Apple CEO Tim Cook is poised to retire as early as next year after 14 years at the helm, according to a Financial Times report last week citing multiple anonymous company insiders. Rumblings about Cook’s exit come amid accelerated succession planning by the board and senior executives, the report says. Some observers suggest Cook, 65,…
Geoffrey Hinton has spent much of the past few years warning about the ways that A.I. could harm humanity. Autonomous weapons, mass misinformation, labor displacement—you name it. Even so, he suggests that a non-catastrophic disaster caused by A.I. might actually prove useful in the long run. “Politicians don’t preemptively regulate,” Hinton said while speaking at…
Today (Nov. 18), Klarna reported its first quarterly earnings as a public company. The fintech giant, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in September, is growing quickly as it leans into A.I. and looks to expand beyond its Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) service into more traditional banking offerings. Klarna beat Wall Street…
This past summer, an MIT report rattled the business community with its finding that 95 percent of enterprise A.I. applications fail to deliver the revenue growth companies expect. A newer Wharton study, released in October, reached a similar conclusion, noting that it is still “too early” for most large organizations to see measurable gains from…
One of the most persistent myths about Europe is that it is in terminal decline. Outdated metrics, misleading headlines and internal self-doubt often fuel this perception. Yet, three leading European innovation models speak for themselves. Real-time internet communication: We forget that Skype started it all The original technology that laid the foundation for Skype and…
Companies like OpenAI, Spotify and X (formerly Twitter) experienced online outages this morning due to a disruption at Cloudflare, the web infrastructure firm used by roughly one-fifth of all websites globally. The outage, which began around 5:20 ET today (Nov. 18) and was resolved four hours later, is the latest incident underscoring the fragility of…
The environmental footprint of A.I. and data centers is under increasing scrutiny. Concerns over rising electricity demand, water use and the carbon cost of compute now dominate headlines and policy discussions. Yet a deeper, data-driven look reveals a far more nuanced—and more promising—story: A.I. and data centers can indeed coexist with climate goals and will,…
Human gambling addiction has long been marked by behaviors like the illusion of control, the belief that a win will come after a losing streak, and attempts to recover losses by continuing to bet. Such irrational actions can also appear in A.I. models, according to a new study from researchers at South Korea’s Gwangju Institute…
Like many other A.I. startups, Sakana AI is pursuing technology that can reason, self-improve and aid scientific research. But where the Tokyo-based venture stands apart from most of the world’s model developers is in its focus on designing products specifically for Japanese society, language and industries. Investors are thrilled about the idea. Sakana announced today…
This Q&A is part of Observer’s Expert Insights series, where industry leaders, innovators and strategists distill years of experience into direct, practical takeaways and deliver clarity on the issues shaping their industries. At a moment when cyber threats are escalating alongside geopolitical tensions, Canada finds itself at a crossroads: how to defend its digital infrastructure, protect…
