Source: https://lifehacker.com/health/your-ai-personal-trainer-can-do-more-harm-than-good Credit: Ian Moore / Lifehacker Composite; Kitti Suwaneakkasit / Anton Vierietin / FG Trade / E+ / BananaStock / iStock / Getty
David Isenberg’s AI News Briefs: “10 things I learned from burning myself out with AI coding agents,” good news for consumers with “‘No Reasons to Own’: Software Stocks Sink on Fear of New AI Too,” dark humor — oh, wait, this is real: “Trump team issues bonkers threat against UK over Elon Musk’s creepy AI,” and much more.
Setting an ExAImple
Micah Blachman is a twelve-year-old seventh grade tech blogger, and in a couple of posts he offered pocket-sized reviews of some of the tech products he encounters in school. The posts are worth a read, but I want to focus on one particular paragraph:
AI. This one is a bit of the odd one out. As students, we are forbidden from using AI for school-related purposes. However, I see my teachers using it to create assignments, mistake-filled example essays, lesson plans, and class discussion questions. some more than others. It makes me wonder: why am I spending so much time doing this assignment that was obviously created by ChatGPT or Claude?
January 20, 2026
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News from the World Economic Forum
New World Economic Forum report shows how AI is driving measurable performance gains in more than 30 countries and 20 industries.
Key factors behind successful AI scaling include embedding AI into enterprise strategy, redesigning work for human-AI collaboration and strengthening data foundations.
January 19, 2026
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10 things I learned from burning myself out with AI coding agents
Opinion: As software power tools, AI agents may make people busier than ever before.
….1. People are still necessary
Even with the best AI coding agents available today, humans remain essential to the software development process. Experienced human software developers bring judgment, creativity, and domain knowledge that AI models lack. They know how to architect systems for long-term maintainability, how to balance technical debt against feature velocity, and when to push back when requirements don’t make sense.
January 19, 2026
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Davos Dispatch: Is AI The New Altruism?
The WEF this year is a tech conference with a Trump cameo. Is AI its new message of social good?
Good morning from Davos, Switzerland where I’ll be on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum conducting interviews with the globe’s AI leaders…. Already, you can tell this is going to be a weird WEF. The event has long been a place where the world’s businesses profess their interest in social good. But …. Many firms have shed the do-good approach and more nakedly embraced the bottom line. …. With the pretense lifted, what is this annual gathering of Davos for?…No less than 48 sessions over the five day WEF program will discuss AI….The WEF expects record participation from governments, including 400 political leaders and 65 heads of state.
January 19, 2026
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News from Bloomberg (no paywall through 1-22-2026)
‘No Reasons to Own’: Software Stocks Sink on Fear of New AI Too
The new year was supposed to bring opportunities for beaten-down software stocks. Instead, the group is off to its worst start in years.
The release of a new artificial intelligence tool from startup Anthropic on Jan. 12 rekindled fears about disruption that weighed on software makers in 2025. TurboTax owner Intuit Inc. tumbled 16% last week, its worst since 2022, while Adobe Inc. and Salesforce Inc., which makes customer relationship management software, both sank more than 11%….
Anthropic’s Claude Cowork service, released as a “research preview,” can create a spreadsheet from screen shots or produce a draft report from an assortment of notes, according to the company. It was developed quickly, largely with AI.
While unproven, the tool represents just the type of capabilities that investors have been fearing…
January 18, 2026
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OpenAI Just Made ChatGPT Free Forever—With a Catch
Y’all non-tech folks know what “Freemium” means?… you either have to pay upfront… or its free with ads…. OpenAI just announced that ads are coming to ChatGPT’s free tier and the new budget-friendly “Go” plan (more on that in a sec). Starting in the next few weeks, you’ll see sponsored content at the bottom of your AI-generated answers.
January 18, 2026
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Your AI Fitness Trainer Can Do More Harm Than Good
There’s a dark side to these “smarter” workouts.
