#Artificial Intelligence

#Artificial Intelligence

The U.S. job market is sluggish and confusing this fall. American companies are mostly holding onto the employees they have. But they're reluctant to hire new ones as they struggle to assess how to use artificial intelligence and how to adjust to President Donald Trump's unpredictable policies, especially his double-digit taxes on imports from around the world. The uncertainty leaves jobseekers struggling to find work or even land interviews.

Senior partners at the global management consulting firm, which has been steadily cutting its worldwide workforce over the past few years, are understood to have held initial talks with the heads of non-client-facing departments about shrinking their teams by as much as 10 per cent. A McKinsey spokesman would not confirm how many roles were at risk, but Bloomberg, which first reported the plans, estimated that there could be "a few thousand" layoffs staggered over the next 18 to 24 months.

But the new year is also a chance to look back at recent turmoil and instability in federally funded scientific research, the wholesale dismissal of evidence in policymaking, andin spite of these thingsthe perseverance of people working in the scientific enterprise. We celebrate the fact-checkers in the field of knowledge and you, our readers, who continue to trust us to bring you what's real, what's factual and what's amazing in our world.

Shoshana Zuboff (New England, U.S., 1951) joins the video call from her home in Maine, in the northeastern United States, on the border with Canada, where the cold is relentless at this time of year. She sips tea to warm her throat and apologizes for being late; her schedule is so packed these days that it was impossible to find an opportunity to do this interview in person.

Every device, system, or application we touch at work and home is designed and enabled around standards. Who comes up with these standards? They are formulated by technology or domain specialists, many either working on a volunteer basis or through their companies, committed to advancing the capabilities of their chosen technology areas in an ever-changing economy. Many of the standards bodies that coalesce and hammer out common standards are always looking for interested professionals willing to contribute their time and insights.

To navigate is to read the world in order to move through it, whether it means scanning a crowd to find a familiar face, deciphering the logic of a bookstore's layout, or following the stars at sea. This ability has always been mediated by tools (many of them disruptive and transformative). Still, the rise of artificial intelligence presents us with a radical promise: a world where we no longer need maps, because the information or the product 'comes to us.'

While the artificial intelligence-fueled tech rally sputtered when tariff concerns grew, it seems to have resumed. Companies that can diversify to address the many demands the industry faces ultimately are poised to profit. Supermicro is one of those companies. The San Jose-based tech firm specializes in high-performance and high-efficiency servers, but it also provides software solutions as well as storage systems for data centers and enterprises focused on cloud computing, AI, 5G, and edge computing.

Helsingborg-based proptech AI startup Proplab continues to build momentum. After opening up their platform for residential real estate this fall, the company has seen rapid growth, now with 100+ broker offices connected across Sweden, on top of their existing commercial property clients. Over the past months, Proplab has established a collaboration with a major brokerage chain and another one is now on the way in. Their traction is clear, revenues more than doubled from October to November this year.

It is happening again, Agent Cooper. Jimmy Fallon is shilling for a tech venture. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was a guest on The Tonight Show on December 8, and Fallon was all about this nascent technology and Altman's claims that it can be used to help raise your children. The whole thing was eerily similar to when Paris Hilton gifted Fallon a Bored Ape NFT. What does Altman think of simulation theory, I wonder?

Besides blocking users from reading its website with an AI chatbot, the magazine anointed the "architects of AI" as its most important visionaries of 2025, eschewing the definition of "person" yet again. The eyeroll-inducing announcement was met with plenty of incredulity, especially considering the astronomical amount of money being spent on building out data centers, their enormous carbon footprint, and a whole litany of other ethical conundrums that the embrace of generative AI has spawned.

Investing in the stock market is an excellent way to build lasting wealth over the long term. By leveraging the power of compounding returns, you can grow your nest egg into a significant amount of money for retirement or other financial goals in mind. There are many approaches to investing, but one popular option is investing in growth stocks. These stocks tend to be fast-growing companies that are disrupting industries, leveraging technology, or tapping into previously underserved markets.

The Navy is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into an artificial intelligence system that it says has sped up key shipbuilding processes. In one case, the AI cut painstaking processes of submarine schedule planning - mapping out how the many pieces of construction fit together and making sure people, parts, and yard space are available at the right time - from many hours to only minutes.

Christian Pilarsky vividly remembers the moment, in 2022, when he realized that his technique for modelling pancreatic cancer had finally worked. A molecular biologist at the University Hospital Erlangen in Germany, Pilarsky had been struggling for three years to perfect the method, which involves growing miniature 3D replicas of pancreatic tumours derived from a person's cells. "Trying this and trying that" and correcting errors along the way,

Revenue grew in the mid to high teens throughout the year, supported by rising enterprise demand and accelerating AI workloads. Amazon leaned heavily into its custom silicon strategy -- Trainium and Inferentia -- providing customers with more cost-efficient options for training and inference. Meanwhile, Bedrock made it easier for companies to build generative AI applications using Amazon's own models or those of partners like Anthropic. Rather than competing for consumer-facing AI attention, AWS focused on powering the back end of AI adoption.