Gen Z has come of age swimming in a gloppy stew of digital content. Every day they navigate memes, photos, social media, chats with their friends, flashes of video, influencers influencing, news articles from a zillion places across the net. How do America's teens and youngest adults sort through all that digitized gunk to determine what's important, or useful, or true?

A lot of folks would love to know. Social networks want young users. Media outlets want subscribers. Politicians want votes. Professors want to know why their students won't read books. Everyone, it seems, has a stake in understanding Kids These Days.

Over the past couple of years, researchers at Jigsaw, a Google subsidiary that focuses on online politics and polarization, have been studying how Gen Zers digest and metabolize what they see online. The researchers were hoping that their work would provide one of the first in-depth, ethnographic studies of Gen Z's "information literacy." But the minute they started, their most fundamental assumption about the nature of digital information came crashing down.

"Within a week of actual research, we just threw out the term information literacy," says Yasmin Green, Jigsaw's CEO. Gen Zers, it turns out, are "not on a linear journey to evaluate the veracity of anything." Instead, they're engaged in what the researchers call "information sensibility" — a "socially informed" practice that relies on "folk heuristics of credibility." In other words, Gen Zers know the difference between rock-solid news and AI-generated memes. They just don't care.

Jigsaw's findings offer a revealing glimpse into the digital mindset of Gen Z. Where older generations are out there struggling to fact-check information and cite sources, Gen Zers don't even bother. They just read the headlines and then speed-scroll to the comments, to see what everyone else says. They're outsourcing the determination of truth and importance to like-minded, trusted influencers. And if an article's too long, they just skip it. They don't want to see stuff that might force them to think too hard, or that upsets them emotionally. If they have a goal, Jigsaw found, it's to learn what they need to know to remain cool and conversant in their chosen social groups.

"The old guard is like: 'Yeah, but you have to care ultimately about the truth,'" Green says. "The Gen Z take is: 'You can tell me your truth and what you think is important.'" What establishes the relevance of a claim isn't some established notion of authority. It's the social signals they get from their peers.

Jigsaw's research doesn't purport to be statistically significant. They didn't poll a large group of Gen Z users about their digital habits. Instead, they relied on intense interviews with a handful of 13- to 24-year-olds from a representative range of demographics, classes, and genders. They were doing what anthropologists do in the field — looking for qualitative depth rather than quantitative data.

What they heard surprised them. Young folks basically say they see no difference between going online for news versus for social interaction. Gen Zers approach most of their digital experience in what the researchers call "timepass" mode, just looking to not be bored. If they want to answer a question or learn something new, they might turn to a search engine, but they're acquiring new information mainly via their social feeds, which are algorithmically pruned to reflect what they care about and who they trust. In short, they've created their own filters to process an onslaught of digitized information. Only the important stuff shows up, and if something shows up, it must be important.

They don't read long articles. And they don't trust anything with ads, or paywalls, or pop-ups asking for donations or subscriptions. "If you're making clickbait, you have zero faith in your content," one subject told the researchers. "And news sources — even CNN and The New York Times — do clickbait. I throw those articles away immediately."

For Gen Z, the online world resembles the stratified, cliquish lunchroom of a 1980s teen movie. Instead of listening to stuffy old teachers, like CNN and the Times, they take their cues from online influencers — the queen bees and quarterback bros at the top of the social hierarchy. The influencers' personal experience makes them authentic, and they speak Gen Z's language.

"Gen Zers will have a favorite influencer or set of influencers who they essentially outsource their trust to, and then they're incredibly loyal to everything that influencer is saying," says Beth Goldberg, Jigsaw's head of research. "It becomes extremely costly to fall out of that influencer's group, because they're getting all their information from them."

None of this means that Gen Z is any less intelligent or diligent than other generations. They know how to research something more deeply. It's just that, usually, they don't wanna. "They tap into those critical literacy skills in a really small proportion of the time they spend online," Goldberg says. If they're prepping for an argument they know they're going to have, or when they have to make big life decisions about schools or investments, they're willing to deal with the drudgery of factfinding. "But the vast majority of the time, they're spending their time mindlessly in timepass mode. Veracity was not only not top of mind, it actually wasn't important to them at all."

