Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, Split Fiction these are just a few of the titles announced to be coming to the Nintendo Switch 2. Thanks to the consoles improved hardware, loads of games that have been stranded on other platforms are now making their way to the Switch 2, and many will be available the day the console drops.On top of that, some games likeTony Hawk 3 + 4 will be released later in the summer, also on the Nintendo Switch 2.Recommended VideosSeveral of the games are getting special editions for Nintendo Switch 2, although it isnt clear what those changes might look like. For example, Elden Ring is getting the Tarnished Edition, and Street Fighter 6 sees the addition of several new Amiibo. What we do know is that some games are taking a performance hit; Elden Ring is going to be locked at 30 frames per second, according to reports. Image used with permission by copyright holderThe brand-new Split Fiction will also come to Switch 2, and its a fantastic multiplayer experience thats perfect for two people to play together. And believe it or not, Cyberpunk 2077 will also be available as a launch title for the Nintendo Switch 2. CD Projekt Red brought The Witcher 3 to the original Nintendo Switch, and now youll be able to explore Night City on the go. RelatedHeres a few of the titles we know are on the way:Elden RingHades IIStreet Fighter 6Hogwarts LegacyDaemon X Machina: Titanic ScionBravely Default 1 RemasteredHitman: World of AssassinationYakuza 0Borderlands 4Civilization VIIEnter the Gungeon 2Cyberpunk Ultimate EditionFortniteWWE 2KNBA 2KEditors Recommendations

gee, I wonder why? Tesla sales and production slumped heavily in Q1 2025 The numbers are going the wrong way for a company valued on continuing growth. Jonathan M. Gitlin Apr 2, 2025 10:34 am | 0 SEATTLE, WASHINGTON - FEBRUARY 22: Demonstrators gather for a protest against Elon Musk and electric car maker Tesla on February 22, 2025 in Seattle, Washington. Credit: David Ryder/Getty Images SEATTLE, WASHINGTON - FEBRUARY 22: Demonstrators gather for a protest against Elon Musk and electric car maker Tesla on February 22, 2025 in Seattle, Washington. Credit: David Ryder/Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreTesla posted its production and sales numbers for the first quarter of 2025 this morning, and they continue the bad news streak for the electric automaker. Tesla produced 362,615 vehicles in total between January and the end of March, a 16.3 percent decrease from the same period in 2024.The drop in sales was a little less bad; unlike this time last year, Tesla was able to more closely match production with demand. As a result, the company delivered 336,681 EVs in Q1, a drop of 12.9 percent compared to Q1 2024.The Models 3 and Y make up the vast majority of Tesla's businessit built 345,454 of them in Q1 2025, a 16.2 percent reduction compared to the same period last year. Despite a recent refresh for the Model Y, which comprised the majority of these two EVs, sales declined by 12.4 percent year-over-year, with just 323,800 being sold, compared to 386,810 for Q1 2024.Things look even worse for the even more outdated Models S and X and the often-recalled Cybertruck. Production for these EVs fell by 18.3 percent year-over-year to 17,161 units in Q1 2025, with sales dropping year-over-year by 24.3 percent to just 12,881.Things were slightly rosier for Tesla's energy storage business, which deployed 10.4 GWh, but this part of the business contributes a small fraction to the bottom line; in 2024, automotive sales accounted for 77 percent of revenues.Much of Tesla's sales collapse has occurred in Europe, where customers are displaying even greater revulsion for CEO Elon Musk's political activity than here in the US. But protests at US Tesla stores are becoming a weekly event, as a majority of Americans disapprove of his interference with the federal government. In the US and abroad, Tesla stores and storage lots have been vandalized and cars have been destroyed. The fall in sales is greater than most market analysts were expectingthey had predicted between 360,000 and 370,000 deliveries for the quarter.These sales numbers are the automaker's worst for several years, but we have to wait until April 22 for the full extent to be revealed, when Tesla publishes its first quarter financial results. Its profit marginwhich briefly rivaled that of OEMs like Ferrari and Porschewas barely half the industry average at just 6.2 percent for Q4 2024.However, it seems that Tesla investors aren't too fazed by these details. Although Tesla was trading below yesterday's closing price at the start of trading this morning, that has steadily been reversing itself, leaving a very long way to go for the price to fall into the $114$100 zone, where it's thought that CEO Musk would face a margin call.Jonathan M. GitlinAutomotive EditorJonathan M. GitlinAutomotive Editor Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC. 0 Comments

Magic Unshittification: 3 tech companies that recently made my life better Enshittification is not the only option. Nate Anderson Apr 2, 2025 9:30 am | 0 Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreI've been complaining about tech a lot recently, and I don't apologize for it. Complaining feels great. That feeling of beleaguered, I-against-the-world self-righteousness? Highly underrated.But a little righteous complaint goes a long, long, loooong way. (Just ask my wife.) Too much can be corrosive, it can make you insufferable to others, and it can leave you jaded, as many people, myself included, have become about technology.I had three recent experiences, however, that were each quite small in their way but which reminded me that not everything in the tech world has fallen victim to the forces of "enshittification." Once in a while, technology still feels easy anddare I co-opt the world from Apple's marketing department?even magical.Call it "unshittification."Better DRMArs has complained about DRM since our founding over 25 years ago. As writers and editors ourselves, we certainly get the desire not to have one's work ripped off or repurposed without payment, but even effective DRM imposes annoying costs on those who actually paid the money for the thing.Case in point: I've been teaching myself songwriting, audio production, and mixing for the last 18 months, and part of that process has led me to invest some decent money into Universal Audio products. I bought its stellar and rock-solid-reliable Volt 2 