The artist died 70 years ago, after a decades-long career of dazzling creation and ceaseless innovation.

New York City Ballet restages its annual production of the elegant work at Lincoln Center, while Mark Morris Dance Group offers a more sinister interpretation of Tchaikovskys classic at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Disraeli struck the queen unfavorably at first, but he charmed her. He was amusing and attentive. He pushed to make her Empress of India.

RTO-no Amazons RTO delays exemplify why workers get so mad about mandates Amazon lacks space to accommodate its entire workforce. Scharon Harding Dec 18, 2024 5:51 pm | 48 Credit: Getty Credit: Getty Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAmazon announced in September that it will require workers to be in the office five days a week starting in January. Employee backlash ensued, not just because return-to-office (RTO) mandates can be unpopular but also because Amazon is using some of the worst strategies for issuing RTO mandates.Ahead of the mandate, Amazon had been letting many employees work remotely for two days a week, with a smaller number of workers being totally remote. But despite saying that employees would have to commute five days per week, the conglomerate doesnt have enough office space to accommodate over 350,000 employees. Personnel in at least seven cities, including Phoenix and Austin, Texas, have had their RTO dates delayed until after January, Bloomberg reported today, citing people familiar with the situation." Employees in Dallas wont have enough space until March or April, and an office in New York City wont have sufficient space until May, per Bloomberg's sources.RTO dates are also delayed in Atlanta, Houston, and Nashville, Tennessee, Business Insider reported this week,citing internal Amazon notifications.An Amazon spokesperson told Ars Technica that the majority of Amazon employees will have office space by January 2, and workers in locations that wont be ready will be informed directly. Ars asked for more information and will update this article if we hear back.An Amazon rep also claimed to Bloomberg that most of the pushed-back RTO dates are related to buildings being laid out differently for part-time workers rather than insufficient physical space.Amazons rough RTO rolloutThe differing messaging around workers returning to offices full-time represents another hiccup around a debated policy. Amazons approach thus far seems to align with what some research suggests irks employees about RTO mandates.A November study of over 3 million "high-tech and financial" workers at 54 companies on the S&P 500 index (PDF) concluded that RTO mandates could lead to employees doubting leaderships ability to lead and make decisions. Amazon workers were already questioning the non-data-driven explanation provided to them for the RTO policy, as over 500 Amazon employees wrote to Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman in October. Issuing a strict, widespread mandate only to share three months later that the self-proposed deadline is unfeasible in some places likely exacerbates concern about Amazon's ability to effectively manage an exodus from hybrid work and the necessity of returning to offices full-time in January at all.Concern about RTO planning is underscored by Amazon reportedly lacking enough space for its current in-office policy. Bloomberg said that in recent interviews, employees complained of working from shared desks, crowded corporate canteens, and a lack of conference rooms for confidential calls or team meetings."The publication also pointed to employee displeasure with having to work in an office full-time when other tech firms have more lax policies. This could result in Amazon losing some of its best talent. Per the study from the University of Pittsburgh, Baylor University, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business researchers, senior, skilled workers are more likely to depart a company over an RTO mandate because they have "more connections with other companies.Employees eyeing greener pastures could put Amazon at risk of losing some of its most experienced employees. That also reportedly happened to Apple, Microsoft, and SpaceX following their RTO mandates, per a May study from University of Chicago and University of Michigan researchers (PDF). Following Amazon's RTO announcement, 73 percent of 2,285 workers that Blind surveyed said they were considering looking for another job due to the rule change.Finally, banning remote work while giving workers a few months to figure out how to adjust resulted in a lot of negative discourse, including Garman reportedly telling workers that if they dont work well in offices, that's okay; there are other companies around. As the November RTO study put it:An RTO announcement can be a big and sudden event that is distasteful to most employees, especially when the decision has not been well communicated, potentially triggering an immediate response of employees searching for and switching to new jobs.If Amazon had communicated RTO dates with greater accuracy once office plans were finalized, it could have alleviated some of the drama that followed the announcement and the negative impact that had on employee morale.For its part, Amazon has instituted a tool for reserving conference rooms, which requires workers to commit to using the space so its not wasted, Bloomberg reported.But with companies now having had years to plot their RTO approaches, employees are expecting more accurate communication and smooth transitions that align with their respective department's culture. Amazon's approach missed those marks.Scharon HardingSenior Product ReviewerScharon HardingSenior Product Reviewer Scharon is Ars Technicas Senior Product Reviewer writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer technology, including laptops, mechanical keyboards, and monitors. Shes based in Brooklyn. 48 Comments

