ReportWire

Tag: Information technology

  • How Walmart plans to prepare America’s largest private workforce for an AI-driven future

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    BENTONVILLE, Ark — As artificial intelligence and demographic changes reshape the U.S. job market, the nation’s largest private employer is trying to identify the skills its workers and the broader labor force might need for the future.

    Walmart on Thursday hosted more than 300 workplace experts and representatives from other companies participating in the Skills-First Workforce Initiative, a project to develop and fill stable jobs based on what people know how to do instead of whether they attended college.

    The retailer already has launched its own employee training and certification programs to meet Walmart’s need for truck drivers and maintenance technicians, two roles for which U.S. companies say they can’t recruit fast enough as experienced tradespeople retire.

    Walmart says it plans to offer a similar AI skills program next year through a new collaboration with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

    The Associated Press sat down with Walmart CEO Doug McMillon at the company’s sprawling headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, to talk about AI and the American workforce. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

    MCMILLON: I would say pretty much a steady state. Turnover numbers are coming down. I’m remembering what happened during the pandemic and relative to that experience, things feel much more stable now. I think the pace of change in the employment market is just smaller and easier to manage.

    MCMILLON: We continue to invest in wages. So I think that’s helping some, and that process will continue. As it relates to AI and the future of employment, I think for the most part, our folks are enthusiastic about it because they’ve seen new tools that they’re receiving that are making their jobs better. That’s helping them take fewer steps.

    And our sales are growing so much. I think people are optimistic about the future of what their life can look like.

    MCMILLON: I think no one knows how this is going to play out exactly. And the way it feels to me is that basically every job gets changed. And I think the best way to think about it is getting “plussed up.” So how can I lean in the role that I have, regardless what that role is, to adopt new tools, leverage them and make things better than they would’ve otherwise been?

    As I look across our company, we have everything from store associates to supply chain associates. Of the 2.1 million people (globally), something less than 75,000 of them are home office jobs. All the other ones are working in a store, a club, a distribution center. And I think those jobs change more gradually. We are still going to want to serve customers and members with people. The change as it relates to the home office jobs probably happens faster.

    MCMILLON: I don’t know there’ll be a moment where we all have clarity. I think the way for all of us to approach it, especially here at Walmart, is just in a very transparent, honest, human, straightforward way, talking to people real time about what we’re learning and what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. That’s the way that we plan to lead through this.

    MCMILLON: One of the biggest areas of change in the last decade is related to associates that work in our stores, picking orders for delivery and pickup for our customers. And we have something north of 200,000 people doing that job, and yet we have about the same (total) number of people working in Walmart U.S.

    How did we do that? Other tasks and other jobs changed, which enabled us to create new jobs that paid more and have fewer of the older jobs that went away. I hope what happens as we lead through this is that there will be pluses and minuses, but the net ends up being even more people because we have more ideas of how to grow.

    MCMILLON: The first thing that comes to mind is store managers. Being a store manager is such a great job and such a challenging job. And it’s a job that pays well, and it pays well for a reason. You’re interacting with the community with large numbers of people. You have a large number of associates. You have big sales numbers to deliver. And those skills that the store manager has are both human and technical. I think the skills that we have as human beings are valuable. They always have been, and that’ll be even more true in the future.

    MCMILLON: To some degree, it’s a lack of awareness. I think most Americans probably don’t know what a tech makes that helps take care of our stores and clubs and that we can help them learn how to be a tech. The same thing’s true for our drivers. So we have a need to get the word out so that people know there are some great jobs.

    MCMILLON: We’ve been able to do that so far, and I expect that we’ll continue to find great people that want to join the company and our turnover rates are down, which is helpful.

    MCMILLON: I think as we all work to learn and navigate the future towards a world where AI fulfills its promise, the best way to do that is to work together and to share information and learn together. It’ll speed up our ability to get ahead of this so that we can do a better job of setting our associates up for success. And that’s ultimately what we’re trying to do. The change that’s happening in the world is going to happen. Our choice is to lean in, learn (and) help lead so there are better outcomes for everybody involved.

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  • Private equity sees profits in power utilities as electric bills rise and Big Tech seeks more energy

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    HARRISBURG, Pa. — Private investment firms that are helping finance America’s artificial intelligence race and the huge buildout of energy-hungry data centers are getting interested in the local utilities that deliver electricity to regular customers — and the servers that power AI.

    Billions of dollars from such firms are now flowing toward electric utilities in places including New Mexico, Texas, Wisconsin and Minnesota that deliver power to more than 150 million customers across millions of miles of power lines.

    “The reason is very simple: because there’s a lot of money to be made,” said Greg Brown, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor of finance who researches private equity and hedge funds.

    Private investment firms that have done well investing in infrastructure over the last 15 years now have strong incentives to add data centers, power plants and the services that support them at a time of rapid expansion and spiking demand ignited by the late 2022 debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Brown said.

    BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink said as much in a July interview on CNBC, saying infrastructure is “at the beginning of a golden age.”

    “We believe that there’s a need for trillions of dollars investing in infrastructure related to our power grids, AI, the whole digitization of the economy” and energy, Fink said.

    In recent weeks, private equity firm Blackstone has sought regulatory approval to buy out a pair of utilities, Albuquerque-based Public Service Company of New Mexico and Lewisville, Texas-based Texas New Mexico Power Co.

    Wisconsin earlier this year granted the buyout of the parent of Superior Water, Light and Power and the owner of Northern Indiana Public Service Co. last year sold a 19.9% stake in the utility to Blackstone.

    However, a fight has erupted in Minnesota over the buyout of the parent of Duluth-based Minnesota Power and the outcome could determine how such firms expand their holdings in an industry that’s a nexus between regular people, gargantuan data centers and the power sources they share.

    Under the proposed deal, a BlackRock subsidiary and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board would buy out the publicly traded Allete, parent of Minnesota Power, which provides power to 150,000 customers and owns a variety of power sources, including coal, gas, wind and solar.

    Both sides of the fight have attracted influential players ahead of a possible Oct. 3 vote by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission. Raising the stakes is the potential that Google could build a data center there, a lucrative prospect for whoever owns Minnesota Power.

    Opponents of the acquisition suspect that BlackRock is only interested in squeezing bigger profits from regular ratepayers. Allete makes the opposite argument, that BlackRock can show more patience because it is free of the short-term burdens of publicly traded companies.

    Opponents also worry that a successful Minnesota Power buyout will launch more such deals around the U.S. and drive up electric bills for homes.

    “It’s no secret that private equity is extremely aggressive in chasing profits, and when it comes to utilities, the profit motive lands squarely on the backs of ratepayers who don’t have a choice of who they buy their electricity from,” said Karlee Weinmann of the Energy and Policy Institute, which pushes utilities to keep rates low and use renewable energy sources.

    The buyout proposals come at a time when electricity bills are rising fast across the U.S., and growing evidence suggests that the bills of some regular Americans are rising to subsidize the rapid buildout of power plants and power lines to supply the gargantuan energy needs of Big Tech’s data centers.

    Mark Ellis, a former utility executive-turned-consumer advocate who gave expert testimony against the Minnesota Power buyout, said he’s talked to private equity firms that want to get into the business of electric utilities.

    “It’s just a matter of what’s the price and will the regulator approve it,” Ellis said. “The challenge is they’re not going to come up for sale very often.”

    That’s because electric utilities are seen as valuable long-term investments that earn around 10% returns not on the electricity they deliver, but the upcharge that utility regulators allow on capital investments, like upgrading poles, wires and substations.

    That gives utility owners the incentive to spend more so they can make more money, critics say.

    The fight over Minnesota Power resembles some of the battles erupting around the U.S. where residents don’t want a data center campus plunked down next to them.