Want customized workout plans, real-time feedback, and 24/7 motivation, all without the cost of a human trainer? AI personal trainers sound like a perfect solution…. I’ve tested some of these apps myself, and I definitely see the appeal. But more than anything, I see companies stuffing AI into apps where it doesn’t belong. There’s Strava’s Athlete “Intelligence”; Garmin’s underwhelming Connect+ subscription; Whoop’s recovery recommendations…. people are increasingly asking ChatGPT for training advice, which is infuriating considering how many high-quality, free programs are already out there.
January 16, 2026
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News from Bloomberg (no paywall)
Musk Seeks Up to $134 Billion Damages From OpenAI, Microsoft
Elon Musk wants OpenAI Inc. and Microsoft to pay him damages in the range of $79 billion to $134 billion over his claims that the generative AI company defrauded him by abandoning its nonprofit roots and partnering with the software giant. Musk’s lawyer detailed the damages request in a court filing Friday, a day after a federal judge rejected a final bid by OpenAI and Microsoft to avoid a jury trial set for late April in Oakland, California.
January 16, 2026
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Automation Fatigue: How A.I. Contact Centers Are Burning Out the Humans Behind Them
As A.I. reshapes contact center operations, efficiency gains are colliding with rising burnout, attrition and invisible psychological strain.
….A.I. systems are now embedded across contact centers, yet the day-to-day experience of frontline staff has not become noticeably calmer. In many teams, stress levels are unchanged. In some cases, they are even higher than before. The gap between what these tools were expected to deliver and what agents actually experience points to a more uncomfortable truth: deploying advanced technology is much easier than changing how work itself feels.
January 16, 2026
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X Says It’s Finally Doing Something About Grok’s Deepfake Porn Problem, but It’s Not Nearly Enough
X says it’s trying to stop intimate deepfakes from spreading on the site, but as of now, you can probably still generate them.
….Elon Musk’s X says it’s finally going to do something about its deepfake porn problem….In response to the pressure, X cut off the ability to tag Grok for edits on its social media site for everyone except subscribers. However, the Grok app, website, and in-X chatbot … still remained open to everyone, allowing the flood of deepfaked AI photos to continue ….Musk has taken a more serious tone in more recent comments on the issue, denying the presence of child sexual abuse material… although various replies to his posts expressed disbelief and claimed to show proof to the contrary.
January 15, 2026
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VA watchdog issues warning on AI use by medical staff
Two AI chat tools, including Microsoft Copilot, are in use at the VA but have not been reviewed by patient safety offices.
A watchdog inside the Department of Veterans Affairs issued an urgent advisory Thursday over two AI chat tools currently in use by VA healthcare providers, citing “potential patient safety risks.” Doctors aren’t using AI to diagnose patients, but the Inspector General found problems could potentially arise in some cases when doctors use artificial intelligence to analyze medical information and update patient records…. the systems can be vulnerable to producing misinformation, privacy violations, and bias, and that the systems had been put in place without review by the VA’s own patient safety experts.
January 15, 2026
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Move Over, ChatGPT
You are about to hear a lot more about Claude Code. Over the holidays, Alex Lieberman had an idea: What if he could create Spotify “Wrapped” for his text messages? Without writing a single line of code, Lieberman, a co-founder of the media outlet Morning Brew, created “iMessage Wrapped”—a web app that analyzed statistical trends across nearly 1 million of his texts. One chart that he showed me compared his use of lol, haha, ?, and lmao—he’s an lol guy. Another listed people he had ghosted.
Lieberman did all of this using Claude Code…
January 14, 2026
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Big Tech is poaching energy talent to fuel its AI ambitions
Technology companies investing heavily in artificial intelligence are bolstering their workforce with energy experts as they look to overcome the biggest bottleneck in scaling AI: access to power. Energy-related hiring jumped 34% year-on-year in 2024, according to data compiled by Workforce.ai for CNBC. Last year’s hiring almost matched this pace and remained 30% higher than pre-AI levels of 2022, when ChatGPT was released late in the year.
