Netflix is building a new search experience aimed at improving the discovery experience, and it’s going to use AI to do it, the company’s CEO Greg Peters said during its first-quarter results conference call. Peters said Netflix is working on “interactive search that’s based on generative technologies” to help people find different titles. Answering an analyst’s question, Peters said the company’s most popular titles that dominate popular conversation draw 1% of traffic, and because of this trend, improving discovery and recommendation is important to the company. “There is more room to improve the discovery and recommendation experience, and therefore provide more value for members, and therefore find the biggest audiences for our titles,” he said. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Netflix has been testing OpenAI-powered search with select customers in Australia and New Zealand. The company, which also started testing a new home page design on its TV app that brought a new way to display show titles and descriptions, plans to roll it out widely later this year. “This [Homepage redesign] is something that we hadn’t made big structural changes to in over a decade. We believe that this will significantly improve Netflix’s discovery experience. We’ve been polishing and improving that experience based on the input we got from members who used it,” Peters noted. The company said first-quarter revenue rose 12.5% to $10.54 billion from a year earlier.

The legendary director Tsui Hark returns with Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants, a martial arts epic brought to life with stunning visual effects by Dexter Studios in Seoul. Witness the battle for Xiangyang like never before! © Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2025 The post Legends of the Condor Heroes – The Gallants: VFX Breakdown by Dexter Studios appeared first on The Art of VFX.

John Taggart/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesWindows 10 is about to expire.In less than six months, Microsoft's most successful operating system release ever will reach its end-of-support date. Like Monty Python's Norwegian Blue, it will be pushing up the daisies. It will have shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the bleedin' choir invisible! Also: How to upgrade your 'incompatible' Windows 10 PC to Windows 11 nowHow is this even possible? It feels like only yesterday, but in fact, Windows 10 was officially released to the public nearly a decade ago, in July 2015. Following on the heels of the ill-fated Windows 8, it became an unqualified success among consumers and business customers alike. And it's continued to be insanely popular more than three years after the release of its successor, Windows 11.That's good news, right? Well, not exactly. Microsoft has a big challenge on its hands in the run-up to that end-of-support date: convincing its enormous installed base to leave their beloved Windows 10 behind and make the move to its successor operating system, Windows 11. To complicate things, they've departed radically from the normal upgrade rules.Also: Microsoft at 50: Its incredible rise, 15 lost years, and stunning comeback - in 4 chartsI wrote the original version of this post in July 2023, when that end date was more than two years in the future, and I've been revisiting the topic regularly to help answer some burning questions. When does Windows 10 support end? Like every version of Windows in the modern era, Windows 10 adheres to a 10-year support lifecycle. That means most Windows 10 editions -- Home, Pro, Pro Workstation, Enterprise, and Education -- will reach their end-of-support date on Oct. 14, 2025. (For the nerdy details on how that date is calculated, see "When will Microsoft end support for your version of Windows or Office?")So, what happens when that day arrives? Nothing. Seriously, absolutely nothing happens on that date. PCs running Windows 10 will continue to work just as they always have, and they will do so indefinitely.Also: Windows 10 PC can't be upgraded? You have 5 options and 6 months to take actionFrom that date forward, however, those PCs will no longer receive security fixes through Windows Update unless their owners pay Microsoft for an Extended Security Updates (ESU) subscription. On Windows 10 PCs without an ESU subscription, any security flaws found from that day forward will remain unpatched, making those PCs increasingly vulnerable to online attacks.There is at least one exception to this cutoff date, which applies to PCs running Windows 10 Enterprise Long Term Servicing editions. In all, Microsoft has released