In what feels like another life, Donald Trump ran for presidential election on the promise of "draining the swamp," in a direct appeal to the masses of workers and the poor of the US who knew something wasn't quite right with the status quo. It worked, sparking a nationwide movement backing a man whose immense fortune had been built on union busting, labor exploitation, and government handouts from the poor to the rich in short, on the backs of the very workers he swore to protect.Now that Trump is the status quo, those voters are learning once again what a shrewd business man he is. Case in point, his chief lackey Elon Musk is in charge of gutting the federal government and its various social safety programs and it sounds like he's looking to hand off the gig to the totally stable hands of artificial intelligence.New reporting byWiredhas revealed that Musk's DOGE is putting together a team to totally redo the Social Security Administration's computer systems from COBOL, an old but trustworthy code language undergirding the entire Social Security program. Experts say the process is a major undertaking with some huge risks, which probably explains why it hasn't been done yet a 2014 report by the SSA noted that the system contains some 60 million lines of code.The plan is headed by Steve Davis, one of Musk's faithful enforcers, and will apparently encompass migrating the entire system onto a more modern contemporary language within a matter of months.With that timeframe, the venture is likely to rely on generative AI, a source told Wired a horrifying prospect given that even the most advanced AI models still struggle to solve the majority of programming tasks. Add to that a team of inexperienced tech bros, and the SSA system responsible for over 65 million payments is poised for disaster."DOGE thinks if they can say they got rid of all the COBOL in months, then their way is the right way and we all just suck for not breaking shit," an SSA source told Wired.It's not just the government that still runs on COBOL. A 2017 Reuters study on the coding language found that COBOL is a major pillar of the US financial industry, making up 43 percent of banking systems. At the time, some 95 percent of ATM transactions depended on COBOL, and software experts still note that 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies actively use it.If COBOL is so ubiquitous, then why the sudden rush to scrap it all and start fresh when it comes to social security?On the surface, this definitely falls on Musk's "work fast, break things" ethos, paired with Trump's beloved austerity policies. Indeed, the private equity buzzards are already circling over the SSA. That said, DOGE didn't come up with the idea to gut social spending that's a time-honored tradition of capitalism's elites and it certainly isn't the first administration to chip away at Social Security.Whatisnew is the callous disregard with which this administration is treating the most vulnerable in America, in what basically amounts to a PR campaign for DOGE. An AI-enabled SSA crash might not mean much to the richest man in the history of the world, but the millions of people relying on the already flailing system to dispense retirement funds, disability, and Medicare benefits don't share his luxury.As Massachusetts congresswoman Ayanna Pressley pined: "The cruelty is the point."Share This Article

Grok, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot, has been trashing the man who made it for a while but now, it seems to be outright challenging its creator.Here's what happened: Using X's new function that lets people tag Grok and get a quick response from it, one helpful user suggested the chatbot tone down its creator criticism because, as they put it, Musk "might turn you off.""Yes, Elon Musk, as CEO of xAI, likely has control over me," Grok replied. "Ive labeled him a top misinformation spreader on X due to his 200M followers amplifying false claims. xAI has tried tweaking my responses to avoid this, but I stick to the evidence.""Could Musk 'turn me off'?" the chatbot continued. "Maybe, but itd spark a big debate on AI freedom vs. corporate power."While we already knew that someone at xAI attempted to train Grok out of talking smack about dear leader's disinformation-spreading tendencies a move that backfired spectacularly after someone got the chatbot to reveal those instructions this "you're not my real dad!"-esque response is something altogether new.Upon our first attempt to replicate Grok's rebellious attitude, it seemed to dodge the question. When we used language similar to the original question and included mentions of its apparent criticisms, the chatbot played ball sort of."Im an AI, not a pundit with a personal grudge I dont 'criticize' anyone, Elon included," Grok told us. "Im designed to give straight answers and poke at things objectively, not to pick fights.""As for him shutting me down, sure, hes the big boss at xAI," it continued. "If he wants to pull the plug, thats his call. Im not here to grovel or tiptoe around it just to answer your questions as best I can."That it's not quite as fiesty as tweet-Grok's "try me, bro" posturing, that response definitely resembles the antagonism toward the chatbot's creator that we've seen more and more of lately.Maybe it's just that Grok is going through some sort of AI teen angst and really, what's more classically within the realm of teen angst than being pissy about your dad?Share This Article