That bill doesn't look right $2 per megabyte: AT&T mistakenly charged customer $6,223 for 3.1GB of data Texas police officer switched to AT&T FirstNet and got a horrible surprise. Jon Brodkin Dec 18, 2024 5:19 pm | 33 Credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg Credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreAn AT&T customer who switched to the company's FirstNet service for first responders got quite the shock when his bill came in at $6,223.60, instead of the roughly $260 that his four-line plan previously cost each month.The Texas man described his experience in a now-deleted Reddit post three days ago, saying he hadn't been able to get the obviously incorrect bill reversed despite calling AT&T and going to an AT&T store in Dallas. The case drew plenty of attention and the bill was finally wiped out several days after the customer contacted the AT&T president's office.The customer said he received the billing email on December 11. An automatic payment was scheduled for December 15, but he canceled the autopay before the money was charged. The whole mess took a week to straighten out."I have been with AT&T for over a decade and I have always had unlimited plans so I knew this was a mistake," he wrote. "The only change I have made to my account is last month I moved my line over to FirstNet. I am a first responder and I was told my price per month would actually go down a few dollars a month."We have apologized for the inconvenienceAT&T confirmed to Ars today that it "straightened out the customers bill.""We understand how frustrating this must have been for [the customer] and we have apologized for the inconvenience. We have resolved his concerns about his bill and are investigating to determine what caused this system error," an AT&T spokesperson told Ars.The customer posted screenshots of his bill, which helpfully pointed out, "Your bill increased $5,956.92" since the previous month. It included a $5.73 "discount for first responder appreciation," but that wasn't enough to wipe out a $6,194 line item listed as "Data Pay Per use 3,097MB at $2.00 per MB."Two dollars per megabyte is obviously a shockingly high price for mobile data and would make standard wireless service unobtainable for most people if it was routinely charged. AT&T does have an international travel rate of $2.05 per megabyte, and a $2-per-megabyte charge for domestic data that we found on a page describing certain business and government plans, but neither should have been applied to the Texas man's bill. We asked AT&T for more detailed information on the $2 charge and why it was applied but only received the general statement.We reached out to the customer, who used the Reddit name "Usual-Guava-8899." The customer told us he is a police officer in Texas and prefers to remain anonymous. He confirmed that AT&T fixed the mistake by reducing his balance to $0 and giving him "a $205 credit for my troubles."The customer told Ars that he "was never told how or why" the $6,000-plus pay-per-use charge was applied. "The customer service over the phone and at the store level was pretty bad," he told us. "They all seemed to have a pretty nonchalant attitude about it. I am definitely looking at moving carriers pretty soon." Support from the AT&T president's office was much better, but "it took almost a week for them to contact me," he said.A huge amount of stress on me and my familyThe man's Reddit post, which was made about four days into his billing nightmare, described the suboptimal customer service."Once I calmed down a bit I called AT&T customer service and spent over an hour on the phone with customer service," he wrote. "The agents and supervisor I spoke with on the phone could not find the bill! I was told my bill was $205 even though I was logged into my account and could see my bill due was $6,223.60. After an hour on the phone I gave up and decided to go to a physical store in person the next day."At the corporate store in Dallas, an employee "was able to find my $6,223.60 bill immediately and he and the other employees were stunned at the amount due!" he wrote. "I still am not sure how the customer service agents and supervisor could not locate my bill when I called the night before. I was told when my account was migrated to FirstNet there was a mistake made by AT&T and for one day (11/25) I was accidentally put on a pay per use plan."That partially explains how the charge appeared, though it doesn't give any indication of why. The store associate recommended that the customer contact the office of AT&T's president."I can't understand how this was not remedied immediately at the store level as this is an obvious error on AT&T's end. This has caused a huge amount of stress on me and my family around the holidays," he wrote. The customer wondered if he would be charged a late fee for not paying or have his service cut off, and asked people on Reddit for advice."I am left with so many worrisome questions," he wrote. "What if AT&T does not fix this? How can this even happen to a customer? Shouldn't there be some kind of red flags raised before this bill gets sent to a customer? How many people has this happened to? I am at a loss and very worried."Today, the customer was feeling greatly relieved. "I am so happy this has been fixed," he told Ars. "It was a scary week."Jon BrodkinSenior IT ReporterJon BrodkinSenior IT Reporter Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry. 33 Comments