four of these editions. The 2015 Long Term Servicing Branch (LTSB) ends support on Oct. 14, 2025, along with the editions described earlier. The 2016 LTSB release ends support a year later, on Oct. 13, 2026. Beginning in 2019, the name changed to Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC). For Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019, the end date is Jan. 9, 2029.Confusingly, Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 has only a five-year support lifecycle, which means it ends support on Jan. 12, 2027. Show more How many PCs are running Windows 10 today? If anyone tells you they know the answer to this one, maybe stop listening to them?Microsoft can probably make a solid estimate based on its telemetry, but the rest of us are forced to guess based on fragmentary third-party metrics.Also: There's a quiet PC boom happening - thanks to Windows 10 and the tariffsOne of the sources I have relied on over the years is the US government's Digital Analytics Program (DAP), which has a well-organized repository of information about traffic to official websites run by agencies like the Postal Service, the National Institutes of Health, the National Weather Service, the IRS, and NASA.I've been checking that source regularly over the past few years. When I visited DAP at the beginning of April 2025, I retrieved 90 days' worth of data, covering billions of visits to those websites from people using Windows computers, Macs, and mobile devices from all around the world. Here's what the data told me when I filtered it to show only visits from PCs running Windows 10 and Windows 11: Show more Windows 11 has steadily overtaken Windows 10 in visits to U.S. government websites as the deadline approaches.  DAP/ZDNETThat's a big improvement over an eight-month period. Last August, visits from PCs running Windows 10 significantly outpaced those from Windows 11. (In case you're curious, other versions of Windows represent a trivial share of visits, being outnumbered by every alternative desktop platform, including ChromeOS.) But if you extrapolate those numbers to the worldwide population of Windows PCs, you can see the problem. Over the past eight months, about 1.6% of Windows 10 PCs have been replaced by Windows 11 PCs each month. At that pace, about 35% of those 1.4 billion devices will still be running Windows 10 when October 2025 rolls around, and many of them have no supported upgrade path. Also: Windows 10 PC can't be upgraded? You have 5 options and 6 months to take actionFor people who are concerned about the security of the internet at large, that thought is -- well, let's call it unnerving. Another widely used measure of web traffic, StatCounter, offers its own estimates of traffic from PCs running Microsoft Windows. If you believe their charts, about 54% of PCs worldwide are still running Windows 10 as of April 2025. Now, I have my issues with StatCounter's metrics, a topic I have recently discussed at length. I think the StatCounter numbers probably overcount the number of Windows 10 PCs, but they do confirm the general conclusion that there will be a large number of unsupported PCs at the end of 2025. How many PCs will be running Windows 10 at the end of 2025? That's the real question, isn't it?Despite predictions of the imminent demise of the PC market, OEMs continue to sell more than 200 million new Windows computers each year. The most optimistic scenario is that every one of those new PCs sold in the next year replaces a Windows 10 device that is then retired, with another 100 million or so older PCs replaced by Chromebooks, iPads, and Macs. Maybe some old PCs are simply put out to pasture and not replaced at all, as consumers decide to use their phones or tablets instead. The prospect of large tariffs on PCs manufactured in China and sold in the US complicates the equation considerably.Also: Can't quit Windows 10? You can pay Microsoft for updates after October, or try these alternativesIf the shift to Windows 11 continues at its current rate, as measured by the DAP data, roughly 35% of PCs will still be running Windows 10 in October 2025. That adds up to more than 500 million PCs that will be running an outdated, unsupported operating system at the end of the year.I suspect that pace will accelerate significantly, especially in enterprise deployments that have been planning for this transition for the past few years and will be executing on those plans before the end of 2025. Even at that accelerated pace, though, it will still mean hundreds of millions of PCs will be running Windows 10 when the end-of-support date rolls around. Yikes.Who