The AI boom has revived a workplace philosophy that China's own regulators cracked down on years ago: the 72-hour work week, known as 996 for its 9am-to-9pm, six-days-a-week cadence. US startups flush with venture capital are now openly advertising it as a feature, not a bug. Rilla, a New York-based AI company that monitors sales reps in the field, warns applicants on its careers page to expect roughly 70-hour weeks. Browser-Use, a seven-person startup building tools for AI-to-browser interaction, operates out of a shared "hacker house" where the line between living and working barely exists.

In a market where dozens of startups are racing to ship similar AI products, founders believe longer hours buy them a competitive edge. But the research disagrees. A WHO and ILO analysis tied 55-plus-hour weeks to 745,000 deaths from stroke and heart disease globally in 2016 alone. Michigan State University found that an employee working 70 hours produces nearly the same output as one working 50.

It's the first "AI" Super Bowl, argues the tech/business writer at Slate, with AI company advertisements taking center stage, even while consumers insist to surveyors that they're "mostly negative" about AI-generated ads.

Last year AI companies spent over $1.7 billion on AI-related ads, notes the Washington Post, adding the blitz this year will be "inescapable" — even while surveys show Americans "doubt the technology is good for them or the world..."

Slate wonders if that means history will repeat itself... The sheer saturation of new A.I. gambits, added to the mismatch with consumer priorities, gives this year's NFL showcase the sector-specific recession-indicator vibes that have defined Super Bowls of the past. 2022 was a pride-cometh-before-the-fall event for the cryptocurrency bubble, which collapsed in such spectacular fashion later that year — thanks largely to Super Bowl ad client Sam Bankman-Fried — that none of its major brands have ever returned to the broadcast. (... the coins themselves are once again crashing, hard.) Mortgage lender Ameriquest was as conspicuous a presence in the mid-2000s Super Bowls as it was an absence in the later aughts, having folded in 2007 when the risky subprime loans it specialized in helped kick off the financial crisis. And then there were all those bowl-game commercials for websites like Pets.com and Computer.com in 2000, when the dot-com rush brought attention to a slew of digital startups that went bust with the bubble.

Does this Super Bowl's record-breaking A.I. ad splurge also portend a coming pop? Look at the business environment: The biggest names in the industry are swapping unimaginable stacks of cash exclusively with one another. One firm's stock price depends on another firm's projections, which depend on another contractor's successes. Necessary infrastructure is meeting resistance, and all-around investment in these projects is riskier than ever. And yet, the sector is still willing to break the bank for the Super Bowl — even though, time and again, we've already seen how this particular game plays out.
People are using AI apps. And Meta has aired an ad where a man in rural New Mexico "says he landed a good job in his hometown at a Meta data center," notes the Washington Post. "It's interspersed with scenes from a rodeo and other folksy tropes, in one of . The TV commercial (and a similar one set in Iowa), aired in Washington, D.C., and a handful of other communities, suggesting it's aimed at convincing U.S. elected officials that AI brings job opportunities.

But the Post argues the AI industry "is selling a vision of the future that Americans don't like." And they offer cite Allen Adamson, a brand strategist and co-founder of marketing firm Metaforce, who says the perennial question about advertising is whether it can fix bad vibes about a product.

"The answer since the dawn of marketing and advertising is no."

Anthropic said today that its AI assistant Claude will not carry advertising of any kind -- no sponsored links next to conversations, no advertiser influence on the model's responses, and no unsolicited third-party product placements -- calling Claude a "space to think" that should remain free of commercial interruption. The announcement comes days after Anthropic's chief rival, OpenAI, announced plans to bring ads to some of its ChatGPT offerings.

Anthropic said its internal analysis of Claude conversations found that a significant share involve sensitive or deeply personal topics. An advertising-based model would also create incentives to optimize for engagement and time spent rather than usefulness, Anthropic said, noting that the most helpful AI interaction might be a short one that doesn't prompt further conversation.