    Building trades unions and the administration of Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who appointed or reappointed all five utility commissioners, are siding with Allete and BlackRock.

    On the other side are the state attorney general’s office and the industrial interests that buy two-thirds of Minnesota Power’s electricity, including U.S. Steel and other owners of iron ore mines, Enbridge-run oil pipelines and pulp and paper mills.

    In its petition, Allete told regulators that, under BlackRock’s ownership, Minnesota Power’s operations, strategy and values wouldn’t change and that it doesn’t expect the buyout price — $6.2 billion, including $67 a share for stockholders at a 19% premium — to affect electric rates.

    In essence, Allete — which solicited bids for a buyout — argues that BlackRock’s ownership will benefit the public because, under it, the utility will have an easier time raising the money it needs to comply with Minnesota’s law requiring utilities to get 100% of their electricity from carbon-free sources by 2040.

    Allete has projected needing to spend $4.3 billion on transmission and clean energy projects over five years.

    However, opponents say Allete’s suggestion that it’ll struggle to raise money is unfounded, and undercut by its own filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in which it says it is “well positioned” to meet its financing needs.

    It hasn’t been smooth sledding for BlackRock.

    In July, an administrative law judge, Megan J. McKenzie, recommended that the commission reject the deal, saying that the evidence reveals the buyout group’s “intent to do what private equity is expected to do – pursue profit in excess of public markets through company control.”

    In recent days, a utility commission staff analysis echoed McKenzie’s concerns.

    They suggested that private investors could simply load up Minnesota Power’s parent with massive debts, borrow at a relatively low interest rate and turn a fat profit margin from the utility commission granting a generous rate of return.

    “For the big investors in private equity, this is a win-win,” the staff wrote. “For the ratepayers of the highly leveraged utility, this represents paying huge profits to the owners if the private equity ‘wins’ and dealing with a bankrupt utility provider if it loses – it is a lose-lose.”

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    Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter

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  • Wall Street set to open higher after taking a break from its most recent rally a day earlier

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    Wall Street was poised to open with small gains Wednesday, a day after markets took a break from their relentless record-breaking rally.

    Futures for the S&P 500 ticked up 0.1% before the bell, while Nasdaq futures rose 0.2%. Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were unchanged.

    Shares of Alibaba soared nearly 10% after the Chinese e-commerce giant announced a partnership with Nvidia and an expansion of data center operations into a handful of countries to bolster its artificial intelligence infrastructure. Alibaba is the latest in a string of companies announcing that they were plowing money into AI, many of which are also partnering with AI-chipmaker Nvidia.

    U.S. markets paused from their recent rally on Tuesday after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said stock prices were “fairly highly valued.”

    In his first public remarks since the Fed cut its main interest rate last week for the first time this year, Powell said that the Fed is stuck in an unusual position because worries about the job market are rising at the same time that inflation has stubbornly remained above its 2% target.

    Analysts said his comments reiterated his stance that there is no risk-free path.

    “Essentially the Fed Chairman confirmed what we already knew, which is that the central bank remains somewhat ‘between a rock and a hard place’ when it comes to managing the risks of rising inflation and falling employment,” said Tim Waterer, chief market analyst at KCM Trade.

    Fed officials have penciled in more cuts to rates through the end of this year and into next, but they are remaining wary because lower rates can also give inflation more fuel.

    An update Friday will show how much prices are rising for U.S. households based on the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, and economists expect it to show a slight acceleration for last month.

    Elsewhere, in Europe at midday France’s CAC 40 slipped 0.6%, while the German DAX and Britain’s FTSE 100 each fell 0.2%.

    Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 recouped morning losses to finish 0.3% higher at 45,630.31. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.9% to 8,764.50. South Korea’s Kospi dropped 0.4% to 3,472.14. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.4% to 26,518.65, while the Shanghai Composite gained 0.8% to 3,853.64.

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  • AI-cloning of Lara Croft’s voice has ‘Tomb Raider’ fans and actors up in arms

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    PARIS — A lifelong fan of “Tomb Raider,” French gamer Romain Bos was on tenterhooks when an update of the popular video game went online in August.

    But his excitement quickly turned to anger.

    The gamer’s ears — and those of other “Tomb Raider” fans — picked up something amiss with the French-language voice of Lara Croft, the game’s protagonist.

    It sounded robotic, lifeless even — shorn of the warmth, grace and believability that French voice actor Françoise Cadol has given to Croft since she started playing the character in 1996.

    Gamers and Cadol herself came to the same conclusion: A machine had cloned her voice and replaced her.

    “It’s pathetic,” says Cadol, who straight away called her lawyer. “My voice belongs to me. You have no right to do that.”

    “It was absolutely scandalous,” says Bos. “It was artificial intelligence.”

    Aspyr, the game developer based in Austin, Texas, didn’t respond to e-mailed questions from The Associated Press. But it acknowledged in a post last week on its website that what it described as “unauthorized AI generated content” had been incorporated into its Aug. 14 update of “Tomb Raider IV–VI Remastered” that angered fans.

    “We’ve addressed this issue by removing all AI voiceover content,” Aspyr’s post said. “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

    Still, the affair has triggered alarms in the voiceover community, with campaigners saying it’s a sobering example of dangers that AI poses to human workers and their jobs.

    “If we can replace actors, we’ll be able to replace accountants, and a whole range of other professions that could also be automated,” says Patrick Kuban, a French-language voice actor who is also a co-president of United Voice Artists, an international federation of voiceover artists.

    “So we need to ask ourselves the right questions: How far should we go, and how do we regulate these machines?”

    Hollywood has seen similar concerns, with video game performers striking for 11 months for a new contract this year that included AI guardrails.

    “This is happening pretty much everywhere. We’re getting alerts from all over the world — from Brazil to Taiwan,” Kuban said in an Associated Press interview.

    “Actors’ voices are being captured, either to create voice clones — not perfect ones — but for illicit use on social media by individuals, since there are now many apps for making audio deepfakes,” Kuban said.

    “These voices are also being used by content producers who aren’t necessarily in the same country,” he said. “So it’s very difficult for actors to reclaim control over their voices, to block these uses.”

    Cadol says that within minutes of the release of the “Tomb Raider” update, her phone began erupting with messages, emails and social media notifications from upset fans.

    “I took a look and I saw all this emotion — anger, sadness, confusion. And that’s how I found out that my voice had been cloned,” she said in an AP interview.

    Cadol says 12 years of recording French-language voiceovers for Lara Croft — from 1996 to 2008 — built an intimate bond with her fans. She calls them the “guardians” of her work.

    Once the initial shock subsided, she resolved to fight back. Her Paris lawyer, Jonathan Elkaim, is seeking an apology from Aspyr and financial redress.

    In the update, new chunks of voiceover appear to have been added to genuine recordings that Cadol says she made years ago.

    Most notably, fans picked up on one particularly awkward segment. In it, a voice instructs players how to use their game controllers to make Lara Croft climb onto an obstacle, intoning in French: “Place toi devant et appuyez sur avancer” — Stand in front and press ‘advance.’

    Not only does it sound clunky but it also rings as grammatically incorrect to French speakers — mixing up the polite and less polite forms of language that they use, depending on who they’re addressing.

    Gamers were up in arms. Bos posted a video on his YouTube channel that same evening, lamenting: “It’s half Françoise Cadol, half AI. It’s horrible ! Why have they done that?”

    “I was really disgusted,” the 34-year-old said in an AP interview. “I grew up with Françoise Cadol’s voice. I’ve been a ‘Tomb Raider’ fan since I was young kid.”

    “Lara Croft is a bit — how should I say — a bit sarcastic at times in some of her lines. And I think Françoise played that very, very well,” he said.

    “That’s exactly why now is the time to set boundaries,” he added. “It’s so that future generations also have the chance to experience talented actors.”