owns those PCs?Those who don't qualify for an automatic upgrade. Some people own older hardware that doesn't meet the minimum hardware compatibility standards for Windows 11. Basically, that means any PC that was designed in 2018 or earlier. Note that this category includes many budget PCs that used older designs and unsupported CPUs but were sold as new in 2019 and 2020.Corporate PCs that are standardized on Windows 10. A nontrivial number of enterprise IT managers aren't ready to go through a wholesale Windows 11 migration. Many of them will use the normal upgrade cycle to perform that migration over time, and they have the option to pay for Windows 10 upgrades for up to three years after the end-of-support date.Windows 10 diehards. From my time spent reading support forums, I know there's a large population of longtime Windows users who are unhappy about the changes in Windows 11. Some of them will reluctantly upgrade, but others won't. Show more Will Microsoft extend the support deadline for Windows 10? I know some people are convinced this is a possibility, and there's precedent for it in the experience of Windows XP, which ended support in April 2014, more than 12 years after it was first released. Windows XP users even received emergency security updates well after that official end date, to address the WannaCry vulnerability in 2017 and a similar flaw in 2019. Likewise, Microsoft issued emergency security updates for Windows 7 in 2021 after its support had officially ended.Of course, in both cases, the customers running the soon-to-be-obsolete Windows version had the option to upgrade to a new version. Indeed, that's the recommendation from Microsoft's official Product End of Support page:Once a product reaches the end of support, or a service retires, there will be no new security updates, non-security updates, or assisted support. Customers are encouraged to migrate to the latest version of the product or service.Also: Can you still get a Windows 10 upgrade for free in 2025? Short answer: MaybeFor Windows 10, though, that alternative might not be available. Devices that don't meet the hardware compatibility requirements will have no Microsoft-supported migration path to a newer version. As I pointed out the last time I looked at this issue, the owners of those perfectly functional PCs -- some only five or six years old -- will instead have the following options:Install a non-Microsoft operating system. Maybe 2026 will be the year when desktop Linux finally takes hold, although that's unlikely. ChromeOS Flex might be another option, but it has its own hardware compatibility requirements that probably make it unsuitable for older hardware.Ignore Microsoft's warnings and upgrade to Windows 11 anyway. There are options to install Windows 11 on "incompatible" hardware, but they require a fair amount of technical experience. People who are clinging to old PCs because they can't afford a new one likely don't have those specialized skills and may not even realize that the option is available. I doubt that many businesses would be willing to risk the support issues that come with that approach.Keep running Windows 10 and hope for the best. History suggests that this is the most likely option.Nothing in the company's behavior over the past year suggests they have any plans to extend the support deadline for Windows 10.Microsoft and its OEM partners would prefer that the owners of those devices dump them in a landfill and buy a new PC running Windows 11. However, my experience with PC owners, especially older people on a fixed income, is that they will use those devices until they stop working. Those PCs will be sitting ducks for a cyberattack like WannaCry, which was brutally effective against the large population of Windows 7 PCs that were still in use three years after its support ended.That incident was a PR nightmare for Microsoft, and a repeat would be even more devastating to the company's reputation. That's why Microsoft has offered paid options to extend support for Windows 10 by three years. Customers in enterprise and education deployments are likely to take advantage of those options.Consumers have the option to pay for updates for a year. I predict that few will do so. After that? Well, you're on your own. Show more This article was originally published in July 2023. The most recent update was in April 2025.Get the morning's top stories in your inbox each day with our Tech Today newsletter.Windows

I think we all knew this was coming, but the upcoming summer of Marvel Rivals is arriving with twist. It's resurrected the Marvel Swimsuit Special.

