Tag: Social and attachment drive

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Learning to lead in a hybrid human-AI enterprise

As adoption of AI agents looks set to surge by as much as 300% in the next two years, leadership teams are carefully considering the implications of a hybrid human-AI workforce. 

Unlike existing enterprise-level automation that relies on manual input, AI agents are capable of autonomously coordinating complex tasks, interacting with multiple tools and environments across an organization. In early applications that center on customer service, HR, and sales, adoption of agentic AI has led to productivity gains of 30-50%. 

Their autonomy positions agents more as collaborators than tools, working side-by-side with human employees in blended teams that look poised to upend traditional workplace dynamics. 

More than three-quarters of HR leaders believe that the deployment of AI agents will transform existing workplace norms, driving a complete reappraisal of how roles and responsibilities are distributed, how skills are prioritized, and how workplace culture is shaped.

Though many admit they’re in the early or preparatory phase of this shift, 86% of chief HR officers predict that navigating digital labor shaped by agentic AI will be a central component of their role in the years ahead.

Fluency in the change management aspect of agentic AI adoption will be a crucial differentiator when it comes to unlocking the full potential of the technology going forward, believes Ateet Jayaswal, chief culture and employee experience officer at Wipro, a leading technology services and consulting company. This moment is one that he says, “calls for a mindset shift in how HR leaders would enable their organizations.”

Redeploying roles to enable higher-value work

As AI agents assume ownership of more complex and integral tasks, the distribution of roles and responsibilities within an organization will undergo significant change. It’s estimated that three-quarters of current roles will require redesign, reskilling, or redeployment by 2030 as a result of agentic AI. 

For leadership, this shift should be about reskilling employees toward higher-value work in order to optimize the potential of an agent-human hybrid workforce, says Jayaswal. 

For example, Wipro is a complex organization of 240,000 employees across 65 countries. It previously had multiple policies, documents, and knowledge fragmented across different systems, which delayed response to employee queries. 

But the company has recently integrated a custom agentic AI assistant—an agent co-created in partnership with enterprise agentic AI platform Ema Unlimited—that can swiftly navigate this complex system, assuming responsibility for 50 HR tasks that had previously fallen to human employees. With the help of an AI agent, average response time to queries has lowered from 48 hours to five seconds. 

Human employees have more time to focus on work “that requires a creative and imaginative mind and cross-functional collaboration, leveraging diverse ideas and thoughts to problem-solve,” says Jayaswal. The AI agent, meanwhile, handles rote administrative tasks like sorting timesheets or helping employees navigate policies and take actions in the flow of work. 

When reallocating employee responsibilities, though, it is imperative that humans remain in the loop, Jayaswal caveats. When agentic AI is incorporated into enterprise technology, it must work with sensitive and personal data and therefore needs even more stringent guardrails and constraints than consumer applications. “When you expose an AI agent to organizational data, when you integrate it into multiple enterprise systems, then pathways around the AI agent become extremely important,” he says. “It’s an evolving space that leadership needs to have front-of-mind.” Governance should include robust data privacy rules and the establishment of governance layers, such as an AI council, he suggests.  

At a fundamental level, the adoption of AI agents will force a re-evaluation of human roles, believes Jayaswal. Rather than employees primarily performing repetitive tasks or troubleshooting, a significant proportion of their time will shift to designing, teaching, and optimizing an AI agent that can do this work for them with far greater speed and predictability and without the agent getting bored. 

“The nature of your job changes from being the hero who comes in to solve the problem to designing the hero who can solve the problem,” he summarizes. “The individuals who I have seen thrive in this environment are the ones who make this shift.”

An evolving employee skillset

Just as roles and responsibilities will be reconfigured to reflect the input of AI agents, the core skills of human employees will be reprioritized. More than four in five HR leaders say they’re planning to reskill workers to become more competitive in a market shaped by AI agents. 

Technical skills will be increasingly important. Leading employers such as Salesforce, Danone, and Walmart are already rolling out dedicated AI and digital skills programs that aim to equip everyone from frontline workers to C-suite executives with a baseline level of AI literacy in response to the pervasiveness of the technology. 

