AI may be losing some of its out-of-the-box sheen for office workers.

Slack’s latest Workforce Index report found that adoption in the US has slowed considerably in recent months as employees seem to be fretting about the stigma of tapping such tools at work. Workforce adoption grew just one percentage point in the last five months—from 32% to 33%. That’s an especially stark dropoff from the start of the year, when usage jumped six points in a single quarter.

Slack’s report, based on a survey of more than 17,000 global workers, attributed some of the slowing to uncertainty around when AI use is appropriate. Among the nearly half of US workers who reported being uncomfortable admitting AI use to managers, the top reasons included feelings that AI might be considered cheating and fear of being seen as incompetent or lazy.

“Workers are very confused about when it is socially and professionally acceptable to use AI at work,” Christina Janzer, Slack’s SVP of research and analytics, said in a press briefing. “We learned that people really struggled to know how and when they should be using it.”

Keep reading here.—PK

There’s a new corporate space race to provide internet access, and scientists say the lack of regulations could prove costly to both consumers and the planet.

In the past five years, the number of large satellites has increased exponentially, with the majority of launches being dominated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Starlink. But concerns over space waste, atmospheric damage, and the potential for collisions have researchers across the world sounding the alarm.

In a recent letter sent to the Federal Communications Commission’s Space Bureau, more than 100 researchers and space professionals demanded that the FCC better regulate the satellite launches or delegate the responsibility to a better equipped agency, noting that an estimated additional 58,000 satellites could be launched by 2030, with other proposals of 500,000 satellites to power the internet in the works. Currently, more than 6,000 satellites in orbit are owned by Starlink, about 60% of the total.

The letter explained the ramifications of that many satellites in orbit are unclear due to a lack of environmental reviews of space-related technology, citing the FCC’s “categorical exclusion” of satellites from the National Environmental Policy Act.

“This is a new frontier, and we should save ourselves a lot of trouble by making sure we move forward in a way that doesn’t cause major problems for our future,” the letter stated.

Samantha Lawler, an associate professor of astronomy at the University of Regina, Canada, and one of the signatories of the letter, likened SpaceX’s proposed satellite plans to “burning up…one Ford F-150 per hour” in the atmosphere.

Keep reading here.—PB

Despite some worry over a possible AI bubble earlier in the year, businesses are continuing to spend on generative technology—and investors are still eyeing it as a growth area.

That’s according to a few recent reports we’ve rounded up on the current state of the AI revolution. Data show that generative AI remains the fastest growing area of business software spending, as well as the biggest likely area for startup investment.

AI becoming an office staple: Corporate finance management platform Ramp found that business spending on AI vendors in the third quarter of this year increased 38% from Q2 to reach over $20 million.

Half of the top-10 fastest growing enterprise software vendors on the platform were AI startups, including AI code assistants Cursor, Replit, and Supermaven; video generation and editing platforms Runway and Luma AI; and development platform LangChain.

While OpenAI’s ChatGPT still reigns supreme—Ramp found that businesses chose it over Anthropic’s Claude 80% of the time—more businesses are opting to spend on multiple LLM services. Ramp found that around 22% of OpenAI customers now spend on Anthropic as well, a big boost from the 3% at the start of the year.

AI still fueling VC growth: AI has been one of the few bright spots in an otherwise sluggish VC market all year. A new report from Dynamo Software expects that trend to continue in the months to come.

Keep reading here.—PK