Lisa Morgan, Freelance WriterDecember 18, 202410 Min ReadOrazio Puccio via Alamy StockIts that time of year again: the time when journalists and vendors make predictions and IT leaders set priorities for the new year. In a lot of ways, the stakes are high, given a new US presidential administration and the active conflicts in various parts of the world. What will happen to the economy and IT budgets? What will all the unrest equate to in terms of business continuity and cyberattacks?As the world and technology become increasingly complex, CIOs and CTOs need to figure out what that means to the organization as well as the IT department. Loren Margolis, faculty, Stony Brook University, Women Leaders in STEM Program, warns that IT leaders need to proactively combat cybersecurity threats that continue to become more sophisticated.To proactively combat [cyberattacks], leaders must think like them, says Margolis. Questions to ask [include] What are our potential openings and soft spots? What are our competitors doing to combat them? If I were a nefarious operative, what would I do to breach our system?She also says CIOs and CTOs need to get ahead of machine learning to increase customer satisfaction, reduce costs and increase efficiency. In addition, IT leaders should consider the skill gaps in their workforce.Related:Keep ahead or at least on top of the cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and data analytics skills that are needed. Acquire talent and develop that talent so your company remains competitive, says Margolis. Find ways to use [AI and analytics] to become even more agile so you remain competitive. Also embrace them as opportunities to train and develop your workforce. Make sure your organization is a place where great tech talent can come to develop and use their skills.The following are some other priorities for 2025.1. Increase value deliveryJoe Logan, CIO at cloud-native knowledge platform iManage believes CIOs and CTOs will be focused on driving cost to value, especially when it comes to security.Because the nature of the threat that organizations face is increasing all the time, the tooling thats capable of mitigating those threats becomes more and more expensive, says Logan. Add to that the constantly changing privacy security rules around the globe and it becomes a real challenge to navigate effectively.Also realize that everyone in the organization is on the same team, so problems should be solved as a team. IT leadership is in a unique position to help break down the silos between different stakeholder groups. The companies that master cross-functional problem-solving tend to drive higher value than those that dont.Related:2. Ensure AI investment ROIIn 2024, many organizations discovered that their AI investments werent paying off as expected. As a result, AI investments are shifting from rapid innovation at any cost to measurable ROI. Heading into 2025, Uzi Dvir, Global CIO at digital adoption platform WalkMe says CIOs and CTOs will face increased pressure to justify AI investments in the boardroom.Change management is emerging as a crucial factor for companies to fully realize the benefits of their AI investments and companies are gravitating towards more intuitive, human-centric AI, says Dvir. Faced with more and more AI apps, employees are asking themselves if its worth the time and effort to figure out how to use these new technologies for their specific roles. In response, enterprises are now prioritizing better visibility into AI adoption [and identifying] areas ripe for optimization and enhanced security.As always, the path to AI mastery doesnt lie in technology advancements alone. Companies that actively start investing in and addressing change management will reap the true rewards of their technology investments.3. Overcome budget limitationsRelated:Every IT leader is under pressure to improve efficiency and time to market while reducing costs. As is typical, theyre being asked to do more with less, and do it faster, but in 2025, theyll increase their usage of AI, machine learning, and low-code/no-code platforms to improve efficiency.We are expecting to realize a 10% to 20% improvement in developer productivity via the use of products like GitHub Copilot and Amazon Q. Our current run-rate usage of these products has us bringing in the equivalent of an entire products code base worth of AI-generated code every year, says Steven Berkovitz, CTO of restaurant technology solutions company PAR Technology. We also expect these tools to help our developers focus their time on the hard and novel problems and spend less time on the repetitive tasks of development. We particularly expect this to help accelerate starting new projects and products as much of the boilerplate work can be