But desirable soft skills will also evolve, Jayaswal points out. Employees who assign tasks to an AI agent need to plainly articulate what modular steps may be needed to accomplish a task, what the desired outcome should be, and what parameters or guardrails need to be in place to ensure the agent doesn’t access or share confidential data. 

As HR executives adapt to a blended workforce, three skills are emerging as top priorities during recruitment, according to a recent survey: relationship building, like forging constructive partnerships and account management; collaboration; and adaptability. 

Maintaining a healthy workplace culture

In freeing up human employees to focus on higher-value tasks, the hope is that AI agents can elevate the employee experience, deepening fulfilment and satisfaction in the workplace. 

“At Wipro, our vision is to improve the life of Wiproites,” says Jayaswal. “We are taking away non-value added work by embracing modern ways of collaborating, engaging, and transacting, leaving associates with higher order work content.” 

But leadership teams embracing agentic AI will also need to plan for the new pressures and stressors that the technology can place on a workforce. 

There is already confusion and knowledge gaps, with 73% of HR leaders reporting their employees don’t yet understand how digital labor will impact their work. Many organizations have opted to define AI agents as teammates or colleagues on org charts, but new research says this could erode trust and a sense of professional identity. It also raises new questions around accountability and ownership. 

The role of management in addressing these concerns is critical, says Jayaswal. To maintain healthy dynamics, managers need to become skilled at orchestrating blended systems, splitting their focus between supervising AI agents and motivating human employees as they also build and supervise AI agents.

Upgrading employee well-being programs will be a core part of maintaining a robust workplace culture. “As there are more interactions with AI agents, you are losing some of the human touch that was provided by service delivery partners or leaders, or often even by colleagues and peers,” Jayaswal says. Employee services that encourage social connection and empathetic communication may help teams navigate this. 

A breakneck transformation

Agentic AI looks set to scale at breakneck speed across many enterprises, and it will significantly transform how these organizations operate. 

Carefully considering and deciding how to adapt to this newly blended workforce is now a top priority for leadership teams. Reviewing and refining organizational strategies is essential for optimizing both technological gains and the employee experience.

This content was produced by Insights, the custom content arm of MIT Technology Review. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff. It was researched, designed, and written by human writers, editors, analysts, and illustrators. This includes the writing of surveys and collection of data for surveys. AI tools that may have been used were limited to secondary production processes that passed thorough human review.

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CiteSentinel Launched to Detect and Prevent AI Hallucinations in Legal Citations

Legal tech startup BrentWorks reports that it has launched CiteSentinel, a dedicated platform built specifically to detect and prevent AI hallucinations in legal citations, including those related to biotechnology. The tool scans legal documents and flags case law, statutes, and legal authorities that may be fabricated, misstated, or otherwise erroneous, before they reach a judge, according to the company.

Courts across the country are increasingly sanctioning attorneys who submit briefs containing invented case citations, a well-documented byproduct of generative AI drafting tools that produce authoritative-sounding, but entirely fictional, legal authority, says BrentWorks co-founder Brent Britton, a technology attorney and MIT-trained engineer. CiteSentinel was designed to close that verification gap, giving attorneys a fast and easy way to confirm that every citation in a filing corresponds to a real case, a real statute, and a real legal authority, he adds.

“The legal profession is learning, in very public ways, that AI doesn’t just make mistakes, it confidently lies to your face,” continues Britton. “CiteSentinel is about restoring trust. It lets lawyers move fast with the irresistible efficiencies of generative AI while still filing documents reciting authorities they can stand behind. It also enables them to scan opposing counsel’s documents, giving them a competitive edge in the courtroom.”

AI hallucinations
When a brief containing fabricated citations reaches the court, the question of who drafted it quickly becomes secondary to the question of whose name is on it. [BestForBest/Getty Images]

Many attorneys who do not personally use AI to draft documents are discovering they have a problem anyway, Britton points out. Opposing counsel may have used AI. Co-counsel may have. Contract attorneys and paralegals almost certainly have access to it and may be using it without disclosing that fact. When a brief containing fabricated citations reaches the court, the question of who drafted it quickly becomes secondary to the question of whose name is on it, he explains.

