Tech Brew Ride Home - AI: Better, Faster, Stronger… Or Just Working Harder?

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

So, have you hit the ads in ChatGPT yet, cause they’re there. Spotify comes out of nowhere with killer good earnings. The coming tidal wave of Chinese AI launches. The coming deluge of social media trials. And does AI usage reduce the amount of work you do, or actually compound it? OpenAI begins testing ads in ChatGPT (Mashable) Spotify Shares Surge After Adding Record Number of New Users (Bloomberg) Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance Offer AI Red Packets to Lure Users (Bloomberg) New Mexico lawsuit accuses Meta of failing to protect children from sexual exploitation online (AP) AI Doesn't Reduce Work, It Intensifies It (HBR) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Google Fi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home for Tuesday, February 10th, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough today. So have you hit the ads in ChatGPT yet because they're there? Spotify comes out of nowhere with killer good earnings. The coming tidal wave of Chinese AI launches, the coming deluge of social media trials, and does AI usage reduce the amount of work you do or actually compound it? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. There here. The ads have finally come to ChatGPT, quoting

mashable. The ads appear outside of chat GPT's responses and are clearly labeled as sponsored content. Open AI says ads do not influence how the chatbot answers questions and that user conversations are not shared with advertisers. Instead, ads are selected based on broad conversation topics and how users interact with ads with restrictions in place to prevent sponsored content from appearing alongside sensitive topics such as health, mental health, or politics. Those who use chat GPT's free service can opt out of the ads with a caveat. If you prefer not to see ads, you can upgrade to our plus or pro plans or opt out of ads in the free tier in exchange for fewer daily free messages, according to the company. Users who do consent to ads will also

have the option to opt out of ad personalization limiting how sponsored content is selected. There are also options to stop chat chepti from utilizing past AI chats to tailor ads, as well as deleting all ads, history, and data the company has compiled on a user. At the time of publication, Mashable attempted to surface ads during regular use, of chat GPT but were unable to trigger any sponsored content which aligns with OpenAI's description of the rollout as a limited test rather than a full launch. The rollout follows months of user confusion and frustration after widely circulated screenshots appeared to show promotional content embedded in chat GPT responses. OpenAI previously dismissed those incidents as poorly timed

suggestions, but the distinction did little to calm concerns, end quote. Man, Spotify had some good earnings this morning, revenue up 13 percent, premium users up 10 percent. Monthly active users up 11 percent and 701 million euro in operating income, which was above expectations. Quoting Bloomberg, shares of Spotify technology jumped the most in nearly eight years after the Swedish music streaming giant added a record number of users last quarter far surpassing analysts' expectations. The world's biggest streaming service added 38 million new listeners from October through December to reach 751 million, according to a statement Tuesday. paid premium subscriptions increased 10% to $290 million. Spotify said it expects to reach

759 million monthly active users in the current quarter. The shares rose as much as 19% their biggest intraday gains since April 2018. After increasing 29% last year, the stock gave up most of those gains heading into the quarterly report as analysts focused on concerns about the impact of artificial intelligence and Spotify's ability to continue to raise prices. The solid beat in results is an early win for Gustav Sonderstrum and Alex Nordstrom, who took the helm at the company as co-chief executive officers at the beginning of the year from longtime leader and co-founder Daniel Eck. Over the past two decades, Spotify has expanded from music streaming to incorporate podcasts,

audiobooks, video, and now physical books as it seeks to become a broad-based entertainment hub. What we've really built is a technology platform for audio and increasingly for all the ways creators connect with audiences. Eck, who is executive chairman, said on the company's call. with investors. This identity will matter even more going forward, he added, as new technology reshapes how people discover and experience audio and media. In recent months, the company has introduced features that aim to give users more control over the platform, including editorial tools for people who want to curate their listening experience. One new tool called prompted

playlist uses artificial intelligence to turn text prompts describing the type of music and individual wants to hear into a playlist, pulling from online context, and the person's historical preferences. Spotify also introduced music videos to the service in the U.S. And last week was among the few platforms to premiere the latest one from Taylor Swift. The company paid more than $11 billion to music rights holders in 2025, an increase of more than 10% from 2024, end quote. I think we need to batten down the hatches because we're about to get a ton of new Chinese AI models, as I've told you recently.