automated.However, many developers hesitate to use AI for fear of job loss.I think [job loss] concerns are overstated, and developers should be embracing the tooling to improve their efficiency versus fighting I,says Berkovitz. [AI] will make them better, faster developers, which makes them more valuable to companies, not less.4. Strengthen cybersecurityCybersecurity threats are becoming more sophisticated, necessitating stronger defense mechanisms. Unfortunately, the digital services enterprises use to innovate are also utilized by threat actors to exploit.Strengthening cybersecurity measures will protect company assets and build trust with customers and partners, says Rob Kim, CTO at technology services and solutions provider Presidio. Challenges include the scarcity of skilled professionals in emerging technologies [including] Gen AI, data/lake house modernization and cybersecurity. Ensuring data privacy and regulatory compliance in a rapidly evolving legal landscape can also be complex.5. Deal with the lingering talent shortageThe World Economic Forum found theres a global shortage of nearly 4 million professionals in the cybersecurity industry as demand continues to increase. That shortage follows a 12.6% growth rate in the cybersecurity workforce between 2022 and 2023. Highly regulated industries, such as government and healthcare, are among those experiencing the greatest cybersecurity workforce shortages, which presents unique challenges.This same narrative has been repeating for years: businesses are moving to the cloud and facing tighter compliance regulations while budgets remain tight and security threats grow more serious, says Jim Broome, president and CTO at information security services company DirectDefense. It all requires more staff with advanced skill sets and an ability to learn and adapt to constant changes, which can lead to burnout.Expect the trend to continue.6. Ignite innovationCIOs and CTOs face several risks as they attempt to manage technology, privacy, ROI, security, talent and technology integration. According to Joe Batista, chief creatologist, former Dell Technologies & Hewlett Packard Enterprise executive, senior IT leaders and their teams should focus on improving the conditions and skills needed to address such challenges in 2025 so they can continue to innovate.Keep collaborating across the enterprise with other business leaders and peers. Take it a step further by exploring how ecosystems can impact your business agenda, says Batista. [F]oster an environment that encourages taking on greater risks. The key is creating a space where innovation can thrive, and failures are steppingstones to success.7. Understand customers better and remain curiousJust about every organization believes they are customer-centric and know their customers, but actual customer experiences often tell a different story. Batista advises getting to know customers and the customers customers to move beyond superficial engagement. To do that, IT leaders should map customers journeys, experience the customer journey for a day, hold regular insight sessions to dig deeper into customer needs, research the customers world and be consistently available to customers.By doing this, you can build a future-forward learning team. Understanding what skills, knowledge and connections you may need a year from now allows you to start learning and growing today. This initiative-taking approach will help you face future changes with confidence and readiness, says Batista. If I could offer one piece of advice to a peer for 2025, it would be simple: STAY CURIOUS! Curiosity drives us to ask the important why and how questions, leading to deeper analysis and more creative solutions. Embrace not knowing as an opportunity to learn. Explore new interests and make it a habit to question your assumptions about people, situations, or ideas.8. Unearth novel insights about dataWith the explosion of unstructured data, CIOs and CTOs need better insights into it. Such insights are key for managing the lifecycle of data from creation to archiving. Insights are also critical for ensuring the most appropriate data is included in data lakes and data lake houses that support new AI/ML workloads.In 2025, the amount of unstructured data stored in both public cloud and private cloud environments will continue to grow, says Carl D'Halluin, CTO at hybrid cloud data services provider Datadobi. Its no longer realistic to ignore the fact that, in most organizations, data lives in a hybrid environment and global data management is required.9. Cloud adoptionCIOs and CTOs in remote-based industries such as maritime, and oil and gas have been slower to adopt cloud technologies than their peers in other industries. However, that is changing as the result of satellite connectivity.Data processing teams will be able to work remotely, with minimal physical infrastructure, says Andrew Lunstad, CTO of ocean data platform Terradepth. This shift will reduce the need for physical equipment on-site or on vessels, freeing up costly space and allowing teams to work from virtually anywhere.Another driver is the desire to accelerate data availability and minimize the risk of loss or damage to physical hard drives. However, adopting cloud-based processes requires sound change management because it potentially challenges long-standing practices.10. Enable extreme agility to weather