CiteSentinel lets attorneys scan any document, their own, a colleague’s, or an adversary’s, for citation errors before those errors become their problem, notes Britton. Attorneys who review opposing counsel’s filings with CiteSentinel gain an additional advantage: the ability to identify and challenge citations to authorities that simply do not exist, he says.

Unlike traditional research platforms that focus on finding more information, states Britton, CiteSentinel was created to confirm that the law cited in a document is real. Attorneys can scan:

  • Their own AI-assisted drafts, before filing
  • Submissions from co-counsel, contract attorneys, and support staff
  • Opposing counsel’s filings, for strategic advantage
  • Any document where citation accuracy carries professional or ethical weight

BrentWorks’ other co-founder is Brent Hunter, a technologist who applied neural networks to finance in 1993. He cites CiteSentinel as the first in a series of products the company will be releasing for the practice of law in the age of AI.

Both BrentWorks’ co-founders agree that AI hallucinations pose particular risks in biotechnology-related legal matters because cases often depend on highly technical evidence, including patent claims, prior art, clinical trial data, FDA regulatory history, scientific publications, expert witness testimony, freedom-to-operate analyses, and licensing agreements. In this context, an AI system could invent scientific references that do not exist, mischaracterize FDA guidance documents, fabricate patent precedents, incorrectly summarize clinical trial results, or generate inaccurate prior-art searches. Such errors can undermine legal arguments, regulatory submissions, and intellectual property strategies.

“Biotech litigation is where AI hallucinations turn genuinely dangerous. You have a system trained to sound authoritative now injecting phantom patent precedents and counterfeit clinical data into documents that determine whether a drug reaches patients or a patent survives challenge,” explains Brent Britton. “In this domain, where the technical record is everything, a ghost FDA guidance document or a fabricated prior art reference can unravel an entire legal strategy and years of work along with it. The law has always been a high-stakes information game, and right now the machines are playing it with synthetic cards.”

As CiteSentinel expands beyond just case citation verification, “it will be the truth layer that keeps all players honest,” he predicts.

 

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Social connectedness in mobile gaming: how family dynamics shape children’s virtual interactions

BackgroundMobile gaming is important for children’s social interaction, but its impact on real-life social connectedness depends heavily on family dynamics. How family patterns shape children’s emotional and social experiences around gaming remains underexplored, particularly qualitatively. This study examined how family dynamics influence children’s belonging, emotion regulation, and virtual interactions in mobile gaming.MethodsUsing a phenomenological design, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 20 participants from 10 families across urban, suburban, and rural China. Participants included children (n=10, aged 10-12), parents (n=8, all mothers), and siblings (n=2). All children had played mobile games for ≥6 months. Data were analyzed via thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke). Family patterns were identified based on parental mediation, emotional communication, and children’s sense of connectedness.ResultsThree family patterns emerged. Restrictive-Control Families (4/8) showed high monitoring and low trust, linked to concealment, tension, and social shift to virtual peers. Supportive Co-Play Families (3/8) exhibited shared play, emotional communication, and digital-offline continuity, with children reporting greater resilience and belonging. Sibling-Mediated Families (3 families) featured siblings as companions and emotional buffers, helping manage frustration without direct parental involvement. No severe conflicts or distress were directly caused by gaming in any pattern.ConclusionsChildren’s mobile gaming outcomes are shaped by relational context, not just time. This study identifies three family-level regulatory mechanisms: suppression (restrictive-control), cognitive reappraisal (supportive co-play), and co-regulation (sibling-mediated). These findings extend Social Connectedness Theory, showing how family patterns shape children’s emotion regulation. Supportive co-play and sibling mediation facilitate adaptive regulation and connectedness, while restrictive-control may drive children to virtual spaces. Family-based interventions targeting emotion regulation, not just screen reduction, are recommended. Shifting from “anti-addiction” to “developmental enhancement” offers a safe, practical strategy for integrating gaming into family life.
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Personality functioning in adolescents with depression: links with childhood maltreatment, psychopathology, self-harm and suicidal ideation

