Author: Art Ryan

Multiple industries including cloud, chips, data storage, semiconductor manufacturing, data centers and servers are seeing revenue gains from artificial intelligence (AI), cementing its role as an economic driver. The main catalyst is increasing enterprise adoption of AI. A 2025 PYMNTS Intelligence report shows that 9 in 10 chief financial officers (CFOs) see “very positive ROI” from generative AI. That’s up substantially from 26.7% in March 2024. “With gen AI yielding such strong results, CFOs are utilizing the technology in more areas of their businesses,” the report said. These include using the technology for high-, medium- and low-impact tasks. Cloud providers are some…

Sports gambling has DraftKings. Political junkies have PredictIt. And now the world’s nerdiest corner — the artificial intelligence (AI) scene — has its own set of bettors, where people wager actual money on whether Google’s Gemini will dunk on OpenAI’s GPT-5 this month. Forget fantasy football, this is fantasy machine learning. People are placing their bets on markets like Kalshi, where they can trade on the outcome of real-world events, everything from when Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce will wed to whether Google will break up and, of course, the AI model race. Kalshi saw 10 times the volume on AI…

The National Football League has expanded its partnership with Microsoft to put new artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the hands of its 32 teams in time for the start of the 2025 football season on Sept. 4. The multiyear deal will equip all of the NFL’s teams with more than 2,500 Microsoft Surface Copilot+ PCs, upgrading existing sideline devices and giving players and coaches faster access to real-time game data and analysis tools, among other benefits. “We are entering a new era of innovation at the NFL through our collaboration with Microsoft to deploy AI across key areas of the…

As artificial intelligence spreads across Virginia’s economy, from data centers to workforce training, Northern Virginia is about to see AI move into the classroom. This fall, Alpha School will open a new campus in Chantilly. The private school, enrolling students in kindergarten through fifth grade, will be Virginia’s first AI-powered school. Tuition is set at $65,000 a year. Alpha’s model is built around two hours of AI-guided academics each morning. Students then spend the rest of the day in workshops that focus on entrepreneurship, teamwork, public speaking and outdoor activities. The school says the approach allows children to learn core subjects faster while leaving time to build practical life skills. Alpha Schools…

TIANJIN, China — Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday urged members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to strengthen artificial intelligence cooperation, while rejecting what he called a “Cold War mentality.” Xi was speaking at the largest-ever summit of the SCO to date, with more than 20 foreign leaders gathered in Tianjin, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The meeting comes as China seeks to cast itself as a global peacemaker, against a backdrop of persistent trade tensions with the United States, Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas conflict. Xi said China has invested $84 billion in…

The Duane Arnold nuclear plant northwest of Cedar Rapids, Iowa is pressing ahead with plans to restart operations by the end of the decade after shutting down for economic reasons in 2020. The plant is the third – and likely the last – mothballed reactor in the U.S. that is in shape to come back online to support growing electricity demand in the U.S. Duane Arnold would follow similar restarts planned for the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan and Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, which plan to resume operations later this year and in 2027, respectively, subject to approval by…

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is exploring local partners to set up a data centre in India. It aims to have a capacity of at least 1 gigawatt, Reuters reported citing Bloomberg News. Backed by Microsoft, OpenAI has registered as a legal entity in India and started building a local team. The company said in August that it plans to open its first office in New Delhi later this year, expanding its presence in its second-largest user market. The new data centre could be a significant move for OpenAI’s Stargate-branded AI infrastructure in Asia, Bloomberg mentioned. However, the exact location and timeline for the India project remain unclear.…

The global online safety movement has paved the way for a number of artificial intelligence-powered products designed to keep kids away from potentially harmful things on the internet. In the U.K., a new piece of legislation called the Online Safety Act imposes a duty of care on tech companies to protect children from age-inappropriate material, hate speech, bullying, fraud, and child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Companies can face fines as high as 10% of their global annual revenue for breaches. Further afield, landmark regulations aimed at keeping kids safer online are swiftly making their way through the U.S. Congress. One…

It’s been a pretty quiet session on the data and news side, but a lively one on the markets front. The US PCE was of course the main highlight of the day and the data came in line with expectations across the board. We had also the Canadian GDP which showed a bigger contraction than expected in Q2, but that’s old news as we are almost at the end of Q3 with the markets focusing on Q4. We started to get more action in the markets once the US stock markets opened. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq sold off…

The same technology that was supposed to put graphic designer Lisa Carstens out of business is now keeping her busier than ever. Carstens, a longtime freelancer based in Spain, spends a good portion of her day working with startups and individual clients looking to fix their botched attempts at AI-generated logos. The illustrations clients bring to her are commonly littered with unclean lines and nonsensical text, and they look like a mess of pixels when blown up beyond a certain size. “There’s people that are aware AI isn’t perfect, and then there’s people that come to you angry because they…