Anthropic generates revenue from enterprise contracts and paid subscriptions. The company said it is exploring agentic commerce -- Claude handling a purchase or booking on a user's behalf -- but stressed that all such interactions should be user-initiated, not advertiser-driven. Anthropic has also brought AI tools to educators in over 60 countries and said it may consider lower-cost subscription tiers and regional pricing.

Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have more in common with cigarettes than with fruit or vegetables, and require far tighter regulation, according to a new report. The Guardian: UPFs and cigarettes are engineered to encourage addiction and consumption, researchers from three US universities said, pointing to the parallels in widespread health harms that link both.

UPFs, which are widely available worldwide, are food products that have been industrially manufactured, often using emulsifiers or artificial colouring and flavours. The category includes soft drinks and packaged snacks such as crisps and biscuits. There are similarities in the production processes of UPFs and cigarettes, and in manufacturers' efforts to optimise the "doses" of products and how quickly they act on reward pathways in the body, according to the paper from researchers at Harvard, the University of Michigan and Duke University.

They draw on data from the fields of addiction science, nutrition and public health history to make their comparisons, published on 3 February in the healthcare journal the Milbank Quarterly. The authors suggest that marketing claims on the products, such as being "low fat" or "sugar free," are "health washing" that can stall regulation, akin to the advertising of cigarette filters in the 1950s as protective innovations that "in practice offered little meaningful benefit."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Supreme Court is taking up a case on whether Paramount violated the 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) by disclosing a user's viewing history to Facebook. The case, Michael Salazar v. Paramount Global, hinges on the law's definition of the word "consumer." Salazar filed a class action against Paramount in 2022, alleging that it "violated the VPPA by disclosing his personally identifiable information to Facebook without consent," Salazar's petition to the Supreme Court said. Salazar had signed up for an online newsletter through 247Sports.com, a site owned by Paramount, and had to provide his email address in the process. Salazar then used 247Sports.com to view videos while logged in to his Facebook account.

"As a result, Paramount disclosed his personally identifiable information -- including his Facebook ID and which videos he watched—to Facebook," the petition (PDF) said. "The disclosures occurred automatically because of the Facebook Pixel Paramount installed on its website. Facebook and Paramount then used this information to create and display targeted advertising, which increased their revenues." The 1988 law (PDF) defines consumer as "any renter, purchaser, or subscriber of goods or services from a video tape service provider." The phrase "video tape service provider" is defined to include providers of "prerecorded video cassette tapes or similar audio visual materials," and thus arguably applies to more than just sellers of tapes.

The legal question for the Supreme Court "is whether the phrase 'goods or services from a video tape service provider,' as used in the VPPA's definition of 'consumer,' refers to all of a video tape service provider's goods or services or only to its audiovisual goods or services," Salazar's petition said. The Supreme Court granted his petition (PDF) to hear the case in a list of orders released yesterday. [...] SCOTUSblog says that "the case will likely be scheduled for oral argument in the court's 2026-27 term," which begins in October 2026.

Pinterest said on Tuesday it would trim its workforce by less than 15% and reduce office space, as the social media company looks to reallocate resources to AI-focused roles and initiatives. From a report: The announcement comes as the company competes with TikTok and Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram for digital advertising budgets, as these platforms continue to draw marketers with their extensive user base.

Pinterest had 5,205 full-time employees as of September 2025. The latest job cut would translate to less than 780 positions. Top executives at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting said while jobs would disappear, new ones would spring up, with two telling Reuters that AI would be used as an excuse by companies which were planning layoffs anyway. Last week, design software maker Autodesk also announced a 7% job cut to redirect investments to its cloud platform and AI efforts.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Google has agreed to pay $68 million to settle a lawsuit claiming it secretly listened to people's private conversations through their phones. [...] the lawsuit claimed Google Assistant would sometimes turn on by mistake -- the phone thinking someone had said its activation phrase when they had not -- and recorded conversations intended to be private. They alleged the recordings were then sent to advertisers for the purpose of creating targeted advertising. The proposed settlement was filed on Friday in a California federal court, and requires approval by US District Judge Beth Labson Freeman.