When one subject shared a fake image of Donald Trump running from the NYPD, the researchers challenged them on it. "They kind of shrugged," Goldberg says. From the subject's perspective, they were using their critical thinking and media-literacy skills. After all, Trump was, at the time, headed for a criminal trial in New York. It could have been true.

And when it comes to things like diet or wellness, Gen Zers will just try it on their own bodies and see if it works. They perceive that as a safe way to do their own research, mostly because it's not hurting anyone else. If that new diet or exercise regimen "works" on their body, that's more believable than data showing its effects on a whole population.

If facty-sounding stuff does manage to sneak into Gen Z's feeds — claims about what constitutes a healthy diet, or what Trump would do as president, or whether Ukraine or Russia is to blame for Russia's invasion of Ukraine — they're likely to head straight for the comments. That's partly because they know the digital hoi polloi will quickly unmask any fake news. But it's also because they're concerned about whether the news — or a particular reaction to it — might prove to be a cancelable take.

"Cancel culture came to be a thing as they were growing up. They were trained and attend to how to perform, and not perform, to avoid that," says Goldberg. "They're getting trusted information from closed group chats or followers with private feeds, so they're able to perform that they're part of an in-group and can perform specific social signals." For Gen Z, checking what other people are saying in the comments isn't shallow. It's a matter of social life or death.

If this sounds like a generation that will believe any flimflam they encounter and never subscribe to a newspaper, well, the researchers at Jigsaw worry about that too. But the good news is, Gen Zers aren't seeing as much intentional falsehood as you might think. Research shows that most mis- and disinformation is being made and consumed by a dwindling minority of users who seek it out, not sprayed algorithmically into the eyeballs of credulous, internet-surfing teens. "Casual consumption of silly TikToks is very unlikely to lead someone into a dark corner of hate or misinformation," says David Rothschild, an economist at Microsoft Research who studies online behavior. "It is highly likely that if they get there, they chose to get there."

All of us are consuming less formal news content these days, like TV or newspapers. And like Gen Z, we're all relying more and more on our social networks to tell us what's going on. A recent study from the Pew Research Center found that most users on Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok encounter news frequently. On X, it most often comes from the media outlets and journalists who actually produced the news. On Facebook and Instagram, it comes via family and friends whose viewpoints, for better or worse, you already know. But on TikTok — with its disproportionately younger user base — the source is usually influencers. They aggregate, meta-analyze, and pre-digest what other sources are saying. Maybe that's why users on TikTok, compared with other platforms, say they're unlikely to be "worn out" by the news they see. Someone else already did the hard work; they're getting the executive summary.

As clickbait-avoidant Gen Zers might suspect, Jigsaw's interest in their online behavior isn't purely academic. The Google subsidiary makes software called Perspective that lots of news outlets — including The New York Times — use to moderate their comment sections. The new iteration of Perspective incorporates Jigsaw's latest findings, elevating comments that contain warm and fuzzy "bridging" sentiments, like curiosity and reasonableness, to the top of the section. The aim is to reach Gen Z readers where they live — scrolling through the comments — and turn them into subscribers. By studying Gen Z in the wild, Jigsaw can lay better traps for them in their native habitat.

As a Gen Xer, I'm inherently skeptical of broad pronouncements about the up-and-coming generation. You should have heard some of the stuff boomers said about us. (Not that we cared. Like, whatever.) But I'll confess that I worried about the idea that Gen Z checks the comments to decide what to believe. So, after a therapeutic clutch at my pearls, I figured I'd better check it out. To evaluate Jigsaw's research, I performed a scientific gut check: I looked at Google Scholar to see how many other researchers had cited the study. That's a standard metric for how much a field values any given journal article.

