Latest news with #2029
CNA
6 hours ago
- Business
- CNA
AI-driven search ad spending set to surge to $26 billion by 2029, data shows
Spending on AI-powered search advertising is poised to surge to nearly $26 billion by 2029 from just over $1 billion this year in the U.S., driven by rapid adoption of the technology and more sophisticated user targeting, data from Emarketer showed on Wednesday. Companies that rely on traditional keyword-based search ads could experience revenue declines due to the growing popularity of AI search ads, which offer greater convenience and engagement for users, according to the research firm. WHY IT'S IMPORTANT Search giants such as Alphabet-owned Google and Microsoft's Bing have added AI capabilities to better compete with chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Perplexity AI, which provide users with direct information without requiring to click through multiple results. Apple is exploring the integration of AI-driven search capabilities into its Safari browser, potentially moving away from its longstanding partnership with Google. The report has come as concerns grew about users increasingly turning to the chatbots for conversational search and AI-powered search results could upend business models of some companies. Online education firm Chegg said in May that it would lay off about 248 employees as it looks to cut costs and streamline operations because students are using AI-powered tools including ChatGPT over traditional edtech platforms. QUOTE "Publishers and other sites are feeling the pain from AI search. As they lose out on traffic, we're seeing publishers lean into subscriptions and paid AI licensing deals to bolster revenue," Emarketer analyst Minda Smiley said. GRAPHIC AI search ad spending is expected to constitute nearly 1 per cent of total search ad spending this year and 13.6 per cent by 2029 in the U.S., according to Emarketer. Sectors such as financial services, technology, telecom, and healthcare are embracing AI as they are seeing clear advantages in using the technology to enhance their ad strategies, while the retail industry's adoption is slow, the report said. Google recently announced the expansion of its AI-powered search capabilities into the consumer packaged goods sector through enhancements in Google Shopping.
Reuters
6 hours ago
- Business
- Reuters
AI-driven search ad spending set to surge to $26 billion by 2029, data shows
June 4 (Reuters) - Spending on AI-powered search advertising is poised to surge to nearly $26 billion by 2029 from just over $1 billion this year in the U.S., driven by rapid adoption of the technology and more sophisticated user targeting, data from Emarketer showed on Wednesday. Companies that rely on traditional keyword-based search ads could experience revenue declines due to the growing popularity of AI search ads, which offer greater convenience and engagement for users, according to the research firm. Search giants such as Alphabet-owned (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google and Microsoft's (MSFT.O), opens new tab Bing have added AI capabilities to better compete with chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Perplexity AI, which provide users with direct information without requiring to click through multiple results. Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab is exploring the integration of AI-driven search capabilities into its Safari browser, potentially moving away from its longstanding partnership with Google. The report has come as concerns grew about users increasingly turning to the chatbots for conversational search and AI-powered search results could upend business models of some companies. Online education firm Chegg (CHGG.N), opens new tab said in May that it would lay off about 248 employees as it looks to cut costs and streamline operations because students are using AI-powered tools including ChatGPT over traditional edtech platforms. "Publishers and other sites are feeling the pain from AI search. As they lose out on traffic, we're seeing publishers lean into subscriptions and paid AI licensing deals to bolster revenue," Emarketer analyst Minda Smiley said. GRAPHIC AI search ad spending is expected to constitute nearly 1% of total search ad spending this year and 13.6% by 2029 in the U.S., according to Emarketer. Sectors such as financial services, technology, telecom, and healthcare are embracing AI as they are seeing clear advantages in using the technology to enhance their ad strategies, while the retail industry's adoption is slow, the report said. Google recently announced the expansion of its AI-powered search capabilities into the consumer packaged goods sector through enhancements in Google Shopping.