The claim has been brought as a class action lawsuit rather than an individual case -- meaning if it is approved, the money will be paid out across many different claimants. Those eligible for a payout will have owned Google devices dating back to May 2016. But lawyers for the plaintiffs may ask for up to one-third of the settlement -- amounting to about $22 million in legal fees. The tech firm also denied any wrongdoing, as well as claims that it "recorded, disclosed to third parties, or failed to delete, conversations recorded as the result of a Siri activation" without consent.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: When TikTok users in the U.S. opened the app today, they were greeted with a pop-up asking them to agree to the social media platform's new terms of service and privacy policy before they could resume scrolling. These changes are part of TikTok's transition to new ownership. In order to continue operating in the U.S., TikTok was compelled by the U.S. government to transition from Chinese control to a new, American-majority corporate entity. Called TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, the new entity is made up of a group of investors that includes the software company Oracle. It's easy to tap "agree" and keep on scrolling through videos on TikTok, so users might not fully understand the extent of changes they are agreeing to with this pop-up.

Now that it's under U.S.-based ownership, TikTok potentially collects more detailed information about its users, including precise location data. Here are the three biggest changes to TikTok's privacy policy that users should know about. TikTok's change in location tracking is one of the most notable updates in this new privacy policy. Before this update, the app did not collect the precise, GPS-derived location data of U.S. users. Now, if you give TikTok permission to use your phone's location services, then the app may collect granular information about your exact whereabouts. Similar kinds of precise location data is also tracked by other social media apps, like Instagram and X.

[...] Rather than an adjustment, TikTok's policy on AI interactions adds a new topic to the privacy policy document. Now, users' interactions with any of TikTok's AI tools explicitly fall under data that the service may collect and store. This includes any prompts as well as the AI-generated outputs. The metadata attached to your interactions with AI tools may also be automatically logged. [...] This change to TikTok's privacy policy may not be as immediately noticeable to users, but it will likely have an impact on the types of ads you see outside of TikTok. So, rather than just using your collected data to target you while using the app, TikTok may now further leverage that info to serve you more relevant ads wherever you go online. As part of this advertising change, TikTok also now explicitly mentions publishers as one kind of partner the platform works with to get new data.

OpenAI said Friday that it will begin testing ads on ChatGPT in the coming weeks, as the $500 billion startup seeks new revenue streams to fund its continued expansion and compete against rivals Google and Anthropic. The company had previously resisted embedding ads into its chatbot, citing concerns that doing so could undermine the trustworthiness and objectivity of responses.

The ads will appear at the bottom of ChatGPT answers on the free tier and the $8-per-month ChatGPT Go subscription in the U.S., showing only when relevant to the user's query. Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscriptions will remain ad-free. OpenAI expects to generate "low billions" of dollars from advertising in 2026, FT reported, and more in subsequent years. The revenue is intended to help fund roughly $1.4 trillion in computing commitments over the next decade. The company said it will not show ads to users under 18 or near sensitive topics like health, mental health, or politics.

"We will make the new ð algorithm...open source in 7 days," Elon Musk posted Saturday on X.com. Musk says this is "including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users," and "This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed."

Some context from Engadget: Musk has been making promises of open-sourcing the algorithm since his takeover of Twitter, and in 2023 published the code for the site's "For You" feed on GitHub. But the code wasn't all that revealing, leaving out key details, according to analyses at the time. And it hasn't been kept up to date.
Bloomberg also reported on Saturday's announcement: The billionaire didn't say why X was making its algorithm open source. He and the company have clashed several times with regulators over content being shown to users.

Some X users had previously complained that they were receiving fewer posts on the social media platform from people they follow. In October, Musk confirmed in a post on X that the company had found a "significant bug" in the platform's "For You" algorithm and pledged a fix. The company has also been working to incorporate more artificial intelligence into its recommendation algorithm for X, using Grok, Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot...