In brief: With the advancements in display and e-ink technology, e-readers can replicate the feeling of reading a real book more than ever before. Now, a company has taken inspiration from smartphones to add another element only seen on their paper-based counterparts – creating the world's first foldable e-reader. At first glance, the mooInk V from Taiwan-based company Readmoo looks like one of the early prototypes of a folding phone. But it's actually an e-reader that can bend, much like Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold series and similar devices. Opened up, the mooInk V has an 8-inch touchscreen based on E Ink's Gallery 3 display technology, which uses three colored ink capsules that can produce over 50,000 shades at a resolution of 300ppi, writes The Verge. The e-reader weighs 225 grams, featuring a body made from aluminum-magnesium alloy finished with a silver metallic paint. The company says it's small enough to fit inside a jeans pocket when folded. Readmoo hasn't revealed the official dimensions but it sounds slightly smaller than the average paperback. The mooInk V can be opened flat – or almost flat – for reading or at a 90-degree angle, replicating the feeling of reading a printed book. As is the case with foldable handsets, there will likely be concerns regarding the durability of a foldable e-reader like this one. Readmoo says that it has been developing the mooInk V for nine years to develop an electronic paper screen that can endure over 200,000 bends. // Related Stories One of the problems with developing a bending e-reader is that the display technology they use is about four times thicker than OLED panels found in foldable phones, hence the near decade-long development time of the mooInk V. Readmoo never said when it expects its device to ship or how much it will cost. Considering the typically high prices of other foldables and the mooInk V's impressive specs, expect it to carry a premium price tag. It'll be interesting to see if other e-reader makers start offering foldable devices. Amazon introduced its first color e-reader, the $279 Kindle Colorsoft, in October 2024, but there have been a lot of complaints from buyers over screen discoloration issues.

Love crossword puzzles but don’t have all day to sit and solve a full-sized puzzle in your daily newspaper? That’s what The Mini is for! A bite-sized version of the New York Times’ well-known crossword puzzle, The Mini is a quick and easy way to test your crossword skills daily in a lot less time (the average puzzle takes most players just over a minute to solve). While The Mini is smaller and simpler than a normal crossword, it isn’t always easy. Tripping up on one clue can be the difference between a personal best completion time and an embarrassing solve attempt. Recommended Videos Just like our Wordle hints and Connections hints, we’re here to help with The Mini today if you’re stuck and need a little help. Related Below are the answers for the NYT Mini crossword today. New York Times Across Lack of practice, metaphorically – RUST The width of your thumb, if you need a rough approximation – INCH It has many private entries – DIARY Disc golfer’s obstacle – TREE Emoji that can mean “I’m intrigued” – EYES Down Dispose (of) – RID Bring together – UNITE Like graveyards at night – SCARY Shortest allowable number of letters for a New York Times crossword answer – THREE “Totally with you!” – YES Editors’ Recommendations

The company is making a shift to focus on only the highest-value GenAI use cases and shut down pilots that were redundant or underdelivering.

It's OK to delay Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the dad rock of video games, and I love it It also proves AAA publishers should be more willing to delay their games. Samuel Axon – Apr 18, 2025 8:30 am | 0 Assassin's Creed Shadows refines Ubisoft's formula, has great graphics, and is a ton of fun. Credit: Samuel Axon Assassin's Creed Shadows refines Ubisoft's formula, has great graphics, and is a ton of fun. Credit: Samuel Axon Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Assassin’s Creed titles are cozy games for me. There’s no more relaxing place to go after a difficult day: historical outdoor museum tours, plus dopamine dispensers, plus slow-paced assassination simulators. The developers of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows seem to understand this need to escape better than ever before. I’m “only” 40 hours into Shadows (I reckon I’m only about 30 percent through the game), but I already consider it one of the best entries in the franchise’s long history. I’ve appreciated some past titles’ willingness to experiment and get jazzy with it, but Shadows takes a different tack. It has cherry-picked the best elements from the past decade or so of the franchise and refined them. So, although the wheel hasn’t been reinvented here, it offers a smoother ride than fans have ever gotten from the series. That’s a relief, and for once, I have some praise to offer Ubisoft. It has done an excellent job understanding its audience and proven that when in doubt, AAA publishers should