Forbes
6 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
It's All Going On: Business And Society In The Next Few Years
To say that there's a lot going on in AI is something of an understatement. Many people less connected to the industry are ignoring its potential at their peril. The technology is due to upend almost everything we know about the supremacy of human capabilities. I'm still sort of pondering a lot of what came out of a recent long essay post on Less Wrong that I started covering last week. The author, who we will call by their handle, L Rudolph L, or simply, for the purposes of this, 'L', brings forth an amazing trove of insights into what life might look like from 2025 through, say, 2029, and as I've said before, these are not vague ambiguous predictions. So let's go through more of how this poster envisions the next part of the AI age playing out. There's a good bit in here about business outcomes. For example: as contenders go for the consumer market, what is OpenAI's moat? L answers this by saying that the company will be 'especially vulnerable, since they rely heavily on consumers, and are also increasingly a product company that competes with products built on their API.' The author's take on the company's likely strategy goes like this: 'Their strategy (internally and to investors, though not publicly) is to be the first to achieve something like a drop-in agentic AI worker and use that to convert their tech lead over open source into >10% of world GDP in revenues. They've raised tens of billions and make billions in revenue from their products anyway, so they can bankroll these efforts just fine.' Meanwhile, the author calls Anthropic a 'jewel of model quality' and a 'Mecca of technical talent', in some great alliteration, while suggesting that XAI and DeepSeek will be the open source leaders. As for winners and losers, here's the take: 'Investors want to see 'real AGI', not just post-scarcity in software. Google DeepMind's maths stuff and xAI's engineering stuff are cool; OpenAI and LLMs are not. Amazon's AWS & physical store is cool, Google Search and Facebook are not.' There's another side point where L talks about 'selling shovel,' or, presumably, the role of infrastructure, and points to Nvidia's success as ongoing in some way, shape or form. We've seen Nvidia stock slump over the last few weeks, but the jury is still out on what that company will look like a couple of years from now. Noting that the progress of AI professionalism might be slowed by human bureaucracy, L Rudolph L nevertheless predicts that AI will learn to perform the role of a physician, and an attorney. Eventually, the human in the loop that the author posits will be mainly relegated to tedious small tasks and data entry, as well as anything that's too sensitive for AI to handle upfront, for instance, certain kinds of verification and authorization tasks. Consider, if you will, the prophetic visions of call centers: 'A surprisingly retro success is call centers of humans who are ready to jump in and put an AI agent back on task, or where AI agents can offload work chunks that are heavy on trust/authentication (like confirming a transaction) or on button-clicking UI complexity (like lots of poor legacy software), to human crowdworkers who click the buttons for them, while the AI does the knowledge/intelligence-intensive parts of the job on its own.' On a sidenote, L also imagines the Nobel prize might be contested between a human and an AI. I liked this part (italics mine): 'Credit for the Nobel Prize is the subject of much discussion, but eventually (in 2030) ends up split between Demis Hassabis, one of the physicists who was most involved, and the most important AI system. Everyone has Opinions.' Theorizing that the Communist Chinese Party unveiled its 15th five year plan in 2026, L also talks about the rivalry between the two major empires – the middle kingdom in Asia, and America in the west. The author also notes that companies like Huawei may be close on Nvidia's heels. The American industry and government, L notes, will be likely focusing on strategies to contain China and prevent it from getting key technologies to dominate the global market and pursue espionage goals. 'There's increasing demand for really air-tight software from a US defense establishment that is obsessed with cyber advantage over especially China, but also Russia, Iran, and North Korea,' L writes. There's even a part where L suggests that human populations will decline because people will be choosing to spend time with their robotic companions instead of other flesh and blood humans, whereby the old manual system of procreation may take a backseat. Besides a trend toward human-AI romances, L also goes into some of how the rank and file may react to these changes. The author talks about 'ChatGPTese' as the noticeable product of the LLM to human audiences. Here's the take on what's likely to happen with AI fakers calling humans on the phone or whatever interface is predominant: 'AI scam calls with deepfaked audio and video start being a nuisance by mid 2025 but are mostly reined in by a series of security measures pushed by platforms (and by regulation in the EU), people creating new trust protocols with each other ('what's our secret passphrase?'), increased ID verification features, and growing social distrust towards any evidence that's only digital.' Basically, L predicts, we will learn to live with normalized AI and what that looks like, as a world with intense automation emerges. Most of us know this intuitively, are preparing for it now. But I would think that for most people, it's extremely hard to envision just how this will work. In any case, do yourself a favor, read the entire essay, and think about all of these predictions as a whole, to try to read the tea leaves on the rest of the 21st century.