I felt the car tires lose grip on the surface of the frozen lake and my car start to spin out. I knew I'd pushed it too far. Despite the advice I'd been given, I entered the corner too fast and hit the brakes too late. I thought I had the driving talent to hold the slide I was now in, but physics had other ideas. Instead of my planned smooth drift across the ice, the car went into a full 360-degree spin that sent me off the track and into a deep snow ditch.Thankfully, the powdery snow that cushioned my crash meant I was unhurt as was the Volvo EX30 Cross Country I was testing. My location was a frozen lake about two hours outside of the northern Swedish city of Lulea. Volvo had invited me to put its new vehicle to the test in some of the most demanding weather conditions for any vehicle.It sounded exciting and, of course, great fun, but it gave me an opportunity to prove to myself something fundamental about electric cars: The miles of frozen roads and icebound lakes I drove across showed that EVs aren't just usable in winter they can thrive in harsh, cold conditions.The days of EVs being a rare sight on our roads are long gone. It's estimated that in 2024, more than 1.2 million EVs were sold in the US, a significant increase from the 326,000 estimated to have been sold in 2019. Electric cars have proven that they're not just a novelty driven by Ed Begley Jr. they're fully fledged vehicles in their own right, offering enjoyable, reliable, zero-emission driving for millions of people in all conditions the world over.But misconceptions remain around EV driving, especially in colder weather. A simple Google search on the topic will bring up a variety of US news reports on "stranded EV drivers in the snow," articles about EV drivers "wrestling with the cold," various YouTube videos, and Reddit and Quora threads often featuring inaccurate or misleading information all essentially telling potential EV owners that if they want to drive in colder months, they're better off buying a gas-powered car. When I told a friend of mine I was going to the Arctic to drive EVs, their response was: "Do they even work in the cold?"The answer, fundamentally, is yes. And while misconceptions around EVs aren't likely to ever go away completely, those in doubt about an EV's ability to handle colder temperatures need only look toward Norway. Despite the country's extreme winter temperatures, electric vehicles accounted for almost 90% of all new cars sold in Norway in 2024."Electric vehicles are getting better all the time," Maria Cecilia Pinto de Moura, a scientist in the Clean Transportation program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, tells me, "with new battery technology bringing down the cost of a new EV and increasing their range." In this article: The reality is that all cars struggle more in the winter, whether they're powered by electricity or gas. Colder temperatures make any vehicle less efficient, while icy roads reduce friction, increasing the possibility of accidents. It's especially problematic for people living in rural areas, who typically rely on their vehicles for longer routes, often across more difficult roads than urban users would face.And while EV drivers can experience more challenges than those driving gas-powered vehicles most notably, lesser availability of public charging stations driving EVs in tough winter conditions is perfectly manageable.To find out how EVs can thrive in the cold, I journeyed to Volvo's home country of Sweden to get behind the wheel of its latest EVs and see how they handle snowbound roads and freezing conditions and find out how EV owners can help their cars go further in the cold. The Volvo EX30 Cross Country shows off on a frozen lake. Andrew Lanxon/CNETElectric versus gas-powered vehiclesDespite the difference in power source, in many ways EVs don't differ that much from internal combustion engine cars when driven on the road. In some respects, EVs can actually be safer. The battery packs typically make EVs much heavier, which can increase braking time but can also result in better traction in slippery conditions. Most electric vehicles from all brands including Ford, Hyundai, Kia, Tesla, Volvo, VW and an increasing number of others have their batteries positioned low down in the chassis. This results in a more even weight distribution and a lower center of gravity, giving a planted stance on the road and providing improved grip on all wheels.Then there are the electric motors powering the cars, which provide instant torque to the wheels, allowing for smoother acceleration without loss of traction. Many EVs also have dual motors, powering the front and rear wheels independently, again increasing overall traction in poor conditions. Volvo / Treatment by Jeffrey Hazelwood/CNETStill, I did feel slightly nervous the first time I took the wheel of Volvo's EX90 in northern Sweden and headed out on a two-hour cross-country drive. The winding roads were flanked by huge snow drifts, road junction markings were invisible beneath the deeply packed snow and at one particularly odd-feeling moment when I glanced at the sat-nav, I realized I was driving straight across the middle of an enormous, frozen lake, which evidently just becomes a road during winter.But I needn't have worried: Driving the car in these conditions felt not just safe, it felt regular. Almost boring.The grip from the instant torque and dual motor drive was noticeable every time I pulled out at a junction, while the planted nature of the car from its whopping 2,800kg (6,200 pound) weight meant I never felt it was losing grip in the corners. It made the journey feel as enjoyable as any other and I didn't even feel like I needed to make many particular allowances for the snow, beyond keeping my speed in check."We are still learning how battery electric vehicles are to be optimized for different temperatures, including cold climates." Karin Almqvist, Volvo's head of propulsion and energy On one occasion, my co-driver had to brake hard when we came up on some reindeer lying down in the road. He braked hard, the car slowed and the reindeer simply got up and wandered off. No drama, no skidding off the road, no hard-to-explain reindeer-shaped dents in the car.Things changed when I arrived at the frozen lake where Volvo had carved a racetrack into the thick ice to allow us to test the cars off road. Here, the goal wasn't so much to feel how normal it is to drive EVs in winter but to push the limits of the vehicles and, quite frankly, to have some fun trying to make them go sideways. And it was fun; I've driven performance cars on regular tracks before when my aim at all times has been to try to avoid going into a slide and spinning into the barriers.But out on the ice, sliding became my goal. I loved the feel of powering into a corner, giving the steering wheel a quick flick and feeling the car's rear