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  • Oracle names Magouyrk and Sicilia as CEOs; Catz to become executive vice chair of the board

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    Oracle has named Clay Magouyrk and Mike Sicilia as CEOs, with current CEO Safra Catz becoming executive vice chair of the technology company’s board.

    The announcement comes as Oracle founder Larry Ellison has been named as part of a group that could be part of a deal in which the U.S. will take control of the social video platform TikTok. The group is also said to include media mogul Rupert Murdoch and tech founder Michael Dell.

    Ellison currently serves as Oracle’s chairman and chief technology officer.

    Oracle said Monday that Magouyrk previously served as president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. He joined Oracle in 2014 from Amazon Web Services and is a founding member of Oracle’s cloud engineering team.

    Sicilia was president of Oracle Industries and joined the company when Oracle acquired Primavera Systems.

    “Humanity is investing enormous resources in the race to advance artificial intelligence,” Ellison said in a statement. “Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is playing a major part in that effort. Clay’s years of experience leading Oracle’s large, fast-growing cloud infrastructure business has demonstrated his readiness for a CEO role. Mike has spent the last several years modernizing Oracle’s industry applications businesses—including Oracle Health—by completely rebuilding those applications using the latest AI technologies.”

    Catz has served as Oracle’s CEO since 2014. Earlier this month she said that Oracle signed four multi-billion dollar contracts during its latest quarter, and it expects cloud infrastructure revenue to jump 77% to $18 billion this fiscal year. After that, it expects such revenue to soar to $144 billion in just four years.

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  • Nvidia to invest $5B in Intel; companies will work together on AI infrastructure, PCs

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    NEW YORK — Nvidia, the world’s leading chipmaker, announced a new partnership on Thursday with struggling semiconductor company Intel.

    Nvidia and Intel will team up to work on custom data centers that form the backbone of artificial intelligence infrastructure as well as personal computer products, Nvidia said in a press release.

    Nvidia also said it’s investing $5 billion in the common stock of Intel, which has been struggling. The deal is subject to regulatory approvals.

    The agreement provides a lifeline for Intel, which was a Silicon Valley pioneer that enjoyed decades of growth as its processors powered the personal computer boom, but fell into a slump after missing the shift to the mobile computing era unleashed by the iPhone’s 2007 debut. Intel fell even farther behind in recent years amid the artificial intelligence boom that’s propelled Nvidia into the world’s most valuable company.

    In premarket trading, Intel shares soared 30%.

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  • How Huawei plans to outperform global tech leaders with less powerful chips

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    BEIJING — China’s Huawei Technologies said Thursday that it would roll out the world’s most powerful AI computing clusters over the next two years as it seeks to outperform global leaders despite relying on less powerful domestic semiconductors.

    China is racing to develop its own technology as America restricts what can be sold to China, including its most advanced chips. At the same time, the Chinese government has reportedly told companies to stop buying some American chips as it seeks to transform China into a global tech leader and one that is less reliant on imported components.

    Huawei, at the forefront of efforts to develop home-grown technology, said at an annual customer event in Shanghai that it would launch new “superpods” in late 2026 and late 2027. That’s computer industry lingo for a group of interconnected computers that, in Huawei’s case, combines the power of thousands of chips.

    That immense power is needed to run models in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence, an area of hot competition between the U.S. and China.

    “This is a significant milestone,” said Charlie Dai, a technology analyst at the research firm Forrester Research. “It signals a stronger push toward self-reliance and resilience in the face of export restrictions.”

    Huawei announced plans to release the Atlas 950 and 960 superpods over the next two years. Dozens of the “SuperPoDs,” as Huawei brands them, could be connected to form what Huawei said would be the world’s most powerful “SuperClusters.”

    The 950 and 960 are the most powerful superpods in the world and would remain so for years to come, a company news release said, based on product road maps from others in the industry.

    The challenge for China is how to keep pace with American competitors such as Open AI and Google without access to the world’s most powerful semiconductors, notably those from America’s market-leading Nvidia. The answer has been to use many more chips and develop the architecture to make them work well together.

    “Our strategy is to create a new computing architecture, and develop computing SuperPoDs and SuperClusters, to sustainably meet long-term demand for computing power,” Eric Xu, the current rotating chairman of Huawei, told the customer conference, according to a transcript provided by the company.

    Huawei, based in Shenzhen in southern China, also announced plans to launch new AI chips in its Ascend series over the next three years. The Atlas 950 and 960 superpods would be based on the Ascend 950 and 960 chips, due out in 2026 and 2027. A planned Ascend 970 chip could follow in 2028.

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  • Is CDW Stock Underperforming the Nasdaq?

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    Vernon Hills, Illinois-based CDW Corporation (CDW) provides information technology (IT) solutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. With a market cap of $21.5 billion, CDW operates through Corporate, Small Business, and Public segments.

    Companies worth $10 billion or more are generally described as “large-cap stocks.” CDW fits right into that category, with its market cap exceeding this threshold, reflecting its substantial size and influence in the information technology services industry.

    Despite its notable strengths, CDW stock has plunged 28.8% from its 52-week high of $230.86 touched on Sept. 20, 2024. Meanwhile, the stock has declined nearly 6% over the past three months, notably underperforming the Nasdaq Composite’s ($NASX) 12.6% surge during the same time frame.

    www.barchart.com

    CDW’s performance has remained grim over the longer term as well. CDW stock has dropped 5.6% in 2025 and plunged 24.9% over the past 52 weeks, underperforming NASX’s 14.7% gains on a YTD basis and 26% surge over the past year.

    CDW stock has traded mostly below its 200-day moving average over the past year with minor fluctuations and below its 50-day moving average since late August, underscoring its bearish trend.

    www.barchart.com
    www.barchart.com

    CDW’s stock prices observed a marginal uptick in the trading session following the release of its better-than-expected Q2 results on Aug. 6. Despite the dynamic macro environment and threat of AI to the IT services industry, the company showcased immense resilience during the quarter. CDW’s net sales for the quarter soared 10.2% year-over-year to approximately $6 billion, exceeding the Street’s expectations by a significant 8.6%. Meanwhile, it observed a slight contraction in gross margins, leading to a much more modest 3.9% growth in non-GAAP EPS to $2.60, which also surpassed the consensus estimates by a notable margin.

    CDW has outperformed its peer, Gartner, Inc.’s (IT) 49% plunge on a YTD basis and 51.1% decline over the past 52 weeks, by a significant margin.

    Among the 12 analysts covering the CDW stock, the consensus rating is a “Moderate Buy.” Its mean price target of $206.80 suggests a 25.9% upside potential from current price levels.

    On the date of publication, Aditya Sarawgi did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. This article was originally published on Barchart.com

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  • Future-Proof Your IT Career with Lifetime Access to 90+ Cybersecurity Courses | Entrepreneur

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    Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you’ll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners.

    If you’re serious about getting into (or advancing your knowledge of) cybersecurity then access to quality, up-to-date training isn’t optional. It’s essential. InfoSec4TC’s Platinum Membership makes that access easy, with a comprehensive lifetime subscription to over 90 expert-led certification courses and continuously updated training material.

    Through October 5, you’ll pay just a one-time payment of $52.97 (MSRP $280) to unlock lifetime, self-paced access to preparation for top IT security certifications: CISSP, GSEC, CISM, CISA, Ethical Hacking, and more. The membership also includes exam question updates, extra course resources, and future course additions — all at no additional cost.

    Courses are designed for professionals at all levels. Whether you’re aiming to earn your first credential, shift careers into cybersecurity, or expand your current skill-set, the structured curriculum and clear learning paths make the journey approachable. You’ll also receive an attendance certificate with CPEs, access to private study groups, and one free session of career consulting and planning.