BackgroundAdolescence represents a critical developmental period marked by significant vulnerability to depression, a condition with heterogeneous presentations that complicate clinical management. The co-occurrence of personality dysfunction with depression is known to indicate greater severity and poorer prognosis, yet specific features of this comorbidity in adolescent clinical samples require further delineation. This study aimed to compare clinical and psychosocial correlates in depressed adolescents with and without impaired personality functioning.MethodsThe clinical sample comprised 73 adolescents (aged 12–17; 83.6% female) diagnosed with depression or reporting clinically significant depressive symptoms. Participants completed self-report measures assessing personality functioning (LoPF-Q 12–18), childhood maltreatment (CEQ), psychopathology (YSR 11-18), mentalizing capacity (RFQY-8), borderline traits (BPFS-C), and self-harm behavior. Based on LoPF-Q 12-18 T-scores, participants were categorized into two subgroups: depression without personality dysfunction (T ≤ 64; n=20) and depression with personality dysfunction (T ≥ 65; n=53).ResultsResults indicated that adolescents with co-occurring depression and personality dysfunction exhibited significantly lower functioning across all personality domains compared to those with depression alone. This subgroup also reported an earlier onset and higher frequency of self-harm, more severe suicidal ideation, elevated borderline traits, and greater impairments in mentalizing. Furthermore, they demonstrated higher levels of internalizing, affective, conduct, and PTSD symptoms, alongside greater exposure to emotional neglect.ConclusionImpaired personality functioning in depressed adolescents is associated with elevated and multifaceted patterns of symptoms, including subjective distress and risky behaviors. These findings underscore the necessity of routinely assessing personality functioning in adolescents with clinically significant depressive symptoms to enable early identification and the development of tailored, integrated interventions for this high-risk subgroup.
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Open Letter: In Support of Mandatory Nucleic Acid Synthesis Screening and Recordkeeping

An open letter, In Support of Mandatory Nucleic Acid Synthesis Screening and Recordkeeping, published late on the evening of June 3, 2026, and signed by life sciences researchers, technologists, national security experts and former White House officials, is calling for mandatory screening of synthetic nucleic acids. This effort is significant because it highlights that screening is a rare point of consensus for a wide coalition of science and technology experts and is widely seen as both pro-AI and pro-safety.

From the CEOs of the major labs to AI skeptics and safety organizations to luminaries in the life sciences, public health, and national security, there is wide agreement that we need stronger screening guardrails. The letter calls on US lawmakers to codify mandatory nucleic acid synthesis screening, including recordkeeping, in order to combat the development of biological weapons at the scale of AI. The open letter reads as follows:

As life sciences researchers, builders of AI and biotechnology, and experts with a wide range of views on how to approach AI policy, we call on legislators to make screening of orders for synthetic nucleic acids—and the equipment needed to make them—mandatory. 
The ability to order synthetic DNA online has accelerated vaccine development, powered basic research, and made it possible for small teams to access capabilities that used to be confined to major institutions. Since the publication of protocols to reconstruct viruses from strands of DNA more than two decades ago, it has also been recognized as a point in the biotechnology supply chain where a bad actor could cause outsized harm. Recognizing the vulnerability, synthesis companies formed the International Gene Synthesis Consortium in 2009 to develop and implement voluntary safeguards against misuse.

While the issue is not new, the pace of progress in artificial intelligence is. AI systems now outperform PhD-level virologists on questions about highly technical laboratory procedures in their own domains of expertise. The evidence about what this means for present-day biosecurity threats is genuinely mixed, but the trend is hard to dispute. AI systems are improving rapidly, and alongside incredible benefits to science and medicine, there is a real possibility that the knowledge barriers which have historically prevented bad actors from obtaining biological weapons will meaningfully erode.

Support for screening does not depend on any particular view of AI; the biosecurity case has been recognized by scientists and governments for decades. Screening is also one of the best understood and least disruptive biosecurity measures available. It asks providers of synthesized DNA and manufacturers of synthesis machines to check synthesis requests for sequences of concern and to verify customer legitimacy before shipping orders. Providers should also record synthesis orders and sequence data to support legitimate biosecurity investigations, so that any threat that might evade initial screening can be traced back to its source — including when individual sequences would not raise concern in isolation. Awareness of traceability itself deters misuse.

Many of the largest and most responsible providers in the industry already screen and record orders voluntarily because it is well understood that they have an important role to play in maintaining public trust in and mitigating potential misuse of this important technology.