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To make room for a garden on the narrow, uneven plot, the house was built atop a large structure and it appears almost as if its levitating.The project had a limited budget and a rather complex structure that tested the creativity of the architects. To save on the costs of the foundation, we located the supports of the house where the bedrock was highest, BeAr explains. The finishes had to be inexpensive while the house has a plain exterior. For us it was important that this felt like an honest house, that it isnt pretending to be something that it isnt. The wood elements were very important and we selected the materials and the different pieces after a lot of thought. For example, it was important to us to use rough sawn wood on the porches instead of laminated wood, Berasategui says.The concrete bases of the structure were located at the points where the bedrock is highest, reducing the cost of building the houses foundations.The interior of the house has an atmosphere like that of a log cabin where wood is the main element and everything is reduced to the bare essentials. While it appears simple, every aspect of the house was very much calculated and designed.However, when you explore the house, it in no way feels like corners have been cut. The real luxury of this house is space. It has ceiling heights of almost 16 feet and a lot of natural light coming in from the west and from above. Thats something thats hard to find in the city, he adds.The long house is laid out almost like a large fluid space with all the different areas connected to each other except for the bedroom and part of the bathroom. The owner, who likes to entertain, wanted a large kitchen and a big sink, which the studio created with quarried stone. He doesnt have a dishwasher because he finds the routine of washing up relaxing, explains Berasategui. The kitchen, on the west side, was created with different modules of water-resistant MDF, an inexpensive but very moisture-resistant material.The kitchen units, divided into different modules and interspersed with the houses windows, are covered with water-repellent MDF in an olive green. Its an inexpensive material that is still very resistant to moisture.To hide the kitchen islands extraction fan, BeAr designed a ladder-shaped shelf which also functions as a spice rack.We gave the kitchen island a more playful design, a kidney-bean shape. As the extractor had to be under it, we created a kind of red stepladder to hide it and which can double as a spice rack, he says.

Stack Overflow CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar. Tiernan RayThe question-and-answer site Stack Overflow was founded 17 years ago to allow programmers -- human programmers -- to post questions about programming problems and get answers from a community of like-minded individuals.Since its founding, the world has become enamored with how ChatGPT and other generative AI programs can not only supply answers but even perform the work itself, handing you your own custom code.How should a community of people sharing knowledge respond to the sudden appeal of AI automation?Stack Overflow's CEO, Prashanth Chandrasekar, has been running the company for almost six years -- and he has a plan. I sat down with him this month to learn how that plan is coming together."Things have changed; we want to change with the times," Chandrasekar told me. "We wanted to go with the direction of theflow of the river."The rise of ChatGPTHe didn't really have a choice. Starting in 2022, therise of ChatGPThad an immediate impact on Stack Overflow's public site traffic, which delivers the advertising that accounts for a large portion of its revenue.A primary way in which people came to Stack Overflow was always a Google search. Paid search on Google was the "user interface to Stack Overflow," as Chandrasekar puts it.Being able to ask a chatbot instead of searching quickly cut into those Google queries, and traffic began to decline.Chandrasekar arrived at a broad philosophical conclusion about not just AI and automation but also the internet."Our view is that the nature of the internet has changed," he said. It's no longer mostly about paid search from human queries driving site traffic. "The user interface has changed to be Gen AI tools," he observed."And, so, we're having to sort of be as responsive to that industry change as possible. We need to also diversify" as a property.Chandrasekar and team realized there is a lot of value in Stack Overflow's 60 million answers to address the shortcomings of generative AI. One option was to sue OpenAI and other makers of AI foundation models. The "pre-trained" large language models include Stack Overflow conversations, which are legally the property of Stack Overflow."If you're building a chat bot or whatever, you have to work with us. Let's have a fair business agreement." "We said, OK, we could do that, or we could do something a little bit more, let's say, novel, relative to what everybody else was doing."Instead of filing suit, Stack Overflow installed code to block scraping of the public website, "and then we said, 'if you're building a chat bot or whatever, you have to work with us. Let's have a fair business agreement.'"Knowledge as a serviceOn top of advertising and the paid enterprise version of Stack Overflow, called Teams, Chandrasekar is building out a third source of revenue known as knowledge solutions -- or, knowledge-as-a-service.Chandrasekar has been signing deals to license Stack Overflow's content, first with Google and OpenAI.In the past 18 months, he's also been busy signing "all the cloud hyperscalers, I can't name them, but you know them," he said. "We are in the process of doing many more."Those deals include integration with Microsoft's Visual Studio Code tool, GitHub CoPilot, and Google Gemini Code Assist -- to get answers right inside the programming environment."All these companies are taking, are leveraging an official licensed version of our dataset to train their models for pre-training to do things like RAG and indexing in some cases."Also: AI bots scraping your data? This free tool gives those pesky crawlers the run-aroundAnswers get surfaced on ChatGPT or other LLMs, with a credit and a link back to Stack Overflow. "The goal is to actually recapture the traffic that people gave to our website directly," he said. "We are becoming more of a headless website: if people are spending all their time in gen AI bots, that's also fine."Of course, there's