In September, Musk wrote that the goal was for X's recommendation engine to "be purely AI" and that the company would share its open source algorithm about every two weeks. "To the degree that people are seeing improvements in their feed, it is not due to the actions of specific individuals changing heuristics, but rather increasing use of Grok and other AI tools," Musk wrote in October. The company was working to have all of the more than 100 million daily posts published to X evaluated by Grok, which would then offer individual users the posts most likely to interest them, Musk wrote. "This will profoundly improve the quality of your feed." He added that the company was planning to roll out the new features by November.

Craigslist, the 30-year-old classifieds site that looks virtually unchanged since the dial-up era, continues to draw more than 105 million monthly users and remains enormously profitable despite never spending a cent on advertising or marketing. The site ranks as the 40th most popular website in the United States, according to Internet data company Similarweb.

University of Pennsylvania associate professor Jessa Lingel called it the "ungentrified" Internet. Unlike Facebook Marketplace, Etsy, or DePop, Craigslist doesn't use algorithms to track users or predict what they want to see. There are no public profiles, no rating systems, no likes or shares. The site effectively disincentivizes the clout-chasing and virality-seeking that dominates platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

Craigslist began in 1995 as an email list for a few hundred San Francisco Bay Area locals sharing events and job openings. Engineer Craig Newmark even recruited CEO Jim Buckmaster through a site ad. The two spent roughly a decade battling eBay in court after the tech giant purchased a minority stake in 2004, ultimately buying back shares and regaining full control in 2015.

Disney+, which is looking to catch up with some streaming and digital rivals in terms of daily engagement, is adding vertical videos to the service. From a report: The arrival of the new format later this year was one of several advertising-oriented announcements the company made Wednesday at its Tech + Data Showcase at CES in Las Vegas. Other new offerings include a new "brand impact" metric and a new video generation tool that helps advertisers create high-quality connected-TV-ready commercials using existing assets and guidelines.

[...] In an interview prior to the Wednesday showcase, Erin Teague, EVP of Product Management for Disney Entertainment and ESPN, said "everything's on the table" in terms of how vertical video is delivered on Disney+. It could be original short-form programming, repurposed social clips, refashioned scenes from longer-form episodic or feature titles or a combination. "We're obviously thinking about integrating vertical video in ways that are native to core user behaviors," Teague said. "So, it won't be a kind of a disjointed, random experience."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The founder of a U.S.-based spyware company, whose surveillance products allowed customers to spy on the phones and computers of unsuspecting victims, pleaded guilty to federal charges linked to his long-running operation. pcTattletale founder Bryan Fleming entered a guilty plea in a San Diego federal court on Tuesday to charges of computer hacking, the sale and advertising of surveillance software for unlawful uses, and conspiracy.

The plea follows a multi-year investigation by agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), a unit within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. HSI began investigating pcTattletale in mid-2021 as part of a wider probe into the industry of consumer-grade surveillance software, also known as "stalkerware."

This is the first successful U.S. federal prosecution of a stalkerware operator in more than a decade, following the 2014 indictment and subsequent guilty plea of the creator of a phone surveillance app called StealthGenie. Fleming's conviction could pave the way for further federal investigations and prosecutions against those operating spyware, but also those who simply advertise and sell covert surveillance software. HSI said that pcTattletale is one of several stalkerware websites under investigation.

Vietnam will begin enforcing new online advertising rules in February 2026 that ban forced video ads longer than five seconds and must allow users to close ads with just one tap. "Furthermore, platforms must provide clear icons and instructions for users to report advertisements that violate the law, and allow them to opt out, turn off, or stop viewing inappropriate ads," reports a local news outlet (translated to English). "These reports must be received and processed promptly, and the results communicated to users as required." From the report: In cases where the entity posting the infringing advertisement cannot be identified or where specialized laws do not have specific regulations, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is the focal agency to receive notifications and send requests to block or remove the advertisement to organizations and businesses providing online advertising services in Vietnam.