    And InfoSec4TC doesn’t stop at instruction. Their mentorship approach helps you stay accountable and on track, no matter if your goal is certification, a job title upgrade, or a full career transition into infosec. With more than 90 courses and growing, your training evolves as the industry does.

    Lock in lifetime access to InfoSec4TC Platinum Membership for just $52.97 until October 5.

    StackSocial prices subject to change.

    If you’re serious about getting into (or advancing your knowledge of) cybersecurity then access to quality, up-to-date training isn’t optional. It’s essential. InfoSec4TC’s Platinum Membership makes that access easy, with a comprehensive lifetime subscription to over 90 expert-led certification courses and continuously updated training material.

    Through October 5, you’ll pay just a one-time payment of $52.97 (MSRP $280) to unlock lifetime, self-paced access to preparation for top IT security certifications: CISSP, GSEC, CISM, CISA, Ethical Hacking, and more. The membership also includes exam question updates, extra course resources, and future course additions — all at no additional cost.

    Courses are designed for professionals at all levels. Whether you’re aiming to earn your first credential, shift careers into cybersecurity, or expand your current skill-set, the structured curriculum and clear learning paths make the journey approachable. You’ll also receive an attendance certificate with CPEs, access to private study groups, and one free session of career consulting and planning.

    The rest of this article is locked.

    Join Entrepreneur+ today for access.

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  • OpenAI reaches new agreement with Microsoft to change its corporate structure

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    OpenAI has reached a new tentative agreement with Microsoft and said its nonprofit, which technically controls its business, will now be given a $100 billion equity stake in its for-profit corporation.

    The maker of ChatGPT said it had reached a new nonbinding agreement with Microsoft, its longtime partner, “for the next phase of our partnership.”

    The announcements on Thursday include a few details about these new arrangements. OpenAI’s proposed changes to its corporate structure have drawn the scrutiny of regulators, competitors and advocates concerned about the impacts of artificial intelligence.

    OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015 and its nonprofit board has continued to control the for-profit subsidiary that now develops and sells its AI products. It’s not clear whether the $100 billion equity stake the nonprofit will get as part of this announcement represents a controlling stake in the business.

    California Attorney General Rob Bonta said last week that his office was investigating OpenAI’s proposed restructuring of its finances and governance.

    He and Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings also sent the company a letter expressing concerns about the safety of ChatGPT after meeting with OpenAI’s legal team earlier last week in Delaware, where OpenAI is incorporated.

    “Together, we are particularly concerned with ensuring that the stated safety mission of OpenAI as a non-profit remains front and center,” Bonta said in a statement last week.

    Microsoft invested its first $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 and the two companies later formed an agreement that made Microsoft the exclusive provider of the computing power needed to build OpenAI’s technology. In turn, Microsoft heavily used the technology behind ChatGPT to enhance its own AI products.

    The two companies announced on Jan. 21 that they were altering that agreement, enabling the smaller company to build its own computing capacity, “primarily for research and training of models.” That coincided with OpenAI’s announcements of a partnership with Oracle to build a massive new data center in Abilene, Texas.

    But other parts of its agreements with Microsoft remained up in the air as the two companies appeared to veer further apart. Their Thursday joint statement said they were still “actively working to finalize contractual terms in a definitive agreement.” Both companies declined further comment.

    OpenAI had given its nonprofit board of directors — whose members now include a former U.S. Treasury secretary — the responsibility of deciding when its AI systems have reached the point at which they “outperform humans at most economically valuable work,” a concept known as artificial general intelligence, or AGI.

    Such an achievement, per its earlier agreements, would cut off Microsoft from the rights to commercialize such a system, since the terms “only apply to pre-AGI technology.”

    OpenAI’s corporate structure and nonprofit mission are also the subject of a lawsuit brought by Elon Musk, who helped found the nonprofit research lab and provided initial funding. Musk’s suit seeks to stop OpenAI from taking control of the company away from its nonprofit and alleges it has betrayed its promise to develop AI for the benefit of humanity.

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    The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP’s text archives.

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    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and non-profits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • Microsoft resolves European Union probe into Teams

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    LONDON — European Union regulators have accepted Microsoft’s proposed changes to Teams, resolving a long-running antitrust investigation that targeted the company’s messaging and videoconferencing app.

    The European Commission said in a statement Friday that Microsoft’s final commitments to unbundle Teams from its Office software suite, including further tweaks following a market test in May and June, are enough to satisfy competition concerns.

    The legally binding commitments will remain in force for up to 10 years and allow the company to avoid a potentially hefty fine.

    “We appreciate the dialogue with the Commission that led to this agreement, and we turn now to implementing these new obligations promptly and fully,” Microsoft’s vice president of European government affairs, Nanna-Louise Linde, said in a statement.

    The Commission, acting on a complaint filed by Slack Technologies, accused Microsoft of “possibly abusive” practices after an investigation, saying that it was tying the Teams app to its widely used Office business software suite, which includes Word, Excel and Outlook. Slack, now owned by Salesforce, makes popular workplace messaging software.

    Microsoft responded by proposing to make its Office 365 and Microsoft 365 software packages available at a discount without Teams, and to let customers switch to packages without Teams. The company also promised to make it easier for rival software to work with Teams and for users to move their data to competing products.

    “Today’s decision therefore opens up competition in this crucial market, and ensures that businesses can freely choose the communication and collaboration product that best suits their needs,” said Teresa Ribera, the European Commission’s executive vice-president overseeing competition affairs.

    The announcement comes a week after the Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s top antitrust authority, fined Google nearly 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) because its ad-tech business breached competition rules, prompting President Donald Trump to threaten retaliation.

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  • How Malawi is taking AI technology to small-scale farmers who don’t have smartphones

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    MULANJE, Malawi — Alex Maere survived the destruction of Cyclone Freddy when it tore through southern Malawi in 2023. His farm didn’t.

    The 59-year-old saw decades of work disappear with the precious soil that the floods stripped from his small-scale farm in the foothills of Mount Mulanje.

    He was used to producing a healthy 850 kilograms (1,870 pounds) of corn each season to support his three daughters and two sons. He salvaged just 8 kilograms (17 pounds) from the wreckage of Freddy.

    “This is not a joke,” he said, remembering how his farm in the village of Sazola became a wasteland of sand and rocks.

    Freddy jolted Maere into action. He decided he needed to change his age-old tactics if he was to survive.

    He is now one of thousands of small-scale farmers in the southern African country using a generative AI chatbot designed by the non-profit Opportunity International for farming advice.

    The Malawi government is backing the project, having seen the agriculture-dependent nation hit recently by a series of cyclones and an El Niño-induced drought. Malawi’s food crisis, which is largely down to the struggles of small-scale farmers, is a central issue for its national elections next week.

    More than 80% of Malawi’s population of 21 million rely on agriculture for their livelihoods and the country has one of the highest poverty rates in the world, according to the World Bank.

    The AI chatbot suggested Maere grow potatoes last year alongside his staple corn and cassava to adjust to his changed soil. He followed the instructions to the letter, he said, and cultivated half a soccer field’s worth of potatoes and made more than $800 in sales, turning around his and his children’s fortunes.

    “I managed to pay for their school fees without worries,” he beamed.

    Artificial intelligence has the potential to uplift agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 33-50 million smallholder farms like Maere’s produce up to 70-80% of the food supply, according to the U.N.’s International Fund for Agricultural Development. Yet productivity in Africa — with the world’s fast-growing population to feed — is lagging behind despite vast tracts of arable land.

    As AI’s use surges across the globe, so it is helping African farmers access new information to identify crop diseases, forecast drought, design fertilizers to boost yields, and even locate an affordable tractor. Private investment in agriculture-related tech in sub-Saharan Africa went from $10 million in 2014 to $600 million in 2022, according to the World Bank.