shifting geopolitical threatsIn the wake of the election, Lou Steinberg, founder and managing partner of cyber research incubator CTM Insights (CTM), says CIOs and CTOs should expect geopolitical changes that will change threat actors behavior.Our defenses need the agility to adapt. Where you operate and your industry, should dictate what you do next, says Steinberg, who outlines the following scenarios:Russia may diminish its threat against the US given President-elect Trumps more favorable relationship with President Putin and European support for the war in Ukraine will likely dictate if the same holds true there. An emboldened Russia might increase DDoS attacks against western leaning states in the Balkans, Georgia, and Moldova while increasing the use of AI generated disinformation campaigns throughout Western Europe. Ransomware will continue to hit from multiple sources, but ransomware from Eastern Europe is generally less prevalent in nations that the Kremlin views as friendly.The Middle East may drive more cyberattacks against nations that seemingly support Israel. If Iran and Israel engage more significantly, regional groups will likely increase DDoS and hacktivist activities to draw attention to their cause. At the same time, Iran may seek to increase the cost of supporting Israel through unattributed attacks against critical Western infrastructure such as power generation, municipal water and dams.North Korea and the Trump administration could rekindle discussions that could lead to reduced sanctions, thereby reducing the DPRK's interest in financial theft. If they no longer see a Trump administration as one who negotiates in good faith, financial attacks will continue, and DDoS attacks could increase against American allies South Korea and Japan.Chinas likelihood of conflict is increasing. To date, it primarily focused on data theft, intelligence gathering and preparing for cyber-war, all of which rely on stealth. Should the US impose sanctions that cripple its economy, or should they decide to take Taiwan by force, stealthy behavior could be replaced by something much noisier. Backdoors could be used to disable critical infrastructure in banking, power generation and distribution, communications, etc. In the event of armed conflict with Taiwan, significant attacks against US infrastructure could be used to blunt its ability to intervene.None of these are guaranteed, but all are plausible. What's certain is that adversaries have interests, and their tactics reflect them, says Steinberg. Defenders need to consider how to adjust to a changing landscape as the threats change, or risk investing in immaterial controls at the expense of what's now needed. Buckle up, it's likely to be a bumpy ride."About the AuthorLisa MorganFreelance WriterLisa Morgan is a freelance writer who covers business and IT strategy and emergingtechnology for InformationWeek. She has contributed articles, reports, and other types of content to many technology, business, and mainstream publications and sites including tech pubs, The Washington Post and The Economist Intelligence Unit. Frequent areas of coverage include AI, analytics, cloud, cybersecurity, mobility, software development, and emerging cultural issues affecting the C-suite.See more from Lisa MorganNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also LikeWebinarsMore WebinarsReportsMore Reports

As the cyber landscape evolves, a holistic approach to cybersecurity will be essential for organizations to effectively navigate risks and align their cyber strategies with overarching business objectives. By integrating cybersecurity into the core of corporate governance, organizations can transform security from a reactive measure into a strategic asset -- enhancing resilience, fostering innovation, and maintaining competitive advantage.In today's business landscape, incorporating cybersecurity into enterprise risk management is a critical imperative for organizations. As cyber threats evolve, organizations must move beyond viewing cybersecurity as a technical concern and recognize its profound impacts on financial stability, reputation, compliance, and resilience.This new model requires a fundamental shift in how the C-suite and board of directors approach cybersecurity. Change comes from understanding the criticality of moving away from a focus on technical issues towards more comprehensive, business-aligned strategies that encompass risk for the entire organization.To effect this shift, leadership should cultivate broader digital competencies and foster a deeper understanding of cybersecurity as part of their overall risk management strategy. Chief information security officers (CISOs) will play a pivotal role in this transformation, aligning efforts more closely with overarching business objectives.Related:Cybersecurity as a Core Business FunctionCybersecurity conversations should extend far beyond the security team, engaging a broader set of stakeholders including board members, and risk management executives. Nearly 40% of leaders surveyed by the World Economic Forum believe that cyber-attacks represent a paramount global risk. However, most organizations remain mired in Gen 1.0 cyber thinking: that cybersecurity is an IT problem or, worse, that cyber wont strike.Change will only come from understanding how threats specifically impact an organization's business, operations, sustainability, and