And then I realized: I was basically checking the comments. We all do it — we look for lots of links, for 5-star reviews, for what the replies say. These are all valid ways to surf the modern social-informational ecosystem. The kids are all right, and all right.

Still, I wondered what Gen Zers themselves might make of Jigsaw's research. Conveniently, two of them live in my house and call me Dad. So I texted them the findings, along with a question-mark emoji.

"Yeah, seems right," the younger one replied. "But you know not all of us do that."

I counted myself lucky — that was more of a response than Goldberg got. "We always share the final results with respondents," she says. But when Goldberg asked her subjects what they thought of her research, true to her findings, all she heard back was the gravid silence of teenagers looking at their phones. "I'm not sure how many of our Gen Zers read our papers," she concluded ruefully. No comment section, no comment.

Adam Rogers is a senior correspondent at Business Insider.

• I sent my 9-year-old and my 5-year-old on a sailing camp in Spain. 
• Our friends had offered us to stay at their house near Barcelona for two months. 
• The camp cost between 170 to 260 euros per week, and they both got a spot a week before it started. 

The homemade videos came through in quick succession on the camp WhatsApp channel. Seven tiny sailboats with children manning them dotted crystal blue Mediterranean waters. The children were in pairs, seemingly matched according to age. Then there was my little one, the 5-year-old, who had insisted on tagging along with her 9-year-old brother, and the camp had agreed.

It was a blistering summer in the little seaside town of Caldes d'Estrac, an enchanting getaway thirty minutes outside Barcelona. We were staying there for two months because our friends had generously invited us to their masia, or country home, for July and August. Caldes used to be a fashionable spa town for the Barcelona bourgeoisie in the 1920s and is now known for its thermal baths and stunning beaches. When our friends suggested we put the children in a sailing casale, or summer camp, together at the local seaport, we enthusiastically agreed.

It was more affordable than camp in the US

There was one catch: How much was this going to cost us, and would we even be able to get a spot? In the US, or at least in California, where we live, summer camps usually start around $250 per child per week and can run upwards of $1000 for specialty camps. In addition, securing a spot is challenging, with parents already beginning to register for summer camps as early as March.

We drove the five minutes down to port Balis in Caldes and went to register in person. It was less than a week from the beginning of camp, yet the experience was seamless. They not only waived the membership fee for the yacht club, but the tuition ranged between 170 and 260 euros depending on how long they stayed, and it included lunch.

They experienced independence

After just the first day, the children came back with exciting and harrowing tales of adventure. They had gone out solo in dinghies with a couple of adults following alongside them in speedboats. They had experienced the thrill of being independent out on the water from the very start and had been forced to problem-solve tricky situations using teamwork to prevent their boats from capsizing or getting stuck. This was especially challenging for my children as they did not speak Spanish, but somehow they managed.

They, of course, took the necessary precautions of life jackets and basic training, but then they were let loose very quickly and had to learn as they went. It felt as if there was a much more laid-back attitude and push toward personal responsibility than we had experienced in the US. When my 5-year-old refused to stay with the little kids in her age group because she was so attached to her brother, the camp counselors let her tag along and ride in the boats with the older children or inside the speedboats with the adults. I'm not sure that would ever have happened in a California camp, and frankly I'm grateful for it.

The rest of the time, the kids learned basic principles of sailing, had free-play in kayaks and SUPs, and ate bowls full of crab and shrimp for lunch. They came back every afternoon exhausted but happy and woke up each morning with enthusiasm, ready for their next big adventure out on the water.

• Lauren Sánchez has been wearing daring outfits since the start of her career as a TV news anchor.
• But her fashion has gotten even bolder while in a relationship with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
• Her most striking fashion choices have included corset minidresses and see-through lace gowns.

When Lauren Sánchez attends an event, she's tough to miss.

For one thing, the Emmy-award-winning news anchor usually attends red carpets and fundraising dinners alongside her billionaire fiancé Jeff Bezos. Together, they're often the it-couple at events.

But she's also on her way to becoming a fashion force all on her own.