feel more comfortable with the idea of delaying a game to focus on quality. Choosing wisely Shadows is the latest entry in the 18-year series, and it was developed primarily by a Ubisoft superteam, combining the talents of two flagship studios: Ubisoft Montreal (Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla) and Ubisoft Quebec (Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Immortals Fenyx Rising). After a mediocre entry in 2023’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage—which began as Valhalla DLC and was developed by B-team Ubisoft Bordeaux—Shadows is an all-in, massive budget monstrosity led by the very A-list of teams. The game comes after a trilogy of games that many fans call the ancient trilogy (Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla—with Mirage tightly connected), which was pretty divisive. Peaking with Odyssey, the ancient trilogy departed from classic Assassin's Creed gameplay in significant ways. For the most part, cornerstones like social stealth, modern-day framing, and primarily urban environments were abandoned in favor of what could be reasonably described as "The Witcher 3 lite"—vast, open-world RPG gameplay with detailed character customization and gear systems, branching dialogue options, and lots of time spent wandering the wilderness instead of cities. As in Odyssey, you spend most of your time in Shadows exploring the wilds. Credit: Samuel Axon I loved that shift, as I felt the old formula had grown stale over a decade of annual releases. Many other longtime fans did not agree. So in the weeks leading up to Shadows' launch, Ubisoft was in a tough spot: please the old-school fans or fans of the ancient trilogy. The publisher tried to please both at once with Valhalla but ended up not really making anyone happy, and it tried a retro throwback with Mirage, which was well-received by a dedicated cohort, but that didn't make many waves outside that OG community. During development, a Ubisoft lead publicly assured fans that Shadows would be a big departure from Odyssey, seemingly letting folks know which fanbase the game was meant to please. That's why I was surprised when Shadows actually came out and was... a lot like Odyssey—more like Odyssey than any other game in the franchise, in fact. Detailed gear stats and synergies are back, meaning this game is clearly an RPG... Samuel Axon Detailed gear stats and synergies are back, meaning this game is clearly an RPG... Samuel Axon ...and that carries through to character customization and progression, too. Samuel Axon ...and that carries through to character customization and progression, too. Samuel Axon There are cities and towns, but they're pretty small, and they're not a big focus. Samuel Axon There are cities and towns, but they're pretty small, and they're not a big focus. Samuel Axon ...and that carries through to character customization and progression, too. Samuel Axon There are cities and towns, but they're pretty small, and they're not a big focus. Samuel Axon Similar to Odyssey, Shadows has deep character progression, gear, and RPG systems. It is also far more focused on the countryside than on urban gameplay and has no social stealth. It has branching dialogue (anemic though that feature may be) and plays like a modernization of The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. Yet it seems this time around, most players are happy. What gives? Well, Shadows exhibits a level of polish and handcrafted care that many Odyssey detractors felt was lacking. In other words, the game is so slick and fun to play, it's hard to dislike it just because it's not exactly what you would have done had you been in charge of picking the next direction for the franchise. Part of that comes from learning lessons from the specific complaints that even Odyssey's biggest fans had about that game, but part of it can be attributed to the fact that Ubisoft did something uncharacteristic this time around: It delayed an Assassin's Creed game for months to make sure the team could nail it. It’s OK to delay Last fall, Ubisoft published Star Wars Outlaws, which was basically Assassin's Creed set in the Star Wars universe. You'd think that would be a recipe for success, but the game landed with a thud. The critical reception was lukewarm, and gaming communities bounced off it quickly. And while it sold well by most single-player games' standards, it didn't sell well enough to justify its huge budget or to please either Disney or Ubisoft's bean counters. I played Outlaws a little bit, but I, too, dropped it after a short time. The stealth sequences were frustrating, its design decisions didn't seem very well-thought out, and it wasn't that fun to play. Since I wasn't alone in that impression, Ubisoft looked at Shadows (which was due to launch mere weeks later) and panicked. Was the studio on the right track? It made a fateful decision: delay Shadows for months, well beyond the quarter, to make sure it wouldn't disappoint as much as Outlaws did. I'm not privy to the inside discussions about that decision, but given that the business was surely counting on Shadows