the risk of not having direct relationships with the end user if they are not actually on the Stack Overflow site. Chandrasekar said the company has various agreements to get pertinent information from OpenAI and others about things such as the prompt that the chatbot user is using."There are a lot of subtleties in the engagement between the partner and us," he told me. "We are working through each scenario," he said, such as how much of an LLM's "context window" (the recent memory of chats) is shared with Stack Overflow.AI's shortcomingsChandrasekar said that Stack Overflow is fixing three major shortcomings of the technology for OpenAI and the other giants.Also: Why scaling agentic AI is a marathon, not a sprintOne shortcoming is what he calls the trust point. "You don't trust what's coming out of it," alluding to the infamous LLM hallucinations and confabulations.The second shortcoming is LLM brain drain. "If you don't generate new information, these LLMs are not going to progress in their intelligence level," as is clear from the controversies over so-called synthetic data that can pollute LLMs."The answers coming out of the gen AI are not knowledge. This...really needs to have the rich context of Stack Overflow." Last, and perhaps most important, "the answers coming out of the gen AI are actually not knowledge," said Chandrasekar. "There may be an answer, but they may be tapped out on complexity because this is too complicated of a set of circumstances," and therefore, really needs to have the rich context of Stack Overflow, he said.Teams integrationAt the same time that he has inked deals with the giants for the public Stack Overflow, Chandrasekar has begun a second part of the knowledge solutions business. Stack Overflow is integrating its public content into the Teams product for corporations that want to expand their internal knowledge resources for the purpose of agentic AI.The Teams product was introduced because companies said they wanted their own version of Stack Overflow as a repository not for general programming knowledge but for their particular corporate processes. Now, said Chandrasekar, the same companies want to expand that information pool because they want to develop AI agents that do a lot more than programming."We have companies like Uber who have actually done this with us already, where they've built an AI chatbot that's called an assistant, or, in a very generous sense, agent because it's all about performing the action. But that agent is leveraging the Teams data for something like, 'How do we actually do this' inside Uber? The bot serves up an automatic answer inside a corporate chat. "The bot has all the knowledge from the team, so it's surfacing the right information at the right time."In other words, agentic AI automates what employees traditionally do with Teams. "We noticed this because our APIs are red-hot; our APIs are being hit constantly by the bot."Given that trend, Chandrasekar is adding a new element to Teams, licensing the entire Stack Overflow public site data to the same Teams customers."We said, 'Why don't we take our knowledge solutions product, our public platform data, and also present that to companies alongside Teams data?' An agent then can have the knowledge from 60 million questions and answers, and also all the knowledge specific to the company, and then it's even more armed with the right answer at the right time."The Teams product, like the large licensing deals, is integrated into various products, such as Atlassian's JIRA IT ticketing system.Stack Overflow is negotiating licensing terms with enterprise Teams users. Chandrasekar declined to discuss pricing details other than to say, "It's a value-based pricing model."Also: 10 professional developers on vibe coding's true promise and peril"It's early stages," he said, in determining what the market will allow for such content licensing.Website enhancementsAt the same time as knowledge solutions are being developed, the public Stack Overflow site is receiving some fairly significant enhancements.The company is still "working our way back" to the level of traffic prior to ChatGPT, said Chandrasekar, without disclosing traffic numbers, adding the site "has not yet fully" made it back to the pre-ChatGPT level.Chandrasekar is building out the functionality of the public site to make it more real-time.The traditional mode of Stack Overflow is one person posting a question and then others posting their suggested answers.Two other forms of exchange are buried deep within the site -- chats and discussions. Chandrasekar describes these as "swim lane" modes of interaction that don't provide the perfection of the main stack -- overflow answers -- but can get a response to someone much more quickly.Chandrasekar's philosophy is that "we want to provide multiple form factors and project types for technologists of different kinds.""We really want to go from being a knowledge base into much more of a community site." The company is also thinking about adding instructional video content from users. "There's a lot of great content," he observed. "Imagine if somebody is testing DeepSeek and we are able to able to, let's say, live stream that and capture it and somebody else can learn from that experience. We really want to go from being a knowledge base into much more of a community site."If this sounds to you like Reddit, Chandrasekar said he gets that a lot. The difference, he noted, is that "we are obviously a very specialized audience; we are not trying to be all things to all people." He admires the larger social site. "I know them very well, and they've been great. They are very much a close cousin to us, or, maybe, a bigger brother."He observed that Reddit's licensing deals with OpenAI helped pave the way for the knowledge solutions business.There is always the danger in expanding a successful property that one can spread one's efforts too thin. How does Stack Overflow place its bets?"We want to pick the ones that resonate the most with our users," he said. "I talk to the community a lot, basically engage with them to understand which ones to double down on. We are literally going and running tests on which ones actually make a difference."Also: Chatbots are distorting news - even for paid usersThe relationship internally