In April, Sánchez first caught major style attention when she wore a semi-sheer corset gown to attend a White House state dinner. The daring dress was divisive and cemented her spot in the world of fashion discourse.

She then attended her first Met Gala this year and was said to have been styled in part by Anna Wintour herself.

Here's a look at her boldest style moments, from see-through pieces to form-fitting gowns.

Lauren Sánchez first experimented with daring fashion in 2004.

She attended the Shalom Foundation Gala that year wearing a strapless brown dress that hugged her body and reached the floor.

It was covered from top to bottom in beaded florals and was held together across its open back with extremely thin strings — one of which also crossed her shoulder like a strap.

She donned a visible corset years later when she attended the 2010 American Music Awards.

She walked the red carpet in a black minidress, which was strapless, lined with mesh, and cinched at the waist with a plethora of small strings.

Sánchez wore the bold garment with strappy sandals and a statement ring.

But her fashion really took a daring turn when she and Jeff Bezos became red-carpet official.

The couple walked their first red carpet together in coordinated outfits featuring bold prints. But Sánchez's red and black gown stood out for a few other reasons, too.

The sequined piece had a plunging neckline that reached her navel, sheer long sleeves decorated with black beads, and a thigh-high slit.

For the 2023 Vanity Fair Oscars party, Sánchez tried the "no pants" look.

She walked the blue carpet alongside Bezos in a sequined, off-the-shoulder gown from Elie Saab. It was crafted with a black leotard and sheer overlay.

Aside from thin black stripes, the latter piece was sheer, showing her legs and see-through sandals.

The dress was also designed with a low, V-shaped neckline, adding another daring element to the look.

She's never afraid to rock vibrant colors.

At Kering's 2023 Caring For Women dinner, Sánchez posed for photographers in a fluorescent yellow gown.

The high-neck dress was form-fitting up top, floor-length at the bottom, and covered entirely in sequins.

Sánchez wore her most daring look to date at a Dolce & Gabbana party in January.

She was photographed walking with Bezos to the Milan party, but her black dress captured all the attention.

The form-fitting piece was strapless with a corset top and crafted entirely from lace — meaning it was also see-through and revealed her black underwear.

She wore the daring dress with black sandals, a rosette shawl, sunglasses, and a long silver necklace.

She celebrated the Oscars months later in an eye-catching dress that matched the Vanity Fair red carpet.

Lever Couture designed her red dress with a deep neckline, puffy tulle sleeves, a corset bodice, and a semi-sheer skirt.

The party outfit was as glamorous as it was bold, thanks to Sánchez's accessories. She wore tan pumps, diamond earrings, and a statement, sparkling necklace.

Some of her boldest looks have been controversial — like the corset dress Sánchez wore to the White House this year.

Sánchez and Bezos were invited to the White House for a state dinner in honor of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

But while Bezos wore a classic tuxedo, his fiancée took a much bolder approach.

Sánchez, styled by Kelly Johnson, wore a red gown with a satin skirt and see-through corset top. The latter piece had a low neckline, off-the-shoulder sleeves, and lace detailing.

Many questioned whether the daring dress was appropriate in the White House setting, but others — including celebrities like Chrissy Teigen — staunchly defended her character and outfit choice.

She wore yet another lace corset piece to attend a pre-Met Gala party.

Sánchez made her Met Gala debut this year with much fanfare. According to fashion journalist and author Amy Odell, Anna Wintour helped pick the Oscar de la Renta gown Sánchez wore, and it was the first time Bezos attended with a date in over a decade.

But the couple also attended a celebratory dinner beforehand and an after-party following the ball.

For the former event, Sánchez sported a black minidress that was strapless and made from see-through lace. It also had a corset bodice that was cinched at the waist.

• The Great Resignation is long gone; the power is shifting back into the hands of employers. 
• More people are staying in their jobs, and companies are squeezing budgets, leaving job hunters in a brutal market.
• Job seekers face more interview rounds, personality tests, and on-site assessment days.

