It's not just Amazon's CEO predicting AI will lower their headcount. "Top executives at some of the largest American companies have a warning for their workers: Artificial intelligence is a threat to your job," reports the Washington Post — including IBM, Salesforce, and JPMorgan Chase.

But are they really just trying to impress their shareholders? Economists say there aren't yet strong signs that AI is driving widespread layoffs across industries.... CEOs are under pressure to show they are embracing new technology and getting results — incentivizing attention-grabbing predictions that can create additional uncertainty for workers. "It's a message to shareholders and board members as much as it is to employees," Molly Kinder, a Brookings Institution fellow who studies the impact of AI, said of the CEO announcements, noting that when one company makes a bold AI statement, others typically follow. "You're projecting that you're out in the future, that you're embracing and adopting this so much that the footprint [of your company] will look different."

Some CEOs fear they could be ousted from their job within two years if they don't deliver measurable AI-driven business gains, a Harris Poll survey conducted for software company Dataiku showed. Tech leaders have sounded some of the loudest warnings — in line with their interest in promoting AI's power...

IBM, which recently announced job cuts, said it replaced a couple hundred human resource workers with AI "agents" for repetitive tasks such as onboarding and scheduling interviews. In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested on Joe Rogan's podcast that the company is building AI that might be able to do what some human workers do by the end of the year.... Marianne Lake, JPMorgan's CEO of consumer and community banking, told an investor meeting last month that AI could help the bank cut headcount in operations and account services by 10 percent. The CEO of BT Group Allison Kirkby suggested that advances in AI would mean deeper cuts at the British telecom company...

Despite corporate leaders' warnings, economists don't yet see broad signs that AI is driving humans out of work. "We have little evidence of layoffs so far," said Columbia Business School professor Laura Veldkamp, whose research explores how companies' use of AI affects the economy. "What I'd look for are new entrants with an AI-intensive business model, entering and putting the existing firms out of business." Some researchers suggest there is evidence AI is playing a role in the drop in openings for some specific jobs, like computer programming, where AI tools that generate code have become standard... It is still unclear what benefits companies are reaping from employees' use of AI, said Arvind Karunakaran, a faculty member of Stanford University's Center for Work, Technology, and Organization. "Usage does not necessarily translate into value," he said. "Is it just increasing productivity in terms of people doing the same task quicker or are people now doing more high value tasks as a result?"

Lynda Gratton, a professor at London Business School, said predictions of huge productivity gains from AI remain unproven. "Right now, the technology companies are predicting there will be a 30% productivity gain. We haven't yet experienced that, and it's not clear if that gain would come from cost reduction ... or because humans are more productive."
On an earnings call, Salesforce's chief operating and financial officer said AI agents helped them reduce hiring needs — and saved $50 million, according to the article. (And Ethan Mollick, co-director of Wharton School of Business' generative AI Labs, adds that if advanced tools like AI agents can prove their reliability and automate work — that could become a larger disruptor to jobs.) "A wave of disruption is going to happen," he's quoted as saying.

But while the debate continues about whether AI will eliminate or create jobs, Mollick still hedges that "the truth is probably somewhere in between."

Edd Gent reporting for IEEE Spectrum: IBM has unveiled a new quantum computing architecture it says will slash the number of qubits required for error correction. The advance will underpin its goal of building a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer, called Starling, that will be available to customers by 2029. Because of the inherent unreliability of the qubits (the quantum equivalent of bits) that quantum computers are built from, error correction will be crucial for building reliable, large-scale devices. Error-correction approaches spread each unit of information across many physical qubits to create "logical qubits." This provides redundancy against errors in individual physical qubits.