to deliver for the all-important holiday quarter and that Ubisoft had never delayed an Assassin's Creed title by more than a few weeks before, it probably wasn't an easy one. It's hard to imagine it was the wrong one, though. Like I said, Shadows might be the most polished and consistently fun Assassin's Creed game ever made. No expense was spared with this game, and it delivers on polish, too. Credit: Samuel Axon In an industry where quarterly profits are everything and building quality experiences for players or preserving the mental health and financial stability of employees are more in the "it's nice when it happens" category, I feel it's important to recognize when a company makes a better choice. I don't know what Ubisoft developers' internal experiences were, but I sincerely hope the extra time allowed them to both be happier with their work and their work-life balance. (If you're reading this and you work at Ubisoft and have insight, email me via my author page here. I want to know.) In any case, there's no question that players got a superior product because of the decision to delay the game. I can think of many times when players got angry at publishers for delaying games, but they shouldn't be. When a game gets delayed, that's not necessarily a bad sign. The more time the game spends in the oven, the better it's going to be. Players should welcome that. So, too, should business leaders at these publishers. Let Shadows be an example: Getting it right is worth it. More dad rock, less prestige TV Of course, despite this game's positive reception among many fans, Assassin’s Creed in general is often reviled by some critics and gamers. Sure, there’s a reasonable and informed argument to be made that its big-budget excess, rampant commercialism, and formulaic checkbox-checking exemplify everything wrong with the AAA gaming industry right now. And certainly, there have been entries in the franchise's long history that lend ammunition to those criticisms. But since Shadows is good, this is an ideal time to discuss why the franchise (and this entry in particular) deserves more credit than it sometimes gets. Let's use a pop culture analogy. In its current era, Assassin’s Creed is like the video game equivalent of the bands U2 or Tool. People call those “dad rock.” Taking a cue from those folks, I call Shadows and other titles like it (Horizon Forbidden West, Starfield) “dad games.” While the kids are out there seeking fame through competitive prowess and streaming in Valorant and Fortnite or building chaotic metaverses in Roblox and—well, also Fortnite—games like Shadows are meant to appeal to a different sensibility. It’s one that had its heyday in the 2000s and early 2010s, before the landscape shifted. We’re talking single-player games, cutting-edge graphics showcases, and giant maps full of satisfying checklists. In a time when all the biggest games are multiplayer games-as-a-service, when many people are questioning whether graphics are advancing rapidly enough to make them a selling point on their own, and when checklist design is maligned by critics in favor of more holistic ideas, Shadows represents an era that may soon by a bygone one. So, yes, given the increasingly archaic sensibility in which it’s rooted and the current age of people for whom that era was prime gaming time, the core audience for Shadows probably now includes a whole lot of dads and moms. The graphics are simply awesome. Samuel Axon The graphics are simply awesome. Samuel Axon Yep, it's a map full of checklist items and todos. Samuel Axon Yep, it's a map full of checklist items and todos. Samuel Axon You can read descriptions of historical sites and look at artwork like you're exploring a real-world museum. Samuel Axon You can read descriptions of historical sites and look at artwork like you're exploring a real-world museum. Samuel Axon Yep, it's a map full of checklist items and todos. Samuel Axon You can read descriptions of historical sites and look at artwork like you're exploring a real-world museum. Samuel Axon There's a time and a place for pushing the envelope or experimenting, but media that deftly treads comfortable ground doesn't get enough appreciation. Around the time Ubisoft went all-in on this formula with Odyssey and Valhalla, lots of people sneered, saying it was like watered-down The Witcher 3 or Red Dead Redemption 2. Those games from CD Projekt Red and Rockstar Games moved things forward, while Ubisoft's games seemed content to stay in proven territory. Those people tended to look at this from a business point of view: Woe is an industry that avoids bold and challenging choices for fear of losing an investment. But playing it safe can be a good experience for players, and not just because it allows developers to deliver a refined product. Safety is the point. Yeah, I appreciate something that pushes the envelope in production values and storytelling. If The Witcher 3 and RDR2 were TV shows, we’d call them “prestige TV”—a type of show that’s all about expanding and building on what television can be, with a focus on critical acclaim and cultural capital. I, too, enjoy