Advertisers, advertising service providers, and advertising transmission and distribution units are responsible for blocking and removing infringing advertisements within 24 hours of receiving a request from the competent authority. For advertisements that infringe on national security, the blocking and removal must be carried out immediately, no later than 24 hours.

In case of non-compliance, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, in coordination with the Ministry of Public Security, will apply technical measures to block infringing advertisements and services and handle the matter according to the law. Telecommunications companies and Internet service providers must also implement technical measures to block access to infringing advertisements within 24 hours of receiving a request.

Apple's Chinese manufacturing partner Luxshare halted production of the Vision Pro headset at the start of 2025, according to market research firm IDC, after the device shipped 390,000 units during its 2024 launch year. The $3,499 headset has also seen its digital advertising budget cut by more than 95% year to date in the US and UK, according to market intelligence group Sensor Tower.

IDC expects Apple to ship just 45,000 new units in the fourth quarter of 2025. Apple launched an upgraded M5 version in October featuring a more powerful chip, extended battery life, and a redesigned headband. The company sells the device directly in 13 countries and did not expand availability in 2025.

Costco's consistency -- from its $1.50 hot dog and drink combo to its functional shopping carts and satisfied employees -- has produced what The Atlantic calls a "cultlike loyalty" among members at more than 600 locations across the U.S.

Its annual membership costs $65. The model traces back to Fedco, a nonprofit wholesale collective for federal employees founded in Los Angeles in the 1940s. Costco's private label Kirkland Signature has become one of the world's largest consumer packaged goods brands while maintaining deliberately understated branding. The company relies on word-of-mouth marketing from satisfied members rather than traditional advertising.

Atlantic staff writer Jake Lundberg, who shops at the Granger, Indiana location, describes the stores as spaces of "cooperation, courtesy, and grown-ups mostly acting like grown-ups." Shoppers follow unwritten rules: move along, don't block the way, step aside to check your phone. Checkout lines form orderly queues. The exceptions come near sample stations and before major holidays, when spatial awareness and common courtesy break down.

Apple has been fined $116 million by Italy's antitrust regulator over the "excessively burdensome" privacy rules it imposes on third-party apps. From a report: The Italian Competition Authority (AGCM) says that Apple abused its dominant app store market position by burdening developers with "disproportionate" terms around data collection that exceed privacy law requirements, compared to rules for native iOS apps.

The fine specifically targets the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy Apple launched in 2021, which requires third-party developers to ask users for consent twice to track their data across other apps and websites. Apple's own apps can obtain this permission in a single tap. AGCM says that the burden of consenting twice led to a reduction in user consent rates for advertising profiling, thus harming developers whose business models depend upon revenue generated by personalized ads.

Instacart has ended its AI-powered pricing tests after a study from Groundwork Collaborative, Consumer Reports and More Perfect Union revealed that the grocery delivery platform was showing different customers different prices for identical items at the same store. The company said Monday that retailers can no longer use Eversight, the AI pricing technology Instacart acquired in 2022, to run such tests.

"Now, if two families are shopping for the same items, at the same time, from the same store location on Instacart, they see the same prices -- period," the company wrote in a blog post. The study drew attention from lawmakers; Sen. Chuck Schumer wrote to the FTC that "consumers deserve to know when they are being placed into pricing tests," and Reuters reported that the agency had opened an investigation. Instacart says the tests "were never based on supply or demand, personal data, demographics, or individual shopping behavior."

The company also reached a $60 million settlement last week over separate allegations including falsely advertising free shipping.

One developer tells MIT Technology Review that AI tools weaken the coding instincts he used to have. And beyond that, "It's just not fun sitting there with my work being done for me."