One of the most popular approaches is known as a surface code, which requires roughly 1,000 physical qubits to make up one logical qubit. This was the approach IBM focused on initially, but the company eventually realized that creating the hardware to support it was an "engineering pipe dream," Jay Gambetta, the vice president of IBM Quantum, said in a press briefing. Around 2019, the company began to investigate alternatives. In a paper published in Nature last year, IBM researchers outlined a new error-correction scheme called quantum low-density parity check (qLDPC) codes that would require roughly one-tenth of the number of qubits that surface codes need. Now, the company has unveiled a new quantum-computing architecture that can realize this new approach. "We've cracked the code to quantum error correction and it's our plan to build the first large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer," said Gambetta, who is also an IBM Fellow. "We feel confident it is now a question of engineering to build these machines, rather than science."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from SiliconANGLE: Hugging Face has open-sourced the blueprints of two internally developed robots called HopeJR and Reachy Mini. The company debuted the machines on Thursday. Hugging Face is backed by more than $390 million in funding from Nvidia Corp., IBM Corp. and other investors. It operates a GitHub-like platform for sharing open-source artificial intelligence projects. It says its platform hosts more than 1 million AI models, hundreds of thousands of datasets and various other technical assets.

The company started prioritizing robotics last year after launching LeRobot, a section of its platform dedicated to autonomous machines. The portal provides access to AI models for powering robots and datasets that can be used to train those models. Hugging Face released its first hardware blueprint, a robotic arm design called the SO-100, late last year. The SO-100 was developed in partnership with a startup called The Robot Studio. Hugging Face also collaborated with the company on the HopeJR, the first new robot that debuted this week. According to TechCrunch, it's a humanoid robot that can perform 66 movements including walking.

HopeJR is equipped with a pair of robotic arms that can be remotely controlled by a human using a pair of specialized, chip-equipped gloves. HopeJR's arms replicate the movements made by the wearer of the gloves. A demo video shared by Hugging Face showed that the robot can shake hands, point to a specific text snippet on a piece of paper and perform other tasks. Hugging Face's other new robot, the Reachy Mini, likewise features an open-source design. It's based on technology that the company obtained through the acquisition of a venture-backed startup called Pollen Robotics earlier this year. Reachy Mini is a turtle-like robot that comes in a rectangular case. Its main mechanical feature is a retractable neck that allows it to follow the user with its head or withdraw into the case. This case, which is stationary, is compact and lightweight enough to be placed on a desk. Hugging Face will offer pre-assembled versions of its open-source Reach Mini and HopeJR robots for $250 and $3,000, with the first units starting to ship by the end of the year.

IBM laid off "a couple hundred" HR workers and replaced them with AI agents. "It's becoming a huge thing," says Mike Peditto, a Chicago-area consultant with 15 years of experience advising companies on hiring practices. He tells Slate "I do think we're heading to where this will be pretty commonplace." Although A.I. job interviews have been happening since at least 2023, the trend has received a surge of attention in recent weeks thanks to several viral TikTok videos in which users share videos of their A.I. bots glitching. Although some of the videos were fakes posted by a creator whose bio warns that his content is "all satire," some are authentic — like that of Kendiana Colin, a 20-year-old student at Ohio State University who had to interact with an A.I. bot after she applied for a summer job at a stretching studio outside Columbus. In a clip she posted online earlier this month, Colin can be seen conducting a video interview with a smiling white brunette named Alex, who can't seem to stop saying the phrase "vertical-bar Pilates" in an endless loop...

Representatives at Apriora, the startup company founded in 2023 whose software Colin was forced to engage with, did not respond to a request for comment. But founder Aaron Wang told Forbes last year that the software allowed companies to screen more talent for less money... (Apriora's website claims that the technology can help companies "hire 87 percent faster" and "interview 93 percent cheaper," but it's not clear where those stats come from or what they actually mean.)
Colin (first interviewed by 404 Media) calls the experience dehumanizing — wondering why they were told dress professionally, since "They had me going the extra mile just to talk to a robot." And after the interview, the robot — and the company — then ghosted them with no future contact. "It was very disrespectful and a waste of time."

Houston resident Leo Humphries also "donned a suit and tie in anticipation for an interview" in which the virtual recruiter immediately got stuck repeating the same phrase. Although Humphries tried in vain to alert the bot that it was broken, the interview ended only when the A.I. program thanked him for "answering the questions" and offering "great information" — despite his not being able to provide a single response. In a subsequent video, Humphries said that within an hour he had received an email, addressed to someone else, that thanked him for sharing his "wonderful energy and personality" but let him know that the company would be moving forward with other candidates.