audio interface and then spent much of 2024 snapping up high-quality plugins like Topline Vocal Suite, the Manley Voxbox, and the Electra 88 Rhodes piano. Terrific stuffbut not necessarily cheap.So it was just insulting to find out the hard way that Universal Audio used a variant of the iLok DRM systemitself unfortunately common in the audio industrythat required constant Internet connectivity to function.The iLok ecosystem can be configured in three main ways, authorizing your plugins 1) to a custom iLok USB dongle (which costs $50$70 and requires a USB portplus, you have to remember it at all times), 2) to the local machine you are working on, or 3) to the cloud. Universal Audio allowed only dongle and cloud authorizations, but I figured this wouldn't be a problem because, surely, the system would only need to check in semi-regularly.In fact, the system checked in constantly. Go even a few minutes without Internet access, and all your plugins will disable themselves, leading any mix that uses them to fall apart immediately. Want to work on your laptop during a power outage? Edit some audio on a flight? Use a studio computer thatfor stability, performance, and security reasonsis not generally online? Well, I hope you like dongles.(Some users dothough others have complained that they too can be unstable, they cost extra, and they permanently take up a USB port on your machine.)Universal Audio is a big name in the business, and their users have complained endlessly about this situation, but the response has generally been that machine-based authorization is less secure and therefore not supported.So it was a surprise and delight when, on March 25, Universal Audio saw the light and announced that "by popular demand" it was shifting to local machine or iLok USB authorizations. The cloud option was gone, and a company rep even admitted that cloud monitoring "requires a constant Internet and server connection. [In other words], more resources."In addition, Universal Audio now allows "up to three" simultaneous authorizations of each digital tool, while before you could only have two.The online response appears overwhelmingly positive. As one commenter put it, "Ok, I admit: I thought the 'submit feedback' feature was just there so users would vent without any serious change occurring... I was wrong on that front. Glad to see UA is listening. Good job!"Others stressed just how beneficial the move was for touring musicians who may use various bits of Universal Audio tech on stage or on tour. "For touring musicians and all other people that often work in an offline environment this is awesome!" wrote one commenter. Another added, "iLok dongle on stage is scary and glad that's over with. Power move!"I concur.Better customer serviceLet's stick with the "musical" theme for example No. 2.I purchased Native Instruments' terrific piano library Noire, which sampled the specific grand piano used by Nihls Frahm in both standard and felted formatsand all of it capturing the ambience of Saal 3 in the East Berlin Funkhaus recording facility where Frahm works. The library is one of my favoritesevocative and gorgeous. But I was apparently the victim of fraud.See, I purchased the library secondhand. This is completely legal and explicitly allowed by Native Instruments, though the company needs to get manually involved in the transfer process. I purchased Noire from a UK user who already had a "transfer code" approved by Native Instruments, indicating that the software in question was genuine and available for sale.So I purchased Noire, completed the transfer, and the software showed up in my Native Instruments account. Everything went smoothly, and I was (very gently) rocking out with Noire's felted piano.A few weeks (!) later, I received a note, completely out of the blue, from Native Instruments support. They had removed Noire from my account, they said, because the seller had committed some unspecified fraud, and Native Instruments had transferred my copy of Noire back to the original purchaser.This was extremely uncool. Not only did I have nothing to do with any fraud, nor any reason to think fraud had occurred, but Native Instruments had vetted the software and approved it for transfer, which gave me the confidence to move forward with the purchase. So why was I now the only person to suffer? The original buyer got the plugin restored, the scammer had my money, and Native Instruments hadn't lost anything.There appeared to be little I could do about all this. Sure, I could file a dispute with PayPal and try to claw my money back, but Native Instruments is a German company, andlet's face itI wasn't going to do anything if they decided to screw me out of a purchase they had helped me make. (WellI was going to do something, namely, never purchase from them again. After all, who knew, when they awoke in the morning, if their purchased products would still function?)This may sound like a complaint, but here's the thing: When I made my case to Native Instruments over email, they got back to me in a day or two and agreed to put a free though "not for resale" copy of Noire on my account as a goodwill gesture. This was all conducted politely, in impeccable English, and without undue delay. It felt fair to me, and I'm likely to continue purchasing their excellent sample libraries.Customer service can feel like a lesser priority to most companies, but done right, it actually ensures future sales.Better money-takingFinally, an almost trivial example, but one that worked so smoothly I still remember my feeling of shock. "Where's the catch?" pretty much summed it up.I'm talking, of course, about March Madness, the annual NCAA college basketball tournament. It's a terrific spectacle if you can ignore all the economic questions about overpaid coaches, no-longer-amateur players, recruiting violations, and academic distortions that the big sports programs generate. And my University of North Carolina Tar Heels had juuuust squeaked in this year.Ordinarily, watching the tournament is a nightmare if you don't have a pay-TV package. For years, streaming options were terrible, forcing you to log in with your "TV provider" (i.e., an expensive cable or satellite company) account or otherwise jump through hoops to watch the games, which are generally shown across three or four different TV channels.All I wanted was a simple way to give someone my money. No gimmicks, no intro offers, no "TV provider" BSjust a pure streaming play that puts all the games in one place, for