AI Makes Everything Worse, Just Ask Everyone Actually Using It

Stephan’s Daily Tech News episode 117 delivers a rapid‑fire roundup of the week’s biggest tech stories. Host Joe Progran kicks off with Intel’s new Heracles accelerator that can compute on fully encrypted data, then moves to Atlassian’s 10 percent workforce cut as the company pivots toward AI. A deep dive follows on Chuwi’s laptop CPU mislabeling scandal, and an overview of OpenJarvis, an open‑source framework for privacy‑first, locally run AI assistants. Meta’s AI roadmap gets a reality check with the delayed Avocado model and the rollout of its own MTIA custom chips, while Tesla unveils the steering‑wheel‑free Cybercab. At SXSW, Steven Spielberg draws a line against AI‑generated filmmaking, and the UK Competition and Markets Authority warns against letting autonomous agents manage personal finances. The episode wraps with academic concerns that AI is eroding critical thinking in students and a new ActivTrak study showing AI tools actually increasing workload and burnout. All delivered with a healthy dose of skepticism and humor—stay human, stay skeptical, and don’t let the robots do your shopping.