It's a nonprofit that's provide hosting for the Linux Foundation, the Apache Software Foundation, Drupal, Firefox, and 160 other projects — delivering nearly 430 terabytes of information every month. (It's currently hosting Debian, Fedora, and Gentoo Linux.) But hosting only provides about 20% of its income, with the rest coming from individual and corporate donors (including Google and IBM). "Over the past several years, we have been operating at a deficit due to a decline in corporate donations," the Open Source Lab's director announced in late April.

It's part of the CS/electrical engineering department at Oregon State University, and while the department "has generously filled this gap, recent changes in university funding makes our current funding model no longer sustainable. Unless we secure $250,000 in committed funds, the OSL will shut down later this year."

But "Thankfully, the call for support worked, paving the way for the OSU Open Source Lab to look ahead, into what the future holds for them," reports the blog It's FOSS.

"Following our OSL Future post, the community response has been incredible!" posted director Lance Albertson. "Thanks to your amazing support, our team is funded for the next year. This is a huge relief and lets us focus on building a truly self-sustaining OSL." To get there, we're tackling two big interconnected goals:

1. Finding a new, cost-effective physical home for our core infrastructure, ideally with more modern hardware.
2. Securing multi-year funding commitments to cover all our operations, including potential new infrastructure costs and hardware refreshes.


Our current data center is over 20 years old and needs to be replaced soon. With Oregon State University evaluating the future of this facility, it's very likely we'll need to relocate in the near future. While migrating to the State of Oregon's data center is one option, it comes with significant new costs. This makes finding free or very low-cost hosting (ideally between Eugene and Portland for ~13-20 racks) a huge opportunity for our long-term sustainability. More power-efficient hardware would also help us shrink our footprint.

Speaking of hardware, refreshing some of our older gear during a move would be a game-changer. We don't need brand new, but even a few-generations-old refurbished systems would boost performance and efficiency. (Huge thanks to the Yocto Project and Intel for a recent hardware donation that showed just how impactful this is!) The dream? A data center partner donating space and cycled-out hardware. Our overall infrastructure strategy is flexible. We're enhancing our OpenStack/Ceph platforms and exploring public cloud credits and other donated compute capacity. But whatever the resource, it needs to fit our goals and come with multi-year commitments for stability. And, a physical space still offers unique value, especially the invaluable hands-on data center experience for our students....

[O]ur big focus this next year is locking in ongoing support — think annualized pledges, different kinds of regular income, and other recurring help. This is vital, especially with potential new data center costs and hardware needs. Getting this right means we can stop worrying about short-term funding and plan for the future: investing in our tech and people, growing our awesome student programs, and serving the FOSS community. We're looking for partners, big and small, who get why foundational open source infrastructure matters and want to help us build this sustainable future together.
The It's FOSS blog adds that "With these prerequisites in place, the OSUOSL intends to expand their student program, strengthen their managed services portfolio for open source projects, introduce modern tooling like Kubernetes and Terraform, and encourage more community volunteers to actively contribute."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader I'm just joshin for suggesting the story.

Google has overtaken IBM to become the leader in generative AI-related patents and also leads in the emerging area of agentic AI, according to data from IFI Claims. Axios: In the patents-for-agents U.S. rankings, Google and Nvidia top the list, followed by IBM, Intel and Microsoft, according to an analysis released Thursday.

Globally, Google and Nvidia also led the agentic patents list, but three Chinese universities also make the top 10, highlighting China's place as the chief U.S. rival in the field. In global rankings for generative AI, Google was also the leader -- but six of the top 10 global spots were held by Chinese companies or universities. Microsoft was No. 3, with Nvidia and IBM also in the top 10.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Major tech companies lobbying to salvage a tax deduction for research and development are warning they may pull back from high-profile pledges of new US investments if Congress doesn't fully reinstate the break.

Big tech companies have pledged more than $1.6 trillion in investments in the US since Donald Trump took office, promising to build factories and data centers in alignment with Trump's push to build in America. But industry representatives are signaling those promises will be imperiled if Congress doesn't fully reinstate the R&D tax deduction, which was pared back to help offset the massive cost of President Donald Trump's 2017 bill. At the time, it was estimated that limiting the provision would temporarily raise about $120 billion from 2018 to 2027.