Sky News
6 hours ago
- Business
- Sky News
Where's Rachel Reeves getting her bus money?
👉 Listen to Sky News Daily on your podcast app 👈 The chancellor presents the Spending Review next week, where she will outline how the budget will be divided for government departments between 2026 and 2029. Rachel Reeves says she has an extra £113bn of capital to play with. But with so many promises and projects dependent on the cash, how does she decide who will win and who will lose? On today's Sky News Daily, Niall Paterson is joined by Sky News' deputy political editor, Sam Coates, who has used AI to predict how the chancellor might spend the cash.
The Guardian
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Last of Us recap: season two, episode seven – well, that was a frustrating finale
This article contains spoilers for the The Last of Us season two. Please do not read unless you have seen episodes one to six. Typical. For the back half of this season, Ellie (Bella Ramsey) has been hunting high and low for Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) in Seattle, desperate to avenge the brutal killing of Joel (Pedro Pascal). But ultimately it was Abby who ambushed Ellie, at exactly the worst possible time. As season-ending cliffhangers go, it certainly served to turbo-charge the suspense. Just who will be left alive after that final panicked gunshot in the theatre lobby? Even before that emotionally charged confrontation, this finale had been carefully ratcheting up the tension. There were heartbreaking confessions, a close call with disembowelment and at least one deeply regrettable death, all as an ominous tempest rumbled overhead. Do they still name storms in the post-apocalyptic year of 2029? Call this one Storm Metaphor: dark, relentless and getting increasingly violent as the night went on. Let's look at how it all shook out. Last time we saw Dina (Isabela Merced), she had just taken a Seraphite crossbow bolt to the thigh. Back in the relative refuge of the theatre, Jesse (Young Mazino) scrambles to fix up his ex-girlfriend's wound in true frontier medicine style (splash some alcohol on it, push the arrow out). When Ellie belatedly returns, it is Dina's turn to play nurse, tending to her heavily bruised back. With her shirt off, the usually tough-as-nails Ellie suddenly seemed physically vulnerable. She opens up emotionally, too, telling Dina about hurting Nora (Tati Gabrielle) to get information about Abby's location. While she managed to extract a couple of cryptic clues (talk of a 'whale' and a 'wheel'), Ellie is now more struck by how quickly she took to torture: 'I thought it would be harder to do.' This soul-baring spills over into finally telling Dina the truth about what Joel did in Salt Lake City, and how Ellie finally figured it all out. It's a lot for poor Dina – pregnant, seriously injured and cooped up in a war zone with both the father of her baby and her new girlfriend – to process. The next morning Jesse is itching to meet back up with Joel's brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna), and get the hell out of Seattle. He and Ellie leave the hobbling Dina to barricade herself into the theatre while they strike out for the bookstore rendezvous. En route they witness a skirmish between a lone Seraphite and six aggressive WLF troops, and Ellie is all for wading in, guns blazing, to save the boy. It's impulse-driven compassion, but to the exasperated Jesse it reads like recklessness. The tension between them foreshadows Ellie's fateful decision later in the day. A quick check-in with the WLF leadership: sombre leader Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) and his loyal lieutenant Elise (Hettienne Park) are planning their big assault on the island home of the Seraphites. The storm gathering above seems like a bad omen, but it may provide useful cover for their beach landing operation. Isaac is hung up on the continued absence of Owen (Spencer Lord), Mel (Ariela Barer) and particularly Abby. 'You in love with her or something?' half-jokes Elise, which seems like a risky thing to say to your superior. But we learn that Isaac has chosen Abby as the best of her young generation to lead the WLF and 'secure their future'. As we haven't spent much time with Abby this season, it's some useful context as to how she fits in with the militia. Back at the bookstore rendezvous, there's no sign of Tommy. But some WLF radio chatter interrupts Jesse and Ellie's frenemy bickering and alerts them to a nearby sniper. As they know the Seraphites don't use guns, they surmise it must be Tommy, and ascend to a decent vantage point to try to spot him. That's when Ellie spots a ferris wheel and guesses that Abby must be holed up in a