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88% resolved. 22% stayed loyal. What went wrong?
That's the AI paradox hiding in your CX stack. Tickets close. Customers leave. And most teams don't see it coming because they're measuring the wrong things.
Efficiency metrics look great on paper. Handle time down. Containment rate up. But customer loyalty? That's a different story — and it's one your current dashboards probably aren't telling you.
Gladly's 2026 Customer Expectations Report surveyed thousands of real consumers to find out exactly where AI-powered service breaks trust, and what separates the platforms that drive retention from the ones that quietly erode it.
If you're architecting the CX stack, this is the data you need to build it right. Not just fast. Not just cheap. Built to last.
Beginners in AI
Good morning and thank you for joining us again!
Welcome to this daily edition of Beginners in AI, where we explore the latest trends, tools, and news in the world of AI and the tech that surrounds it. Like all editions, this is human curated and edited, and published with the intention of making AI news and technology more accessible to everyone.
THE FRONT PAGE
Mark Zuckerberg AI Clone in Progress. Other CEOs Are Already Following.
TLDR: Meta is building a photorealistic AI version of Mark Zuckerberg that can talk with employees in his place, and other top executives are already doing something similar.
The Story:
According to the Financial Times, Meta has been developing a 3D, AI-powered version of Zuckerberg trained on his voice, mannerisms, public statements, and his current thinking on company strategy. The goal? Let employees interact with a digital version of their CEO for guidance and feedback without needing the real Zuckerberg in the room. He's reportedly spending 5 to 10 hours a week coding and testing it himself. The project sits inside Meta's newly formed Superintelligence Labs, the same team behind Meta's latest AI model, Muse Spark. It's separate from his personal AI assistant, which already helps him find information faster by cutting through layers of staff. The $1.6 trillion company has committed up to $135 billion in spending for 2026 alone.
Meta isn't alone. Uber's CEO Dara Khosrowshahi reportedly has an AI clone employees already use. Sam Liang, the CEO of Otter.ai, built an avatar of himself to handle routine meetings. Klarna and Zoom have both used digital versions of their leaders for announcements. A Carnegie Mellon and Emory study found that while managers see some value in AI clones for repetitive tasks, most workers aren't exactly thrilled about the idea of their boss being replaced with software. One manager told researchers that if an AI could do his job, he'd start wondering what the point of his job was.
Its Significance:
This is a trend of where the boss-employee relationship might be heading. If an AI version of your CEO can answer questions and give feedback at any hour, companies may use that as a reason to flatten their management structures even further. Meta has already said it plans to let AI do the work of some mid-level roles. There's also a trust question. An AI trained on someone's mannerisms and words isn't actually that person, and if it gives you bad advice, nobody's really accountable. For now, Meta says this is about helping employees feel more connected to leadership at a company with tens of thousands of people worldwide.
QUICK TAKES
The story: A Nevada man is suing both a police officer and the city of Reno after AI facial recognition misidentified him at a casino and led to his arrest. His lawyers say this wasn't a one-off mistake. They allege the city's police used the same flawed process to make thousands of unlawful arrests over several years.
Your takeaway: This is one of the first lawsuits to blame a city government directly for how it trained officers to use AI, not just a single bad cop. If he wins, it could force cities across the country to change how they handle AI-based identification and who's liable when it goes wrong.
The story: A new survey from Epoch AI and Ipsos of 2,000 US adults found that 20 percent of full-time workers say AI has already replaced tasks they used to do themselves. Only 15 percent said AI created new tasks for them, meaning displacement is outpacing added work right now.
Your takeaway: The real debate isn't whether AI is in the workplace. It is. The open question is whether it's actually more productive than the humans it's replacing. At Amazon, a drive to cut human workers has reportedly slowed overall output. At Klarna, the company eventually had to bring humans back after going all-in on AI for customer service.
The story: A report from the America First Policy Institute found that most popular AI systems, including ChatGPT, Copilot, and others, consistently reflect a center-left political lean. One researcher told Fox News Digital that AI "is persuasive, and it also leans left," which could shift how people think about policy over time without them realizing it.
Your takeaway: It's worth knowing that the AI tools you use every day were built by humans, trained on internet data, and reflect the assumptions and decisions of the people who made them. That applies to political topics, but also to health advice, career guidance, and news summaries. Skepticism is reasonable. Multiple sources still matter.
TOOLS ON OUR RADAR
🧚♀️ Pinokio Free and Open Source: An innovative browser application that allows non technical users to install and run complex local artificial intelligence scripts and web applications with a single click.
🔮 Opal Paid: A spatial knowledge management workspace that puts your notes tasks and links on a giant draggable canvas and integrates with artificial intelligence agents to automate your daily workflows.