"A lot of those announcements are predicated on an expectation the administration and Congress will partner together on reinstating those R&D provisions," said Jason Oxman, president of the Information Technology Industry Council, a trade group that includes among its members Amazon, Apple, Anthropic, Alphabet, and IBM. Lobbyists representing tech companies that announced US investments have made similar claims to congressional aides and lawmakers, according to people familiar with the conversations.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said the tech giant has used AI, and specifically AI agents, to replace the work of a couple hundred human resources workers. As a result, it has hired more programmers and salespeople, he said. From a report: Krishna's comments on Monday come as businesses sort through the workforce impacts of AI and AI agents, the independent bots that can autonomously perform tasks like analyze spreadsheets, conduct research and draft emails.

While there haven't yet been widespread layoffs or downsizing as a result of AI across the economy, some business leaders have said they are holding down head count as they investigate the use of the technology.

Meanwhile, the information-technology workforce has continued to shrink as AI weighs on hiring and some workers leave the field. For IBM, which this week hosts its annual Think conference in Boston, AI adoption has led it to boost hiring in some functions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Today, open-source software powers the world. It didn't have to be that way. The Open Invention Network's (OIN) origins are rooted in a turbulent era for open source. In the mid-2000s, Linux faced existential threats from copyright and patent litigation. Besides, the infamous SCO lawsuit and Microsoft's claims that Linux infringed on hundreds of its patents cast a shadow over the ecosystem. Business leaders became worried. While SCO's attacks petered out, patent trolls -- formally known as Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs) -- were increasing their attacks. So, open-source friendly industry giants, including IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat, and Sony, formed the Open Invention Network (OIN) to create a bulwark against patent threats targeting Linux and open-source technologies. Founded in 2005, the Open Invention Network (OIN) has evolved into a global community comprising over 4,000 participants, ranging from startups to multinational corporations, collectively holding more than three million patents and patent applications.

At the heart of OIN's legal strategy is a royalty-free cross-license agreement. Members agree not to assert their patents against the Linux System, creating a powerful network effect that shields open-source projects from litigation. As OIN CEO Keith Bergelt explained, this model enables "broad-based participation by ensuring patent risk mitigation in key open-source technologies, thereby facilitating open-source adoption." This approach worked then, and it continues to work today. [...] Over the years, OIN's mission has expanded beyond Linux to cover a range of open-source technologies. Its Linux System Definition, which determines the scope of patent cross-licensing, has grown from a few core packages to over 4,500 software components and platforms, including Android, Apache, Kubernetes, and ChromeOS. This expansion has been critical, as open source has become foundational across industries such as finance, automotive, telecommunications, and artificial intelligence.

IBM announced plans to invest $150 billion in the United States over the next five years, with more than $30 billion earmarked specifically for research and development of mainframes and quantum computing technology. The investment follows similar commitments from tech giants including Apple and Nvidia -- each pledging approximately $500 billion -- in the wake of President Trump's election and tariff threats.

"We have been focused on American jobs and manufacturing since our founding 114 years ago," said IBM CEO Arvind Krishna in a statement. The company currently manufactures its mainframe systems in upstate New York and plans to continue designing and assembling quantum computers domestically. The announcement comes amid challenging circumstances for IBM, which recently saw 15 government contracts shelved under the Trump administration's cost-cutting initiatives.

Further reading: IBM US Cuts May Run Deeper Than Feared - and the Jobs Are Heading To India;
IBM Now Has More Employees In India Than In the US (2017).

US government agencies and Fortune 500 companies are turning to AI to modernize mission-critical systems built on COBOL, a programming language dating back to the late 1950s. The US Social Security Administration plans a three-year, $1 billion AI-assisted upgrade of its legacy COBOL codebase [alternative source], according to Bloomberg.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has repeatedly stressed the need to overhaul government systems running on COBOL. As experienced programmers retire, organizations face growing challenges maintaining these systems that power everything from banking applications to pension disbursements. Engineers now use tools like ChatGPT and IBM's watsonX to interpret COBOL code, create documentation, and translate it to modern languages.