prestige shows like HBO’s The White Lotus. But sometimes I have to actually work on getting myself in the mood to watch a show like that. When I’ve had a particularly draining day, I don’t want challenging entertainment. That’s when it’s time to turn on Parks and Recreation or Star Trek: The Next Generation—unchallenging or nostalgic programming that lets me zone out in my comfort zone for a while. That's what Assassin's Creed has been for about a decade now—comfort gaming for a certain audience. Ubisoft knows that audience well, and the game is all the more effective because the studios that made it were given the time to fine-tune every part of it for that audience. Assassin's Creed Shadows isn't groundbreaking, and that's OK, because it's a hundred hours of fun and relaxation. It's definitely not prestige gaming. It’s dad gaming: comfortable, refined, a little corny, but satisfying. If that's what you crave with your limited free time, it's worth a try. Samuel Axon Senior Editor Samuel Axon Senior Editor Samuel Axon is a senior editor at Ars Technica, where he is the editorial director for tech and gaming coverage. He covers AI, software development, gaming, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for the TV network CBS, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at the creative agency SPCSHP. He also is an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and he is a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development. 0 Comments

Given the outsized role AI has taken in discussions about the future of work, not to mention humanity, it is no surprise that a C-level role focused on this technology has emerged.  “There's this trend line when something is massive, important, game-changing from an industry perspective, and people don't know how to react to it, they name a C-Level title who is ultimately responsible and accountable for incubating new ideas, trying new ways of working, and pivoting an organization culturally,” Casey Foss, chief commercial officer at West Monroe, a business and tech consulting firm, tells InformationWeek.  West Monroe conducted a survey of 1,000 professionals at the director, vice president, and senior vice president levels to get an idea of what they expect the C-suite to look like in five years. The chief AI officer (CAIO) role played a prominent part in the responses; 40% believe that this position will grow in influence and importance over the next five years.  What exactly does the CAIO role look like today, and how will it have to change to keep up with the breakneck development of AI technology and its capabilities?  What Does a Chief AI Officer Do? When a new leadership role begins its rise to prominence, there is a lot of room for individuals and companies to define what it looks like. A CAIO’s job at one company might look quite different from another.  Related:“Some AI officers are identifying use cases. Some are heavily focused on the technology. Some are heavily focused on upskilling the people and delivering value through how they do the work,” says Foss.  For Ivalua, a cloud-based procurement software company, AI was so important that the company’s founder David Khuat-Duy shifted from his position as CEO to CAIO at the beginning of this year.  His first objective in his new role is to deploy AI internally at the company. Then, he wants to take those lessons learned to customers.  LinkedIn appointed its CAIO, Deepak Agarwal, at the beginning of this year as well. “To help LinkedIn use the best AI technology available for our purpose and goals, my team and I focus on developing and deploying cutting-edge AI solutions that enhance how members and customers connect, learn, and grow on the platform,” he tells InformationWeek via email.  Given just how quickly AI is advancing, a primary responsibility of CAIO could be keeping up with those changes and understanding what that means for their enterprises.  Vivek Mohindra, senior vice president, corporate strategy at Dell Technologies, a technology solutions company, works closely with John Roese, Dell’s CTO and CAIO. “John and I collaborated to set up what we call AI radar. We really track on a daily basis the changes in our landscape and think about what the implications of that could be,” he shares.  Related:CAIOs could be heading up efforts to build models internally or finding ways to leverage externally built models. And managing data is intrinsic to that task.” There’s a lot of data categorization, storage, cleaning that needs to happen,” says Khuat-Duy.  As CAIOs identify use-cases for AI and champion their implementation, they are likely to be spearheading the accompanying changes in process and culture. “Chief AI officers must also serve as internal advocates for AI while guiding teams through emerging regulations, ethical considerations, and increasing stakeholder expectations for what AI can achieve,” says Agarwal.  The regulatory and ethical dimensions of the job are no small piece. AI governance is integral to the CAIO’s responsibilities.  