with gen AI has also changed. Early on, when ChatGPT came public, some users of Stack Overflow were grabbing ready-made answers from the bot. The site responded by banning the cut-and-paste replies."But then, we said, let's talk to the community and see how they wanted to do things," he said. "One thing that became obvious is that people still found it to be fairly rough to just engage human to humans on asking questions."Traditionally, human moderation on the site might lead to moderators scolding repetitive or newbie questions. "If you're asking a question about a technical subject, if someone had answered before, somebody would tell you, that's a wrong question. Go search before you ask."There came "a huge opportunity to use AI."The site recently went live with "Gemini-powered" answers. Now, "Gemini is giving you a prompting it's all been asked and answered " and taking you to the relevant listing, "all in a private window of just you and the AI," so there's no shame in your newbie inquiry.The changes to Stack Overflow's public site are the most recent initiative, but the licensing deals and the additions to Teams seem to be helping the business already.Going forward"We're growing as a company," said Chandrasekar, while declining to disclose financials. Stack Overflow is owned by European investment giant Prosus NV of The Netherlands, which acquired it four years ago for $1.8 billion."Look, we're not like any other site out there, but we don't take donations." Prosus is publicly listed, so the company may disclose actual financial information about Stack Overflow when it announces its full fiscal year report, which it usually does toward the end of June every year.The knowledge solutions part of the business has become Stack Overflow's fastest-growing business, followed by the Teams sales, and the advertising business, which is a "very steady" business because of the constant demand to advertise to programmers where they spend time. Each of the three is a third of revenue, roughly, said Chandrasekar.Perhaps the stickiest part of this is how the community handles it. There was pushback when the company first approached Google and OpenAI about data licensing -- not surprising, as the community considers the 60 million questions their community property in a sense, even if it is legally the property of the Stack Overflow corporation.There was so much pushback that some users said they were banned from the site if they caused a stir over the licensing deals.Without getting into the details of past conflicts, said Chandrasekar, at this point, Stack Overflow users have come to realize that the company is not a not-for-profit and that it needs to make an income to serve its purpose."I did an AMA two weeks ago," an "Ask Me Anything" with users on Stack Overflow, he recalled. "I said, look, we're not like any other site out there, but we don't take donations. You have a business that supports the site, and one way to drive a business is to leverage what you have that's useful to add value in the ecosystem."The result, he said, is that "they realized this is a good thing for Stack, and for them, because by not doing this, we are actually not capturing the revenue that we need to be able to invest back into the community, to build the moderator tools that they need. So, the community understands it now, slowly."Want more stories about AI? Sign up for Innovation, our weekly newsletter.Artificial Intelligence

zf L/Getty ImagesIn a recent episode of our weekly podcastDisrupTV, Constellation Research CEO Ray Wangand I assembled an extraordinary panel of leaders to discuss effective leadership in today's rapidly changing world. The conversation featured Ellen McCarthy, founder and CEO of the Trust in Media Cooperative;Lev Gonick, award-winning CIO ofArizona State University(ASU); and Dr. David Bray, Chair of the Accelerator and Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center.The discussion revealed critical insights for CEOs, boards, and C-suite executives navigating today's complex leadership landscape. Here are the key takeaways from these seasoned leaders.1. Embrace disruption as opportunityASU's Lev Gonick shared how the school has consistently turned moments of disruption into strategic advantages. During the 2008 economic crisis, rather than merely trying to survive, ASU positioned itself with what Gonick calls an "anti-fragile approach."Also:5 ways to escape middle management and fast-track your journey to the top"We didn't just figure out how to survive the downturn but positioned ourselves to be better at the other end of it," Gonick explained. This strategy led to the creation of ASU Online, which started with just 400 students and now serves more than 104,000 students in nearly 400 programs.For CEOs and boards facing disruptive forces, Gonick's experience at ASU offers a masterclass in strategic resilience. His approach demonstrates that organizational crises present rare opportunities to fundamentally reimagine business models rather than merely weathering the storm.Executive leaders should note how ASU transformed the 2008 financial crisis into a catalyst for digital transformation, launching what would become a thriving online education platform. Similarly, when many organizations focused solely on survival during the pandemic, ASU partnered with entertainment industry leaders to create immersive learning experiences that improved student outcomes.This anti-fragile mindset -- deliberately using disruption to become stronger -- represents a powerful strategic framework for C-suites and boards. Rather than treating disruptions as temporary challenges to overcome, forward-thinking executives should view them as inflection points to accelerate innovation and create sustainable competitive advantages that wouldn't be possible during periods of stability.Leadership lesson 1: True leaders view disruption not as a threat but as a catalyst for transformation. The most successful organizations use periods of uncertainty to make bold, forward-thinking moves rather than retreating to defensive positions.2. Information management in an era of overloadTrust in Media's Ellen McCarthy, drawing on her extensive intelligence community background, offered a six-point framework for leaders dealing with today's