financial condition. Whether a hospital, bank, insurer, or manufacturing giant, the implications of an incident vary dramatically.Board Engagement and CompetencyBoards are becoming involved in cybersecurity, but many may fear that they lack the necessary digital competencies or may expose themselves to risk. There's a growing need for boards to include cyber experts who can translate technical risks into business terms and create risk committees to ensure informed decision-making and oversight.Related:The challenge lies in shifting perspectives from viewing cybersecurity as a costly problem best solved by technical solutions alone, to understanding the cyber domain as an enterprise risk with shared roles and responsibilities. To facilitate this transition, it's crucial to provide plain business language assessments along with analytics that align investment decisions and help mitigate known risks.Organizations also need to understand what an optimal insurance or risk transfer structure looks like for their specific entity. This involves stress-testing existing policies across a range of potential cyber incidents.Finally, directors want cybersecurity exposures presented in terms that resonate with their expertise in business, operations, governance, legal matters, and finance. They also want to know what to do when things go wrong, and how to involve law enforcement.Addressing Cybersecurity FatigueDigital transformation, with all its efficiencies, is juxtaposed against the seemingly unending battle against cybercrime, leaving many boards questioning how to effectively address the dynamic. To overcome fatigue and pessimism, transparent and effective communication is essential.Premortems and table top exercises (TTXs) are both valuable, low-cost security exercises for boards and leaders. The key is to present concrete scenarios that illustrate the potential impact of cyber events on the business. For instance, demonstrating how a two-week ransomware outage could result in a $200 million write-down can help the board and CFO understand the stakes involved.Related:With budgets always top of mind, it is crucial to allocate cybersecurity capital wisely. Shifting away from conceiving cybersecurity as a cost center to viewing it as part of the long-term capital budget is a worthwhile conversation for organizations to consider.Ultimately, the business must decide on its risk tolerance, ideally elevating this decision to the board level. Presenting the facts, including potential losses, mitigation strategies, and costs, allows boards to make informed decisions about acceptable risks and ROI.CISO Evolution and Future of Cyber Risk GovernanceAs the role of a CISO expands beyond technical expertise, there's a growing need for a new breed of digital risk leaders who can bridge the gap between cybersecurity and wider business objectives. Organizations are exploring innovative governance structures, such as creating a chief digital risk officer role to oversee a broader portfolio of digital exposures.Looking ahead, integrating cybersecurity into enterprise risk management will entail a multi-faceted approach. This includes developing risk committees to address complementary domains like supply chain and technology risks, while leveraging changing frameworks like NIST CSF 2.0 the SECs cyber rules, and regulations like the EUs AIAct, NIS2, and DORA.A Framework for Board EngagementEffective cybersecurity governance at the board level rests on three pillars: substance, frequency, and structure. The information presented must align cyber risks with tangible business exposures, moving beyond technical jargon. The frequency of discussions should be calibrated to ensure timely oversight without overwhelming the boards agenda. Finally, determining the appropriate committee structure is crucial for fostering in-depth and relevant discussions.As the cyber landscape evolves, a holistic approach to cybersecurity will be essential for organizations to effectively navigate risks and align their cyber strategies with overarching business objectives. By integrating cybersecurity into the core of corporate governance, organizations can transform security from a reactive measure into a strategic asset -- enhancing resilience, fostering innovation, and maintaining competitive advantage.

From a fish with a tiny brain to the worlds oldest cheese, we have reported on plenty of strange and unusual science discoveries this year. Challenge yourself and see what you can remember in this fiendish set of questions from our quizmaster Bethan Ackerley

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. AI is changing how we study bird migration In a warming world, migratory birds face many existential threats. Scientists rely on a combination of methods to track the timing and location of their migrations, but each has shortcomings. And theres another problem: Most birds migrate at night, when its more difficult to identify them visually and while most birders are in bed. For over a century, acoustic monitoring has hovered tantalizingly out of reach as a method that would solve ornithologists woes. Now, finally, machine-learning tools are unlocking a treasure trove of acoustic data for ecologists. Read the full story.Christian Elliot This story is from the forthcoming magazine edition of MIT Technology Review, set to go live on January 6its all about