Exclusive: Workers say £500k contract with US tech firm which supplies Israeli forces raises ‘serious ethical questions’ Public sector workers have voiced “deep concern” after Coventry city council signed a £500,000-a-year artificial intelligence contract with the US data technology company Palantir. The deal is the first of its kind between a UK local authority and the Denver-based company, which supplies technology to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and to help Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts. The contract follows a pilot scheme in the council’s children’s services department, including using AI for case-note transcription and to summarise social workers’ records. The council is planning to…

Meta is changing some of the rules governing its chatbots two weeks after a Reuters investigation revealed disturbing ways in which they could, potentially, interact with minors. Now the company has told TechCrunch that its chatbots are being trained not to engage in conversations with minors around self-harm, suicide, or disordered eating, and to avoid inappropriate romantic banter. These changes are interim measures, however, put in place while the company works on new permanent guidelines. The updates follow some rather damning revelations about Meta’s AI policies and enforcement over the last several weeks, including that it would be permitted to “engage a child in conversations that are romantic or…

Do AI chatbots packaged inside plush animals really help children, or do they threaten vital developmental milestones? Companies market them as “screen-free playmates” for toddlers, but pediatric experts warn these toys could trade human connection for machine conversation. Toys like Grem, Grok and Rudi are designed to bond with kids through voice and conversation. Instead of simply replacing screen time, they may replace something far more important: the role of parents and peers in emotional development. AI-powered stuffed toys, such as Grem (left), could disrupt cognitive and emotional development among young children, experts say. (Curio/©Michael Cuviello/Amarillo Globe-News/USA Today Network/IMAGN) Why AI stuffed animals worry…

Nearly 40% of Nvidia’s second quarter revenue came from just two customers, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. On Wednesday, the chipmaker reported record revenue of $46.7 billion during the quarter that ended on July 27 — a 56% year-over-year increase largely driven by the AI data center boom. However, subsequent reporting highlighted how much of that growth seems to be coming from just a handful of customers. Specifically, Nvidia said that a single customer represented 23% of total Q2 revenue, while sales to another customer represented 16% of Q2 revenue. The filing does not identify either of these customers,…

The vast majority (92%) of marketing professionals are using AI in their day-to-day operations, turning it from a buzzword into a workhorse. According to SAP Emarsys – which took the pulse of over 10,000 consumers and 1,250 marketers – while businesses are seeing real benefits from AI, shoppers are becoming increasingly distrustful, especially when it comes to their personal data. This divide could easily unravel the personalised shopping experience that brands are working so hard to build. The rush to bring AI into marketing has been fast and decisive. As Sara Richter, CMO at SAP Emarsys, puts it, “AI marketing is now…

It’s only been since June that Meta invested $14.3 billion in the data-labeling vendor Scale AI, bringing on CEO Alexandr Wang and several of the startup’s top executives to run Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). But the relationship between the two companies is already showing signs of fraying. At least one of the executives Wang brought over to help run MSL — Scale AI’s former Senior Vice President of GenAI Product and Operations, Ruben Mayer — has departed Meta after just two months with the company, two people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Mayer spent roughly five years with Scale AI across…

The recent launches of Gemini Deep Think and GPT-5 have highlighted the rapid evolution of large language models. With 67 percent of organizations worldwide now using them, you have probably experimented with them too. Perhaps you were impressed — or less so, in the case of the new ChatGPT. But you may also have noticed that you are more easily distracted, your memory is not as reliable as it was and tasks that once felt effortless now seem harder to manage.It is not your imagination. While artificial intelligence-powered tools can dazzle with their speed and fluency, relying on them too…

Camb.AI has launched real-time translation for news, powered by AI. Now available in over 150 languages, Camb.AI For News adds to the company’s existing speech-to-speech translation products that cover sport, entertainment, audio content and in-car media. It is currently providing its services for the top division of French football, Ligue 1. Akshat Prakash, CTO of Camb.AI, which is backed by Accelerate Ventures, said: “A more informed and educated population is essential, and by making news and journalism accessible to anyone, we are setting the stage for AI to be a net positive when it comes to trusted journalism – benefitting not only…

Microsoft AI (MAI) has begun public testing of the first foundation model it trained in-house. The model, dubbed MAI-1-preview, is being tested on LMArena, a platform for community model evaluation, the company said in a Thursday (Aug. 28) blog post. “This represents MAI’s first foundation model trained end-to-end and offers a glimpse of future offerings inside Copilot,” the company said in the post. “We are actively spinning the flywheel to deliver improved models.” MAI-1-preview is designed for use by consumers and specializes in following instructions and answering everyday questions, according to the post. It will be rolled out for some text use…

OpenAI’s corporate restructuring could reportedly be pushed back to next year. At issue, according to a Wednesday (Aug. 27) Financial Times (FT) report, are the artificial intelligence (AI) startup’s negotiations with Microsoft, which could complicate plans for a multi-billion dollar fundraising effort. As the report notes, OpenAI has been engaged in complex talks with Microsoft — its largest benefactor — to rework a commercial contract between the companies that extends until 2030. A deal would let OpenAI complete its restructuring, allowing it to hold equity in the business and set the stage for an initial public offering. However, multiple sources with knowledge of the talks…