THE BIG STORY

Are Skilled Workers at Highest Risk?

A new report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development says major economies are on the “cusp of an AI revolution” that could trigger job losses in skilled professions such as law, medicine and finance.

The occupations at highest risk from AI-driven automation are highly skilled jobs and represent about 27 percent of employment across OECD's 38 member countries, which include the U.S., United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Australia and Canada, the Guardian notes.

“Occupations in finance, medicine and legal activities which often require many years of education, and whose core functions rely on accumulated experience to reach decisions, may suddenly find themselves at risk of automation from AI,” the OECD report states.

Added the Paris-based organization: “Urgent action is required to make sure AI is used responsibly and in a trustworthy way in the workplace.”

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Elon Musk Takes the Wraps Off xAI

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and owner of Twitter, on Wednesday announced the debut of a new artificial intelligence company, xAI, CNBC reports. It appears Musk is positioning xAI to compete with companies like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, which are behind leading chatbots ChatGPT, Bard and Claude.

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SOCIAL MEDIA

The Challenges Awaiting Threads

Within hours of its introduction eight days ago, 10 million people had signed up for Threads, the "Twitter killer" app developed by Meta-owned Instagram. By Monday, that had soared to 100 million people—the fastest start ever for an app. Nonetheless, the New York Times reports, bigness alone is “no guarantee of winning the fickle and faddish social media market.” Remember Google+? 

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BUSINESS

The Hottest Spots for Business Starts

The Southeastern U.S. is a hotbed of new business activity, home to nine of the top 10 major metro areas with the most new business applications per 1,000 residents last year, according to a new Axios analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and IRS data. The only metro area outside the Southeast making the top 10: Provo, Utah.

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SPONSORED

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QUICK HITS

• Stability AI, the startup behind the image-generating model Stable Diffusion, is launching a new service, Stable Doodle, that turns sketches into images.
• Anthropic has announced the second major iteration of its Claude large language model. Named Claude 2, it is significantly better at coding, math, and reasoning.
• The global music industry surpassed 1 trillion streams in the first quarter, the fastest pace ever, with music in non-English languages surging.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram."

—Twitter owner Elon Musk, responding to the launch of Threads, a competing app built by Meta-owned Instagram

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