The most seductive narrative in American work culture right now isn’t that AI will take your job. It’s that AI will save you from it.

That’s the version the industry has spent the last three years selling to millions of nervous people who are eager to buy it. Yes, some white-collar jobs will disappear. But for most other roles, the argument goes, AI is a force multiplier. You become a more capable, more indispensable lawyer, consultant, writer, coder, financial analyst — and so on. The tools work for you, you work less hard, everybody wins.

But a new study published in Harvard Business Review follows that premise to its actual conclusion, and what it finds there isn’t a productivity revolution. It finds companies are at risk of becoming burnout machines.

As part of what they describe as “in-progress research,” UC Berkeley researchers spent eight months inside a 200-person tech company watching what happened when workers genuinely embraced AI. What they found across more than 40 “in-depth” interviews was that nobody was pressured at this company. Nobody was told to hit new targets. People just started doing more because the tools made more feel doable. But because they could do these things, work began bleeding into lunch breaks and late evenings. The employees’ to-do lists expanded to fill every hour that AI freed up, and then kept going.

As one engineer told them, “You had thought that maybe, oh, because you could be more productive with AI, then you save some time, you can work less. But then really, you don’t work less. You just work the same amount or even more.”

Over on the tech industry forum Hacker News, one commenter had the same reaction, writing, “I feel this. Since my team has jumped into an AI everything working style, expectations have tripled, stress has tripled and actual productivity has only gone up by maybe 10%. It feels like leadership is putting immense pressure on everyone to prove their investment in AI is worth it and we all feel the pressure to try to show them it is while actually having to work longer hours to do so.”

It’s fascinating and also alarming. The argument about AI and work has always stalled on the same question — are the gains real? But too few have stopped to ask what happens when they are.

The researchers’ new findings aren’t entirely novel. A separate trial last summer found experienced developers using AI tools took 19% longer on tasks while believing they were 20% faster. Around the same time, a National Bureau of Economic Research study tracking AI adoption across thousands of workplaces found that productivity gains amounted to just 3% in time savings, with no significant impact on earnings or hours worked in any occupation. Both studies have gotten picked apart.

This one may be harder to dismiss because it doesn’t challenge the premise that AI can augment what employees can do on their own. It confirms it, then shows where all that augmentation actually leads, which is “fatigue, burnout, and a growing sense that work is harder to step away from, especially as organizational expectations for speed and responsiveness rise,” according to the researchers.

The industry bet that helping people do more would be the answer to everything. It may turn out to be the beginning of a different problem entirely.

NordVPN is having a big sale on its two-year plans right now. The Complete tier, for example is 70 percent off, bringing the price of 24 months down to just $130.

NordVPN regularly appears on Engadget’s list of the best VPN services thanks to its wide server network, strong security tools and consistent performance across devices. NordVPN’s latest promotion puts one of its most comprehensive plans at a price that undercuts many competing premium VPN subscriptions.

NordVPN

Save on all NordVPN plans right now; the Complete plan includes a password manager and 1TB of cloud storage for 70 percent off.

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The Complete tier includes full access to NordVPN’s core VPN service, which encrypts internet traffic and masks a user’s IP address to help protect online activity on public Wi-Fi networks and at home. Subscribers can use the service on multiple devices, including phones, tablets, laptops and smart TVs, with apps available for major operating systems. It also includes access to NordPass (more on that below), an ad blocker and 1TB of cloud storage. You’ll find similar discounts on all of NordVPN’s other plans: Basic, Plus and Prime.

Beyond the basics, NordVPN offers features like threat protection to help block malicious websites and trackers, as well as specialty servers designed for added privacy or faster performance in specific scenarios. In our NordVPN review, the service was praised for its evolving feature set and overall reliability, even as the VPN market becomes increasingly competitive.

Engadget regularly tracks VPN pricing trends and this offer compares favorably with other current promotions. It also appears alongside NordVPN deals featured in Engadget’s ongoing roundup of the best VPN discounts available right now, which compares offers from multiple major providers.

Those looking for additional security tools may also want to note that NordVPN’s Complete plan bundles in extra services beyond the VPN itself. One of those is NordPass, the company’s password management app. NordPass is also discounted as part of a separate promotion, if you’re primarily looking for a password manager rather than a VPN. The Premium tier is currently 50 percent off, bringing the price down to $36 for two years. NordPass Premium adds features such as cross-device password syncing, secure password sharing and breach monitoring, which alerts users if stored credentials appear in known data leaks.