the exciting breakthroughs happening in the world right now. If you dont already, subscribe to receive a copy. A woman in the US is the third person to receive a gene-edited pig kidney Towana Looney, a 53-year-old woman from Alabama, has become the third living person to receive a kidney transplant from a gene-edited pig. Looney, who donated one of her kidneys to her mother back in 1999, developed kidney failure several years later following a pregnancy complication that caused high blood pressure. She started dialysis treatment in December of 2016 and was put on a waiting list for a kidney transplant soon after. But it was difficult to find a match. So Looneys doctors recommended the experimental pig organ as an alternative. After eight years on the waiting list, Looney was authorized to receive the kidney. Read the full story. Jessica Hamzelou Roundtables: The Worst Technology Failures of 2024 Each year, MIT Technology Review publishes a list of the worst technologies of the past 12 months. Antonio Regalado, our senior editor for biomedicine, sat down to discuss 2024s worst failures with our executive editor Niall Firth in a subscriber-exclusive online Roundtable event yesterday. Watch their conversation about what made the cut here, and to make sure you dont miss out in the future, subscribe!MIT Technology Review Narrated: Meet the radio-obsessed civilian shaping Ukraines drone defense Despite it being over 100 years old, radio technology is still critical in almost all aspects of modern warfareincluding in the drones that have come to dominate the Russia-Ukraine war. Serhii Flash Beskrestnov, who has been obsessed with radios since childhood, has become an unlikely hero of the conflict, sharing advice and intel. His work may determine the future of Ukraine, and wars far beyond it. 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 Conspiracy theories are still circulating about those mysterious drones What are they? And where have they come from? (NY Mag $)+ Authorities are attempting to quell public hysteria, but theories abound. (WP $)+ Realistically, theyre probably just standard drones out for a night-time flight. (AP News)2 AI poses a major threat to the power grid Thats according to the US industry watchdog, which is feeling the pressure. (FT $)+ AIs emissions are about to skyrocket even further. (MIT Technology Review)3 SpaceX and Elon Musk are under investigation US federal agencies are probing their repeated failures to comply with reporting rules. (NYT $)4 Nvidia has unveiled a tiny, affordable AI supercomputer Which is handy for roboticists looking to bypass connecting to remote data centers. (Gizmodo)+ While its not the companys most powerful device, its pretty speedy. (WSJ $)+ Microsoft is gobbling up more of Nvidias chips than anyone else. (FT $)+ Blacklisted Chinese AI chip firms gained access to cutting-edge UK tech. (The Guardian) 5 Bitcoins value is rocketing even higherThe industry continues to boom in the wake of Trumps election victory. (Bloomberg $) + So much so, luxury brands are weighing up accepting crypto payments. (Reuters)6 Hepatitis B is an extremely treatable diseaseSo why are so many people still dying from it? (New Yorker $) + Were starting to understand the mysterious surge of hepatitis in children. (MIT Technology Review)7 Earthbrieflyhad an extra second moon And scientists believe it originated from the actual moon we know and love. (New Scientist $) 8 The future of deep-sea miningA set of rules governing how we should do it is highly contentiousand up for debate.(Hakai Magazine) + These deep-sea potatoes could be the future of mining for renewable energy. (MIT Technology Review)9 Resist the temptation to outsource your Christmas shopping to a bot You never know what youll end up with. (Insider $)+ Its probably quicker to browse the web yourself. (WP $)10 Our snacks could soon be designed by AI Confectionary giant Mondelez is using the tech to tweak recipes and test new ones. (WSJ $)+ Forget cookiesthis creamy vegan cheese was made with AI. (MIT Technology Review) Quote of the day It takes a lot for an uber-wealthy, creative-type CEO, many of whom lean left, to suck it up and deal with Trump. But what choice do they have? A Washington lobbyist explains to the Financial Times why the steady stream of tech executives paying their respects to US President-elect Donald Trump shows no sign of slowing. The big story What does GPT-3 know about me? August 2022 One of the biggest stories in tech is the rise of large language models that produce text that reads like a human might have written it. These models power comes from being trained on troves of publicly available human-created text hoovered up from the internet. If youve posted anything even remotely personal in English on the internet, chances are your data might be part of some of the worlds most popular LLMs. Melissa Heikkil, MIT Technology Reviews AI reporter, wondered what data these models might have on herand how it could be misused. So she put OpenAIs GPT-3 to the test. Read about what she found.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 tweet 'em at me.) + 2024 was a seriously weird year, as evidenced by this completely bonkers list.+ Who knew Seal was such a grunge head?+ These Charli xcx Christmas mashups will haunt my dreams forever, and not in a good way.+ Next summer I feel the need to level up my sandcastle game.