💼 WorksBuddy Freemium: An all in one artificial intelligence business platform that automates work and centralizes tools to help teams manage leads projects billing and marketing from a single unified dashboard.
🛍️ Tagshop AI Paid: An advanced artificial intelligence video advertisement generator that helps brands increase conversions by creating high quality and engaging promotional content using realistic digital avatars.
TRENDING
Stanford's 2026 AI Index: The US and China Are Neck and Neck, and Everyone Is Adopting AI Faster Than They Adopted the Internet — The new Stanford AI Index shows people are picking up AI tools faster than they adopted personal computers or the internet. As of March 2026, Anthropic leads model rankings, followed closely by xAI, Google, and OpenAI. Chinese models lag only slightly. The race has gotten so tight that companies are now competing on price and reliability rather than raw performance.
Drones and AI Just Identified the Best Wheat Varieties for a Hotter, Drier World — Researchers from the University of Barcelona used drones with thermal and multispectral cameras to monitor 64 wheat varieties across Mediterranean conditions. AI models trained on that data could predict both crop yield and harvest stability with high accuracy. The surprise finding: the most resilient varieties aren't the ones that stay green the longest, but the ones that grow fast early and mature sooner.
Researchers Find Using AI Tools Affects the Brain Differently Depending on How You Use Them — A new study found that people who rely heavily on AI for tasks that require thinking showed different brain activity patterns than people who use AI as a secondary tool. Heavier reliance was associated with reduced engagement in areas linked to critical thinking. The research adds to growing evidence that how you use AI matters as much as whether you use it at all.
Apple May Be the Surprise Winner of the AI Race It Mostly Sat Out — While every major tech company burned billions racing to build frontier AI models, Apple mostly watched. That's starting to look smart. As AI models get cheaper and better, the company that builds the best hardware and on-device experience, not the biggest model, may have the real advantage. Apple's massive cash reserves and device reach put it in a strong position to run capable AI locally, without subscriptions or cloud costs.
Why AI Keeps Producing Mediocre Websites — A blunt breakdown from a developer explains why AI tools consistently produce generic, dated-looking front-end code. The short answer: AI was trained on templates and tutorials, not on the living process of why design decisions get made. It can copy patterns but doesn't understand context, user behavior, or modern CSS well enough to produce truly good work. Fine for scaffolding. Not great for anything original.
Cybercriminals Are Now Using AI Tools to Target Government Agencies and Corporate Networks — A new wave of AI-assisted cyberattacks is targeting agencies and large organizations in ways that weren't possible two years ago. Attackers are using AI to automate vulnerability scanning, write custom exploit code, and personalize phishing at scale. Security researchers say the same capabilities being built for defense are showing up on the offensive side faster than most organizations are prepared for.
TRY THIS PROMPT (copy and paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini)
Build a Pomodoro focus timer with three modes (Focus, Short Break, Long Break), a circular progress ring, and a session counter that tracks your daily output
Build a Pomodoro focus timer in React. Include three modes: Focus (25 min), Short Break (5 min), and Long Break (15 min). Add a circular SVG progress ring that fills as the timer counts down, start/pause/reset controls, a session progress tracker with 4 dot indicators per set, and a stats panel showing today's pomodoros completed, total focus time, and sets finished. Include a recent sessions history list showing the last 8 completed sessions with timestamps, and a tips section at the bottom that cycles through Pomodoro technique facts when clicked. Use a dark navy background with indigo accents.What this does: Runs a 25-minute focus timer with short and long break modes, tracks how many Pomodoro sessions you complete each day, and shows a circular countdown ring so you always know how much time is left in the current session.
What this looks like:
WHERE WE STAND(based on today’s news)
✅ AI Can Now: Mimic a real person's voice, face, mannerisms, and decision-making well enough that tens of thousands of employees might interact with a digital version of their CEO and believe it reflects his thinking.
❌ Still Can't: Replace the actual accountability, judgment, and trust that comes from a real person in leadership. An AI trained on someone's words isn't the same as that person, and when it gives bad guidance, no one is responsible.
✅ AI Can Now: Monitor crops from the air using drones and accurately predict both yield and harvest stability for dozens of wheat varieties without having to wait for a physical harvest.
❌ Still Can't: Catch modern front-end design decisions. AI-generated websites still rely on outdated patterns and templates, missing context around why good design works the way it does.
FROM THE WEB
RECOMMENDED LISTENING/READING/WATCHING
This short film imagines a world where augmented reality contact lenses gamify every aspect of daily life, from cooking to dating. It starts as a cool tech fantasy and gradually becomes deeply uncomfortable. Only eight minutes long, but it'll stick with you for days.
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Thank you for reading. We’re all beginners in something. With that in mind, your questions and feedback are always welcome and I read every single email!
-James
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