IBM is mandating that U.S. sales and Cloud employees return to the office at least three days a week, with work required at designated client sites, flagship offices, or sales hubs. According to The Register, some IBM employees argue that these policies "represent stealth layoffs because older (and presumably more highly compensated) employees tend to be less willing to uproot their lives, and families where applicable, than the 'early professional hires' IBM has been courting at some legal risk." From the report: In a staff memo seen by The Register, Adam Lawrence, general manager for IBM Americas, billed the return-to-office for most stateside sales personnel as a "return to client initiative."Citing how "remarkable it is when our teams work side by side" at IBM's swanky Manhattan flagship office, unveiled in September 2024, Lawrence added IBM is investing in an Austin, Texas, office to be occupied in 2026.

Whether US sales staff end up working in NYC, Austin, or some other authorized location, Lawrence told them to brace for -- deep breath -- IBM's "new model" of "effective talent acquisition, deployment, and career progression." We're told that model is "centered on client proximity for those dedicated to specific clients, and anchored on core IBM locations for those dedicated to territories or those in above-market leadership roles." The program requires most IBM US sales staff "to work at least three days a week from the client location where their assigned territory decision-makers work, a flagship office, or a sales hub." Those residing more than 50 miles from their assigned location will be offered relocation benefits to move. Sales hubs are an option only for those with more than one dedicated account.

[...] IBM's office policy change reached US Cloud employees in an April 10 memo from Alan Peacock, general manager of IBM Cloud. Peacock set a July 1, 2025, deadline for US Cloud employees to work from an office at least three days per week, with relocating workers given until October 1, 2025. The employee shuffling has been accompanied by rolling layoffs in the US, but hiring in India -- there are at least 10x as many open IBM jobs in India as there are in any other IBM location, according to the corporation's career listings. And earlier this week, IBM said it "is setting up a new software lab in Lucknow," India.

U.S. stock markets suffered their worst day since the Covid pandemic after Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs, triggering a global selloff and wiping out $470 billion in value from tech giants Apple and Nvidia. From a report: The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 6%, while the S&P 500 and the Dow dropped 4.8% and 3.9%, respectively. [...] Meanwhile, the US dollar hit a six-month low, going down at least 2.2% on Thursday morning compared with other major currencies and oil prices sank on fears of a global slowdown. Though the US stock market has been used to tumultuous mornings over the last few weeks, US stock futures -- an indication of the market's likely direction -- had plummeted after the announcement. Hours later, Japan's Nikkei index slumped to an eight-month low and was followed by falls in stock markets in London and across Europe.

Multiple major American business groups have spoken out against the tariffs, including the Business Roundtable, a consortium of leaders of major US companies including JP Morgan, Apple and IBM, which called on the White House to "swiftly reach agreements" and remove the tariffs. "Universal tariffs ranging from 10-50% run the risk of causing major harm to American manufacturers, workers, families and exporters," the Business Roundtable said in a statement. "Damage to the US economy will increase the longer the tariffs are in place and may be exacerbated by retaliatory measures."

The Register: Following our report last week on IBM's ongoing layoffs, current and former employees got in touch to confirm what many suspected: The US cuts run deeper than reported, and the jobs are heading to India. IBM's own careers site numbers back that up. On January 7, 2024, Big Blue listed just 173 open positions in India. On November 23, 2024, there were 2,946 jobs available in the nation. At the time of writing, the IT titan listed 3,866 roles in India.

American jobs listed for these three periods are 192, 376, and 333, respectively, though at least among those being laid off, there's doubt those roles will be filled with job seekers in the States. A current IBMer who won't be there much longer said that after being told to teach recently hired workers in India "everything I know," the reward was a resource action, or RA -- Big Blue's euphemism for a layoff. After receiving an RA notification, employees typically have a set period of time to apply for open roles elsewhere in the mega-corporation. But just because there are open positions listed in the US doesn't mean IBM is making much of an effort to fill them, we are told.

Besides administering standardized pre-college tests, America's nonprofit College Board designs college-level classes that high school students can take. But now they're also crafting courses "not just with higher education at the table, but industry partners such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the technology giant IBM," reports Education Week.