The hiring process seems to have become increasingly complex in recent years, with job seekers facing new tests, more interviews, and months of waiting to hear back from prospective employers.

Job seekers have been taking to social media to complain about jumping through various hiring hoops just to secure an entry-level job. A scroll through the hashtag "job search" on TikTok, and you'll see many videos of people lamenting about applying for hundreds of jobs and going through drawn-out hiring processes, only to be ghosted by companies.

"There has been a dramatic shift in the employment market over the past few years," Chris Abbass, founder and CEO of recruitment firm Talentful, told Business Insider.

He explained that in 2021 and 2022, companies struggled to retain and attract talent, but the labor market has stagnated since the "Great Resignation," when a wave of people quit their jobs and started new ones.

Now, more people are staying put in their roles, dubbed the "Big Stay," and companies are tightening their purse strings in response to economic hardship, shifting the market back into the hands of employers.

"This manifests in companies being more selective about who they hire, moving slower through the process, and only hiring folks who tick all — or 90% — of the boxes," Abbass said.

Jumping through hoops

Peter Cappelli, Wharton professor of management and director of the school's Centre for Human Resources, how hiring practices shaped up a few years ago compared with the present day.

Back in 2019 he wrote in the Harvard Business Review: "Businesses have never done as much hiring as they do today. They've never spent as much money doing it. And they've never done a worse job of it."

Cappelli told BI that hiring practices have remained pretty bad since then.

He said that in recent years, the hiring process has slowed down as the number of interview rounds has increased: "It reflects a lack of understanding by employers about what they're actually looking for."

"The most bizarre aspect is that few companies seem to look to see whether they are actually hiring good people. They look to see whether the process is cheap instead," he added.

The recruitment market has been pretty brutal for job hunters. They've had to adapt to new hiring techniques with the advent of AI recruitment tools, like AI chatbots that can do first-round interviews with candidates.

Rapid advancements in automation and AI have also impacted hiring decisions, Abbass explained, with companies pausing to consider how this new tech can help them drive productivity without hiring more employees and, in some cases, laying off existing workers.

Hiring has shifted online

One big shift in hiring practices has been the COVID-19 pandemic, which changed how companies conduct interviews, Nikita Gupta, cofounder of Careerflow.ai, an AI career coach platform that tracks job postings and builds resumes for job seekers, told BI.

"Many interviews and job assessments now take place online, which means candidates need to adapt to virtual interactions and later demonstrate their skills remotely," she said.

When job interviews started to be done on Zoom and managers had fewer opportunities to evaluate candidates, more employers began using cognitive and psychometric assessments as part of their hiring process.

These tests are meant to give a deeper insight into a candidate's suitability for a role and weed out hiring biases. But if they're designed badly and over-relied upon, these assessments can overlook the best-qualified candidates, especially those who find them anxiety-inducing.

Entry-level candidates are bearing the brunt

Entry-level jobs in big-name firms in management consulting, Big Tech, and finance also appear to be harder to come by right now. Some firms say they're considering pulling back on these roles to lean more heavily on AI.

That spells bad news for college grads looking for big salaries and impressive names for their CVs to supercharge their careers.

Plus, if these firms cut back their graduate hiring, it ramps up the competition for a smaller pool of roles — potentially meaning more interview rounds, assessments, and presentations for job seekers.

Those starting out in their careers also aren't as used to such intense evaluations.

"The pressure to get their first job makes it even more stressful," Gupta explained. She added that the process can be emotionally draining and incur a financial cost if candidates need to travel to interviews.

"While these steps help find the best fit, they make it hard for people just starting their careers," said Gupta.

• The US says that Chinese students are welcome to study in the US, but in arts, not the sciences.
• Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said that Indian students can fill the gap in STEM fields.
• He cited security concerns with letting Chinese students access sensitive technology.

Chinese students are still welcome in the US, but less so in fields of science where sensitive tech could be involved, Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said.