No matter how a CAOI is tasked with doing their job, the overarching goal is almost certainly going to be delivering value from AI to their enterprise. How Does the Role Fit into the C-Suite? AI is poised to touch every aspect of business operations, if it isn’t already. That puts the CAIO in a position that requires communication and coordination with other executives and their teams.  Related:Roles like CTO, CIO, and chief data officer are natural complements to the CAIO. Indeed, Dell’s CAIO is also its CTO.  “My weekly meetings with the CTO are extremely important both because the CTO's office builds out a lot of the architecture that we have to fit into but also we have a big impact on with that architecture has to look like in order to get the data to the right place,” says Craig Martell, chief AI officer at Cohesity, an AI-powered data security company.  They might find themselves in regular conversations with a chief people officer or chief human resources officer about sourcing talent and how AI is reshaping the day-to-day for existing talent.  Interaction with the CFO is inevitable. How much of the budget can a CAIO secure for their AI strategy? AI comes with cybersecurity concerns. Naturally, the CISO is going to want face time with a CAIO to understand how to mitigate those concerns. Of course, CEOs and boards are going to want to know how AI can drive an enterprise toward its business goals.  Martell also finds himself spending a good deal of time on compliance issues, particularly around data usage. “The chief AI officers are going to have to become much more legally adept,” he notes. That is going to mean coordination with chief legal and compliance officers.  How Could the Role Change? The AI landscape is no stranger to shakeups. DeepSeek came onto the scene, sparking an avalanche of discussion around the possibility of a cheaper model undercutting the more entrenched players.  The enticing possibilities of AGI and quantum computing hover in the future, albeit one of uncertain timing. Big questions about how to regulate AI are still open. What do all of these potential changes mean for the position that is meant to shepherd organizations’ AI strategies?  For now, the role is less about exploring the possibilities of AI and more about delivering on its immediate, concrete value.  “This year, the role of the chief AI officer will shift from piloting AI initiatives to operationalizing AI at scale across the organization,” says Agarwal.  And as for those potential upheavals down the road? CAIO officers will no doubt have to be nimble, but Martell doesn’t see their fundamental responsibilities changing.  “You still have to gather the data within your company to be able to use with that model and then you still have to evaluate whether or not that model that you built is delivering against your business goals. That has never changed,” says Martell. Will Chief AI Officers Face Pressure to Deliver? AI is at the inflection point between hype and strategic value. “I think there's going to be a ton of pressure to find the right use cases and deploy AI at scale to make sure that we're getting companies to value,” says Foss.  CAIOs could feel that pressure keenly this year as boards and other executive leaders increasingly ask to see ROI on massive AI investments.  “Companies who have set these roles up appropriately, and more importantly the underlying work correctly, will see the ROI measurements, and I don't think that chief AI officers [at those] organizations should feel any pressure,” says Mohindra.  Will Chief AI Officers Last in the C-Suite? AI is certainly not going anywhere, but what about the CAIO?  Khuat-Duy argues that there will continue to be the need for a central team that manages this technology. “Managing data and the architecture around LLMs is clearly something that needs to be thought [about] in a central, global way for a company,” he says.  Mohindra envisions the CAIO role at Dell as a temporary one.  “This role is finite by design. It is to launch and integrate AI until it becomes inseparable from how our company operates and it is embedded in the DNA of the company, at which point you really don't need a separate role to capitalize the momentum that one needs for an AI-powered enterprise,” he says.  That could mean the CAIO simply steps into a different position. Or, the role gets folded into another. “I think the most likely path is sort of a combination of data and AI,” says Martell. The fate of the role, like its current form, is likely to be dictated by the needs of individual companies.  

Douglas fir wood can be turned into a water filterJanet Horton / Alamy Stock Photo Slices of wood can act as water filters that remove bacteria and microplastics with more than 99 per cent efficiency, potentially offering a cheap way to protect people from water-borne illnesses. Previous research has investigated more complex methods to make wooden filters involving complex chemical treatments, but these would be impractical in lower-income countries where water-borne illnesses cause hundreds of thousands of deaths a year, say Antoni Sánchez-Ferrer and Jenifer Guerrero Parra at the Technical University of Munich, Germany.