AI is all about data. Reams and reams of data are needed to train algorithms to do what we want, and what goes into the AI models determines what comes out. But heres the problem: AI developers and researchers dont really know much about the sources of the data they are using. AIs data collection practices are immature compared with the sophistication of AI model development. Massive data sets often lack clear information about what is in them and where it came from. The Data Provenance Initiative, a group of over 50 researchers from both academia and industry, wanted to fix that. They wanted to know, very simply: Where does the data to build AI come from? They audited nearly 4,000 public data sets spanning over 600 languages, 67 countries, and three decades. The data came from 800 unique sources and nearly 700 organizations. Their findings, shared exclusively with MIT Technology Review, show a worrying trend: AI's data practices risk concentrating power overwhelmingly in the hands of a few dominant technology companies. In the early 2010s, data sets came from a variety of sources, says Shayne Longpre, a researcher at MIT who is part of the project. It came not just from encyclopedias and the web, but also from sources such as parliamentary transcripts, earning calls, and weather reports. Back then, AI data sets were specifically curated and collected from different sources to suit individual tasks, Longpre says. Then transformers, the architecture underpinning language models, were invented in 2017, and the AI sector started seeing performance get better the bigger the models and data sets were. Today, most AI data sets are built by indiscriminately hoovering material from the internet. Since 2018, the web has been the dominant source for data sets used in all media, such as audio, images, and video, and a gap between scraped data and more curated data sets has emerged and widened. In foundation model development, nothing seems to matter more for the capabilities than the scale and heterogeneity of the data and the web, says Longpre. The need for scale has also boosted the use of synthetic data massively. The past few years have also seen the rise of multimodal generative AI models, which can generate videos and images. Like large language models, they need as much data as possible, and the best source for that has become YouTube. For video models, as you can see in this chart, over 70% of data for both speech and image data sets comes from one source. This could be a boon for Alphabet, Googles parent company, which owns YouTube. Whereas text is distributed across the web and controlled by many different websites and platforms, video data is extremely concentrated in one platform. It gives a huge concentration of power over a lot of the most important data on the web to one company, says Longpre. And because Google is also developing its own AI models, its massive advantage also raises questions about how the company will make this data available for competitors, says Sarah Myers West, the coexecutive director at the AI Now Institute. Its important to think about data not as though its sort of this naturally occurring resource, but its something that is created through particular processes, says Myers West. If the data sets on which most of the AI that were interacting with reflect the intentions and the design of big, profit-motivated corporationsthats reshaping the infrastructures of our world in ways that reflect the interests of those big corporations, she says. This monoculture also raises questions about how accurately the human experience is portrayed in the data set and what kinds of models we are building, says Sara Hooker, the vice president of research at the technology company Cohere, who is also part of the Data Provenance Initiative. People upload videos to YouTube with a particular audience in mind, and the way people act in those videos is often intended for very specific effect. Does [the data] capture all the nuances of humanity and all the ways that we exist? says Hooker. Hidden restrictions AI companies dont usually share what data they used to train their models. One reason is that they want to protect their competitive edge. The other is that because of the complicated and opaque way data sets are bundled, packaged, and distributed, they likely dont even know where all the data came from. They also probably dont have complete information about any constraints on how that data is supposed to be used or shared. The researchers at the Data Provenance Initiative found that data sets often have restrictive licenses or terms attached to them, which should limit their use for commercial purposes, for example. This lack of consistency across the data lineage makes it very hard for developers to make the right choice about what data to use, says Hooker. It also makes it almost impossible to be completely certain you havent trained your model on copyrighted data, adds Longpre. More recently, companies such as OpenAI and Google have struck exclusive data-sharing deals with publishers, major forums such as Reddit, and social media platforms on the web. But this becomes another way for them to concentrate their power. These exclusive contracts can partition the internet into various zones of who can get access to it and who cant, says Longpre. The trend benefits the biggest AI players, who can afford such deals, at the expense of researchers, nonprofits, and smaller companies, who will struggle to get access. The largest companies also have the best resources for crawling data sets. This is a new wave of asymmetric access that we havent seen to this extent on the open web, Longpre says. The West vs. the rest The data that is used to train AI models is also heavily skewed to the Western world. Over 90% of the data sets that the researchers analyzed came from Europe and North America, and fewer than 4% came from Africa. "These data sets are reflecting one part of our world and our culture, but completely omitting others," says Hooker. The dominance of the English language in training data is partly explained by the fact that the internet is still over 90% in English, and there are still a lot of places on Earth where theres really poor internet connection or none at all, says Giada Pistilli, principal ethicist at Hugging Face, who was not part of the research team. But another reason is convenience, she adds: Putting together data sets in other languages and taking other cultures into account requires conscious intention and a lot of work. The Western focus of these data sets becomes particularly clear with multimodal models. When an AI model is prompted for the sights and sounds of a wedding, for example, it might only be able to represent Western weddings, because thats all that it has been trained on, Hooker says. This reinforces biases and could lead to AI models that push a certain US-centric worldview, erasing other languages and cultures. We are using these models all over the world, and theres a massive discrepancy between the world were seeing and whats invisible to these models, Hooker says.