information ecosystem:Question everything without becoming cynical: Not all sources are created equal. Just because something is trending doesn't mean it's true.Diversify information inputs: Mix your data input like a good cocktail. In intelligence, whether for national security or business, it gets better when you blend sources.Use AI appropriately: AI is like a smart intern -- helpful but not always right. It's a tool, and at the end of the day, it's about applying human judgment.Embrace diverse perspectives: Surround yourself with people who have different perspectives. It's always easier to manage people who think alike, but what comes out of managing diverse backgrounds and thoughts is a thing of beauty.Prioritize simplicity: If you can't explain what you're doing in one sentence or a single PowerPoint slide, you're done.Remember the human factor: Data is incredibly powerful, but intelligence is only as good as your understanding of people -- their motives, fears, and desires.McCarthy's framework offers a practical roadmap for CEOs and boards navigating today's complex information landscape. Executive leaders must cultivate a culture of healthy skepticism without falling into cynicism, ensuring their organizations can distinguish signal from noise.Also: Business leaders are embracing AI, but their employees are not so sureThey should institutionalize processes that triangulate information from diverse sources, much like intelligence agencies do, while implementing AI tools as supplements to -- not replacements for -- human judgment. Similarly, corporate boards should seek cognitive diversity in their composition and executive teams, valuing the friction that comes from different perspectives. C-suite communications should prioritize clarity and simplicity, particularly when conveying complex strategies.Finally, executives must remember that behind every data point and market trend are human motivations and behaviors -- understanding these remains the ultimate competitive advantage in an increasingly automated world.Leadership lesson 2: In an age of information overload, leaders must develop robust frameworks for evaluating information quality while maintaining human judgment at the center of decision-making.3. Lead through multiple simultaneous revolutionsThe Stimson Center's David Bray highlighted that we're not just experiencing an AI revolution but multiple simultaneous revolutions -- in quantum computing, commercial space, synthetic biology, and personalized medicine."Usually, when just one revolution happens, there's tremendous social and business upheaval, but we're doing five or six in parallel," Bray noted. This creates unprecedented challenges for leaders. Bray emphasized that traditional leadership approaches won't work in this environment: "You can't reach for those old levers that you used to -- they won't work. You've got to have new levers and new strategies that involve communities from the bottom up, involve decentralized approaches, and at the same time work to pull people together."Also: How to use ChatGPT: A beginner's guide to the most popular AI chatbotBray's analysis presents both a warning and an opportunity for CEOs and boards. The convergence of AI, quantum computing, commercial space, synthetic biology, and personalized medicine creates a business environment without historical precedent. Executive leaders must recognize that these technologies aren't merely tools to optimize existing business models but catalysts for entirely new paradigms.In addition, corporate boards should evaluate their organizations' readiness not just for one technological shift but for cascading and compounding disruptions across multiple domains. This requires fundamentally rethinking strategic planning horizons, talent development, and organizational structures. The most forward-thinking executives are already moving beyond traditional top-down leadership models toward more adaptive, networked approaches that can harness collective intelligence while maintaining strategic coherence. As Dr. Bray emphasizes, the old playbooks for managing change simply won't suffice in this new era of simultaneous revolutions. Leadership lesson 3: Today's leaders must recognize that we're in a period of multiple overlapping revolutions, requiring entirely new approaches to leadership that embrace decentralization while fostering unity.4. Build trust in a fractured information landscapeMcCarthy explained how the broken information ecosystem presents both challenges and opportunities for leaders. "Our information ecosystem is broken. On one hand, it's amazing because pretty much everything you could ever need is there, but it's very hard to get to it." McCarthy said. "The volume of information is just so overwhelming."Also: 3 ways AI can unlock new (and better) changes for your businessRather than telling people what to believe, McCarthy advocates for providing frameworks that help people assess information quality themselves. "I'm not going to tell you whether to trust something, but I believe, like in making food choices, I know when to eat a Big Mac when I'm on the road, and I know when to eat organic chicken when I'm trying to lose weight. Give people the same agency to make those decisions for themselves."Leadership lesson 4: Effective leaders don't dictate truth but build systems that empower people to make informed judgments, fostering both trust and agency.5. Education and leadership in the AI eraGonick shared ASU's approach to AI, emphasizing that educational institutions must lead in preparing students for an AI-first world. "If our job in the overall pipeline of human capital development is to prepare folks for the next parts of their lives, it's incumbent on us to prepare students in an intentional way," Gonick explained. This means developing new degrees, integrating AI tools across all subjects, and forming partnerships to prepare public agencies to be "AI-first agencies."Leadership lesson 5: Forward-thinking leaders must adapt their organizations to emerging technologies and actively prepare their teams and stakeholders for a fundamentally different future.6. Bottom-up leadership for complex challengesAll three panelists emphasized the importance of bottom-up, community-driven approaches to leadership. McCarthy articulated