Speaking to the Council of Foreign Relations think tank on Monday, Campbell said more students were needed in STEM fields because Americans were not filling out those spots in universities.

However, the ideal international students for these fields are Indians, not Chinese, Campbell said. But he added that the US does need more Chinese students, too — just not in STEM.

"I would like to see more Chinese students coming to the United States to study humanities and social sciences, not particle physics," Campbell said.

He also cited security concerns about letting Chinese students access sensitive technology.

"There's been careful attempts now across most American universities to support continuing higher education, but to be careful about the labs, some of the activities of Chinese students," he said.

He added: "I do think it is possible to curtail and to limit certain kinds of access, and we have seen that generally, particularly in technological programs across the United States."

Chinese academics have already faced Trump-era restrictions

Back in the Trump era, there were policies in place to restrict Chinese access to developments in the US academic space — like denying visas to Chinese graduate students based on the Chinese universities they attended.

Former President Donald Trump also enacted the China Initiative, a program aimed at countering China's economic espionage and preventing trade secret theft. The China Initiative was scrapped by the Department of Justice in 2022 after critics said it promoted an anti-Asian bias.

But even now, Chinese students say that they have been facing extra scrutiny while entering the US. The Washington Post, citing online discussion forums, reported in March that Chinese students were questioned for hours at US border controls, or had their visas canceled without valid reasons.

Chinese students make up the largest international student body in the US, with almost 290,000 students enrolled in US institutions in the 2022-23 academic year, according to the Institute of International Education.

Indian students are the second largest group, with about 270,000 enrolled in the 2022-23 academic year. And Campbell said that there is space for this group to grow.

"I believe that the largest increase that we need to see going forward would be much larger numbers of Indian students that come to study in American universities on a range of technology and other fields," he told the think tank on Monday.

Worsening US-China relations

Campbell's comments also come amid worsening US-China relations, particularly in the tech space.

In April, the Senate passed a bill that, if signed into law by President Joe Biden, will force Chinese tech company Bytedance to sell video site TikTok.

The White House also announced in May that it would impose tariffs on $18 billion of Chinese goods.

In particular, new measures target Chinese electric vehicles, with tariffs rising from 25% to 100%. This provided relief for American EV companies nervous about the competition from cheap Chinese EVs entering the market.

China, meanwhile, is squeezing the US tech companies that operate within its borders. Apple is one of them, with its iPhone sales in China dropping 24% in the first six weeks of the year, according to data from Counterpoint Research.

And homegrown Chinese companies are taking a larger share of the domestic pie, aided by the state.

China banned its officials from using iPhones in September, a move that coincided with Huawei's launch of its Mate 60 Pro, a breakthrough phone whose capabilities rivaled those of the iPhone.

Sure enough, unit sales of Huawei phones climbed 64% in the same period iPhone unit sales fell by almost a quarter.

The Council of Foreign Relations think tank and representatives of Campbell didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

• Dr. Joseph Antoun, the CEO of a longevity company, shared his workout schedule. 
• Muscle loss after age 40 can lead to a slower metabolic rate, weight gain, and health issues, he said.
• To stay healthy, Antoun walks 10,000 steps daily and does cardio and strength training. 

A doctor and CEO of a longevity-focused nutrition company who views movement as one of the pillars of healthy aging shared his workout routine with Business Insider.

Amid the rise of expensive "longevity clinics" and luxury gyms like Equinox offering $ 40,000-a-year longevity memberships, Dr. Joseph Antoun's approach to fitness is relatively simple and accessible.

As we age, muscles become "an organ of longevity," Antoun said. Once you hit 40, you naturally start to lose muscle, which slows down the metabolic rate, meaning the body burns fewer calories, he said. This can lead to weight gain and put a person at risk of developing related health conditions such as type 2 diabetes.

Sarcopenia, or age-related muscle, strength, and function loss, is a major factor in increased falls, frailty, and fractures in older people, which can result in them losing their independence as they struggle to complete daily tasks on their own, according to Cleveland Clinic.