Both offers are available for a limited time, though Nord has not specified an end date for the promotion. If you’re still unsure whether NordVPN is right for you, it offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can change your mind and get a full refund.

Ring aired a Super Bowl ad touting its that didn’t quite get the intended buzz. Instead, the commercial scared the pants off of anyone .

The feature is advertised as a way to reunite missing dogs with their owners, a noble cause indeed, but Search Party does this by turning individual Ring devices into a surveillance network. Each camera uses AI to identify pets running across its field of vision and all feeds are pooled together to potentially identify lost animals. I’ve never seen a slope quite so slippery, as the technology could easily be rejiggered to track people.

It’s also worth noting that this isn’t a new feature. Search Party was . In that time it has been used to find 99 lost dogs in 90 days of use, according to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Approximately ten million pets go missing in America each year. Many people aren’t keen on helping to create a surveillance state for a tool with what looks to be around a 0.005 percent success rate. That percentage is sure to rise with mass adoption, but you get the jist.

With that said, many Ring users are looking for a way to disable the feature, as it’s enabled by default. Engadget has got you covered.

How to Disable Search Party

Thankfully, this is fairly easy to do. Just open the Ring app and tap the menu in the top-left corner. Next, select Control Center. Then, tap Search Party and toggle the settings to Disable for both Search for Lost Pets and Natural Hazards. Repeat this process for each camera.

There has also been some confusion as to what Ring . If you want to go a step further, delete all of your saved videos by tapping the History icon and then “Delete All.”

Susan Popkin has a brother-in-law who was kept out of traditional education until high school. David Bateman has a brother-in-law who couldn’t enroll for the first 17 years of his life.

These stories were common before special education accommodations saw a massive overhaul in the 1970s, with the passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1975, and again in the 1990s, with the start of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Now, with large cuts to the federal Department of Education, advocates are concerned that the learning experience schools offer to students who have disabilities could revert back in time.

“It does seem like so far ago, but right now we’re witnessing all we accomplished could go away in the blink of an eye,” Denise Marshall, CEO of the Council of Parents Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA), says.

After all, she adds, her young granddaughter has heard questions from other children about whether her 12-year-old brother really belongs in a normal school, considering his special education needs.

The Trump administration’s plans to eventually slash the Department of Education were previewed by the conservative policy playbook “Project 2025.” Despite several outstanding lawsuits, the administration has largely made good on that promise with a massive reduction in force hitting the department. The official rationale for the cuts is that they “empower states to take charge and advocate for and implement what is best” for students’ education, according to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.

“Closing the Department does not mean cutting off funds from those who depend on them—we will continue to support K-12 students, students with special needs, college student borrowers, and others who rely on essential programs,” McMahon said in a statement.

The administration added that IDEA, individual education programs (IEPs) and other accommodations will remain in place for the 7.5 million students across the U.S. who rely on them in schools.

But experts say that gutting the Department of Education, which serves as the umbrella for those services, essentially cuts those accommodations off by proxy.

“If there’s no one to do the work, then you have gotten rid of them,” Eve Hill, a disability rights lawyer, says. “They’re reducing our rights to pieces of paper.”

Millions of Students Set to Be Affected

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, students receiving special education accommodations grew by over 1 million students over the last decade, increasing from 6.4 million in the 2012–2013 school year to 7.5 million in the 2022–2023 academic year. Special education services serve the equivalent of 15 percent of all public school students.

The system has never been fully comprehensive or uniform, with many states offering varying levels of services based on their own investments into special education programs. Each state also receives a cut of $15 billion from the federal government designated for special education, covering costs of special education teachers and aides, screening and early intervention for infants and toddlers, and speech and occupational therapists, among other resources. Most advocates say they believe it will be “nearly impossible” for the now-reduced Department of Education workforce to properly distribute and oversee that pool of funding.

“You end up with no oversight and no way to distribute the resources,” Susan Popkin, co-director of the Disability Equity Policy Initiative at the nonprofit Urban Institute, says.

She compared it to the patchwork attempt by states to cover SNAP food assistance programs with local funds during the 2025 government shutdown.