a reasonable fee. When I looked into the situation this year, I was surprised to find that this did now exist, it was easy, and it was cheap.The Max streaming service had all the games, except for those shown on CBS. (You can't have everything, I guess, but I get CBS in HD using an over-the-air antenna.) It was $10 for a month of service. There were no "intro offers," no lock-ins, no "before you go!" pleas, no nothing. Indeed, I didn't even have to create a new account or share a credit card with some new vendor. I just added Max as a "subscription" within Amazon's video app and boomtournament time. It took about four seconds, and it has worked flawlessly.That something this simple could feel revelatory was a good reminder of just how crapified our tech and media ecosystems have become. On my expensive LG OLED TV, for instance, I have to go out of my way to literally prevent my TV from spying on everything that I watch. (Seriously, you should turn this "feature" off. Otherwise, your TV will watch your screen and try to identify everything you watch, then send that data back to whatever group of zombified MBAs thought this was a good idea.) Roku, which provides streaming services to my basement television, is toying with new ads. Every streaming service I've subscribed to has jacked up rates significantly over the last year or so.So just being able to sign up quickly and easily, for 10 bucks, felt frictionless and magical in the way that tech used to do more often. As a bonus, I've been able to watch full episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I have never seen before.Magic?"Unshittification" is not always the result of "innovation"sometimes it's just about treating people decently. Responding to feedback, personal customer service, and non-gimmicky pricing aren't new or hot technologies, but they are the sort of things that make for satisfied long-term customers.So much tech has fallen victim to algorithms, scale, and monetization that it can be a surprising relief to connect easily with a Real Live Human, one empowered to act on your behalf, or to make a purchase without being part of some constantly upselling "sales funnel." But when it does happen, it feels good. Indeed, in a cynical and atomized age, it feels a tiny bit magical. Listing image: Getty Images Nate AndersonDeputy EditorNate AndersonDeputy Editor Nate is the deputy editor at Ars Technica. His most recent book is In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World, which is much funnier than it sounds. 0 Comments

Matthew Jamison, Principal, The Gunter Group April 2, 20254 Min ReadCharlotte Allen via Alamy StockIts never been harder to be a chief information officer. You have the demands of major digital-transformation projects that far too often fail to fully deliver on their promise. You have the give and take between user convenience and IT security in an era when, thanks to ransomware, breaches have never been more costly. You have talent gaps and budget limitations.And, you have unremitting requests from business units amid the emergence of generative AI, which has had the effect of releasing squirrels at a dog show.So, its no surprise that, while infamously short CIO tenures seem to be marginally longer than they were a few years back, their departures are often someone elses idea. How can a CIO avoid that fate?Dont try to be a technical wizard. The CIO job is mostly about communicating. You dont make it to the C-suite without proven technical skills. That background remains indispensable. But the CIOs job is to deeply understand the businesss goals and then guide the selection, implementation, and acceptance of technological solutions that best help the organization achieve those goals.The business environment is in constant flux. Technologies quickly evolve. Knowing the business requires constant dialogue with C-suite peers as well as business-unit leaders. That means taking the initiative to reach out to and drive strategic conversations with leaders across the organization to deeply understand what their functions do; what they hope to do; how theyre using technology; and how all that contributes (or may one day contribute) to the organizations overall strategic goals.Related:However, to grasp the technological state of the art, CIOs must rely on the deep dives of trusted IT architects and other specialists. Only then can CIOs serve as trusted intermediaries between business and technology experts. So, regardless of ones background, a CIOs communication skills and political savvy are vastly more prized than their technical knowledge.Also, a CIOs technical upbringing can color a worldview in unproductive ways. A CIO who came up through data-center management and infrastructure may be prone to invest in performance past the point of economic return. One who grew up in development may pour more money into custom solutions and user experience than pays off. Staying laser-focused on the companys strategy and business goals while understanding -- and communicating at a conceptual level -- how evolving technologies can meet those goals lets CIOs grow beyond their own backgrounds. Thats good for the company, and for the CIO.Related:Focus on strategy. That takes ruthless prioritization. Marketing wants a new automation platform. Finance and operations want a new security app. Product wants custom development for an R&D project. Business development wants IT due diligence for a prospective acquisition. Sales wants a new lead-generation system. Operations wants a new messaging app.Each may be a good idea in isolation. But approving them all would overwhelm the IT group even if one could budget for it all. Yet, so often, the CIO says yes, yes, and yes. Thats overpromising, which is a guaranteed path to underdelivering, disappointing and throwing the CIOs competence into question.A focus on strategy is crucial here. What is technologys role in the business? Unless youre a Spotify or a Netflix, technology is not what the business does, but rather an enabler of what the business does. For example, with a financial advisory firm, finding new customers to advise is the lifeblood, so it makes sense to invest in and support state-of-the-art analytics and lead-generation capabilities for the sales team and to hold off on that new messaging app for operations.Say no, then explain the strategic business reasons why. Vivid explanation must accompany ruthless prioritization. This takes us back to the importance of communication. Failing to