These workers don't fear artificial intelligence. They're getting degrees in it.
Discovering how fast the artificial intelligence tool could execute a complicated task, Fowler, who has spent two decades working on data protection at a large bank, felt a new urgency to learn more about AI. So she enrolled in the online master's program in AI at the University of Texas at Austin and expects to graduate next year.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
7 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump meets with Intel CEO after demanding he resign
US President Donald Trump on Monday said he had a "very interesting" meeting with the chief of US chip maker Intel, just days after calling for his resignation. Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he met with Lip-Bu Tan along with Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent. "The meeting was a very interesting one," Trump said in the post. "His success and rise is an amazing story." Trump added that members of his cabinet are going to spend time with Tan and bring the president "suggestions" next week. Intel did not respond to a request for comment. Trump demanded last week that the recently-hired boss of Intel resign "immediately," after a Republican senator raised national security concerns over his links to firms in China. "The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem," Trump posted on Truth Social last Thursday. Tan released a statement at the time saying that the company was engaged with the Trump administration to address the concerns raised and ensure officials "have the facts." Intel is one of Silicon Valley's most iconic companies but its fortunes have been dwarfed by Asian powerhouses TSMC and Samsung, which dominate the made-to-order semiconductor business. In a statement, Tan said there has been "a lot of misinformation circulating" about his past roles at Walden International and Cadence Design Systems. "I have always operated within the highest legal and ethical standards," Tan said. The Malaysia-born tech industry veteran took the helm at struggling Intel in March, announcing layoffs as White House tariffs and export restrictions muddied the market. Intel's niche has been chips used in traditional computing processes, which are steadily being eclipsed by the AI revolution. gc/bjt Sign in to access your portfolio
Forbes
7 minutes ago
- Forbes
Ford's New Truck Needs To Understand The EV Myths Permating Automaking
Ford promised their announcement of a new 'universal' EV platform, along with a low-cost light pickup truck, would be another 'Model T' moment in automaking history. Ford didn't show us the truck, just teased various attributes, in particular that their electric truck should sell for about $30,000 and be available in 2027, thanks to new design and manufacuring innovations. Nobody's going to be critical of making a decent vehicle for a lower price, and Ford certainly knows the truck market, though they haven't shown the same aplomb in the EV world. Based on what little we know, this is going to be a fairly short range truck, of low utility for towing traditional trailers. Are the choices the right ones? Range The base truck has a battery estimated at around 51kWh. The most efficient pickup today, Rivian's, would get around 125 miles of range on that, with a practical range under 100 miles. That's a customer scaring number, and impactical for road trips out of town, though many working trucks that never leave town could indeed get by on that. Perhaps Ford has found a way to make dramatic aerodynamic improvements--they did not show the shape of the truck--but even so, they will not likely get past 150 miles. On the plus side, that's with an LFP battery pack. LFP batteries are cheaper, used in shorter-range Teslas and many Chinese cars. While most of the battery industry has been on a very expensive quest for denser, longer range battery chemistries, 'good old' LFP has been winning the day. While it's a bit bulkier and heavier, it's cheaper and you can charge it to 100% every day, which makes up a lot for the reduced range. Ford will make a longer range NMC version as well, according to reports. Ford is perhaps betting that people will realize a not well understood truth, that long range is mostly useful for intercity road trips. (And in some cases, for those doing Level 1 charging at home.) While it's a bit less convenient, customers who know they plan to use their truck around town can save a bunch of money buying a smaller battery. Ford presumably hopes the $30K price point will attract a whole new class of buyers. Cost Buyers who don't understand EVs do indeed think they cost too much. The reality is that EVs are already a fair bit cheaper than ICE equivalents in total cost of ownership, when you add in energy and maintenance. Customers just have trouble feeling that--paying $5,000 more up front and saving $1,000/year is a huge win, but a delayed one. Of course, a vehicle that costs the same and still saves, $1,000/year is great, but that involves some compromises, like range. It would be nice if there were a way to get around the psychology of this. A way to sell the car for less but get the owner to pay $500/month more for their electricity (but still less than they paid for gas) so