“Some states will have funding and services ready to go and others won’t do anything at all, so we’ll have huge holes across the country,” she says. “The hope is parents and local government will unite and come up with local solutions, but it’ll be patchy. There’s no way of getting around it.”

There are also discussions of turning IDEA funding into a block grant, meaning states could theoretically use discretion to put the federal money toward one priority — like autism services — while disregarding others, like services for blind and deaf populations.

“They may prioritize it in odd or harmful ways,” says Carrie Gillispie, project director of Early Development and Disability at think tank New America. “We don’t know for sure if it’ll be block granted, but everything we’ve seen in the president’s proposal and other rhetoric leading up to now is making people worried they will block grant it.”

The funding also helps with early intervention programs intended to prevent children from needing special education services later — for example, identifying a speech impediment and fixing it early on.

“There’s a real danger that the youngest learners, particularly infants and toddlers, will not get the funding they need,” Gillispie says.

She added federal cuts to Medicaid could further eat into funding for early intervention programs.

“It’s already underfunded, it’s already strained. There’s already a workforce crisis,” she says. “Demand keeps rising for young kids with disabilities; there’s more young children being identified, so demand is going up with supply going down.”

More Complaints, Fewer Resources

There could be more confusion about special education rights with the loss of Department of Education oversight. Federal staffers provide long-standing institutional knowledge. Gillespie pointed toward 18 new state directors of special education who “now have no one to call.”

“Parents, educators and state administrators rely on ED [the Education Department] for a lot of help and technical assistance in making special education work,” she says. At the state level, “a lot are saying, ‘Where do we get the guidance to follow the law?’ [ED officials] have institutional knowledge you can’t read from a textbook.”

With that confusion comes more complaints filed. Often, families file complaints within the school district or the state, before going to the federal Office for Civil Rights. They typically stem from violations of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which guarantees individuals with disabilities have equal opportunities and rights, and the IDEA Act, which guarantees a “free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities.” A complaint could cover anything from a school not having wheelchair accessibility to a teacher not giving a student extra time to take an exam.

According to data from the Department of Education , over one-third of the complaints OCR handles are related to disabilities. That office was largely gutted in February and again in October. Hill, an attorney, expects parents will begin turning toward private lawyers as OCR will be unable to keep up with the deluge of complaints.

“I think there will be more problems; there just won’t be anywhere to go with them,” Hill, a partner at law firm Brown, Goldstein and Levy, says. “Parents and kids will have complaints they need to file, but nowhere to file them. So, they’ll go to private lawyers. But there are not enough of us, so people will end up having their educational rights taken away.”

Hiring private lawyers also requires time and money many do not have.

“Parents are taking out second mortgages on their homes just to get the rights for the child, but they can also take off from work to prep for the hearing and attend the hearing,” says David Bateman, a special education consultant and retired professor of special education at Shippensburg University. “Most don’t have the money, nor flexibility.”

Special education advocates advise parents to reach out to their local and state representatives, while also working alongside their schools.

“Everyone can take some level of action to reverse this and it’s important to be loud about it,” Marshall says. “The worst thing we can do is allow this to continue and not take the steps to educate people why it’s part of their fight.”

Hill pointed toward Marshall’s COPAA as a good resource, along with the National Disabilities Rights Network, though said the latter is going through its own potential funding crisis.

Popkin suggested connecting with, or creating, a special education PTA within school districts and calling local representatives to pressure them to fill in the gaps left by the federal government.

“Things are different than the earlier eras; there’s a lot of strong advocacy groups for disabilities and parents are always motivated to protect their kids,” she says. “If we’re not going to protect our children, who will we protect?”

KitchenAid’s strategy is one that maybe we should all live by—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Remaining nearly unchanged since its introduction in 1914, KitchenAid’s stand mixer has become such a legendary kitchen staple that we called the KitchenAid Artisan 7-Quart Lift Stand Mixer an “everlasting” kitchen must-have and put it on our Buy It For Life guide. KitchenAid’s heralded and beloved kitchen appliances luckily run regular sales so that you can get these great, but pricey, essentials for less.

Save up to $500 With KitchenAid Promo Codes and Deals

One of the best perks of shopping online at KitchenAid are the rotating deals and discounts on some of their best-selling appliances. If you really want to level up this spring, consider these sleek, lifetime-lasting appliances from KitchenAid. You can save big for a limited time with the KitchenAid Presidents’ Day Sale where you can buy more to save more. When you buy 2, you can save $100; when you buy 3, you’ll save $300; when you buy 4 or more, you’ll save $500 on select major appliances, through February 25.