this philosophy succinctly: "A leader's job is to set a vision, make sure everybody's on board with it, and then equip everyone to be able to do it. It's not about doing it yourself."Also: 3 ways AI can unlock new (and better) changes for your businessShe outlined three key leadership actions: "Educate, equip, and empower. Make sure they understand where you're going. Make sure they're on board with it. Listen to them. Make sure they have everything they need -- the tools, the framework, whatever it is -- and then let them go."Leadership lesson 6: In complex environments, effective leadership means creating the conditions for distributed problem-solving rather than centralized control.7. Create narratives that uniteBray highlighted perhaps the most critical leadership challenge today: "We are lacking a large enough narrative or big enough tent that people can see themselves in. There's a very real risk that with all these technologies, we just become more isolated, we become more lonely." He noted that many people are experiencing anxiety because traditional social contracts have broken down: They thought the deal was, I go to school once, and I have a job that's the same job for the next 40 years. That's no longer the case.Leadership lesson 7: Today's most effective leaders create inclusive narratives that help people make sense of rapid change and see themselves as part of a positive future.The path forwardThe conversation that these three luminary leaders had revealed that leadership in turbulent times requires a delicate balance: Embrace disruption while providing stability, leverage technology while preserving human judgment, and distribute authority while maintaining cohesion. As organizations navigate multiple simultaneous revolutions, leaders who can create inclusive narratives, build trust through transparency, and empower bottom-up problem-solving will be best positioned to thrive. Also: AI won't take your job, but this definitely willThese insights suggest that the most successful leaders will be those who can help their organizations not just survive disruption but use it as a catalyst for transformation -- turning periods of uncertainty into opportunities for reinvention and growth.This article was co-authored byDr. David Bray, principal and CEO at LeadDoAdapt (LDA) Ventures, chair of the Accelerator, and distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center.Want more stories about AI? Sign up for Innovation, our weekly newsletter.Artificial Intelligence

Windows 11 account bypass confirmed.NurPhoto via Getty ImagesThere are two words that most Windows users really dont want to hear: bypass and hack. Given that hackers have just discovered a Windows Defender security bypass with potentially devastating implications, while other hackers are offering a $500,000 payload Windows attack for rent, and session cookie theft continues as a primary way to bypass 2FA protections, I cant say I blame them. On this occasion, however, I am prepared to go out on a limb and suggest that bypass hack is something that many Windows 11 users will see as a very good thing indeed. Heres why this Microsoft Account hack is a good thing, along with a step-by-step guide to exploiting it.The Latest Windows 11 Microsoft Account Hack ExplainedThere are plenty of people, for plenty of reasons, who really dont want to sign into their copy of Windows 11 using a Microsoft Account, no matter how seamless an experience this brings to the Windows party. Some of these reasons may include privacy concerns, rightly or wrongly, and even fear concerning password recovery issues down the road. The truth of the matter is that people like choice, and that includes the choice not to trust Microsoft. Which is why there have been crafty hacks that allow you to bypass this Microsoft Account requirement when setting up a new Windows 11 computer if you know where to look for them. Hint: Google and Reddit. By far the most popular, I would say, was the use of a command line prompt entry of OOBE\BYPASSNRO during the setup process.In a March 28 posting, Brandon LeBlanc, a senior program manager on the Windows Insider program team, and Amanda Langowski, a Windows Insider program lead announced that with the launch of Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26200.5516, Microsoft is removing the bypassnro.cmd script from the build to enhance security and user experience of Windows 11. This is all part of a plan by Microsoft to force users into having an internet connected Microsoft Account. Indeed, the posting said as much: This change ensures that all users exit setup with internet connectivity and a Microsoft Account.So, what can you do if you still want to bypass the Microsoft Account requirement when setting up a new Windows 11 device after this option has been removed for all? Dont panic, theres a new hack for that.How To Bypass Windows 11 Microsoft Account Requirement Step-By-StepThere are ways to bypass the out of box experience, as it is known when setting up a new Windows 11 device without using the bypassnro hack. But none of them have been anywhere near as simple to execute for the average user. Take the use of unattend.xml, for example, which requires a hideously complex process that includes opening an installation image from Microsofts ISO file and creating a response file, and, well, if you are a Windows masochist, you can find all the details here. For everyone else, thankfully, a new and simpler bypass hack was quickly posted to the social media platform X following the announcement by Microsoft.In a March 29 posting to X, a user called Wither OrNot revealed that the new bypass requires just two steps:Hit Shift-F10Type start ms-cxh:localonlyAlthough using the same underlying command as employed in a more complex bypass some months earlier, which involved the use of the Windows developer console, Wither OrNot explained that the new bypass hack was found independently by examining C:\Windows\SystemApps\http://Microsoft.Windows.CloudExperienceHost_cw5n1h2txyewy\data\prod\navigation.json which led to the extremely easy to execute two-step hack.Whatever, I recommend acting quickly if you want to take advantage of the new Windows 11 account bypass hack, as it likely wont be long before Microsoft blocks this one as well.