they see themselves saving money every year, not just in the future. It could be that creative accounting is more valuable than good engineering, though both are great. No sign as yet from Ford of another interesting solution for pickup trucks, namely a way to mount a temporary rental battery pack, or rental compact generator in the truckbed. That's much easier to design into a truck than a car. If drivers could stop for 15 minutes at a depot on the way out of town to rent such a range extender, they could get the best of both worlds--a cheap in-town car, and the ability to get extra range on rarer trips out of town. Single Platform It's not new to Ford, but they also plan to switch to a universal platform, on which they can build trucks, sedans, vans and SUVs. The battery pack of this pickup truck is a structural element that makes the bed of the truck. Universal platforms allow better economies of scale over all models, one of the best ways to drive down prices. Where's The Software? Ford spoke a lot about new hardware designs and manufacturing approaches, which is great, but it's 2025, and the vehicles that win will derive more and more of their value from their software, not their hardware. You need both, but without a world-beating software strategy, failure is likely. We didn't hear a lot about this, so Ford had better start laying that out soon. It's not just about making software-defined-vehicles; everybody knows about that, though they had to be dragged, kicking and screaming to do what silicon valley companies do as 2nd nature. It's hard to imagine a new "Model-T moment" without a lot of innovation there. Ford used to have a strong position overseas. It needs to regain that. In the USA, they will have protectionist tariffs to make them complacent, but out in the rest of the world they will be going head to head with China, where the things Ford announced today might generate a yawn, and not many Yuan. Let's hope that real reinvention of the company is coming.
Fast Company
8 minutes ago
- Fast Company
SOS: Who will throw fact-checked reporting a life raft?
AI is gobbling up journalism for many of the same reasons humans do: to develop a concrete understanding of the world; to think critically; to differentiate between what is true and what's not; to become a better writer; and to distill history and context into something accessible. But what happens to AI when our journalistic institutions crumble? Upon what foundation of truth will it answer everyone's questions? Write their emails? Do their jobs? Because while the alarm bells have been ringing for journalism for decades, the so-called end of search feels like the potential death knell. What does that mean for AI, and for us as we try to make sense of an increasingly confusing world? In our rush to integrate generative AI into every corner of our lives, we've ignored a fundamental truth: AI cannot function without a baseline of verified facts. And, at the moment, that baseline is built and maintained by so-called 'traditional' journalism (the kind with fact checkers and editors). As AI threatens to upend search, media monetization, and news consumption behaviors, it's also undercutting the very industry that feeds it the facts it depends on. A society cannot function without objective journalism, and neither can AI. Loss of accuracy Recent Apple research says that, 'It doesn't take much to cause generative AI to fall into 'complete accuracy collapse.'' It goes on to show that generative AI models lack strong logical reasoning, unable to function beyond their complexity threshold. I immediately thought of a recent piece from The New Yorker, in which Andrew Marantz weaves together various examples of autocracy, set against thousands of years of history, to (attempt to) make sense of what is happening in America right now. I imagined AI trying to do the same, essentially short-circuiting before being able to form the salient points that make the piece so impactful. When asked to think too hard, the AI breaks. An even more damning report from the BBC reports that AI can't accurately summarize the news. It asked ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and Perplexity to sum up 100 news stories and asked expert journalists to rate each answer. 'As well as containing factual inaccuracies, the chatbots 'struggled to differentiate between opinion and fact, editorialised, and often failed to include essential context,'' says the report. Almost one-fifth of the summaries included false facts and quote distortions—19%! There's more, of course. This study from MIT Sloan shows that AI tools have a history of fabricating citations and reinforcing gender and racial bias, while this Fast Company article argues that AI-driven journalism's 'good enough' standards are accepted because of the revenue these tools create. And that, of course, is the less human reason AI is gobbling up journalism: the money. None of that money is going back into funding the journalistic institutions that power this whole experiment. What happens to our society when the core pillar of a true and free press collapses under the weight of the thing that has sloppily consumed it? Our AI lords must place real value on fact-checked reporting—right now—to ensure its continued existence.
