College London is acting as the lead academic partner in the UK.

The five-year LIGAND-AI programme is funded through the Innovative Health Initiative and aims to speed up early drug discovery. Researchers will generate large open datasets showing how molecules bind to human proteins, supporting the training of advanced AI models.

The consortium, led by Pfizer and the Structural Genomics Consortium, includes 18 partners in nine countries. Work will focus on proteins linked to diseases such as cancer, neurological conditions and rare disorders.

UK based UCL scientists will help build global research networks and promote open sharing of protein samples and machine learning models. Organisers say the project supports open science and long-term goals to map chemical modulators for every human protein.

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WEF adds a AI helper for participants

Attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos are getting a new tool to navigate the packed schedule, an AI ‘concierge’ built by Salesforce and embedded in the forum’s official mobile app. The assistant, called EVA (Event Virtual Agent), is designed to help visitors keep track of sessions and meetings and decide what to focus on amid a week of nonstop events.

Salesforce says the main problem at Davos is not getting around in the snow but managing ‘cognitive overload’, with dozens of meetings, hundreds of sessions and constant last-minute changes. The company argues the tool could make the experience easier for regular attendees who do not have personal staff to brief them, plan their day, and reshuffle schedules when plans change.

EVA is built on Salesforce’s Agentforce platform and is trained on WEF data and institutional knowledge, which the company describes as ‘trusted’ and governed by permissions. The goal, Salesforce says, is for EVA to generate quick, context-aware briefings for upcoming sessions, recommend what to do next, and keep plans updated in real time as agendas shift.

Salesforce executives are positioning EVA as more than a simple chatbot, describing it as an ‘agentic’ system that can connect a user’s interests with relevant information and, over time, move from offering recommendations to taking actions. Erin Oles, a senior vice-president at Salesforce, said the broader idea is to reduce the burden on people by surfacing only what is appropriate to the right person, within existing rules and controls.

WEF leadership has also embraced the concept, saying it is deploying AI agents to support staff in event preparation and to improve the participant experience. WEF President and CEO Børge Brende said the aim is to put the organisation’s institutional knowledge directly into the hands of attendees, rather than simply optimising schedules.

Behind the scenes, Salesforce is also providing the technical plumbing that helps run the event, including tools to connect WEF’s CRM with finance, HR, travel and operations systems, and analytics to track engagement across WEF initiatives. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said he will be using the agent himself as Davos hosts its largest edition yet, with hundreds of sessions planned.

Diplo is live reporting on all sessions from the World Economic Forum 2026 in Davos.

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Guernsey sees AI as a job transformer, not a net job killer

A BBC report highlights growing confidence among Guernsey’s business community that AI will change how work is done without reducing overall employment.

Paul Gorman, CEO of start-up Bank Aston, says AI will be embedded in workflows and may eliminate some roles while creating new ones, a view echoed by PwC, which sees adaptation rather than decline as the key challenge for the future workforce.

Educators and employers stress the need for skills development, with The Guernsey Institute working on AI-focused curricula and small creative firms using AI to compete with larger players.

While some in the creative sector describe AI as disruptive, there is broad agreement that its effects are transitional, prompting calls for policy coordination, including a proposal to establish a dedicated AI office to manage risks and opportunities.

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ChatGPT achieves perfect scores in Japan university exams

ChatGPT earned full marks in nine subjects during this year’s unified university entrance examinations in Japan. LifePrompt Inc reported that the AI achieved 97 percent accuracy across 15 subjects overall.

The subjects with perfect scores included mathematics, chemistry, informatics, and politics and economy. Performance was lower in Japanese language, where ChatGPT scored 90 percent, reflecting challenges with processing complex text.

Tests were conducted without access to the internet, with the AI relying solely on pre-stored data. Results show that ChatGPT has steadily improved since 2024, outperforming scores required for competitive programmes such as Human Sciences I at the University of Tokyo.