Chinese AI companies like Alibaba and Tencent are releasing new models and spending millions on red envelope freebies. two woo users ahead of the Lunar New Year. Quoting Bloomberg, if you ask executives at AI firms around the world what they would do with $720 million in cash, you might expect to hear about big orders of Nvidia's GPUs to boost computing power or recruiting top talent in pursuit of the next breakthrough. But in China, the AI heavyweights are giving away the money to users, whether or not they have a good idea what to do with a chat GPT like bot on their phones. This marks the latest episode in China's AI race where household names such as Alibaba, Tencent, Bight Dance, and Baidu

are gearing up for the Lunar New Year Festival with a costly so-called red packet campaign of vouchers and subsidies to entice use of their nascent tools. Alibaba is the most generous spender so far. The developer of Quen models and apps said it will spend $3 billion or $433 million over the holiday period to subsidize a wide scope of activities like online shopping, food delivery and ticket bookings via the AI bot. Many milk tea shops were overwhelmed by a flood of orders placed by Quinn, according to domestic media reports. The AI and Cloud Arm of Beijing-based bite dance is sponsoring the state broadcaster's popular New Year gala program, giving out gifts including robots and smartwatches, as well as red packets worth up to 8,88 yuan.

Tencent, owner of Jan Bao, the AI app, opted for a more direct approach, offering users digital red packets worth up to 10,000 yuan. The generous giveaways reflect Chinese AI players' anxiety to attract users to try their offerings, which have become far more powerful than they were a year ago. These platforms are increasingly positioning themselves as one-stop services, handling everything from movie recommendations and seat selection to payment. This year could mark a pivotal moment when Chinese consumers learn from firsthand experience just how powerful and useful chatbots can be in their everyday lives. It is only the first battle in the AI industry this year, said, Normura analyst Shi Jai Long. Still monetization models for Chinese AI companies remain murky,

a challenge mirrored in the U.S. It will take time for clearer trends to emerge. In addition, subsidizing new apps and services entails more than just marketing costs. It also means mounting query processing expenses at a time when the free services provided by industry heavyweights lack a clear path to profitability. In the race to dominate China's AI sphere, the tech giants risk winning a war of attrition that leaves their bottom lines as depleted as users' attention spans. way, heavy subsidies and price wars are the norm in China's consumer-facing sectors, where fierce competition often forces companies to buy growth. Typically, the cycle starts with an expansionary period of relative calm, where leading players establish their positions before reaching the

point of having too few new users available to convert. Ride-hailing platform, D-D narrowly emerged victorious from a year-long subsidy battle with rivals including Uber and Kauai, more than a decade ago. Later, handset brands, Apo and Vivo, stunned Apple and and Zhaomi by pouring subsidies into rural retail networks after smartphones had already become ubiquitous. Most recently, food delivery became a subsidy battleground again after years of development. With AI, we've skipped right past all that. Still, every major player has its own reason to enter the fray. The battle isn't simply about user numbers, but about securing long-term loyalty to a broader

ecosystem of services offered by each parent company. Alibaba is weaving Quinn into a wide spectrum of its core businesses around online shopping. the milk tea frenzy was meant to showcase Quinn's power to take care of any needs a shopper could have when picking items, placing orders, and completing payment. Tencent, owner of China's number one social networking app WeChat, is building Yuan Bao into an extension of that strength, effectively the backbone for the next generation of what WeChat could become. Much like Baidu, which is playing defense as China's internet search leader with a 500 million yuan red packet campaign of its own, Denson is aiming to ensure its ecosystem doesn't get upended by AI. Bight Dance, on the other hand, is leaning into the new technology as a means to grow its network of services built around short videos and live streaming, end quote. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC.

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Just want to put on your radar that those lawsuits around social media addiction are actually coming to court now. Here's one from New Mexico, quoting the AP. It's the first standalone trial from state prosecutors in a stream of lawsuits against major social media companies, including meta, over harm to children, and one that is likely to highlight explicit online content and its effects. In his opening statement, prosecution attorney Donald Migliore said Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has misrepresented the safety of its platforms engineering its algorithms to keep young people online while knowing that children are at risk of sexual exploitation on social media.

