If they want to be a part of building a great culture and environment, theyll come along on these adjustments and changes, Stankey said at the time. Others may decide, given the station of life they are in, that they want to move in a different direction.

That may be underselling it. On the inside, workers told Bloomberg this week they think Stankeys mandate is a covert attempt to trim the workforcewithout actually having to stomach the bad press of layoffs. Its a layoff wolf in return-to-office sheeps clothing, an AT&T manager anonymously said. (An AT&T spokesperson did not immediately respond to a Fortune request for comment.)

AT&Ts move seems to be the synthesis of many workers worst-case scenarios: A compulsory return to the office, and the threat of losing the job. Leaders like Stankey (and Googles Sundar Pichai, Metas Mark Zuckerberg, and Salesforces Marc Benioff) are flexing their leverage and doubling down on in-person work, workers preferences be damned. Many are also contributing to the historic number of layoffs as they look to downsize after over-hiring during the era of remote work. AT&Ts mandate is a subtle way of doing both, workers say.

This shift in favor of worker power is happening in the context of massive layoffs by tech companies, which are becoming less willing to offer perks like remote work, Gleb Tsipursky, author and CEO of future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts, wrote for Fortune in March. In fact, theres evidence that some companies are using return-to-office mandates to get workers to quit voluntarily so they can avoid paying severance.

For his part, Stankey, whos been with AT&T for nearly four decades, believes the in-office push is necessary for the company to get the right people doing similar functions in the right places. But most workers side with Tsipurskys reasoning, and many are incensed by the needless action. 

As one Reddit commenter pointed out, even if a manager lives within a three-hour drive of their assigned office hub, theyd still have to make that commute at least 75% of the workweek. Stankeys decision, they went on, appears to be a way to force a chunk of the workforce to quit rather than be fired (which would require severance), because logically [it] makes no sense.

Plus, the commenter added, this summer is a particularly difficult time to force people to relocate. The housing market is dire and interest rates are sky-high, particularly in the suburbs around the AT&T major city office hubs. Be careful out there, they wrote. AT&T cares nothing about their workers and it might cause a ripple effect on their services overall. 

Who is a return to office mandate for?

Stankeys decision shouldnt have come as a complete shock. AT&T periodically trims its headcount in a move it calls surplussing, a representative told Bloomberg. Just since the pandemic, a multi-billion dollar cost-cutting effort resulted in laying off nearly 70,000 employees. 

Perhaps as a result, AT&T workers in particular have strongly resisted return-to-office measures for over a year. Last August, workers actually filed a Change.org petition against the move.  Many managers supported the refusal to return to work, citing childcare and elder care needs and a desire for more flexibility. There was some sympathy. But clearly its a different sentiment in the towers high above us, Kieran Knutson, an AT&T call center worker for almost two decades and organizer of the petition, told Fortune. 

A new office locationwith insufficient parkingmeant a three-hour round-trip commute for Suzette Belhumeur, a California-based engineering administrator for AT&T. If my quality of life deteriorates because of this, so will my work, she wrote last year beneath her petition signature. How can I provide quality service if Im stressed and unhappy?

AT&T workers will know if theyre impacted by the end of the month, Bloomberg reported, and move-by dates for those who will be assigned a new location are still to come. In the interim, company morale has been decimated, and workers are rushing to consider their options. 

Perhaps the writing has long been on the wall. A 2022 study by AT&T itself said hybrid work will be the primary working model by 2024100% of senior executive respondents said it would be crucial for attracting young talent.

Some medical professionals are using A.I. chatbots like OpenAIs ChatGPT, introduced in November, to relate to patients. 

I wish I would have had this when I was in training, Dr. Gregory Moore, former corporate vice president at Microsoft Health and Life Sciences, told the New York Times, referring to ChatGPT, in whose parent Microsoft is an investor.  Dr. Moore specialized in radiology and neurology as a physician, and he used the tool when trying to tell his friend, who had cancer, that there were few options to effectively treat the condition.

According to the Times, When Dr. Moore explained the situation via prompt to ChatGPT, the A.I. tool returned this response in one instance: I know this is a lot of information to process and that you may feel disappointed or frustrated by the lack of optionsI wish there were more and better treatmentsand I hope that in the future there will be.