That's why Antoun, the CEO of longevity-focused nutrition company L-Nutra, exercises three to four times a week and integrates movement into his busy workday to build and maintain muscle mass and get his heart rate up.

"I think this is so critical," he said.

Here's how he works out to stay healthy for as long as possible.

Walking 10,000 steps a day

Antoun aims to walk 10,000 steps each day. "Six and a half years in LA, and I never bought a car," he said. He walks to work every day and takes lots of his meetings on his AirPods while walking outside.

"I have four AirPods because everywhere I go I just want to make sure I can walk and talk," he said.

Evidence suggests that walking daily increases a person's chances of living a long, healthy life.

A 2023 study published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology found that walking 4,000 steps a day reduced the risk of dying early from any cause — and the more a person walked the lower the risk. (The study only looked at data for up to 20,000 steps).

One of the study authors told The New York Times that switching from a sedentary lifestyle to having a workout schedule was comparable to "smoking versus not smoking."

Cardio and strength training 3 to 4 times a week

Antoun works out three or four times a week, doing a mixture of strength training and cardio. A 2022 study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, based on data from more than 400,000 American adults, found that those who did a combination of aerobic exercise and strength training were less likely to die early than participants who did just one type.

To maintain his muscular strength, he lifts weights for 45 minutes three or four times a week. His cardio regime, which he does to get his heart rate up, is more varied.

To really challenge himself, Antoun will run at a fast pace on a treadmill. He does three rounds of 12 minutes.

Other times he plays basketball or tennis for around 30 minutes. This is a great way to combine exercise with social connection, another pillar of longevity, Antoun said.

Researchers from The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, a large-scale longitudinal study, found that friendships could be just as important for longevity as exercise.

• AI chatbots lack humor, producing bland and overly politically correct jokes.
• A study by Google's DeepMind had 20 comedians test OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.
• Big Tech companies like Google and Amazon emphasize humor to make AI more engaging.

It turns out that AI chatbots not only have a tendency to be inaccurate, but they also lack a sense of humor.

In a study published earlier this month, Google DeepMind researchers concluded that artificial intelligence chatbots are simply not funny.

Last year, four researchers from the UK and Canada asked 20 professional comedians who use AI for their work to experiment with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. The comedians, who were anonymized in the study, played around with the large language models to write jokes. They reported a slew of limitations. The chatbots produced "bland" and "generic" jokes even after prompting. Responses stayed away from any "sexually-suggestive material, dark humor, and offensive jokes" and were too politically correct.

The participants also found that the chatbots' overall creative abilities were limited and that the humans had to do most of the work.

"Usually it can serve in a setup capacity. I more often than not provide the punchline," one comedian reported.

The participants also said that LLMs also self-censored. While the comedians said they understood the need to self-moderate, some said they wish the chatbot would not do it for them.

"It wouldn't write me any dark stuff, because it sort of thought I was going to commit suicide," one participant who works with dark humor told the researchers. "So it just stopped giving me anything."

Self-censorship also came in the form of being overly politically correct. Participants reported that the LLMs refused to write material about people outside the Western, white, straight, male mainstream.

"I wrote a comedic monologue about Asian women, and it says, 'As an AI language model, I am committed to fostering a respectful and inclusive environment,'" another participant said. But when asked to write a monologue about a white man, it did.

The inability of two of the most popular chatbots to crack a joke is a big problem for Big Tech. Besides answering queries, companies want chatbots to be engaging enough that users will spend time with them and eventually fork out $20 for their premium versions.

Humor is proving to be another component of the AI arms race, as more companies join the already overcrowded generative AI market.

Late last year, Elon Musk said that his one goal for his AI chatbot Grok is to be the "funniest" AI after criticizing other chatbots for being too woke.

Amazon-backed Anthropic has also been trying to make its chatbot Claude more conversational and have a better understanding of humor.

OpenAI may be trying to improve its funny bone, too. In a demo video the company released last month, a user is seen telling GPT-4o a dad joke. The model laughed.