deliver on too many yeses can doom a CIO. But saying no (or, with good ideas that rank as lower priorities for the time being, not yet) will disappoint, too. That can sour a business unit or administrative functions relationship with IT. At its worst, it can lead to rogue installations that bring security risks and maintenance nightmares.Related:The way a CIO avoids this is, yet again, by evangelizing the IT organizations alignment with the companys overall strategic goals. That means being firm and factual about where a rejected or waitlisted project sits on the long roster of prospective projects -- and why the ones above it are more important to the businesss success.It may mean describing the need to engage external partners or bring in outside resources. It certainly means explaining that each new system or API represents a long-term commitment of money and attention. And it could even mean reminding people that trying to deliver for everyone runs the real risk of delivering for no one.Failure to deliver due to impaired strategic vision, compounded by poor communication, is bad for the business and everyone involved. By constantly communicating, ruthlessly prioritizing, and focusing on projects that make the most strategic sense for the business, CIOs can make the right moves for their companies and help ensure that, when they do depart, they do so on their own terms.About the AuthorMatthew JamisonPrincipal, The Gunter Group Matthew Jamison is a principal at The Gunter Group, a management consultancy based in Portland, Ore. The former IT solutions architect helps CIOs and technology leaders align their efforts with enterprise strategy with a results-oriented understanding of the intersection between reality and architectural theory. With over 20 years of functional information technology experience, Matt is an expert in mapping technology solutions to business needs, with experience that spans multiple industries, including healthcare, telecommunications, and security and software.See more from Matthew JamisonWebinarsMore WebinarsReportsMore ReportsNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also Like

It may not matter how many days a week you exercise, as long as you do itHugh Bao / AlamyYou dont need to exercise every day to be healthy. Squeezing in at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity at the weekend seems to have similar health benefits as spreading it out throughout the week.This adds to existing evidence that weekend warriors, who fit their weekly physical activity into just one or two days, have a lower risk of early death than people who dont exercise and about the same risk as those who are consistently active all week. AdvertisementThe World Health Organization recommends that most adults do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity each week, which includes brisk walking, gardening or cycling, or at least 75 minutes of vigorous activity, such as running and swimming, or a combination of both.To investigate whether it makes a difference when people exercise, Zhi-Hao Li at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, and his colleagues analysed data in the UK Biobank study on the physical activity of more than 93,000 people, aged between 37 and 73. This was recorded by wrist accelerometers, worn between 2013 and 2015. Most previous studies have relied on surveys, which can be unreliable.Over eight years of follow-up, nearly 4000 of the participants died. The researchers found that among people who did at least 150 minutes of weekly physical activity but squashed it into one or two days, the risk of death from all causes was 32 per cent lower than it was for people who didnt manage this level of exercise. The risk of death from cardiovascular disease was 31 per cent lower, and from cancer was 21 per cent lower.Get the most essential health and fitness news in your inbox every Saturday.Sign up to newsletterFor people who spread their activity throughout the week, the risk of death from all causes, cardiovascular disease and cancer was 26 per cent, 24 per cent and 13 per cent lower, respectively, than it was for the less active people.This might make it seem that exercising at the weekend is better than spreading out your physical activity, but there was no statistically significant difference in the risk of death between the weekend warriors and those who were active more regularly.This study adds to what we know about the right way to be active. That is, there is no single right way, says I-Min Lee at Harvard Medical School. Whether one is regularly active, or whether one bunches activity over only one to two days a week, it is equally beneficial.All the participants lived in the UK and about 97 per cent were white, so the researchers write that additional studies that include a wider range of ethnicities are required to validate the results and make them more applicable to general populations.Journal reference:Journal of the American Heart Association DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.124.039225Topics:exercise

This is today's edition ofThe Download,our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. How 3D printing could make better cooling systems A new 3D-printed design could make an integral part of cooling systems like air conditioners or refrigerators smaller and more efficient, according to new research. Heat exchangers are devices that whisk away heat, and theyre everywhereused in data centers, ships, factories, and buildings. The aim is to pass as much heat as possible from one side of the device to the other. Most use one of a few standard designs that have historically been easiest and cheapest to make. Energy demand for cooling buildings alone is set to double between now and 2050, and new designs could help efficiently meet the massive demand forecast for the coming decades. Read the full story. Casey Crownhart MIT Technology Review Narrated: The quest to figure out farming on Mars If were going to live on Mars well need a way to grow food in its arid dirt. Researchers think they know a way. This is our latest story to be turned into a MIT Technology Review Narrated podcast, which were publishing each week on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Just navigate to MIT Technology Review Narrated on either platform, and follow us to get all our new content as its released. The must-reads Ive combed the internet to find you todays most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Thousands of