January 14, 2026
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Gemini’s new beta feature provides proactive responses based on your photos, emails, and more
Google announced on Wednesday that it’s launching a new beta feature in the Gemini app that allows the AI assistant to tailor its responses by connecting across your Google ecosystem, starting with Gmail, Photos, Search, and YouTube history. Although Gemini could already retrieve information from these apps, it can now reason across your data to provide proactive results, such as connecting a thread in your emails to a video you watched.
January 14, 2026
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? Slackbot is an AI agent now
Salesforce has transformed Slackbot, the automated assistant built into its corporate messaging platform Slack, into a full-fledged AI agent. This version, available to Business+ and Enterprise+ customers, can find information, draft emails, and schedule meetings directly within Slack.
January 14, 2026
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Anthropic’s Cowork widens its lead with pros
Anthropic’s latest app, released Monday as a research preview for Claude Max subscribers (the $100 to $200 per month tier), gives users an agentic assistant that handles tasks autonomously when given access to specific folders. Relying on the same agentic architecture that powers Claude Code, the product can handle complex tasks on users’ behalf, running locally on your device via Claude Desktop rather than requiring users to open a terminal. It’s only on macOS for now.
January 14, 2026
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3 things leaders should know to get more out of AI.
1. Nearly 40% of AI’s promised productivity is silently lost to rework, reducing the net value of efficiency gains.
2. The most enthusiastic users often carry the highest burden, spending disproportionate time verifying and correcting output.
January 14, 2026
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News from Stay Tuneed with Preet Bharara
Your Doctor Has a Fiduciary Duty to You. ChatGPT Doesn’t.
As confidence in public health institutions drops, reliance on AI chatbots for health information is rising
….more than 230 million health-related questions are already asked on ChatGPT each week, over forty million a day, often outside of normal healthcare hours…..people trust AI health advice even when it’s wrong. A recent study published in NEJM AI found that people often struggle to distinguish between AI-generated medical responses and those written by doctors….The crisis of legitimacy in our public health institutions is real and growing. But the answer isn’t to transfer that authority to systems with no accountability at all.
January 14, 2026
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Google’s update for Veo 3.1 lets users create vertical videos through reference images
Google on Tuesday updated its Veo 3.1 AI video-generation model with the ability to create native vertical videos for social platforms using reference images. The changes will also make the videos generated from reference images more expressive and dynamic.
When producing AI-generated videos for YouTube Shorts or other platforms like Instagram or TikTok, Veo users can now natively choose the 9:16 vertical format to avoid any cropping. Google is also adding the feature directly to the YouTube Shorts and the YouTube Create app.
January 13, 2026
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News from the Wall St. Journal (no paywall)
Matthew McConaughey Trademarks Himself to Fight AI Misuse
Actor plans to use trademarks of himself saying ‘Alright, alright, alright’ and staring at a camera to combat AI fakes in court….the “Interstellar” and “Magic Mike” star has had eight trademark applications approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office featuring him staring, smiling and talking. His attorneys said the trademarks are meant to stop AI apps or users from simulating McConaughey’s voice or likeness without permission—an increasingly common concern of performers.
January 13, 2026
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Trump team issues bonkers threat against UK over Elon Musk’s creepy AI
The State Department is issuing a blunt warning to the United Kingdom: Ban Elon Musk’s X, and the United States could retaliate.
The threat follows increased concern in Britain over a flood of AI-generated sexualized deepfakes circulating on X, including non-consensual images and material that could violate child-safety laws
January 13, 2026
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The Dangerous Paradox of A.I. Abundance
Silicon Valley envisions artificial intelligence ushering in an era of economic plenty. But what if the benefits are largely confined to corporations and investors that own the technology itself?
…a great leap in productivity and economic growth is precisely what many developers and promoters of artificial intelligence claim will happen…. “Double-digit growth is coming within 12 to 18 months,” Musk wrote on X last month….But …if A.I. agents can eventually carry out virtually all cognitive tasks without human intervention…many workers could be displaced….
January 12, 2026
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