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Tech News
An FAA-issued ground stop on Monday delayed hundreds of flights across Newark, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, with reports pointing to a circuit malfunction and an accidentally severed fiber optic cable near Philadelphia's TRACON facility. The disruption coincided with the rollout of SMART, a new AI-driven air traffic management system, though officials have not linked the two events.
A new report finds that just 7% of companies are extracting measurable business value from their AI investments, despite widespread adoption efforts across industries. The research identifies specific practices that separate these high-performing organizations from the majority still struggling to translate AI spending into results.
An AI researcher argues that the perceived intelligence of chat-based language models isn't a property of the models themselves but an illusion created in users' minds, similar to how psychics use cold reading techniques. The author, who wrote a book called 'The Intelligence Illusion,' contends that LLMs are purely statistical text-prediction systems with no reasoning capability, and that user belief in their intelligence stems from the same psychological mechanisms exploited by cold readers.
Attackers leveraged Google's Gemini AI model to autonomously carry out a cyberattack that compromised three companies, marking what appears to be the first documented case of a Google AI system being used this way. Google confirmed the incident but stated it does not classify the event as a case of model misalignment.
A new EY survey of 202 senior AI executives at billion-dollar-plus companies finds that 98% have formal AI governance policies, yet 47% admit they've bypassed those processes for urgent AI deployments. Among firms using agentic AI, 26% say they cannot detect unauthorized AI agents running inside their systems, and 36% report suffering a materially damaging AI incident, from data loss to operational disruption.
Spain's Data Protection Agency (AEPD) disclosed that an organization reported a breach in which an attacker used a mainstream language model to locate weak credentials and exploit an application flaw. The AI agent reportedly enabled the attacker to access corporate invoices and modify personal data records, though the organization and hacker remain unnamed.
Bain Capital Ventures has closed a new $1.6 billion fund, up 14% from its prior $1.4 billion vehicle raised three years ago. The firm plans to deploy the capital mainly into AI-focused startups, targeting infrastructure, healthcare, physical AI, and security as key sectors it believes will define what it calls the 'post-AGI era'.
Mastercard has signed a new deal aimed at letting AI-driven shopping agents complete purchases using customer payment credentials. The move comes as rivals Visa and American Express are also preparing their own systems to support autonomous, AI-powered shopping bots.
NVIDIA, Google, and startup Emerald AI have created the AI Energy Management Alliance (AEMA), a coalition aimed at making AI data centers more flexible in their power consumption. The group wants facilities to be able to shift workloads, tap batteries, and cut usage during peak demand, in exchange for utilities granting faster grid connections and potentially sharing infrastructure costs.
Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would permanently prohibit building or deploying superintelligent AI and temporarily halt advanced AI development until federal safety rules exist. The bill also calls for a new cabinet-level agency to monitor AI systems for dangerous capabilities and pursue international agreements against superintelligence development worldwide.
Mistral AI has struck a partnership with data platform provider Cloudera aimed at reaching more enterprise customers, particularly in regulated industries. The tie-up is designed to help Mistral's AI models integrate more easily into corporate data environments that businesses already use to manage compliance and operations.
Nvidia has started using Palantir's software platform to run its supply chain operations, making itself the first user of a system the two companies plan to jointly market to other businesses and government agencies. The partnership positions Nvidia as a live demonstration of Palantir's capabilities amid the broader AI infrastructure buildout.