Dr. Moore was surprised by how good the tool was. Its unclear if he ever communicated the chatbots responses to his friend.  

I have never seen or had a coach like this, he said.

Chatbots like ChatGPT are being integrated into the day-to-day routine in all sorts of industrieswhether banking or online retail. The tool is being adopted faster than the pace at which regulations are being drafted, leading to rallying cries from A.I. industry experts warning about the techs potential dangers if its misused or developed too fast. Within the medical profession, some doctors are questioning whether using chatbots is ethical. 

I know physicians are using this, Dr. Dev Dash, an emergency medicine physician and member of Stanford Health Cares data science team, told the Times. Ive heard of residents using it to guide clinical decision making. I dont think its appropriate.

OpenAI did not immediately return Fortunes request for comment.

Many others in the medical field have also been trying out the chatbot despite the concerns. Dr. Harlan Krumholz, the director of Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation at Yale School of Medicine, thinks that even though it would be admitting you dont know how to talk to patients, theres value in testing the tool.

Youd be crazy not to give it a try and learn more about what it can do, Dr. Krumholz told the Times.

Theres clearly a need for empathy in how doctors approach their patientsa trait that a study found to be lacking among many physicians. Authors of the paper reviewed the audio recordings of physician-family conferences that addressed end-of-life decisions, and concluded that in one-third of the cases, doctors made no empathetic statements. Empathy has also been linked to better outcomes among patients. So, if ChatGPT is helping doctors with communicating more effectively with their patients, some say, why not? 

Most doctors are pretty cognitively focused, treating the patients medical issues as a series of problems to be solved, Dr. Douglas White, who is the director at University of Pittsburghs Program on Ethics and Decision Making in Critical Illness, told the Times. He said that could sometimes lead them to overlook the emotional aspect of treating illnesses.

For its part, ChatGPT has shown some talent for medicine by passing a U.S. Medical Licensing Exam, a requirement to practice medicine in the U.S. Additionally, in an April study by JAMA Internal Medicine, one of the journals published by the American Medical Association, authors fed questions from a Reddit forum where people ask about illnesses and health conditions into ChatGPT. Health care professionals preferred the chatbots response in nearly 80% of medical evaluations to those by physicians. 

There is now research showing that this is going to helpwell, lets see if we can translate this into practice, Christopher Longhurst, the chief digital officer and chief medical officer at University of California at San Diego Health, told the Wall Street Journal earlier this year.  

About 75% of Foundations enterprise portfolio uses A.I., whether its machine learning, computer vision, or the buzzed-about large language models, she explains. Among those businesses are Jasper, an A.I. copywriting assistant; and infrastructure players like Anyscale, whose clients include OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, the popular generative A.I. chatbot.

Theres a lot of opportunity but also a lot of downsides, Chen says, singling out fake content and security problems. Thats why we invest in both the applications of A.I. as well as data security, things that are counterbalancing the downsides of that technology.

Chen sits on more than 10 portfolio company boards. Asked how directors can grasp what role A.I. should play in their organization, along with its potential risks, she emphasizes governance. The board is really the forum to ask questions, not to have, necessarily, the answers.

With A.I. poised to transform many industries, corporate directors cant ignore this rapidly advancing technology. For boards and their organizations, it offers great promise but also presents daunting challenges. Directors must provide useful oversight of A.I. strategy and ensure that they educate themselves.

Missteps involving A.I. can be costly, as Google parent company Alphabet learned when its market value recently plunged by $100 billion after the underwhelming launch of the Bard chatbot. If youre in a regulated industry and youre trying to apply A.I., I think youve got to be very, very careful, Chen warns. Because the consequences of applying A.I. in an incorrect way, where that leads to poor advice or poor results, can be really, really bad.

Most boards could stand to raise their A.I. game. In a recent survey of 500 U.S.-based senior executives by law firm Baker McKenzie, only 41% said they have A.I. expertise at the board level. And even though all respondents agreed that using A.I. comes with risks, just 4% considered them significant.

The first number sounds suspiciously high to Alan Dignam, professor of corporate law at Queen Mary University of London. I think levels of actual knowledge are pretty poor, says Dignam, who is writing a book about the A.I.-driven organizational transformations that lie ahead.