"The organization hopes the effort will make high school content more meaningful to students by connecting it to in-demand job skills." It believes the approach may entice a new kind of AP student: those who may not be immediately college-bound.... The first two classes developed through this career-driven model — dubbed AP Career Kickstart — focus on cybersecurity and business principles/personal finance, two fast-growing areas in the workforce." Students who enroll in the courses and excel on a capstone assessment could earn college credit in high school, just as they have for years with traditional AP courses in subjects like chemistry and literature. However, the College Board also believes that students could use success in the courses as a selling point with potential employers... Both the business and cybersecurity courses could also help fulfill state high school graduation requirements for computer science education...

The cybersecurity course is being piloted in 200 schools this school year and is expected to expand to 800 schools next school year... [T]he College Board is planning to invest heavily in training K-12 teachers to lead the cybersecurity course.
IBM's director of technology, data and AI called the effort "a really good way for corporations and companies to help shape the curriculum and the future workforce" while "letting them know what we're looking for." In the article the associate superintendent for teaching at a Chicago-area high school district calls the College Board's move a clear signal that "career-focused learning is rigorous, it's valuable, and it deserves the same recognition as traditional academic pathways."

Also interesting is why the College Board says they're doing it: The effort may also help the College Board — founded more than a century ago — maintain AP's prominence as artificial intelligence tools that can already ace nearly every existing AP test on an ever-greater share of job tasks once performed by humans. "High schools had a crisis of relevance far before AI," David Coleman, the CEO of the College Board, said in a wide-ranging interview with EdWeek last month. "How do we make high school relevant, engaging, and purposeful? Bluntly, it takes [the] next generation of coursework. We are reconsidering the kinds of courses we offer...."

"It's not a pivot because it's not to the exclusion of higher ed," Coleman said. "What we are doing is giving employers an equal voice."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader theodp for sharing the article.

This week the "Old Vintage Computing Research" blog published a 21,000-word exploration of the DEC PDP-11, the 16-bit minicomputer sold by Digital Equipment Corporation. Slashdot reader AndrewZX calls the blog post "an excellent deep dive" into the machine's history and capabilities "and the classic Venix UNIX that it ran." The blogger still owns a working 1984 DEC Professional 380, "a tank of a machine, a reasonably powerful workstation, and the most practical PDP-adjacent thing you can actually slap on a (large) desk."

But more importantly, "It runs PRO/VENIX, the only official DEC Unix option for the Pros." In that specific market it was almost certainly the earliest such licensed Unix (in 1983) and primarily competed against XENIX, Microsoft's dominant "small Unix," which first emerged for XT-class systems as SCO XENIX in 1984. You'd wonder how rogue processes could be prevented from stomping on each other in such systems when neither the Intel 8086/8088 nor the IBM PC nor the PC/XT had a memory management unit, and the answer was not to try and just hope for the best. It was for this reason that IBM's own Unix variant PC/IX, developed by Interactive Systems Corporation under contract as their intended AT&T killer, was multitasking but single-user since in such an architecture there could be no meaningful security guarantees...

One of Venix's interesting little idiosyncrasies, seen in all three Pro versions, was the SUPER> prompt when you've logged on as root (there is also a MAINT> prompt when you're single-user...

Although Bill Gates had been their biggest nemesis early on, most of the little Unices that flourished in the 1980s and early 90s met their collective demise at the hands of another man: Linus Torvalds. The proliferation of free Unix alternatives like Linux on commodity PC hardware caused the bottom to fall out of the commercial Unix market.
The blogger even found a 1989 log for the computer's one and only guest login session — which seems to consist entirely of someone named tom trying to exit vi.

But the most touching part of the article comes when the author discovers a file named /thankyou that they're certain didn't come with the original Venix. It's an ASCII drawing of a smiling face, under the words "THANK YOU FOR RESCUING ME".

"It's among the last files created on the system before it came into my possession..."

It's all a fun look back to a time when advances in semiconductor density meant microcomputers could do nearly as much as the more expensive minicomputers (while taking up less space) — leaving corporations pondering the new world that was coming: As far back as 1974, an internal skunkworks unit had presented management with two small systems prototypes described as a PDP-8 in a VT50 terminal and a portable PDP-11 chassis.

Engineers were intrigued but sales staff felt these smaller versions would cut into their traditional product lines, and [DEC president Ken] Olsen duly cancelled the project, famously observing no one would want a computer in their home.