For these reasons, the undersigned support mandatory nucleic acid synthesis screening, including recordkeeping, in the United States.

Given the pace at which the underlying technology is changing, we believe the need is urgent. Congress should act this session, and we applaud the legislative efforts currently underway. To ensure a consistent national standard rather than a patchwork of conflicting laws, states should also consider implementing requirements based on existing federal and industry guidelines.

This is a rare moment of agreement across stakeholders that are often at odds. We hope policymakers will meet it with decisive action.

Sincerely,

You can find the full list of signatories and the letter here. I am a media consultant working with the two organizations that are the primary organizers of the letter: the Institute for Progress (IFP) and the Foundation for American Innovation (FAI). The best email contact regarding the open letter is letter@screendna.org.

Carrie Hutcheson is senior director of the Glen Echo Group in Washington, DC.  

 

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Veracyte Launches Test Identifying Breast Cancer Patients Who Don’t Need Chemo

Buoyed by the remarkable results of the OPTIMA trial presented at the ASCO Annual Meeting, Veracyte this week announced the U.S. launch of the Prosigna Breast Risk of Recurrence (ROR) test, a genomic test for patients diagnosed with early-stage hormone-receptor positive (HR+) breast cancer. 

“Prosigna is the only test proven to be predictive for chemotherapy benefit in a Phase III prospective trial for patients with up to nine positive lymph nodes, including premenopausal women, all of whom were recommended to receive ovarian suppression,” Phillip G. Febbo, MD, chief scientific and medical officer at Veracyte, told Inside Precision Medicine. 

The Prosigna test determines a patient’s ROR score and estimates the 10-year probability of distant recurrence. It thus help guide treatment decisions, including predicting whether high risk patients are likely to benefit from chemotherapy or may safely achieve optimal outcomes with endocrine therapy alone, helping clinicians to make personalized care plans for their patients. 

Prosigna will be available to order starting June 8, 2026.

“Every patient diagnosed with breast cancer deserves answers they can trust about what their cancer means and what comes next,” said John Leite, PhD, chief commercial officer, Veracyte​.

“Prosigna gives patients and their oncologists a deeper understanding of their individual risk of recurrence, and, for many, whether chemotherapy will truly benefit them or whether they can safely avoid it. That kind of personalized insight can bring greater confidence and reassurance as patients navigate decisions that will shape their care and future health.”

In the U.S., more than 225,000 new HR+/HER2- breast cancer cases are diagnosed each year. When breast cancer is diagnosed early and treated appropriately, five-year survival rates reach 92%.

“For decades, clinical staging just comprised tumor size and nodal status together with pathology. This was the standard approach to determining whether patients with HR+/HER2- breast cancer need chemotherapy. Many node-positive patients routinely receive chemotherapy as standard of care,” Febbo said.

He added, “And yet, chemotherapy is likely to only benefit a relatively small fraction of these patients.” 

The OPTIMA trial uses the Prosigna test to guide therapy and testing. Those patients with a low Prosigna ROR (<60) can safely avoid chemotherapy. OPTIMA shows that tumor biology, as evaluated by the Prosigna test, provides information beyond traditional clinical factors.

Prosigna is based on the PAM50 genomic classifier, which classifies tumors into four intrinsic subtypes. Prosigna, the company said in a press release, “uniquely combines intrinsic subtypes and proliferation score with clinical pathological factors into a single comprehensive analysis to calculate a patient’s Risk of Recurrence (ROR) score and predict 10-year probability of distant recurrence.”  

Veracyte’s portfolio includes multiple cancer types, including tests for prostate cancer (Decipher Prostate), bladder cancer (Decipher Bladder and TrueMRD for muscle invasive bladder cancer monitoring), and others. The company said, “Prosigna’s intrinsic subtyping data positions us well for future expansion. While ROR scoring is specific to HR+/HER2- disease, the underlying intrinsic subtyping information spans all breast cancer types.” 

More than 225,000 new HR+/HER2- breast cancer cases are diagnosed annually, with approximately 75,000 patients having node-positive disease annually. The OPTIMA trial demonstrated that more than two-thirds of clinically high-risk patients (68%) can safely avoid chemotherapy—a significant population previously assumed to require treatment based solely on nodal status. 

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