But is AI making coders faster? "After speaking to more than 30 developers, technology executives, analysts, and researchers, MIT Technology Review found that the picture is not as straightforward as it might seem..." For some developers on the front lines, initial enthusiasm is waning as they bump up against the technology's limitations. And as a growing body of research suggests that the claimed productivity gains may be illusory, some are questioning whether the emperor is wearing any clothes.... Data from the developer analytics firm GitClear shows that most engineers are producing roughly 10% more durable code — code that isn't deleted or rewritten within weeks — since 2022, likely thanks to AI. But that gain has come with sharp declines in several measures of code quality. Stack Overflow's survey also found trust and positive sentiment toward AI tools falling significantly for the first time. And most provocatively, a July study by the nonprofit research organization Model Evaluation & Threat Research (METR) showed that while experienced developers believed AI made them 20% faster, objective tests showed they were actually 19% slower...

Developers interviewed by MIT Technology Review generally agree on where AI tools excel: producing "boilerplate code" (reusable chunks of code repeated in multiple places with little modification), writing tests, fixing bugs, and explaining unfamiliar code to new developers. Several noted that AI helps overcome the "blank page problem" by offering an imperfect first stab to get a developer's creative juices flowing. It can also let nontechnical colleagues quickly prototype software features, easing the load on already overworked engineers. These tasks can be tedious, and developers are typically glad to hand them off. But they represent only a small part of an experienced engineer's workload. For the more complex problems where engineers really earn their bread, many developers told MIT Technology Review, the tools face significant hurdles...

The models also just get things wrong. Like all LLMs, coding models are prone to "hallucinating" — it's an issue built into how they work. But because the code they output looks so polished, errors can be difficult to detect, says James Liu, director of software engineering at the advertising technology company Mediaocean. Put all these flaws together, and using these tools can feel a lot like pulling a lever on a one-armed bandit. "Some projects you get a 20x improvement in terms of speed or efficiency," says Liu. "On other things, it just falls flat on its face, and you spend all this time trying to coax it into granting you the wish that you wanted and it's just not going to..." There are also more specific security concerns, she says. Researchers have discovered a worrying class of hallucinations where models reference nonexistent software packages in their code. Attackers can exploit this by creating packages with those names that harbor vulnerabilities, which the model or developer may then unwittingly incorporate into software.
Other key points from the article:

• LLMs can only hold limited amounts of information in context windows, so "they struggle to parse large code bases and are prone to forgetting what they're doing on longer tasks."

• "While an LLM-generated response to a problem may work in isolation, software is made up of hundreds of interconnected modules. If these aren't built with consideration for other parts of the software, it can quickly lead to a tangled, inconsistent code base that's hard for humans to parse and, more important, to maintain."

• "Accumulating technical debt is inevitable in most projects, but AI tools make it much easier for time-pressured engineers to cut corners, says GitClear's Harding. And GitClear's data suggests this is happening at scale..."

• "As models improve, the code they produce is becoming increasingly verbose and complex, says Tariq Shaukat, CEO of Sonar, which makes tools for checking code quality. This is driving down the number of obvious bugs and security vulnerabilities, he says, but at the cost of increasing the number of 'code smells' — harder-to-pinpoint flaws that lead to maintenance problems and technical debt."

Yet the article cites a recent Stanford University study that found employment among software developers aged 22 to 25 dropped nearly 20% between 2022 and 2025, "coinciding with the rise of AI-powered coding tools."

The story is part of MIT Technology Review's new Hype Correction series of articles about AI.

alternative_right writes: Grocery delivery service Instacart will refund $60 million to settle FTC claims that it misled customers with false advertising and unlawfully enrolled them in paid subscriptions. Instacart partners with over 1,800 retailers to provide online shopping, delivery, and pickup services from nearly 100,000 stores across North America. Its platform serves millions of customers and is also used by roughly 600,000 independent shoppers across thousands of cities in Canada and the United States.

In a complaint filed on Thursday, the FTC claimed Instacart engaged in multiple deceptive tactics that raised costs for customers, including failing to provide advertised refunds and falsely advertising "free delivery" while still charging mandatory service fees that added up to 15% to order costs. The FTC said Instacart also advertised a "100% satisfaction guarantee," but typically offered only small credits toward future orders rather than full refunds to customers experiencing problems with deliveries or service. The company allegedly hid refund options from "self-service" menus, leading customers to believe credits were their only option.