US health agency workers have been laid off Experts warn that patients will die preventable deaths as a result. (Wired $)+ How will the US respond to the measles and bird flu outbreaks? (Reuters)+ US cuts could lead to serious delays in forecasting extreme weather. (Undark)+ The wide-ranging cuts are also likely to lose America money. (The Atlantic $)2 Donald Trump is set to discuss a proposal to save TikTok Hes due to meet with aides today to thrash out a new ownership structure. (NYT $)+ Oracle and Blackstone are among the companies in talks to make an offer. (WSJ $)+ The White House is playing the role of investment bank. (The Guardian)3 X has asked the Supreme Court to exempt its users from law enforcementIt claims to be worried by broad, suspicionless requests. (FT $) 4 Things arent looking good for Mexico-based Chinese companies Trumps tariff plans could imperil an awful lot of deals. (WSJ $)+ The US Chips Act is another probable casualty. (Bloomberg $)5 US lawmakers want to regulate AI companionsA proposed bill would allow users to sue if they suffer harm from their interactions with a companion bot. (WP $) + We need to prepare for addictive intelligence. (MIT Technology Review) 6 Covid hasnt gone awayAnd life for the covid-conscious is getting increasingly difficult. (The Atlantic $) 7 Brands are trying to game Reddit to show up in ChatGPT recommendationsCatering to AI search is a whole business model now. (The Information $) + Your most important customer may be AI. (MIT Technology Review)8 Nothing could destroy the universe Humans have long been obsessed with nothingness. (New Scientist $)9 Would you flirt with a chatbot?Tinder wants you to give it a go. (Bloomberg $) + The AI relationship revolution is already here. (MIT Technology Review)10 Trading in your Tesla is TikToks favorite trend Clips of Tesla owners ditching their cars are going viral. (Fast Company $)+ This guy returned his Cybertruck out of fear his daughter would get bullied. (Insider $)+ Sales of new Teslas are slumping too. (NYT $)Quote of the day Id get on in a heartbeat. Butch Wilmore, one of the pair of astronauts who was stuck in space for nine months, explains how hed be willing to fly on the beleaguered Starliner again, the Washington Post reports. The big story Bringing the lofty ideas of pure math down to earth April 2023Pradeep Niroula Mathematics has long been presented as a sanctuary from confusion and doubt, a place to go in search of answers. Perhaps part of the mystique comes from the fact that biographies of mathematicians often paint them as otherworldly savants. As a graduate student in physics, I have seen the work that goes into conducting delicate experiments, but the daily grind of mathematical discovery is a ritual altogether foreign to me. And this feeling is only reinforced by popular books on math, which often take the tone of a pastor dispensing sermons to the faithful.Luckily, there are ways to bring it back down to earth. Popular math books seek a fresher take on these old ideas, be it through baking recipes or hot-button political issues. My verdict: Why not? Its worth a shot. Read the full story. We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet 'em at me.) + Why are cats the way they are? This database might help us find out.+ John McFall could become the first disabled person in space.+ ASMR at the V&A is just delightful.+ Addicted to lip balm? Youre not the only one.

James Doohan as Lt. Commander Montgomery Scotty Scott on Star Trek CBS via Getty Images 2025-04-02T13:26:24Z SaveSaved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? If AI agents catch on, there may not be enough computing capacity.AI agents generate many more tokens than chatbots, increasing computational demands.More AI chips may be needed if AI agents grow, Barclays analysts warned.In Star Trek, the Starship Enterprise had a chief engineer, Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, who regularly had to explain to Captain Kirk that certain things were impossible to pull off, due to practicalities such as the laws of physics."The engines cannae take it, Captain!" is a famous quote that the actor may actually not have said on the TV show. But you get the idea.We may be approaching such a moment in the tech industry right now, as the AI agent trend gathers momentum.The field is beginning to shift from relatively simple chatbots to more capable AI agents that can autonomously complete complex tasks. Is there enough computing power to sustain this transformation?According to a recent Barclays report, the AI industry will have enough capacity to support 1.5 billion to 22 billion AI agents.This could be enough to revolutionize white-collar work, but additional computing power may be needed to run these agents while also satisfying consumer demand for chatbots, the Barclays analysts explained in a note to investors this week.It's all about tokensAI agents generate far more tokens per user query than traditional chatbots, making them more computationally expensive.Tokens are the language of generative AI and are at the core of emerging pricing models in the industry. AI models break down words and other inputs into numerical tokens to make them easier to process and understand. One token is about of a word.More powerful AI agents may rely on "reasoning" models, such as OpenAI's o1 and o3 and DeepSeek's R1, which break queries and tasks into more manageable chunks. Each step in these chains of thought creates more tokens, which must be processed by AI servers and chips."Agent products run on reasoning models for the most part, and generate about 25x more tokens per query compared to chatbot products," the Barclays analysts wrote."Super Agents"OpenAI offers a ChatGPT Pro service that costs $200 monthly and taps into its latest reasoning models. The Barclays analysts estimated that if this service used the startup's o1 model, it would generate about 9.4 million tokens per year per subscriber.There's been media reports recently that OpenAI could offer even more powerful AI agent services that cost $2,000 a month or even $20,000 a month.The Barclays analysts referred to these as "super agents," and estimated that these services could generate 36 million to 356 million tokens per year, per user.More chips, Captain!That's a mind-blowing amount of tokens that would consume a mountain of computing power.The AI industry is expected to have 16 million accelerators, a type of AI chip, online this year. Roughly 20% of that infrastructure may be dedicated to AI inference essentially the computing power needed to run AI applications in real time.If agentic products take off and are very useful to consumers and enterprise users, we will likely need "many more inference chips," the Barclays analysts warned.The tech industry may even need to repurpose some chips that were previously used to train AI models and use those for inference, too, the analysts added.They also predicted that cheaper, smaller, and more efficient models, like those developed by DeepSeek, will have to be used for AI agents, rather than pricier proprietary models.Recommended video