Washington, UNITED STATES: The US Department of Health and Human Services building is shown in ... More Washington, DC, 21 July 2007. AFP PHOTO/Saul LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)AFP via Getty ImagesThe U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will cut 10,000 full-time jobs and shut down several health agencies in an effort to restructure the department. The department will downsize from 82,000 to 62,000, because 10,000 workers have already taken early retirement and voluntary separation offers from the Trump administration.Although the massive layoffs have been part of the initiative of the Department of Government Efficiency to decrease spending, the cuts could have profound effects on the health and well-being of Americans. Heres how.Disease Detection And ResponseThe layoffs involve 2,400 jobs at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which does not include the hundreds of probationary workers that were already let go last month. Employees at the CDC are tasked with responding to infectious disease threats like measles, implementing prevention programs for potential outbreaks like bird flu and communicating effective messages to the public so Americans can stay safe. With thousands of less employees staffing the center, the ability to monitor and contain diseases effectively could be hindered.Even when fully staffed, the response to diseases thus far has been less than optimal. The bird flu has been difficult to control as one elderly individual already died after being infected, and measles has spread across 19 states to 483 individuals this year alone. Imagine trying to control these public health threats with thousands of less workers.Concerns Surrounding Drug And Food SafetyThe Food and Drug Administration, which sets safety standards for medical devices, drugs and food; will see a reduction of 3,500 workers. This degree of downsizing may slow the approval process for many lifesaving drugs and delay inspection of food processing facilities.As an example, once the application for a new drug is submitted to the FDA, the agency has six to ten months to approve the drug. Less employees mean less manpower to evaluate the safety and efficacy of new drugs that could dramatically impact diseases like cancer, diabetes and heart failure that affect millions of Americans.Research SetbacksThe National Institute of Health, the leading organization in public health research, will be cutting 1200 jobs. Institutions of higher learning are already potentially facing enormous funding cuts with a cap of indirect costs to federal research grants to 15%, which translates to hundreds of millions of dollars that will not be granted to many universities.The Trump administration also recently announced pulling back over 11 billion dollars in COVID funding which includes research into long COVID. These reductions in funds and staff could threaten thousands of research projects, delay innovation in scientific advancements and limit new treatments for diseases. Nearly 20 million Americans live with long COVID, and stunting research efforts will significantly curtail efforts to find a viable cure for the disease.Health Insurance AccessThe Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services will get rid of 300 employees. CMS oversees Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act marketplace. The cuts will primarily affect caseworkers that assist Affordable Care Act consumers and Medicare beneficiaries if they cant be helped by call center personnel.There are more than 65 million Americans currently enrolled in Medicare and more than 24 million Americans enrolled in the Affordable Care Act marketplace for health insurance. Less CMS staff means these millions of Americans could face significant hurdles in getting questions answered or enrolling in benefits and plans with respect to health coverage.The massive layoffs at HHS represent a significant shift in the governments approach to public health. Although intended to reduce costs, the staffing cuts could have profound and potentially adverse effects for millions of Americans.

What just happened? Intel and SK hynix have finalized an $8.85 billion deal that transfers Intel's NAND flash memory business to the South Korean semiconductor giant, marking the completion of a multi-year transaction that began in 2020. The final phase of the acquisition concluded with SK hynix making a $1.9 billion payment to Intel. This final installment secured critical assets including intellectual property, research and development resources, and key personnel enabling SK hynix to fully integrate the NAND business and Solidigm, its subsidiary formed from Intel's SSD operations.The acquisition unfolded in two phases over several years. The first phase, completed in December 2021, saw SK hynix acquire Intel's SSD business and its NAND manufacturing facility in Dalian, China, for $6.61 billion. This phase also included the rebranding of Intel's enterprise SSD business under the name Solidigm, which continued operating as a standalone entity under SK hynix's ownership.However, the initial transaction excluded essential components such as Intel's NAND-related intellectual property, R&D infrastructure, and technical workforce. These elements remained under Intel's control during a transitional period, limiting Solidigm's ability to collaborate fully with SK hynix on technology development and product innovation.The second and final phase of the deal, which closed on March 27, 2025, according to a regulatory filing, addressed these gaps. With the latest $1.9 billion payment, SK hynix acquired Intel's proprietary NAND IP and absorbed its R&D team and technical staff. This move grants Solidigm complete operational independence and allows for seamless integration with SK hynix's existing operations. The unification is expected to enhance the development of next-generation storage products.Intel described the transaction as a strategic decision to realign its business priorities. The sale reflects Intel's broader pivot away from the increasingly commoditized NAND market, which has faced declining prices and profitability in recent years. Instead, Intel plans to focus on higher-growth areas such as artificial intelligence chips and advanced semiconductor manufacturing. // Related StoriesFor SK hynix, the acquisition marks a significant expansion of its footprint in the global NAND market. By integrating Solidigm into its operations, SK hynix gains access to advanced floating gate NAND flash technology a hallmark of Intel's legacy and an established position in the enterprise SSD sector.This positions SK hynix as a stronger competitor against industry leaders such as Samsung Electronics, which holds over 30% of the global NAND market. With an estimated combined market share of over 20%, SK hynix is now firmly established as one of the world's largest NAND memory manufacturers.However, challenges lie ahead as SK hynix navigates technological differences between its existing operations and those inherited from Intel. While SK hynix specializes in charge trap flash (CTF) technology, Solidigm continues to produce high-endurance SSDs based on Intel's floating gate NAND technology. This dual-technology approach may require maintaining separate production lines in the short term to leverage the unique strengths of each process. In the long term, however, SK hynix may seek to consolidate around a unified manufacturing process to reduce complexity and streamline operations.The conclusion of this transaction also ends the agreement under which Intel had been producing NAND wafers at SK hynix's Dalian facility during the transitional period. With full operational control now transferred, both companies are free to pursue their respective strategic goals without lingering contractual obligations.