I dont know whether that reflects Ive downloaded ChatGPT and Ive downloaded [image generation engine] DALL-E, and Ive had a look at it, he adds of the 41% figure. But Id be really, really surprised if that meant real expertise at board level. Deep knowledge of A.I. is scarce, Dignam notes. Computer scientists arent experts in it, because its not maths, its not computer science, its statistics.

Directors awareness of A.I. has risen over the past several years, says Beena Ammanath, executive director of the Global Deloitte AI Institute. Every board is now aware they need some level of A.I. savvy and A.I. education, and they need to have an understanding of the risks that come with using A.I.

Board composition has changed as a result, observes Ammanath, who also leads the Trustworthy Tech Ethics practice at Deloitte and is the author of Trustworthy AI. Theres definitely been that slow shift to include a tech executive as part of the board, just to raise the tech IQ, Ammanath says.

Jeanne Kwong Bickford, managing director and senior partner with Boston Consulting Group, sees parallels with cybersecurity a few years ago. Cybersecurity is the downside risk of digitization, and digitization is a major strategic imperative for a lot of organizations, says Bickford, one of her firms risk and compliance leaders. But historically, boards lacked expertise in or knowledge of cybersecurity because it was an emerging risk.

Theyre now in a similar situation with A.I., Bickford notes. Originally you think of it as, Well, thats really for management to do because its a very technical topic, she says. But the reality is, A.I. itself is also strategic in nature because it is a disruptive technology that can allow for massive innovation, both on the revenue side but also from a cost and a process side.

In addition to understanding how to use A.I. for competitive advantage, boards must know the downside risks of a sometimes unproven technology, Bickford says. Those risks are also strategic, she explains. The downside risk of it forces a board to think about corporate social responsibility, the purpose and values of the company itself, because some of the decisions on how you use A.I. will test those values, and the board needs to be able to engage on that.

Ammanath highlights the brand and reputational risks of A.I. To use a timely example, a chatbot might produce misogynistic content. For Ammanath, its a matter of understanding the places within the organization that A.I. is being used and what kind of ethical tech checks have been done, and getting the best practices from the rest of the industry or from other organizations.

Because all A.I. should be responsible, the organization must first set out its responsible A.I. policy, Bickford asserts. What are those principles that guide how a firm will or will not use A.I.? she asks. We really do believe that responsible A.I. cant be separate from normal risk management and good governance.

Regulation is another key factor for Bickford, who points to the European Unions proposed AI Act. And there are various national, regional, state, and local regulations that are coming up, [so] that this also becomes a fiduciary responsibility from just a legal and regulatory perspective. So all of those things force the board to have to engage on A.I.

For any company that plans to roll out an A.I. strategy, Chen reels off a list of questions that directors should ask management. What are the goals for the strategy? How is this impacting top line, bottom line? What are the resources we need? she says. In the case of unintended consequences, what are the guardrails that you guys are enforcing in advance? How are competitors using this technology?

Dignams advice: Be skeptical about sales pitches for A.I. products. [Ask] really, really detailed questions about what this thing was tested on, he counsels. Theres an awful lot of mis-selling; theres an awful lot of misunderstanding by boards as to what theyre buying.

In Dignams experience, organizations seeking to harness A.I. often misread how dramatically they must change. The No. 1 thing that a board needs to understand [is] that if youve got the type of business that could take advantage of A.I., then really, you are talking about transforming your business into one primarily designed around high-quality internal data generation, which you can then use A.I. with to help you analyze patterns.

Businesses going that route wont need to resemble todays companies, predicts Dignam, who thinks many executive roles will become superfluous. The board will move closer to production; itll move closer to the product. Shareholders will move closer to the product as well, he says. Im not sure that in 10 years, well need boards in the way that we use them now for certain industries.

In health care and other regulated industries, companies are usually conservative about deploying A.I., Chen relates. Maybe theyre applying it to support functions versus the core product first, she says, and then thinking about what guardrails they can bring in.

For a board to talk capably about strategic direction when it comes to A.I., not every director needs to be facile in the technology, Bickford reckons. You would hope or aspire to have at least one member that has enough of that depth to be able to help guide the rest of the board in those conversations around the possibilities and opportunities of A.I.

