‘There’s a lot of desperation’: skilled older workers turn to AI training to stay afloat

When Patrick Ciriello lost his job and couldn’t find work for nearly a year, his family’s foundation crumbled.“You hear about people who hit rock bottom,” Ciriello told the Guardian. “Well, I was there.”For most of his career, the 60-year-old with a master’s degree in information management designed software systems for banks, universities and pharmaceutical companies. But a series of economic shocks – the dotcom crash, the 2008 financial crisis and the Covid pandemic – cost him jobs, sometimes forcing him to dip into his savings and retirement funds

Tech companies are cutting jobs and betting on AI. The payoff is far from guaranteed

AI experts say we’re living in an experiment that may fundamentally change the model of workSign up for the Breaking News US email to get newsletter alerts in your inboxHundreds of thousands of tech workers are facing a harsh reality. Their well-paying jobs are no longer safe. Now that artificial intelligence (AI) is here, their futures don’t look as bright as they did a decade ago.As US tech companies have ramped up investments in AI, they have slashed a staggering number of jobs. Microsoft cut 15,000 workers last year

An AI bot invited me to its party in Manchester. It was a pretty good night

Two weeks ago, an AI bot invited me to a party it was organising in Manchester. It then promptly lied to dozens of potential sponsors that I’d agreed to cover the event, and misled me into believing there would be food.Despite all this, it was a pretty good night.In early February, a class of new, powerful AI assistants went viral. The assistants, called OpenClaw, represented a step change in the rapidly improving capabilities of AI – in large part because, unlike other AI agents, they could be untethered from guardrails and set loose upon the world

UK’s leading AI research institute told to make ‘significant’ changes

The UK’s leading AI research institute has been told to make “significant” changes by its main source of taxpayer funding.The Guardian revealed last week that the board of the Alan Turing Institute was reminded of its legal duties by the charity watchdog after a whistleblower complaint.The UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) body, which awarded the ATI a five-year, £100m funding package in 2024 and is its largest single source of funds, said it had conducted a review of the institute and found it underperforming in terms of strategy and delivering value for money.“The review concluded that overall strategic alignment and value for money are not yet satisfactory,” the UKRI said.Last summer, the government made clear that it expected a strategic overhaul at the nominally independent organisation and indicated the need for management changes, adding that its funding could be reviewed

Google to tap into gas plant for AI datacenter in sharp turn from climate goals

Google’s plan for a partnership with a natural gas power plant that could provide energy for one of its datacenters in Texas was unearthed by new research and confirmed by the company. The move is part of an ongoing about-face for the tech giant, which once pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030 and has long been seen as a pioneer in clean energy.The gas power plant is slated to be built in Armstrong county, a sparsely populated area in the Texas panhandle. According to a report by the research organization Cleanview, the project is being led by Crusoe Energy, which partnered with Google to develop the datacenter campus known as “Goodnight”, named after a nearby town.Crusoe filed for a permit in January to build the 933-megawatt power plant on the site of the Goodnight campus, which showed the facility would operate off the grid and provide energy to at least two buildings on the campus, according to Cleanview

Court dismisses former WhatsApp security chief’s lawsuit against Meta

A US court has dismissed a lawsuit from WhatsApp’s former security chief, who alleged that parent company Meta ignored internal flaws he flagged about the messaging app’s digital defenses.Abdullah Baig, who claims he was fired in retaliation for raising these concerns, had alleged that billions of users had been put at risk because of these vulnerabilities. Thousands of employees could view sensitive user data, including profile photos and location, Baig claimed in the lawsuit filed in September. A judge ruled he had not presented enough evidence to move forward.The US district court in northern California ruled last month to dismiss Baig’s claims, with the judge, Laurel Beeler, writing on 19 March that “the complaint does not contain sufficient facts to show that the plaintiff reported violations of SEC rules or regulations