Migliore said state prosecutors will present evidence that META CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Moceri, the head of Instagram, have emphasized profits over safety. Meta clearly knew that youth safety was not its corporate priority, that youth safety was less important than growth and engagement, Migliore told the jury. Meta attorney Kevin Huff pushed back on those assertions in his opening statement, highlighting an array of efforts by the company to weed out harmful content from its platforms, while warning users that some dangerous content still gets past its safety net. He repeated the refrain that meta disclosed it didn't deceive. The state cannot win this case by showing there is bad content on Facebook and Instagram, he told the jury. He must instead focus on whether meta disclose risks to users. And the evidence will show that meta did disclose that. More than 40 state attorneys general have filed lawsuits against meta claiming it is deliberately designing features that addict children to its platforms and failed to protect children and their mental health. Most filed their lawsuits in federal court. Also Monday, trial begins. in a separate case in California accusing Meta and Google of deliberately making their social media platforms addictive. In California, opening statements began Monday in a separate case against

meta and Google's YouTube, alleging their platforms are deliberately addictive and harm children. The outcome there, and in New Mexico, could challenge the Company's First Amendment Shield and Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which protects tech companies from liability for material posted on their platforms, end quote. Finally today from Harvard Business Review, an eight-month 20-25 study at a U.S. tech company found that AI tools didn't reduce work but actually intensified it. Employees worked faster, longer, but did a bigger scope of tasks. Quote, in an eight-month study of how generative AI changed work habits at a U.S.-based technology company with about 200 employees, we found that employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day,

often without being asked to do so. Importantly, the company did not mandate AI use, though it did offer enterprise subscriptions to commercially available AI tools. On their own initiative, workers did more because AI may doing more feel possible, accessible, and in many cases, intrinsically rewarding. While this may sound like a dream come true for leaders, that changes brought about by enthusiastic AI adoption

can be unsustainable causing problems down the line. Once the excitement of experimenting fades, workers can find that their workload has quietly grown and feel stretched from juggling everything that's suddenly on their plate. That workload creep can turn into cognitive fatigue, burnout, and weakened decision-making. The productivity surge enjoyed at the beginning can give way to lower-quality work, turnover, and other problems. That puts leaders in a bind. What should they do? Asking employees to self-regulate isn't a winning strategy. Rather, companies need to develop a set of norms and standards around AI use, what we call an

AI practice. Here's what leaders need to know and what they can do to set their employees up for success, We identified three main forms of intensification. There was task expansion. Because AI can fill in gaps in knowledge, workers increasingly stepped into responsibilities that previously belonged to others. Product managers and designers began writing code. Researchers took on engineering tasks and individuals across the organization attempted work. They would have outsourced, deferred, or avoided entirely in the past. Generative AI made those tasks feel newly accessible. These tools provided what many experienced as an empowering cognitive boost. They reduced dependence on others and offered immediate feedback and correction along the way. Workers described this as just

trying things with the AI, but these experiments accumulated into a meaningful widening of job scope. In fact, workers increasingly absorbed work that might previously have justified additional help or headcount. Blurred boundaries between work and non-work were an issue because AI made beginning a task so easy. It reduced the friction of facing a blank page or unknown starting point. Workers slipped small amounts of work into moments that had previously been breaks. Many attempted AI during lunch in meetings or while waiting for a file to load. Some described sending a quick last prompt right before leaving their desk so that the AI could work while they stepped away. These actions rarely felt like doing more work, yet over time they produced a workday with

fewer natural pauses and more continuous involvement with work. The conversational style of prompting further soften the experience, typing a line to an AI system felt closer to chatting than to undertaking a formal task, making it easy for work to spill into evenings or early mornings without deliberate intention. Finally, was simply more multitasking. AI introduced a new rhythm in which workers managed several active threads at once, manually writing code while AI generated an alternative version, running multiple agents in parallel or reviving long-deferred tasks because AI could, quote, handle them in the background. They did this in part because they felt like they had a, quote, partner that could

help them move through their workload. While this sense of having a partner enabled a feeling of momentum, the reality was a continual switching of attention, frequent checking on AI outputs, and a growing number of open tasks. This created cognitive load and a sense of always juggling, even as the work felt productive. All of this produced a self-reinforcing cycle. AI accelerated certain tasks, which raised expectations for speed. Higher speed made workers more reliant on AI, increased reliance widened the scope of what workers attempted,

and a wider scope further expanded the quantity and density of work. Several participants noted that although they felt more productive, they did not feel less busy and in some cases felt more busy than before. As one engineer summarized, you had thought that maybe, oh, because you could be more productive with AI then you save time, you can work less, but then really, you don't work less. You just work the same amount or even more, end quote. Man, that sensation of, hey, I'll just run this AI process in the background while I work on the show or do other things. Boy, do I identify with that. It's kind of why,

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