Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

More than 1,000 Amazon employees have signed an open letter expressing serious concerns about AI development, saying that the company's all-costs justified, warp speed approach to the powerful technology will cause damage to democracy, to our jobs, and to the earth. The letter, published on Wednesday, was signed by the Amazon workers anonymously, and comes a month after Amazon announced mass layoff plans as it increases adoption of AI in its operations.

The Vrije Universiteit Brussel has officially put the new Flemish Tier-1 supercomputer Sofia into operation. For the first time in history, the VUB will manage the Flemish supercomputer, located at the Nexus Data Center in Zellik, for the next 6 years. The investment of 8.6 million euros should help Flanders further in AI and HPC research. The Flemish government is investing €8.6 million in Sofia, which was developed by NEC. The system was selected primarily for its energy efficiency.

In those five years, AlphaFold 2 and its successor AI models have become almost as fundamental and ubiquitous tools of biochemical research as microscopes, petri dishes, and pipettes. The AI models have begun to transform the way scientists search for new medicines, promising faster and more successful drug development. And they are starting to help scientists work on solutions to everything from ocean pollution to creating crops that are more resilient to climate change.

Bill Peebles, who heads Sora at OpenAI, said free users will have six video generations a day. "Our gpus are melting," he explained. Unlike previous limits, Peebles did not say the measures were temporary, but noted users "can purchase additional gens as needed," part of a broader push to monetize the platform. Limits for ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers are unchanged, though not specified.

Companies supplying data centers, chips, and "compute" processing power to OpenAI have taken on about $96 billion in debt to fund their operations, according to an analysis by the Financial Times. The news highlights the AI sector's increasing reliance on debt and its growing dependence on loss-making AI startup OpenAI in particular.Currently, the revenues being generated by AI companies and many of the data center operators that are rapidly expanding in order to serve them, are nowhere near big enough to cover their build-out costs.

And in the coming weeks, we're also enhancing our automatic model selection in Search with Gemini 3. This means Search will intelligently route your most challenging questions in AI Mode and AI Overviews to this frontier model - while continuing to use faster models for simpler tasks. This will be rolling out to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the U.S.

I recently realized something while building Podscan, my podcast database system that does a lot of background data extraction and analysis for my users. I've stumbled upon a couple of AI integration best practices that a lot of people might not be fully aware of. So today, I want to dive into the concepts I found not just useful, but essential for maintaining and operating mission-critical data handling with LLMs and AI platforms.

AI training is a booming industry that is making the human contributors behind the screen more important than ever. As data from publicly available sources runs out, companies like Meta, Google, and OpenAI are hiring thousands of data labelers around the world to teach their chatbots what they know best. Data labeling startups like Mercor and Handshake advertise that contributors can earn up to $100 an hour for their STEM, legal, or healthcare expertise.

Enter Nano Banana Pro, Google's new AI-powered image generation tool that's redefining the boundaries of creativity. Built on the robust Gemini 3 Pro foundation, this tool doesn't just generate images; it interprets, reasons, and aligns visuals with cultural nuances and current events. Imagine crafting a marketing campaign that seamlessly integrates trending themes or designing educational materials that feel as dynamic as the lessons they support.

In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), Sweeney said, "It makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production." He also underscored that an AI tag is more relevant when it comes to art exhibits for authorship disclosure, and digital content licensing marketplaces where the buyer needs to understand the rights.

Drawing on data from OpenRouter, closed models account for around 80% of overall usage globally while also generating roughly 96% of revenue. This dominance isn't driven by a "substantial performance gap", however. In fact, open models "routely achieve 90% or more" of the performance of closed counterparts. These models also benefit from "significantly lower prices" compared to closed models, researchers found, with operational costs up to 84% lower.

It's making coding so much more enjoyable,

A leader at the Big Four firm EY recently told me that the firm has introduced an AI tool to help their employees navigate the uncertainty around jobs that the new technology is creating. It's part of an internal training program known as AI Now 2.0, which prompts EY employees to answer a series of questions about their job, day-to-day responsibilities, and overall deliverables.

As AI transforms workplace learning, a paradox has emerged: 40% of U.S. employees report receiving AI-generated "workslop," content that looks polished but lacks substance. It's something that's costing organizations nearly $9 million annually for every 10,000 employees, according to research from coaching platform BetterUp and the Stanford Social Media Lab. Each incident of workslop consumes nearly two hours of cleanup time, with nearly half those on the receiving end seeing colleagues who send such subpar work as less creative and less trustworthy.