IBM is laying off thousands of employees across the United States, with approximately 25% of staff at its Cloud Classic operation affected, The Register reports, citing a source. "Concrete numbers are being kept private," a source told the publication. "It is in the thousands."

Staff reductions have occurred in Raleigh, North Carolina; New York; Dallas, Texas; and California, the report said. Affected departments include consulting, corporate social responsibility, cloud infrastructure, sales, and internal systems teams. The report adds: With regard to IBM Cloud Classic -- the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) outfit offering built on IBM's 2013 acquisition of SoftLayer -- another source told us: "It's a resource action. I don't know how many people are in IaaS classic. They don't typically make that information easy to find. What I can say is that they have been making a lot of changes to shift employment to India as much as possible."

A third source, newly let go by Big Blue, said it was fair to characterize this a layoff. "Everyone I know that was affected, myself included, was simply offered a separation agreement," this individual said, estimating that 10 percent of the Cloud group (which is not the same as Cloud Classic) has been let go.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna has publicly disagreed with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's prediction that AI will write 90% of code within 3-6 months, estimating instead that only "20-30% of code could get written by AI."

"Are there some really simple use cases? Yes, but there's an equally complicated number of ones where it's going to be zero," Krishna said during an onstage interview at SXSW. He argued AI will boost programmer productivity rather than eliminate jobs. "If you can do 30% more code with the same number of people, are you going to get more code written or less?" he asked. "History has shown that the most productive company gains market share, and then you can produce more products."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Security researchers are warning that data exposed to the internet, even for a moment, can linger in online generative AI chatbots like Microsoft Copilot long after the data is made private. Thousands of once-public GitHub repositories from some of the world's biggest companies are affected, including Microsoft's, according to new findings from Lasso, an Israeli cybersecurity company focused on emerging generative AI threats.

Lasso co-founder Ophir Dror told TechCrunch that the company found content from its own GitHub repository appearing in Copilot because it had been indexed and cached by Microsoft's Bing search engine. Dror said the repository, which had been mistakenly made public for a brief period, had since been set to private, and accessing it on GitHub returned a "page not found" error. "On Copilot, surprisingly enough, we found one of our own private repositories," said Dror. "If I was to browse the web, I wouldn't see this data. But anyone in the world could ask Copilot the right question and get this data."

After it realized that any data on GitHub, even briefly, could be potentially exposed by tools like Copilot, Lasso investigated further. Lasso extracted a list of repositories that were public at any point in 2024 and identified the repositories that had since been deleted or set to private. Using Bing's caching mechanism, the company found more than 20,000 since-private GitHub repositories still had data accessible through Copilot, affecting more than 16,000 organizations. Lasso told TechCrunch ahead of publishing its research that affected organizations include Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, PayPal, Tencent, and Microsoft. [...] For some affected companies, Copilot could be prompted to return confidential GitHub archives that contain intellectual property, sensitive corporate data, access keys, and tokens, the company said.

Major corporations are reshaping their workforces around AI with Salesforce announcing it will not hire software engineers in 2025 and other companies laying off thousands while shifting focus to AI-specific roles. Duolingo has laid off thousands after implementing ChatGPT-4, UPS cut 4,000 jobs in its largest layoff in 116 years, and IBM paused hiring for back-office and HR positions that AI can now handle.

Amazon is redirecting staff from Alexa to AI areas, while Intuit is laying off 10% of its non-AI workforce. Cisco plans to cut 7% of employees in its second round of job cuts this year as it prioritizes AI and cybersecurity. Salesforce reports its AI platform is boosting software engineering productivity by 30%. SAP is restructuring 8,000 positions to focus on AI-driven business areas. The trend extends globally, with Microsoft relocating thousands during an "exodus" from China, while entry-level jobs on Wall Street are becoming obsolete.

A study found that 3 out of 10 companies replaced workers with AI last year, with over one-third of firms using AI likely to automate more roles in 2025. Job listings at large privately-held AI companies have dropped 14.2% over six months, JP Morgan wrote in a note seen by Slashdot. The transformation is creating new opportunities, with rising demand for AI skills in job postings. A survey of more than 1,200 users found nearly two-thirds of young professionals use AI tools at work, with 93% not worried about job threats, as business leaders view Generation Z's digital skills as beneficial for leveraging AI.