    But not without challenges.

    Africa has hundreds of languages for AI tools to learn. Even then, few farmers have smartphones and many can’t read. Electricity and internet service are patchy at best in rural areas, and often non-existent.

    “One of the biggest challenges to sustainable AI use in African agriculture is accessibility,” said Daniel Mvalo, a Malawian technology specialist. “Many tools fail to account for language diversity, low literacy and poor digital infrastructure.”

    The AI tool in Malawi tries to do that. The app is called Ulangizi, which means advisor in the country’s Chichewa language. It is WhatsApp-based and works in Chichewa and English. You can type or speak your question, and it replies with an audio or text response, said Richard Chongo, Opportunity International’s country director for Malawi.

    “If you can’t read or write, you can take a picture of your crop disease and ask, ‘What is this?’ And the app will respond,” he said.

    But to work in Malawi, AI still needs a human touch. For Maere’s area, that is the job of 33-year-old Patrick Napanja, a farmer support agent who brings a smartphone with the app for those who have no devices. Chongo calls him the “human in the loop.”

    “I used to struggle to provide answers to some farming challenges, now I use the app,” said Napanja.

    Farmer support agents like Napanja generally have around 150-200 farmers to help and try to visit them in village groups once a week. But sometimes, most of an hour-long meeting is taken up waiting for responses to load because of the area’s poor connectivity, he said. Other times, they have to trudge up nearby hills to get a signal.

    They are the simple but stubborn obstacles millions face taking advantage of technology that others have at their fingertips.

    For African farmers living on the edge of poverty, the impact of bad advice or AI “hallucinations” can be far more devastating than for those using it to organize their emails or put together a work presentation.

    Mvalo, the tech specialist, warned that inaccurate AI advice like a chatbot misidentifying crop diseases could lead to action that ruins the crop as well as a struggling farmer’s livelihood.

    “Trust in AI is fragile,” he said. “If it fails even once, many farmers may never try it again.”

    The Malawian government has invested in Ulangizi and it is programmed to align with the agriculture ministry’s own official farming advice, making it more relevant for Malawians, said Webster Jassi, the agriculture extension methodologies officer at the ministry.

    But he said Malawi faces challenges in getting the tool to enough communities to make an extensive difference. Those communities don’t just need smartphones, but also to be able to afford internet access.

    For Malawi, the potential may be in combining AI with traditional collaboration among communities.

    “Farmers who have access to the app are helping fellow farmers,” Jassi said, and that is improving productivity.

    ___

    For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

    The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • FTC launches inquiry into AI chatbots acting as companions, their effects on children

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    The Federal Trade Commission has launched an inquiry into several social media and artificial intelligence companies about the potential harms to children and teenagers who use their AI chatbots as companions.

    The FTC said Thursday it has sent letters to Google parent Alphabet, Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms, Snap, Character Technologies, ChatGPT maker OpenAI and xAI.

    The FTC said it wants to understand what steps, if any, companies have taken to evaluate the safety of their chatbots when acting as companions, to limit the products’ use by and potential negative effects on children and teens, and to apprise users and parents of the risks associated with the chatbots.

    EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

    The move comes as a growing number of kids use AI chatbots for everything — from homework help to personal advice, emotional support and everyday decision-making. That’s despite research on the harms of chatbots, which have been shown to give kids dangerous advice about topics such as drugs, alcohol and eating disorders. The mother of a teenage boy in Florida who killed himself after developing what she described as an emotionally and sexually abusive relationship with a chatbot has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Character.AI. And the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine recently sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging that ChatGPT coached the California boy in planning and taking his own life earlier this year.

    Character.AI said it is looking forward to “collaborating with the FTC on this inquiry and providing insight on the consumer AI industry and the space’s rapidly evolving technology.”

    “We have invested a tremendous amount of resources in Trust and Safety, especially for a startup. In the past year we’ve rolled out many substantive safety features, including an entirely new under-18 experience and a Parental Insights feature,” the company said. “We have prominent disclaimers in every chat to remind users that a Character is not a real person and that everything a Character says should be treated as fiction.”

    Meta declined to comment on the inquiry and Alphabet, Snap, OpenAI and X.AI did not immediately respond to messages for comment.

    OpenAI and Meta earlier this month announced changes to how their chatbots respond to teenagers asking questions about suicide or showing signs of mental and emotional distress. OpenAI said it is rolling out new controls enabling parents to link their accounts to their teen’s account.

    Parents can choose which features to disable and “receive notifications when the system detects their teen is in a moment of acute distress,” according to a company blog post that says the changes will go into effect this fall.

    Regardless of a user’s age, the company says its chatbots will attempt to redirect the most distressing conversations to more capable AI models that can provide a better response.

    Meta also said it is now blocking its chatbots from talking with teens about self-harm, suicide, disordered eating and inappropriate romantic conversations, and instead directs them to expert resources. Meta already offers parental controls on teen accounts.

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  • Asian shares are mostly up after US stocks inch to more records as inflation slows

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    MANILA, Philippines — World shares were mostly higher Thursday, buoyed by gains of tech-related stocks after Wall Street inched to more records following a surprisingly encouraging report on inflation and a stunning forecast for growth from Oracle because of the artificial intelligence boom.

    In early European trading, Germany’s DAX was nearly flat at 23,631.29. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.4% to 9,259.17, while France’s CAC 40 climbed 0.5% to 7,803.52.

    In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 added 1.2% to 44,372.50, with tech investment company SoftBank Group’s shares jumping 8.3% in a second straight day of gains.

    Data released Thursday showed Japan’s producer prices rose 2.7% year-on-year in August from a 2.5% rise the previous month, in line with market expectations. The higher cost of food, transport equipment and machinery contributed to the rise in prices.

    In Chinese markets, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index slid 0.4% to 26,086.32 while the Shanghai Composite index rose 1.7% to 3,875.31.

    Shares of chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp added more than 6%, while Hua Hong Semiconductor rose 3.8%. Cambricon Technologies, often called China’s Nvidia, climbed 9%.

    South Korea’s Kospi climbed 0.9% to 3,344.20 while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 was down 0.3% to 8,805.00. India’s BSE Sensex added nearly 0.2% while Taiwan’s Taiex rose 0.1%, trimming earlier gains.

    The future for the S&P 500 rose 0.1% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average added less than 0.1%.

    “Asia’s Thursday tape was the kind of market that looks lively from a distance but flat when you press your nose against the glass. After Wall Street’s record sprint, traders in Tokyo and Seoul tried to carry the baton. Still, Hong Kong and Sydney promptly fumbled it, leaving the MSCI Asia-Pacific index pacing on the spot after five straight daily advances,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a market commentary.

    On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose 0.3% on Wednesday and set an all-time high for a second straight day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 220 points, or 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite edged up by less than 0.1% after both set records the day before.

    Stocks have hit records in large part because Wall Street is expecting the economy to pull off a delicate balancing act: slowing enough to convince the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, but not so much that it causes a recession, all while inflation remains under control.

    Many things must go right for that to happen, and an encouraging signal came from a report Wednesday saying inflation at the U.S. wholesale level unexpectedly slowed in August.

    A potentially more important report is coming Thursday, which will show how bad inflation has been for U.S. households.

    Traders were already convinced the Fed will deliver its first cut to interest rates of the year at its next meeting, but they need inflation data until then to be mild enough not to derail those expectations.

    On Wall Street, tech stocks led the way after Oracle said AI-related demand is set to send its revenue surging. Oracle stock leaped 35.9% for its best day since 1992, even though it also reported results for the latest quarter that came up just shy of analysts’ expectations.

    Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which makes chips used in AI and other computing, saw its stock that trades in the U.S. climb 3.8% after it said its revenue jumped nearly 34% in August from a year earlier.