Other awesome deals include free delivery and haul away on major appliances over $399 when signed in to your KitchenAid account, through February 25. You can also save up to $170 on select stand mixers, up to $250 off select espresso machines, and up to 50% off on select refurbished stand mixers, all through February 21. Plus, you can save 50% on the 5 Quart Horizontal Stripes Ceramic Bowl through February 16.

Save 15% With These KitchenAid Promo Codes and Deals

One of the best perks of shopping online at KitchenAid are the rotating deals and discounts on some of their best-selling appliances. If you really want to level up this Valentine’s Day, consider the gift of a sleek, lifetime-lasting appliance from KitchenAid. You can save big for a limited time with the KitchenAid Savings event, where you can save an extra $10 when you spend $100; get $20 off $200; and $30 off $300 with KitchenAid promo code VALENTINE (through February 7).

Are you hosting a SuperBowl party? Don’t get bogged down with cumbersome appliances and messy hand mixers. Level up your countertop appliances with 15% off, and be ready to cook up your fan favorites with KitchenAid promo code GAMEDAY (through February 7).

Score 15% Off With a KitchenAid Professional Discount

Speaking of great offers, there are other KitchenAid promo codes specifically for essential workers, like teachers, students, healthcare workers, military, first responders – and those over 50. If you are a member of one of those groups, all you need to do is verify your account with SheerID to receive the extra discounts (on top of any other accounts if you are an account holder). The verification form is in the “Profile Information” tab under “My Account” on KitchenAid’s site. Don’t fall into one of these categories? No worries! Those who have recently moved can also save 15%.

Enjoy Year-Round Savings at KitchenAid

Even without a discount code on hand, you can still save with regular deals, like great savings on refurbished items and free delivery on all appliances sitewide. Account holders also get access to exclusive perks and discounts sitewide—all you have to do is create an account. Be on the lookout for other great savings events from KitchenAid (like a discount on that mixer you’ve been eyeing all year long).

How to Redeem a KitchenAid Promo Code

Whether you’re shopping for a highly-rated cold brew coffee maker, a 5-speed hand mixer that’s great for saving countertop space, or a quiet electric kettle, we have the best KitchenAid promo codes to help you save on all your for-life kitchen products. When you’ve found a deal you want to use, like one of our promo codes listed above, simply paste the code in the box at checkout to save (remember to double-check whether you need to sign up for an account first). If the deal doesn’t require a special coupon, just put it in your cart, and the sale will be automatically applied—easy as pie.

Social network Bluesky is finally rolling out one of users’ most-requested features: drafts. Bluesky’s competitors, X and Threads, have long supported the ability to write drafts, which is seen as a baseline feature for services like this.

Users can access drafts on Bluesky the same way they do on these other platforms, which is by opening the new post flow and selecting the Drafts button in the top-right corner.

The rollout of drafts comes as Bluesky recently teased its roadmap for the year ahead. The company said it plans to focus on improving the app’s algorithmic Discover feed, offering better recommendations on who to follow, and making the app feel more real-time, among other updates. At the same time, the company acknowledged that it still needs to get the basics right.

Although Bluesky has gained a loyal user base, it still lags behind rivals when it comes to basic features, like private accounts and support for longer videos.

Launched to the public in early 2024, Bluesky has since scaled to over 42 million users, according to data sourced directly from the Bluesky API for developers.

India is pushing Aadhaar, the world’s largest digital identity system, deeper into everyday private life through a new app and offline verification support, a move that raises new questions about security, consent, and the broader use of the massive database.

Announced in late January by the Indian government-backed Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the changes introduce a new Aadhaar app alongside an offline verification framework that allows individuals to prove their identity without real-time checks against the central Aadhaar database. 

The app allows users to share a limited amount of information, such as confirming that they are over a certain age rather than revealing their full date of birth, with a range of services, like hotels and housing societies to workplaces, platforms, and payment devices, while the existing mAadhaar app continues to operate in parallel for now.

Alongside the new app, UIDAI is also expanding Aadhaar’s footprint in mobile wallets, with upcoming integration with Google Wallet and discussions underway to enable similar functionality in Apple Wallet, in addition to existing support on Samsung Wallet. 