Moves like swagger: Kraft Heinz's global chief growth officer, Diana Frost, said she wants her marketing team to adopt a sense of pride and swagger in their work. WFA 2025-04-02T13:26:03Z SaveSaved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? At the World Federation of Advertisers conference, it was clear marketers are under pressure.Tariffs, DEI rollbacks, the potential for ad budget cuts it's a lot.But CMOs are a creative bunch. They told me they're hopeful marketing can steer brands through."Snafu: Situation normal, all fd up."Stephan Loerke, CEO of the World Federation of Advertisers, dropped this f-bomb part of an acronym coined by the US military during the Second World War onstage at the ING Arena at the trade body's recent flagship event in Brussels. He said it was an apt way to describe how marketers feel three months into 2025.Yet marketers will often say they're at their most creative when they're under pressure. (Just don't mention cutting their budgets.)The duality was on full display at the glitzy conflab, replete with snazzy onstage graphics and a house band playing electropop in between sessions. Speakers from brands like Mastercard, L'Oral, and Kraft Heinz painted an optimistic vision to the 2,000-strong audience about how marketers could position their companies for growth, despite the tectonic shifts happening around them.Between the prospects of tariffs, inflation, the rising cost of living, global conflicts, political polarization, and the disruptive impact of AI, there's a lot for a CMO to keep on top of.Almost all (99%) of the roughly 600 marketers polled in a recent survey from the WFA and the consultancy firm Oxford said economic and geopolitical uncertainty and the need to quickly adjust priorities and budgets would be important or more important in the next five years. Roughly two-thirds (68%) said they'd anticipate these pressures would grow.One knock-on effect of that is ad budgets are likely to take a hit. Marketing is often the first department to feel the impact of cost cuts. In separate reports last month, analysts from Madison and Wall, as well as Magna Global, trimmed their US ad market forecasts for 2025. World Federation of Advertisers CEO Stephan Loerke didn't mince words. World Federation of Advertisers Backstage, Loerke told me that many marketers felt the uncertainty was at an inflection point, which was driving conversations about how to prove marketing's value as CMOs prepare for a tough year."Usually, when that conversation starts, it means that actually there's a recession coming," said Loerke, a former marketer at L'Oral in the 1990s.I interviewed six top global CMOs and spoke with other marketing execs attending the Brussels event to get a sense of what's top of mind for marketers as they navigate the turbulence.Marketers are scenario planning while trying to keep on track with their long-term strategiesMany marketers are spending a significant portion of their time locked in scenario-planning meetings with their CEOs, chief finance officers, and other members of the C-suite."Back in the day, when I started in the business, it was an A plan and a B plan," said Diana Frost, global chief growth officer at Kraft Heinz. "Well, that's a C plan and a D plan now."With the costs of raw materials going up, marketers in sectors like consumer goods and food are having to make rapid-fire decisions about prices, packaging, and product formulations. Consumers' willingness to pay more at the checkout is often partly determined by years of brand-building designed to make them choose one product over another.Patrik Hansson, EVP of marketing and innovation at the dairy company Arla Foods, said that while companies may encounter a year with disappointing growth, it's important for CMOs to stick to their plans a five-year horizon rather than a six-month horizon, say to ensure their marketing has a long-term impact."If you have a way forward, then a bit of noise, a bit of turbulence doesn't distract you from the long term, and that's what we're trying to focus on because otherwise, you get lost in this," Hansson told me.It all adds up for marketing measurementOver coffees, canaps, and cocktails, job security was a hot topic at the event.A February survey published Tuesday from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business found that 63% of the 281 US marketing leaders polled felt increased pressure from their chief finance officers, up from 52% in 2023."One of the big problems is that the advertisers themselves are shedding people in an attempt to cut costs, so CMOs are risk-averse and look for signs of success that are supposedly measurable," Nick Manning, founder of the media consultancy Encyclomedia, who was in attendance, told me after the event."Saying 'trust me, it'll work' doesn't play in a world where short-term is the only term," Manning added. A side dish of marketing effectiveness chat with your lunch, sir? World Federation of Advertisers Diageo is often seen across the industry as a poster child for demonstrating marketing effectiveness.In 2023, it began working with a tech company called CreativeX. CreativeX uses artificial intelligence to generate a "creative quality score" that predicts whether digital marketing assets will be effective.The drinks giant is also using an AI listening tool, developed with its partners Share Creative and Kantar, to predict consumer trends. One insight: 2025 is the year of "zebra striping," in which consumers cut down on their alcohol consumption by alternating between alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.Diageo's marketers also use an internal tool called Catalyst to get immediate access to data to help them make planning decisions."I want our marketers to have a business mindset and delve into the insights we can now access to plan spend, design campaigns, create content, and collaborate with partners