TECH NEWS

AI agents are flooding public services with new requests

As AI makes it easier to fill forms and file complaints, public services around the world are seeing enormous jumps in applications and other requests.

In the United Kingdom, complaints to the housing ombudsman more than doubled since the introduction of ChatGPT, rising from 2600 in 2022 to just over 7,000 last year. The United States’ Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) saw 5x growth in complaints over the same period. There were similar jumps in Brazilian judicial petitions and German parliamentary petitions.

Researcher Chris Schmitz is tracking this rise as part of a broader trend he called “agentic flooding.” In a paper set to be presented next month at the AI Ethics and Society conference, he looks at 84 different cases of potential flooding across 11 jurisdictions, finding broad evidence that AI tools are changing the way people interact with public services.

The harder question is what to do in...

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Tesla driver says he was asleep and using FSD when he crashed into highway patrol cars

Video shows the crash that injured two CHP officers responding to an earlier incident on I-80. by Stevie Bonifield Oct 16, 2026, 8:49 PM UTC Image: California Highway Patrol Stevie Bonifield is a news writer covering all things consumer tech. Stevie started out at Laptop Mag writing news and

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We can finally hear some of Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon A Time in Shaolin album

Jay Peters is a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme. Wu-Tang’s Once Upon A Time in Shaolin album has, for the most part, been extremely difficult to listen to, but you can now hear two snippets

A 'Flying' Tesla Roadster Sounds Impossible, Until You See What Lockheed Martin Built Decades Ago

Thrusters are as good at flipping cars as they are at hunting ballistic missiles. Tesla Tesla's long-delayed and still unreleased Tesla Roadster was formally reintroduced on October 16 and besides an angular, Cybertruck-esque design and the ability to go 0-60 mph in less than a second, the company&

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Sprouts’ first-ever CTO departs

An article from Jim Bahrenburg stepped down after three years in the role, marking the first confirmed C-suite change since the grocer announced a CEO succession plan in September. Published Oct. 16, 2026 First published on Sprouts Farmers Market’s first-ever chief technology officer, Jim Bahrenburg, has resigned, according to

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Tesla driver says he was asleep and using FSD when he crashed into highway patrol cars

We can finally hear some of Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon A Time in Shaolin album

A 'Flying' Tesla Roadster Sounds Impossible, Until You See What Lockheed Martin Built Decades Ago

Sprouts’ first-ever CTO departs