The Indian authority is also promoting the app’s use in policing and hospitality. The Ahmedabad City Crime Branch has become the first police unit in India to integrate Aadhaar-based offline verification with PATHIK, a guest-monitoring platform launched by the police department, aimed at hotels and guest accommodations to record visitors’ information.

UIDAI has also positioned the new Aadhaar app as a digital visiting card for meetings and networking, allowing users to share selected personal details via a QR code.

Officials at the launch in New Delhi said these latest efforts are part of a broader effort to replace photocopies and manual ID checks with consent-based, offline verification. The approach, they argued, is meant to give users more control over which specific identity information they want to share, while enabling verification at scale without having to query Aadhaar’s central database.

Early uptake on top of massive scale

While UIDAI formally launched the new Aadhaar app last month, it had been in testing since earlier in 2025. Estimates from Appfigures show that the app, which appeared in app stores toward the end of 2025, quickly overtook the older mAadhaar app in monthly downloads. 

Combined monthly installs of Aadhaar-related apps rose from close to 2 million in October to nearly 9 million in December.

The new app is being layered onto an identity system that already operates at enormous scale considering India’s population. Figures published on UIDAI’s public dashboard show that Aadhaar has issued more than 1.4 billion identity numbers and handles roughly 2.5 billion authentication transactions each month, alongside tens of billions of electronic “know your customer” checks since its launch. 

The shift toward offline verification does not replace this infrastructure so much as extending it, moving Aadhaar from a largely backend verification tool into a more visible and everyday interface.

At the app’s launch, UIDAI officials said the move toward offline verification was intended to address long-standing risks associated with physical photocopies and screenshots of Aadhaar documents, which have often been collected, stored, and circulated with little oversight.

The expansion comes at a time of regulatory changes, easing restrictions, and a new framework (PDF), with UIDAI now allowing some public and private organizations to verify Aadhaar credentials without querying the central database. 

Consent, accountability, and unresolved risks

Civil liberties and digital rights groups say those legal changes do not resolve Aadhaar’s deeper structural risks. 

Raman Jit Singh Chima, senior international counsel and Asia Pacific policy director at Access Now, said the expansion of Aadhaar into offline and private-sector settings introduces new threats, particularly at a time when India’s data protection framework is still being put in place.

Chima questioned the timing of the rollout, arguing that the federal government should have waited for India’s Data Protection Board to be established first, and allow for independent review and wider consultation with affected communities.

“The fact that this has gone ahead at this point of time seems to indicate a preference to continue the expansion of the use of Aadhaar, even if it is unclear in terms of the further risks that it might pose to the system, as well as to the data of Indians,” Chima told TechCrunch.

Indian legal advocacy groups also point to unresolved implementation failures. 

Prasanth Sugathan, legal director at New Delhi-based digital rights group SFLC.in, said that while UIDAI has framed the app as a tool for citizen empowerment, it does little to address persistent problems, such as inaccuracies in the Aadhaar database, security lapses, and poor mechanisms for redress, which have disproportionately affect vulnerable populations. 

He also cited a 2022 report by India’s Comptroller and Auditor General, which found UIDAI had failed to meet certain compliance standards.

“Such issues can often result in disenfranchisement of people, especially those who were meant to be benefited by such systems,” Sugathan told TechCrunch, adding that it remains unclear how data shared through the new app would prevent breaches or leaks.

Campaigners associated with Rethink Aadhaar, a civil society campaign focused on Aadhaar-related rights and accountability, argue that the offline verification system risks reintroducing private-sector use of Aadhaar in ways the Supreme Court has already explicitly barred. 

Shruti Narayan and John Simte of the group said enabling private entities to routinely rely on Aadhaar for verification amounts to “Aadhaar creep”, normalizing its use across social and economic life despite a 2018 judgment that struck down provisions allowing private actors to use Aadhaar to verify people’s information. They warned that consent in such contexts is often illusory, particularly in situations involving hotels, housing societies, or delivery workers, while India’s data protection law remains largely untested.

Together, the new app, regulatory changes, and expanding ecosystem are shifting Aadhaar from a background identity utility into a visible layer of daily life that is increasingly hard to avoid. As India doubles down on Aadhaar, governments and tech companies are watching closely, attracted by the promise of population-scale identity checks.

The Indian IT ministry and UIDAI CEO did not respond to requests for comments.