    On the losing side of Wall Street was Apple, whose drop of 3.2% helped drag the Dow lower and was the heaviest single weight on the S&P 500. Some analysts said its unveiling of new iPhones the day before contained no surprises and may not drive much growth in demand.

    In other dealings Thursday, benchmark U.S. crude shed 11 cents to $63.56 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 8 cents to $67.41 per barrel.

    The U.S. dollar rose to 147.88 yen from 147.36 yen. The euro slid to $1.1687 from $1.1704.

    ___

    AP Business Writers Stan Choe in New York contributed to this report.

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  • ASML invests $1.5B in French AI startup Mistral, forming European tech alliance

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    ASML, a leading Dutch chipmaking equipment maker, is investing 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion) into French AI startup Mistral AI

    LONDON — ASML, a leading Dutch maker of chipmaking gear, is investing 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion) into French artificial intelligence startup Mistral AI, the two said on Tuesday, announcing a partnership between two of Europe’s top technology companies.

    ASML Holding, based in Veldhoven, Netherlands, holds an important role in the global tech industry because it makes equipment used to manufacture semiconductors, including the most advanced microchips used for cutting-edge AI systems.

    Mistral was founded two years ago in Paris by former researchers at Google DeepMind and Meta Platforms and quickly became a European tech darling.

    The partnership underscores Europe’s efforts to reduce exposure to American technology. President Donald Trump’s increasingly hostile attitude to European Union tech regulations has fueled debate about whether the continent is too dependent on services provided by U.S. tech companies such as cloud computing and mobile operating systems.

    Mistral makes the Le Chat chatbot but it has struggled to keep up with American AI companies like ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, and Chinese rivals like DeepSeek.

    ASML’s chipmaking equipment can cost hundreds of millions of dollars but the U.S. government has blocked it from selling its most advanced machines to China.

    The deal gives ASML an 11% stake in Mistral, and values the startup at about 11.7 billion euros. The 1.3 billion euro investment is part of a larger funding round worth 1.7 billion euros, which also involves venture capital firms and chipmaker Nvidia.

    Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch said in a press release that the alliance combines Mistral’s “frontier AI expertise with ASML’s unmatched industrial leadership and most sophisticated engineering capabilities.”

    “Together, we will accelerate technological progress across the global semiconductor and AI value chain,” Mensch said.

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  • Apple to unveil next iPhone amid Trump trade war that could result in higher prices

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    Apple on Tuesday will unveil its next line-up of iPhones amid a global trade war that’s added a potential price increase to the usual intrigue surrounding the annual evolution of the company’s marquee product.

    The new iPhones will be the first to be released since President Donald Trump returned to the White House and unleashed a barrage of tariffs, in what his administration says is an attempt to bring overseas manufacturing back to the U.S. — a crusade that has thrust Apple CEO Tim Cook into the hot seat.

    If Apple follows the same naming scheme since the product’s 2007 debut, the new models will be called the iPhone 17. But the Cupertino, California, company recently deviated from tradition with its naming formula for the iPhone operating system. When the next version of its iOS system was previewed at its developers conference in June, Apple revealed the free update will be called iOS 26 in reference to the upcoming year — a marketing technique that automakers have embraced for decades.

    Regardless, these new iPhones are still expected to be made in Apple’s manufacturing hubs in China and India, much to the Trump administration’s consternation.

    Both Trump and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have repeatedly insisted that iPhones be made in the U.S. instead of overseas. It’s an unrealistic demand that analysts say would take years to pull off and would result in a doubling, or even a tripling, of the iPhone’s current average price of about $1,000.

    Cook tried to placate Trump by initially pledging that Apple would invest $500 billion i n the U.S. over the next four years, and then upped the ante last month by adding another $100 billion to the commitment. He also gifted Trump a statue featuring a 24-karat gold base.

    That kind of diplomacy has helped insulate Apple from Trump’s most severe tariffs. However, the iPhones being brought into the U.S. still face duties of about 25%, stoking speculation that the company will reveal its first across-the-board price increase in five years in an effort to preserve its hefty profit margins.

    Since 2020, Apple has charged $800 for its basic iPhone and $1,200 for its top offering, but analysts now believe the company may raise prices by $50 to $100 on some of the new models. If Apple does announce price increases, it will come just weeks after Google held steady on prices for its new Pixel smartphones.

    Whatever Apple ends up charging for the next iPhone, the new line-up isn’t expected to be much different from last year’s model — the first to be designed for a wide range of new artificial intelligence features. While the iPhone 16 has proven to be popular, the models didn’t sell quite as well as analysts had anticipated because Apple failed to deliver all the AI-fueled improvements it had promised, including a smarter and more versatile Siri assistant. The Siri improvements have been pushed back until next year.

    That has lowered the expectations for this year’s line-up, which will likely include the usual improvements in camera quality and battery life on top of a slightly redesigned appearance. The most significant new twist could be the introduction of an ultra-thin iPhone dubbed “Air” — a moniker Apple already slaps on like its sleekest iPads and Mac computers.

    The relatively minor updates to recent iPhone models are raising questions about Apple’s ability to innovate in the fast-moving era of AI, said Forrester Research analyst Thomas Husson. “Apple is reaching a tipping point, and I expect 2026 and 2027 to be pivotal years.”

    Apple’s AI follies, combined with its exposure in Trump’s trade war, have weighed on the company’s stock, while the market values of Big Tech peers like Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta Platforms and Google parent Alphabet have been surging.

    Although Apple’s stock price is still down by 4% so far this year, the shares have been bouncing back in recent months amid signs it won’t be as hard hit by the tariffs as once feared, and a highly anticipated court ruling cleared the way for the company to continue receiving $20 billion annually to lock in Google’s search engine as the default option on iPhones.

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  • AI shakes up the call center industry, but some tasks are still better left to the humans

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    NEW YORK — Armen Kirakosian remembers the frustrations of his first job as a call center agent nearly 10 years ago: the aggravated customers, the constant searching through menus for information and the notes he had to physically write for each call he handled.

    Thanks to artificial intelligence, the 29-year-old from Athens, Greece, is no longer writing notes or clicking on countless menus. He often has full customer profiles in front of him when a person calls in and may already know what problem the customer has before even saying “hello.” He can spend more time actually serving the customer.

    “A.I. has taken (the) robot out of us,” Kirakosian said.

    Roughly 3 million Americans work in call center jobs, and millions more work in call centers around the world, answering billions of inquiries a year about everything from broken iPhones to orders for shoes. Kirakosian works for TTEC, a company that provides third party customer service lines in 22 countries to companies in industries such as autos and banking that need extra capacity or have outsourced their call center operations.

    Answering these calls can be thankless work. Roughly half of all customer service agents leave the job after a year, according to McKinsey, with stress and monotonous work being among the reasons employees quit.

    Much of what these agents deal with is referred to in the industry as “break/fix,” which means something is broken — or wrong or confusing — and the customer expects the person on the phone to fix the problem. Now, it’s a question of who will be tasked with the fix: a human, a computer, or a human augmented by a computer.

    Already, AI agents have taken over more routine call center tasks. Some jobs have been lost and there have been dire forecasts about the future job market for these individuals, ranging from modest single-percentage point losses, to as many as half of all call center jobs going away in the next decade. The drop likely won’t match the more dire predictions, however, because it’s become evident that the industry will still need humans, perhaps with even higher levels of learning and training, as some customer service issues become increasingly harder to solve.

    Some finance companies have already experimented with going in heavily with AI for their customer service issues.

    Klarna, the Swedish buy now, pay later company, replaced 700 of their roughly 3,000 customer service agents with chatbots and AI in 2024. The results were mixed. While the company did save money, Klarna found there was still a need for higher skilled human agents in certain circumstances, such as complicated issues related to identity theft. Earlier this year, Klarna hired seven internal freelancers to handle these issues.