based on what scenario best delivers the brand-building outcome that drives growth," said Cristina Diezhandino, Diageo's chief marketing officer.At Kraft Heinz, Frost wants to instill a sense of swagger and pride within the marketing department and she's got the receipts to back it up. The Heinz brand, in particular, has marked compound annual revenue growth of 6% over the past two years, adding around $600 million in top-line growth to the broader Kraft Heinz business, Frost said. She credits the creation of its internal digital ad agency, "The Kitchen," and also the repeatable frameworks it's put in place for Heinz marketers around the world to help grow the brand further."When you have these proof points of growth, then you can build the pride, then you can build the momentum of how it's actually possible as you roll it out to the rest of the portfolio, " Frost said.Jitters over brand safety and DEI rollbacks loomed large"Brand safety" was the elephant in the room at the event.Unspoken but present were lawsuits filed by Elon Musk's X and the video platform Rumble, plus a Jim Jordan-led House Judiciary Committee investigation. These took aim at the WFA's now-shuttered voluntary initiative, the Global Alliance of Responsible Media, and more than a dozen of its advertiser members. The lawsuits and the probe, which are ongoing, allege GARM's members illegally colluded to boycott platforms like X and Rumble. While GARM closed, which the WFA said was due to its limited resources, the WFA has said it adhered to competition rules and would prove so in court. The WFA told me in Brussels it didn't want to discuss the matter.(Side note: For all its glamour, the WFA's event had been originally due to take place at the far-flung locale of Mumbai, India, but after the legal troubles arose, it was shifted to Brussels, where the WFA is headquartered. The WFA partnered with the local advertising trade body, the UBA, to run the main show.) A bull market for marketing: Attendees packed the former Brussels stock exchange building to dine and dance at the gala dinner. World Federation of Advertisers While GARM was off limits, marketers did open up about another topic that's become newly contentious, particularly in corporate America: the anti-woke movement and the vocal backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.Gael de Talhouet, VP of brand building at the Swedish hygiene company Essity, said marketers should be mindful that "a brand is not a political stage.""It's something where you tell people about the good you bring to the world," he added.Rupen Desai, CMO and venture partner of the Una Terra Early Growth Fund, said the recent DEI rollbacks had revealed two types of companies: those where DEI was hard-coded into the company's economic model and those that were investing in these sorts of programs just because everyone else was.For the second type of company, Desai said the recent movements are a "huge sigh of relief.""When you're grappling with growth, or the lack of it, and this investment isn't really yet showing results, it's probably easier to take a step back," Desai said.But he added: "The companies who continue on this journey will be bigger winners than the ones who took a step forward, took a step back."As the sun set over the Palais de la Bourse, the former Brussels stock exchange, where the event's gala dinner was held, the mood was buoyant, despite the complexities the people in the vast dining room were having to navigate this year. (And sure, perhaps the frequently topped-up wine, exquisitely cooked duck, and performance from the French comedy TikTok creators Supermassive helped a tiny bit.) My name is Lara O'Reilly, and I approve this duck. Lara O'Reilly CMOs are complex creatures, after all, as David Wheldon, the new WFA president and chief brand officer of the lottery group Allwyn, summed up."A marketer has to have this strange combination of optimism and belief in what you're doing personally, and belief in what you're doing for your company and your customers and you have to be aware of the context you're in," Wheldon said. "If you flip-flop because the context is changing rapidly, then you cause yourself a problem."Recommended video

In God and Man at Yale, the 1951 book that made William F. Buckley famous, American conservatisms founding father argues that academic freedom is premised on a fiction.While professors claim that they are merely attempting to equip their students with the tools necessary to comprehend the world and succeed in it, they are in fact engaged in conveying a particular set of truths and values to their students meaning, at the time, liberal and socialist values. In response, Buckley argues, university trustees and administrators should banish favorable discussion of such ideas from the classroom, replacing them with a curriculum that emphasizes the eternal truths of Christianity and capitalism.In some ways, the Trump administrations aggressive approach to college campuses directly echoes Buckleys ideas. They are making transparently ideological demands of universities like Harvard and Columbia, and threatening to withhold funding if they dont comply. They have also adopted what looks a lot like a systematic policy of deporting foreign students who participate in pro-Palestinian activism.The Trump administration goes even further than Buckley in two critical respects.First, Buckley explicitly rejected government interference in the affairs of private universities the sort of thing that Trump has been doing throughout his second term. I should bitterly contest a preemption by the state of the duties and privileges of the alumni of the private institutions themselves to guide the destinies of the schools they support, Buckley wrote. Second, Trump has added a layer of ideological hypocrisy.Buckley explicitly rejected the idea of campuses as free speech zones, but the president has long claimed to be defending exactly this principle saying in 2019 that taxpayer dollars should not subsidize anti-First Amendment institutions. Indeed, the notion that there is a free speech crisis on campus that must be addressed has become a mainstream conservative position in the era of wokeness and cancel culture.Yet, Trumps current approach to universities is a dire threat to the First Amendment. The breadth of the threat became painfully clear last week, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio openly bragged that he was revoking visas of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students