News Room

This week's launch of ChatGPT for Teens may be welcome news to parents concerned about the role of artificial intelligence in their child's life.

OpenAI positioned its new product as a learning partner for students. The company said ChatGPT for Teens limits the emotional and intimate exchanges between young people and AI that have driven concerns about well-being and mental health.

In some tragic cases, that dynamic has allegedly led teens and young adults to attempt or die by suicide after heavy engagement with ChatGPT, according to lawsuits filed against OpenAI.

So parents who know their teen is using ChatGPT, or who want their child to safely access AI, may see OpenAI's teen product as the answer.

Yet experts who spoke to Mashable about ChatGPT for Teens urge parents to remain cautious. They say more independent testing is needed before concluding that ChatGPT is an effective study aid, and that its safeguards against emotional dependence hold up under everyday teen use.

While not strictly an ‘AI’ certification in the narrow sense, the Certified Analytics Professional (CAP) credential from INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences) offers a broader, yet incredibly relevant, perspective for an AI Integration Specialist. Why? Because AI doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It relies heavily on data, analytics, and a deep understanding of business or, in our case, educational problems that AI can solve. CAP focuses on the entire analytics process, from framing the problem to model building, deployment, and lifecycle management.

Replying to a recruiter even a few minutes late can hurt your chances, reports Celia Bernhardt in the Wall Street Journal. She covers a Management Science study of millions of Fiverr interactions which found that even a five- to 10-minute lag in replying to an inquiry from a recruiter or hiring manager cut a candidate's odds of getting hired by roughly 30%. Follow-up experiments suggested people read fast responses as a sign of competence, despite insisting they don't demand instant replies. The piece argues that the old worry about looking desperate is outdated in a market where recruiters can ping loads of candidates with AI tools and move on quickly, and it advises job seekers to monitor email and LinkedIn messages multiple times daily and respond within the same day to stay competitive.

In “vertical integration” in the healthcare system, one company owns or controls multiple parts of a supply chain and can therefore direct patients to more expensive treatment options. 

Such healthcare integration is occurring at a breakneck pace all across the nation, with endless permutations: Hospitals are buying doctors’ practices and surgery and imaging centers. Insurers are buying doctors’ practices and specialty pharmacies and sometimes merging with pharmacy chains. Hospitals are buying or creating insurers. Private equity firms are behind many of the deals, buying practices, reorganizing operations, paring costs, then selling at a profit in a few years to a hospital or insurer higher up the healthcare food chain.

And while the stated purpose is generally greater efficiency, studies have shown that for patients the net result has been higher prices and no benefit, or worse health outcomes. That’s in part because the purchases have been driven by financial efficiency, not more seamless and attentive care, said Soroush Saghafian, an associate professor at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. What’s more, these transactions occur in a gray zone of competition law, and regulators’ tools to examine or stop them are plodding and not up to the task.

Workers get only about 85 minutes of undisturbed focus a day, and constant task-switching and growing workloads drain the energy creative work needs, writes Diana Shi in Fast Company. The piece argues for managing energy rather than time. Its tips include blocking meeting-free days and silencing notifications, doing solo ideation before group brainstorming (an approach backed by Carnegie Mellon professor Anita Williams Woolley's research on creative "bursts"), and scheduling demanding work for peak hours based on your chronotype, leaving administrative tasks for natural energy dips.