GenAI is in your inbox, your search results, your Zoom meetings—and soon, maybe, your car.

GM recently became the latest automaker to announce plans to introduce an AI chatbot powered by Google Gemini, joining others in the industry that see opportunities to jump on the hype train and personalize the in-vehicle experience.

“You’ll be able to draft and send messages by voice, get personalized suggestions for a stop or what to do, or even have a productive chat to prepare for a meeting,” Dave Richardson, GM’s former SVP of software and services engineering, said during an event in October. “And in the future, we will introduce our own AI, fine-tuned to your vehicle. Think of this as an assistant. It’s going to anticipate your needs, offer timely help, and make every journey more personal and more enjoyable.”

“It will precondition your vehicle based on your schedule, optimize routes and errands around your business hours, enhance safety, coach you through a parallel park, or even teach you how to use SuperCruise,” he added. “This is how we unlock the full potential of the car, which you’ll be able to control with privacy and safety top of mind.”

Industry trend: In a recent analysis, S&P Global Mobility projected that the number of light-duty vehicles with GenAI chatbots will grow from 2.7 million in 2024 to nearly 28 million by 2031.

“We’re getting a lot of questions around it. I think all OEMs are definitely looking at this,” Anna Buettner, a principal analyst with S&P Global Mobility, told Tech Brew. “But the integration has to make sense. If the connection is lost while you’re driving, that’s super frustrating. You don’t want to add one more frustrating thing to the user experience.”

Keep reading here.—JG

Republicans and Democrats may not agree on much these days, but they seem to have some common ground: fears over AI.

A Pew Research survey found that almost equal portions of Democrats and Republicans surveyed (51% and 50%, respectively) say they’re more concerned than excited about AI’s growing presence in everyday life.

The finding marks a shift from Pew’s previous surveys in 2021 and 2023, when Republicans were about 15 points more likely than Democrats to be more concerned by the technology.

A rare consensus: Pew’s research echoes some other studies that have found that fears around AI and a desire to regulate it tend to be bipartisan issues. A recent survey from the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation, a YouGov poll for UMass Amherst, and research from the AI Policy Institute have all shown similar agreement across party lines.

In past years of Pew’s survey, Democrats have been more likely to be either equally concerned and excited by AI or more excited overall. There was a marked rise in concerns among all groups between 2021 and 2023, when the late 2022 release of ChatGPT first made AI an inescapable topic in the news.

Keep reading here.—PK

Layoffs have reached historic highs this year, and the AI arms race could be partly to blame.

There were 1,099,500 million job cuts between January and October, up 65% from the same period in 2024, a recent report from consulting firm Challenger, Grey, and Christmas found. And some of those layoffs affected HR departments. Amazon announced last month a 30,000-employee reduction-in-force (RIF) that has, and will continue to, affect HR pros. And Google earlier this year offered a buyout to employees in its people ops function.

People leaders, who largely lead employees through RIFs, may now find themselves on the chopping block, experts told HR Brew. However, it’s not all doom and gloom.

One step at a time. As technology advances faster than it has in decades, Daniel Zhao, chief economist at Glassdoor, told HR Brew that people leaders should remain flexible and open-minded, because the exact skills and jobs needed in the future of work are still largely unknown.

“It’s important to be humble as we’re thinking about what changes might come down the line. There are people out there who are throwing out, like, very grand predictions about AI and how much of [a] change it’s going to have,” Zhao said. “But the fact of the matter is, we don’t know exactly what those changes will look like.”

Keep reading here.—MC

As states rush to pass their own AI laws, experts warn of déjà vu: another messy, state-by-state patchwork, just like data privacy. Here’s how the fight over regulation is unfolding and why a unified federal approach still feels out of reach.

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