    Earlier this year, Klarna hired a handful of customer service employees back to the firm, acknowledging there were certain issues that AI couldn’t handle as well as a real person, like identity theft.

    “Our vision of an AI-first contact center, where AI agents handle the majority of conversations and fewer, better trained and better paid human agents support only the most complex tasks, is quickly becoming a reality,” said Gadi Shamia of Replicant, an AI-software company that trains chatbots to sound more human, in an interview with consultants at McKinsey.

    The call center customer’s experience, while improved, is still far from perfect.

    The initial customer service call has long been handled through interactive voice response systems, known in the industry as IVR. Customers interact with IVR when they’re told “press one for sales, press two for support, press five for billing.” These crude systems got an update in the 2010s, when customers could prompt the system by saying “sales” or “support” or simple phrases like “I’d like to pay a bill” instead of navigating through a labyrinthian set of menu options.

    But customers have little patience for these menus, leading them to “zero out,” which is call center slang for when a customer hits the zero button on their their keypad in hopes of reaching a human. It’s also not uncommon that after a customer “zeros out” they will be put on hold and transferred because they did not end up in the right place for their request.

    Aware of Americans’ collective impatience with IVR, Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Republican Jim Justice of West Virginia have introduced the “Keep Call Centers in America Act,” which would require clear ways to reach a human agent, and provide incentives to companies that keep call center jobs in the U.S.

    Companies are trying to roll out telephone systems that broadly understand customer service requests and predict where to send a customer without navigating a menu. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is coming out with its “ChatGPT Agent” service for users that’s able to understand phrases like “I need to find a hotel for a wedding next year, please give me options for clothing and gifts.”

    Bank of America says it has had increasing success in integrating such features into “Erica,” its chatbot that debuted in 2018. When Erica cannot handle a request, the agent transfers the customer directly to the right department. Erica is now also predictive and analytical, and knows for instance that a customer may repeatedly have a low balance and may need better help budgeting or may have multiple subscriptions to the same service.

    Bank of America said this month that Erica has been used 3 billion times since its creation and is increasingly taking on a higher case load of customer service requests. The chatbot’s moniker comes from the last five letters of the company’s name.

    James Bednar, vice president of product and innovation at TTEC, has spent much of his career trying to make customer service calls less painful for the caller as well as the company. He said these tools could eventually kill off IVR for good, ending the need for anyone to “zero out.”

    “We’re getting to the point where AI will get you to the right person for your problem without you having to route through those menus,” Bednar said.

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  • AI shakes up the call center industry, but some tasks are still better left to the humans

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    NEW YORK — Armen Kirakosian remembers the frustrations of his first job as a call center agent nearly 10 years ago: the aggravated customers, the constant searching through menus for information and the notes he had to physically write for each call he handled.

    Thanks to artificial intelligence, the 29-year-old from Athens, Greece, is no longer writing notes or clicking on countless menus. He often has full customer profiles in front of him when a person calls in and may already know what problem the customer has before even saying “hello.” He can spend more time actually serving the customer.

    “A.I. has taken (the) robot out of us,” Kirakosian said.

    Roughly 3 million Americans work in call center jobs, and millions more work in call centers around the world, answering billions of inquiries a year about everything from broken iPhones to orders for shoes. Kirakosian works for TTEC, a company that provides third party customer service lines in 22 countries to companies in industries such as autos and banking that need extra capacity or have outsourced their call center operations.

    Answering these calls can be thankless work. Roughly half of all customer service agents leave the job after a year, according to McKinsey, with stress and monotonous work being among the reasons employees quit.

    Much of what these agents deal with is referred to in the industry as “break/fix,” which means something is broken — or wrong or confusing — and the customer expects the person on the phone to fix the problem. Now, it’s a question of who will be tasked with the fix: a human, a computer, or a human augmented by a computer.

    Already, AI agents have taken over more routine call center tasks. Some jobs have been lost and there have been dire forecasts about the future job market for these individuals, ranging from modest single-percentage point losses, to as many as half of all call center jobs going away in the next decade. The drop likely won’t match the more dire predictions, however, because it’s become evident that the industry will still need humans, perhaps with even higher levels of learning and training, as some customer service issues become increasingly harder to solve.

    Some finance companies have already experimented with going in heavily with AI for their customer service issues.

    Klarna, the Swedish buy now, pay later company, replaced 700 of their roughly 3,000 customer service agents with chatbots and AI in 2024. The results were mixed. While the company did save money, Klarna found there was still a need for higher skilled human agents in certain circumstances, such as complicated issues related to identity theft. Earlier this year, Klarna hired seven internal freelancers to handle these issues.

    Earlier this year, Klarna hired a handful of customer service employees back to the firm, acknowledging there were certain issues that AI couldn’t handle as well as a real person, like identity theft.

    “Our vision of an AI-first contact center, where AI agents handle the majority of conversations and fewer, better trained and better paid human agents support only the most complex tasks, is quickly becoming a reality,” said Gadi Shamia of Replicant, an AI-software company that trains chatbots to sound more human, in an interview with consultants at McKinsey.

    The call center customer’s experience, while improved, is still far from perfect.

    The initial customer service call has long been handled through interactive voice response systems, known in the industry as IVR. Customers interact with IVR when they’re told “press one for sales, press two for support, press five for billing.” These crude systems got an update in the 2010s, when customers could prompt the system by saying “sales” or “support” or simple phrases like “I’d like to pay a bill” instead of navigating through a labyrinthian set of menu options.

    But customers have little patience for these menus, leading them to “zero out,” which is call center slang for when a customer hits the zero button on their their keypad in hopes of reaching a human. It’s also not uncommon that after a customer “zeros out” they will be put on hold and transferred because they did not end up in the right place for their request.

    Aware of Americans’ collective impatience with IVR, Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Republican Jim Justice of West Virginia have introduced the “Keep Call Centers in America Act,” which would require clear ways to reach a human agent, and provide incentives to companies that keep call center jobs in the U.S.

    Companies are trying to roll out telephone systems that broadly understand customer service requests and predict where to send a customer without navigating a menu. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is coming out with its “ChatGPT Agent” service for users that’s able to understand phrases like “I need to find a hotel for a wedding next year, please give me options for clothing and gifts.”

    Bank of America says it has had increasing success in integrating such features into “Erica,” its chatbot that debuted in 2018. When Erica cannot handle a request, the agent transfers the customer directly to the right department. Erica is now also predictive and analytical, and knows for instance that a customer may repeatedly have a low balance and may need better help budgeting or may have multiple subscriptions to the same service.

    Bank of America said this month that Erica has been used 3 billion times since its creation and is increasingly taking on a higher case load of customer service requests. The chatbot’s moniker comes from the last five letters of the company’s name.

    James Bednar, vice president of product and innovation at TTEC, has spent much of his career trying to make customer service calls less painful for the caller as well as the company. He said these tools could eventually kill off IVR for good, ending the need for anyone to “zero out.”

    “We’re getting to the point where AI will get you to the right person for your problem without you having to route through those menus,” Bednar said.

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  • Trump’s job market promises fall flat as hiring collapses and inflation ticks up

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    WASHINGTON — The U.S. job market has gone from healthy to lethargic during President Donald Trump’s first seven months back in the White House, as hiring has collapsed and inflation has started to climb once again as his tariffs take hold.

    Friday’s jobs report showed employers added a mere 22,000 jobs in August, as the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3%. Factories and construction firms shed workers. Revisions showed the economy lost 13,000 jobs in June, the first monthly losses since December 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The new data exposed the widening gap between the booming economy Trump promised and the more anemic reality of what he’s managed to deliver so far. The White House prides itself on operating at a breakneck speed, but it’s now asking the American people for patience, with Trump saying better job numbers might be a year away.