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Tech-dense farms emerge as a new model for future agriculture

A BBC report examines the rise of so-called ‘tech-dense’ farms, where digital tools such as AI-powered sensors, satellite imagery, and farm management software are increasingly central to agricultural operations.

While the total number of farms is declining, those that remain are investing heavily in technology to stay competitive, improve precision, and reduce input costs such as pesticides and water.

Farmers interviewed describe using smart spraying systems, data analytics, and predictive software to optimise planting, monitor crop health, and respond to weather or pest risks in real time.

Agronomists suggest that these innovations could stabilise food supplies and potentially lower consumer prices, though adoption varies by age, cost, and willingness to change, highlighting a broader transition toward treating farming as a data-driven business.

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Davos 2026 reveals competing visions for AI

AI has dominated debates at Davos 2026, matching traditional concerns such as geopolitics and global trade while prompting deeper reflection on how the technology is reshaping work, governance, and society.

Political leaders, executives, and researchers agreed that AI development has moved beyond experimentation towards widespread implementation.

Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella argued that AI should deliver tangible benefits for communities and economies, while warning that adoption will remain uneven due to disparities in infrastructure and investment.

Access to energy networks, telecommunications, and capital was identified as a decisive factor in determining which regions can fully deploy advanced systems.

Other voices at Davos 2026 struck a more cautious tone. AI researcher Yoshua Bengio warned against designing systems that appear too human-like, stressing that people may overestimate machine understanding.

Philosopher Yuval Noah Harari echoed those concerns, arguing that societies lack experience in managing human and AI coexistence and should prepare mechanisms to correct failures.

The debate also centred on labour and global competition.

Anthropic’s Dario Amodei highlighted geopolitical risks and predicted disruption to entry-level white-collar jobs. At the same time, Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis forecast new forms of employment alongside calls for shared international safety standards.

Together, the discussions underscored growing recognition that AI governance will shape economic and social outcomes for years ahead.

Diplo is live reporting on all sessions from the World Economic Forum 2026 in Davos.

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OpenAI models embedded into ServiceNow for enterprise automation

ServiceNow has announced a multi-year agreement positioning OpenAI as a preferred intelligence capability across its enterprise platform, extending access to frontier AI models for organisations running tens of billions of workflows each year.

The partnership reflects a broader shift towards operational AI embedded directly within business systems instead of experimental deployments.

By integrating OpenAI models such as GPT-5.2 into the ServiceNow AI Platform, enterprises can embed reasoning and automation into secure workflows spanning IT, finance, human resources, and customer operations.

AI tools are designed to analyse context, recommend actions, and execute tasks within existing governance frameworks instead of functioning as standalone assistants.

Executives from both companies emphasised that the collaboration aims to deliver measurable outcomes at scale.

ServiceNow highlighted its role in coordinating complex enterprise environments, while OpenAI stressed the importance of deploying agentic AI capable of handling work end to end within permissioned infrastructures.

Looking ahead, the partnership plans to expand towards multimodal and voice-based interactions, enabling employees to communicate with AI systems through speech, text, and visual inputs.

The initiative strengthens OpenAI’s enterprise footprint while reinforcing ServiceNow’s ambition to act as a central control layer for AI-driven business operations.

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Workers voice concern over AI-driven workplace change

Four in five workers believe AI will affect their daily tasks, as companies expand the use of AI chatbots and automation tools in the workplace, according to a new Randstad survey.

Demand for roles requiring ‘AI agent‘ skills has risen by 1,587%, reflecting a shift towards automation in low-complexity and transactional jobs, the recruitment firm said in its annual Workmonitor report.

Randstad surveyed 27,000 workers and 1,225 employers, analysing more than three million job postings across 35 global markets to assess how AI is reshaping labour demand.

Corporate cost-cutting pressures, weakened consumer confidence, and geopolitical uncertainty linked to US trade policies are accelerating workforce restructuring across multiple industries.

Gen Z workers expressed the highest level of concern about AI’s impact, while Baby Boomers reported greater confidence in their ability to adapt, as nearly half of employees said the technology may benefit companies more than workers.

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