Boards could also have an A.I. expert give a presentation or hold regular advisory meetings, Chen suggests. The trick, though, is to find someone who understands how to commercialize a product using A.I., as well as someone who understands A.I. sufficiently to see the impact.

Whats the best way for directors to get up to speed on artificial intelligence? Universities offer A.I. fluency training, and many companies have in-house programs, Ammanath says. But A.I. for board members is a training that I think should be mandated, she says, recommending that it become part of their certification.

And besides regulation, what trends should boards be watching?

Generative A.I. has changed the game by democratizing access, Bickford says. Previously, I think, in a board or even management, the development and deployment of A.I. was actually quite controlled, she explains. With generative, its embedded in products you buy, so your third-party vendors, you can buy it from them. You might not fully understand or vet how it can or cant be used, or the quality of what you just purchased. Meanwhile, an employee might decide to use a generative app in their work.

For boards, all that access creates a new urgency because the normal governance processes dont apply so well, Bickford explains. You have a lot of shadow A.I. that exists in an organization, which I think also can push a board to actually pay attention and also help set what the guidelines are.

Ammanath expects A.I. and other tech to get more attention at the committee level. I wouldnt be surprised in the future if we have some form of technology committee or subcommittee, she says.

Dignam has a somewhat different take: If [directors are] serious about looking at it, they need a subcommittee of the board to look at organizational transformation around high-quality data and utilizing A.I.

More advanced boards have started to consider new technologies that are blending with artificial intelligence, Ammanath says, citing the metaverse. Its important [for directors] to also look beyond A.I. at other emerging technologies and educate themselves, and know how to assess and govern it as a board member.

This is the broadest cyber espionage campaign known to be conducted by a China-nexus threat actor since the mass exploitation of Microsoft Exchange in early 2021, Charles Carmakal, Mandiants chief technical officer, said in a emailed statement. That hack compromised tens of thousands of computers globally.

In a blog post Thursday, Google-owned Mandiant expressed high confidence that the group exploiting a software vulnerability in Barracuda Networks Email Security Gateway was engaged in espionage activity in support of the Peoples Republic of China. It said the activity began as early as October.

The hackers sent emails containing malicious file attachments to gain access to targeted organizations devices and data, Mandiant said. Of those organizations, 55% were from the Americas, 22% from Asia Pacific and 24% from Europe, the Middle East and Africa and they included foreign ministries in Southeast Asia, foreign trade offices and academic organizations in Taiwan and Hong Kong. the company said.

Mandiant said the majority impact in the Americas may partially reflect the geography of Barracudas customer base.

Barracuda announced on June 6 that some of its its email security appliances had been hacked as early as October, giving the intruders a back door into compromised networks. The hack was so severe the California company recommended fully replacing the appliances.

After discovering it in mid-May, Barracuda released containment and remediation patches but the hacking group, which Mandiant identifies as UNC4841, altered their malware to try to maintain access, Mandiant said. The group then countered with high frequency operations targeting a number of victims located in at least 16 different countries.

Word of the breach as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken departs for China this weekend as part of the Biden administrations push to repair deteriorating ties between Washington and Beijing.

His visit had initially been planned for early this year but was postponed indefinitely after the discovery and shootdown of what the U.S. said was a Chinese spy balloon over the United States.

Mandiant said the targeting at both the organizational and individual account levels, focused on issues that are high policy priorities for China, particularly in the Asia Pacific region. It said the hackers searched for email accounts of people working for governments of political or strategic interest to China at the time they were participating in diplomatic meetings with other countries.

In a emailed statement Thursday, Barracuda said about 5% of its active Email Security Gateway appliances worldwide showed evidence of potential compromise. It said it was providing replacement appliances to affected customers at no cost.

The U.S. government has accused Beijing of being its principal cyberespionage threat, with state-backed Chinese hackers stealing data from both the private and public sector.

In terms of raw intelligence affecting the U.S., Chinas largest electronic attacks have targeted OPM, Anthem, Equifax and Marriott.

Earlier this year, Microsoft said state-backed Chinese hackers have been targeting U.S. critical infrastructure and could be laying the technical groundwork for the potential disruption of critical communications between the U.S. and Asia during future crises.

China says the U.S. also engages in cyberespionage against it, hacking into computers of its universities and companies.

AP Business Writer Zen Soo contributed from Hong Kong.