nearby flooded aquarium. She has a clear-cut choice: help save Tommy or pursue a flimsy lead on Abby for revenge. To Jesse's disgust she chooses the latter. The storm is really whipping up now. Down at the shore, Ellie sees a fleet of WLF boats pushing through the rain toward their invasion target. She manages to find her own little speedboat, but as she sets course for the aquarium it soon becomes clear she is in over her head – heaving waves tip her out of the boat, onto a beach and into the hands of the Seraphites. We've seen how this cult treats outsiders: hanging them by the neck and disembowelling them with very unhygienic-looking sickles. Despite her protests, Ellie is strung up and about to be sliced open when an alarm horn from their besieged village scatters her attackers. Phew! This, of course, would be the perfect time to count your blessings and retreat. But Ellie has come too far and invested too much. She completes her journey to the aquarium, taking time out to methodically dry Joel's revolver and bullets. As she advances through the darkened corridors, she hears the voices of Owen and Mel. Soon she is threatening to kill them if they don't tell her where to find Abby. Owen pretends to cooperate but it is just a ruse to get closer to his gun. All that WLF training is for naught: Ellie shoots him dead and Mel takes a bullet to the neck. As Mel begins to bleed out, Ellie realises with horror that she is pregnant and is using her final, gasping breaths to implore her killer to save her baby by improvising a C-section with a knife. Despite her usual gumption, Ellie is completely overwhelmed by the situation and cannot bring herself to do anything. That's when Tommy and Jesse swoop in and whisk Ellie back to the relative safety of the theatre. She is wrestling with the carnage she has caused but still struggles with the idea of leaving Seattle with her revenge quest incomplete. If she doesn't kill Abby, then what was the point of all the others dying? But the group are determined to return to Jackson, so Joel will remain unavenged. 'Are you able to make your peace with that?' asks Tommy. They vow to leave at first light. It has certainly been an eventful three days in Seattle. But as Ellie and Jesse patch up their tattered friendship in the auditorium, they hear shouts and shots coming from the lobby. As they burst through the doors, they are greeted by gunplay. Jesse takes the brunt of it, and looks like a goner. Abby has tracked them down and seeing Ellie only seems to enrage her more. 'You,' she hisses. Ellie tries to offer up her life in exchange for sparing the wounded Tommy, but Abby simply doesn't want to hear it: 'I let you live … and you wasted it!' A gunshot cuts to darkness. It's a long enough pause to imagine every horrible potential outcome. Then we are back with Abby in a cluttered WLF compound. There is the briefest glimpse of Manny (Danny Ramirez), the final accomplice to Joel's murder, who says that Isaac wants to see them. Abby wanders out to reveal she is in a sports stadium repurposed as a settlement. A final caption confirms that this is Seattle Day One, when Ellie and Dina first arrived in the city. Rewinding the clocks seems to be preparing the ground to tell Abby's side of the story next time. But ending with a focus on a character who has been so elusive throughout season two feels a little frustrating. And who knows how long it will be before we learn exactly what went down in that lobby. RIP Owen and Mel. If you count poor infected Nora, that means Ellie has crossed out three of the five young WLF members on her kill list. But what were the pair conspiring about when Ellie ambushed them? It feels as though there is a lot more WLF backstory to be revealed in future seasons. Back in episode three it felt safe to assume Jesse had voted in favour of hunting down and executing Joel's killers. But during one of his various exasperated exchanges with Ellie he revealed he was actually one of the eight council members who voted against the motion. Jesse also mentioned that while infiltrating the city, he and Tommy had found Ellie's horse, Shimmer – last spotted back in episode four – thankfully safe and well in that hipster record shop. A third season of The Last of Us was confirmed before season two even launched. But would that be enough to finish adapting all of the second (and so far final) game? Last week co-showrunner Craig Mazin suggested that season three might end up being longer, and that his hopes were pinned on a fourth season to wrap up the story. What did you think? Did this feel like a satisfying end to season two? What do you hope is explored in the next season? Have your say below, but please avoid spoilers from the game …