Ng said he rarely sticks to a single chatbot. To brainstorm effectively, he rotates across different models and leans into their contrasting strengths. For coding, he prefers tools like Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex. He added that staying longer in a conversation with the model yields a better response. "AI is very smart, but getting context in is difficult," Ng said.

The venture capitalist said on an episode of the "a16z Podcast" published Tuesday that AI tools can act as the "world's best coach, mentor, therapist, advisor, board member" for anyone who asks the right kind of questions. AI is probably "the most democratic" technology of all time, said the cofounder of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. "The very best AI in the world is fully available on the apps that anybody can download."

Meta Platforms and Amazon could surpass the current combined market value of Nvidia and Palantir by the end of the decade. Over the past year, Nvidia shares have advanced 33%, bringing its market value to $4.3 trillion. Meanwhile, Palantir Technologies shares has advanced 155%, bringing its market value to $395 billion. In aggregate, the companies are worth about $4.7 trillion. Apple could certainly surpass that figure within five years, but I also have confidence in Meta Platforms and Amazon .

Context engineering has emerged as one of the most critical skills in working with large language models (LLMs). While much attention has been paid to prompt engineering, the art and science of managing context-i.e., the information the model has access to when generating responses-often determines the difference between mediocre and exceptional AI applications. After years of building with LLMs, we've learned that context isn't just about stuffing as much information as possible into a prompt.

For much of the world, technology has become so intertwined with our day-to-day lives that it influences everything. Our relationships, the care we seek, how we work, what we do to protect ourselves, even the things we choose to learn and when. It would be understandable to read this as a dystopian nightmare conjured up by E.M. Forster or Ernest Cline. Yet, we are on the verge of something fundamentally different. We've caught glimpses of a future that values autonomy, empathy, and individual expertise.

Corporate learning has always been about knowledge transfer, skill building, and talent development. But today's dynamic business environment demands more. L&D leaders are tasked with building a skilled, resilient workforce while navigating constant change. Traditional training models, though foundational, often struggle to keep pace with the speed and specificity these modern roles require. The shift is visible. A 2025 Gallup poll [1] found that 40% of U.S. employees now use AI in their roles, nearly double from two years ago. Meanwhile, a Microsoft Canada Work Trend Index revealed that 59% of Canadian business leaders fear their organizations lack a clear AI implementation plan.

HP Inc. said that it will lay off 4,000 to 6,000 employees in favor of AI deployments, claiming it will help save $1 billion in annualized gross run rate by the end of its fiscal 2028. HP expects to complete the layoffs by the end of that fiscal year. The reductions will largely hit product development, internal operations, and customer support, HP CEO Enrique Lores said during an earnings call on Tuesday.

One thing that has always fascinated me is how an innocent, dispassionate analysis can still reinforce biases and exacerbate societal problems. Looking at crime rates by district, for example, shows which area has the highest rate. Nothing wrong with that. The issue emerges when that data leads to reallocating police resources from the lowest-crime district to the highest or changing enforcement emphasis in the higher-crime district.

The CEO of the Chinese tech giant, Eddie Wu, said on Alibaba's second-quarter earnings call on Tuesday that the company "doesn't really see much of an issue in terms of a so-called AI bubble." "We're not even able to keep pace with the growth in customer demand," Wu said, adding that the pace at which Alibaba can deploy new servers is insufficient. "In the next three years to come, AI resources will continue to be under supply," he said.

There's an old adage that goes, "No one ever got fired for hiring [insert consulting firm here]." This rang true for many years, as there was no substitute for consulting 'SaaS' ('scapegoat as a service') - but a reckoning is coming. After nearly a decade of uninterrupted growth, the days of multi-million-dollar, multi-year contracts with governmental entities and private companies are swiftly withering away.

Enterprises can move from small pilots to full deployments without violating their jurisdiction's rules on where data should live. The reality is that, earlier, most security and compliance teams weren't rejecting GenAI because of model design; they were rejecting it because storing data in the US or EU pushed them into conflict with GDPR, India's incoming DPDPA norms, UAE's federal rules, or sector-specific mandates like PCI-DSS,

After The New York Times story was published, Guss, Ozair, and about three dozen other people updated their LinkedIn profiles to list their affiliation with the Bezos venture. Several of those people also work at Foresite Labs. Details about Prometheus remain limited. Its founding date, formal name, and headquarters haven't been publicly identified. But the dinner Bajaj hosted in June provided other clues.