    “We’re going to win like you’ve never seen,” Trump said Friday. “Wait until these factories start to open up that are being built all over the country, you’re going to see things happen in this country that nobody expects.”

    The plea for patience has done little to comfort Americans, as economic issues that had been a strength for Trump for a decade have evolved into a persistent weakness. Approval of Trump’s economic leadership hit 56% in early 2020 during his first term, but that figure was 38% in July of this year, according to polling by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

    The situation has left Trump searching for others to blame, while Democrats say the problem begins and ends with him.

    Trump maintained Friday that the economy would be adding jobs if Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell had slashed benchmark interest rates, even though doing so to the degree that Trump wants could ignite higher inflation. Investors expect a rate cut by the Fed at its next meeting in September, although that’s partially because of weakening job numbers.

    Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Trump’s tariffs and freewheeling policies were breaking the economy and the jobs report proved it.

    “This is a blaring red light warning to the entire country that Donald Trump is squeezing the life out of our economy,” Schumer said.

    By many measures, Trump has dug himself into a hole on the economy as its performance has yet to come anywhere close to his hype.

    — Trump in 2024 suggested that deporting immigrants in the country illegally would protect “Black jobs.” But the Black unemployment rate has climbed to 7.5%, the highest since October 2021, as the Trump administration has engaged in aggressive crackdowns on immigration.

    — At his April tariffs announcement, Trump said, “Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country and you see it happening already.” Since April, manufacturers have cut 42,000 jobs and builders have downsized by 8,000.

    — Trump said in his inaugural address that the “liquid gold” of oil would make the nation wealthy as he pivoted the economy to fossil fuels. But the logging and mining sectors — which includes oil and natural gas — have shed 12,000 jobs since January. While gasoline prices are lower, the Energy Information Administration in August estimated that crude oil production, the source of the wealth promised by Trump, would fall next year by an average of 100,000 barrels a day.

    — At 2024 rallies, Trump promised to “end” inflation on “day one” and halve electricity prices within 12 months. Consumer prices have climbed from a 2.3% annual increase in April to 2.7% in July. Electricity costs are up 4.6% so far this year.

    The Trump White House maintains that the economy is on the cusp of breakout growth, with its new import taxes poised to raise hundreds of billions of dollars annually if they can withstand court challenges.

    At a Thursday night dinner with executives and founders from companies including Apple, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta, Trump said the facilities being built to develop artificial intelligence would deliver “jobs numbers like our country has never seen before” at some point “a year from now.”

    But Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, noted that Trump’s promise that strong job growth is ahead contradicts his unsubstantiated claims that recent jobs data was faked to embarrass him. That accusation prompted him to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics last month after the massive downward revisions in the July jobs report.

    Strain said it’s rational for the administration to say better times are coming, but doing so seems to undermine Trump’s allegations that the numbers are rigged.

    “The president clearly stated that the data were not trustworthy and that the weakness in the data was the product of anti-Trump manipulation,” Strain said. “And if that’s true, what are we being patient about?”

    The White House maintained that Friday’s jobs report was an outlier in an otherwise good economy.

    Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, said the Atlanta Federal Reserve is expecting annualized growth of 3% this quarter, which he said would be more consistent with monthly job gains of 100,000.

    Hassett said inflation is low, income growth is “solid” and new investments in assets such as buildings and equipment will ultimately boost hiring.

    But Daniel Hornung, who was deputy director of the National Economic Council in the Biden White House, said he didn’t see evidence of a coming rebound in the August jobs data.

    “Pretty broad based weakening,” Hornung said. “The decline over three months in goods producing sectors like construction and manufacturing is particularly notable. There were already headwinds there and tariffs are likely exacerbating challenges.”

    Stephen Moore, an economics fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and supporter of the president, said the labor market is “definitely softening,” even as he echoed Trump’s claims that the jobs numbers are not reliable.

    He said the economy was adjusting to the Trumpian shift of higher tariffs and immigration reductions that could lower the pool of available workers.

    “The problem going forward is a shortage or workers, not a shortage of jobs,” Moore said. “In some ways, that’s a good problem to have.”

    But political consultant and pollster Frank Luntz took the contrarian view that the jobs report won’t ultimately matter for the political fortunes of Trump and his movement because voters care more about inflation and affordability.

    “That’s what the public is watching, that’s what the public cares about,” Luntz said. “Everyone who wants a job has a job, for the most part.”

    From the perspective of elections, Trump still has roughly a year to demonstrate progress on improving affordability, Luntz said. Voters will generally lock in their opinions about the economy by Labor Day before the midterm elections next year.

    In other words, Trump still has time.

    “It’s still up for grabs,” he said. “The deciding point will come Labor Day of 2026.”

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  • Google hit with $3.5B fine from European Union in ad-tech antitrust case

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    LONDON — European Union regulators on Friday hit Google with a 2.95 billion euro ($3.5 billion) fine for breaching the bloc’s competition rules by favoring its own digital advertising services, marking the fourth such antitrust penalty for the company.

    The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc’s executive branch and top antitrust enforcer, also ordered the U.S. tech giant to end its “self-preferencing practices” and take steps to stop “conflicts of interest” along the advertising technology supply chain.

    EU regulators had previously threatened a breakup of the company but held off on that threat for the time being.

    Google said the decision was “wrong” and that it would appeal.

    “It imposes an unjustified fine and requires changes that will hurt thousands of European businesses by making it harder for them to make money,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company’s global head of regulatory affairs, said in a statement.

    The decision was long overdue, coming more than two years after the European Commission announced antitrust charges against Google.

    The commission had said at the time that the only way to satisfy antitrust concerns about Google’s lucrative digital ad business was to sell off parts of its business. However, this decision made only a brief mention of possible divestment and comes amid renewed tensions between Brussels and the Trump administration over trade, tariffs and technology regulation.

    Top EU officials had said earlier that the commission was seeking a forced sale because past cases that ended with fines and requirements for Google to stop anti-competitive practices have not worked, allowing the company to continue its behavior in a different form.

    It’s the second time in a week that Google has avoided a breakup.

    Google is also under fire on a separate front in the U.S., where prosecutors want the company to sell off its Chrome browser after a judge found the company had an illegal monopoly in online search.

    On Tuesday, a U.S. federal judge found that Google had illegal monopoly in online search and ordered a shake-up of its search engine but rebuffed the government’s attempt to break up the company by forcing a sale of its Chrome browser.

    But the EU indicated that breakup option is not totally off the table. Google has 60 days to tell the Commission its proposals to end its conflicts of interest, and if the regulators aren’t satisfied they will propose an “appropriate remedy.”

    “The Commission has already signaled its preliminary view that only the divestment by Google of part of its services would address the situation of inherent conflicts of interest, but it first wishes to hear and assess Google’s proposal,” it said in a press release.

    The commission’s penalty follows a formal investigation that it opened in June 2021, looking into whether Google violated the bloc’s competition rules by favoring its own online display advertising technology services at the expense of rival publishers, advertisers and advertising technology services.

    Its investigation found that Google “abused” its dominant positions in the ad-technology ecosystem, the commission said.

    Online display ads are banners and text that appear on websites and are personalized based on an internet user’s browsing history.

    Mulholland said, “There’s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before.”

    Google is facing pressure on other fronts.

    In a separate U.S. case, the Justice Department asked a federal judge in May to force the company to sell off its AdX business and DFP ad platform — tools that are also at the heart of the EU case. They connect advertisers with publishers who have ad space to sell on their sites. The case is scheduled to move to the penalty phase, known as remedy hearings, in late September.

    Authorities in Canada and Britain are also targeting the company over its digital ad business.

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