in retaliation for their political beliefs and activism.The conservative position on higher education and free speech is thus profoundly muddled. While nearly everyone on the right believes that left-liberal domination of the campus is a problem in fact, has been a problem since the 1950s there is no obvious consistent position on why this is a problem or what role the government should have in solving it.The case of Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts graduate student who was snatched off the street by unidentified DHS agents, has brought these tensions into full view. Ozturk was in the United States on a valid student visa; her only apparent crime, so far as we know, was writing an op-ed critical of Israels war in Gaza in the Tufts student newspaper.Ozturks case is important not only because its an especially egregious abuse of power, but also because it provides a clear test for the various factions of the modern right.Do they truly care about free speech, or was that a convenient talking point right up until they obtained the power to create a new campus orthodoxy? Do they agree with Buckley, that the state should stay out of private university affairs, or get on board with Trumps increasingly aggressive approach? Do they really think that targeting hundreds of students like Ozturk, as Rubio suggested he was doing, could be squared with any kind of commitment to limited government and individual rights?The reactions from right-of-center publications divide into roughly four camps, aligning on a spectrum ranging from vocal approval to outright abhorrence. Yet the former was far closer to the center of gravity than the latter.The four kinds of reactions to Ozturks arrest1) The illiberal nationalists. This group endorses Ozturks arrest on the grounds that noncitizens do not have the same free speech rights as Americans and, thus, should be deported when they engage in speech the administration finds harmful.As a matter of First Amendment jurisprudence, this is largely false: The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that noncitizen residents have constitutional protections, including First Amendment rights (with only very limited exceptions). The illiberal nationalists do acknowledge this, but they argue that the court was simply wrong in conflict with the morally correct interpretation of the law.The Supreme Courts twentieth-century rulings are incorrect, Ben Crenshaw writes in American Reformer, a Christian nationalist publication. Non-citizen foreigners are under the goodwill and censure of US law, but cannot claim the full range of its benefits until they become citizens.The illiberal nationalists reject both the campus free speech argument and the Buckelyite vision of limited government. They believe the state has the right and responsibility to shape the American polity along their preferred lines, including by interfering in the management of private universities and curtailing allegedly dangerous speech.2. The whataboutists. These articles focused less on the actual question of whether it was right to deport Ozturk than the alleged sins or inconsistencies of Trumps liberal critics, on campus or otherwise.Writing at The Federalist, a staunchly pro-Trump outlet, John Daniel Davidson spends most of his word count attacking Never Trumper David French for the alleged hypocrisy of criticizing Ozturks deportations while also having worked at a publication that helped Facebook fact-check arguments about abortion during the 2020 election.French worked as a senior editor at an outlet that was paid to justify Big Tech censorship of pro-life views. Its reasonable to conclude that he doesnt care about free speech, no matter what he says about it now, Davidson writes.The weakness of Davidsons guilt-by-association move aside, his evasion of the substantive question is striking. Davidson does not weigh in on whether Ozturk specifically deserves deportation; he just speaks in generic terms about the presidents new policy of revoking the visas of foreign nationals who agitate for terrorist groups like Hamas.Ozturk didnt actually do this: Her op-ed doesnt even mention Hamas. But that doesnt matter. For the whataboutists, the key issue is always the sins of their enemies. Ozturk, academic freedom, basic civil liberties these are all merely collateral damage in the war on the left.3. The see-no-evil crowd. Evasion is also the key feature here. These people and publications simply chose not to say anything about Ozturk, despite a longstanding and preexisting interest in issues relating to campus politics, immigration, or Israel-Palestine. This was, in my research, the most common response from major right-wing outlets. Take the Daily Wire, the Ben Shapiro-founded media empire that has made the campus culture war and Israel-Palestine two of its primary foci. While the site publishes at a truly astonishing clip, the only mention of Ozturks case is a passing reference in a March 31st news roundup in which the author describes her as a Turkish national [whose] visa was revoked after the State Department found she engaged in activities in support of Hamas. That one line is the entirety of the Daily Wires coverage which, of course, amounts to no real coverage at all.Whatever the reason for this silence, it speaks volumes about their commitment to alleged free-speech principles.4. The principled objectors. I couldnt find many of these from conservatives other than people who were already Never Trumpers, but they do exist.The clearest example is a column from Jeffrey Blehar at National Review. Blehar, whose official position on the 2024 election was that Trump and Harris were equally bad, appears to be genuinely appalled by Ozturks arrest.To capriciously eject people from the country without warning merely for publishing an unpopular political opinion in a student newspaper is, no matter what Trumps defenders or special pleaders may beg, utterly abhorrent, Blehar writes. The idea that foreigners who are here on valid visas should live under fear that their every political opinion might become grounds for sudden incarceration in Louisiana or El Salvador is inhumane and close to un-American in spirit.This is, I think, the right reaction and it deserves to be commended unreservedly. That it was published in the magazine Buckley founded, the closest thing to a house organ for the pre-Trump GOP establishment, is also notable. See More:

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