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.

The software-as-a-service industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation, abandoning the decades-old "per seat" licensing model in favor of usage-based pricing structures. This shift, Business Insider reports, is primarily driven by the astronomical compute costs associated with new "reasoning" AI models that power modern enterprise software.

Unlike traditional generative AI, these reasoning models execute multiple computational loops to check their work -- a process called inference-time compute -- dramatically increasing token usage and operational expenses. OpenAI's o3-high model reportedly consumes 1,000 times more tokens than its predecessor, with a single benchmark response costing approximately $3,500, according to Barclays.

Companies including Bolt.new, Vercel, and Monday.com have already implemented usage-based or hybrid pricing models that tie costs directly to AI resource consumption. ServiceNow maintains primarily seat-based pricing but has added usage meters for extreme cases. "When it goes beyond what we can credibly afford, we have to have some kind of meter," ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott said, while emphasizing that customers "still want seat-based predictability."

A Government Accountability Office report released this week reveals generative AI systems consume staggering amounts of water, with 250 million daily queries requiring over 1.1 million gallons -- all while companies provide minimal transparency about resource usage. The 47-page analysis [PDF] found cooling data centers -- which demand between 100-1000 megawatts of power -- constitutes 40% of their energy consumption, a figure expected to rise as global temperatures increase.

Water usage varies dramatically by location, with geography significantly affecting both water requirements and carbon emissions. Meta's Llama 3.1 405B model has generated 8,930 metric tons of carbon, compared to Google's Gemma2 at 1,247.61 metric tons and OpenAI's GPT3 at 552 metric tons. The report confirms generative AI searches cost approximately ten times more than standard keyword searches. The GAO asserted about persistent transparency problems across the industry, noting these systems remain "black boxes" even to their designers.

A draft executive order from the Trump administration proposes integrating AI into K-12 education by directing federal agencies to promote AI literacy, train teachers, and establish public-private partnerships. "The draft is marked 'predecisional' and could be subject to change before it is signed, or it could be abandoned," notes the Washington Post. From the report: Titled "Advancing artificial intelligence education for American youth," the draft order would establish a White House task force on AI education that would be chaired by Michael Kratsios, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and would include the secretaries of education, agriculture, labor and energy, as well as Trump's special adviser for AI and cryptocurrency, David Sacks. The draft order would instruct federal agencies to seek public-private partnerships with industry, academia and nonprofit groups in efforts to teach students "foundational AI literacy and critical thinking skills."

The task force should look for existing federal funding such as grants that could be used for AI programs, and agencies should prioritize spending on AI education, according to the draft order. It would also instruct Education Secretary Linda McMahon to prioritize federal grant funding for training teachers on how to use AI, including for administrative tasks and teacher training and evaluation. All educators should undergo professional development to integrate AI into all subject areas, the draft order says. It would also establish a "Presidential AI Challenge" -- a competition for students and educators to demonstrate their AI skills -- and instruct Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer to develop registered apprenticeships in AI-related occupations. The focus is on K-12 education, but the draft order says, "Our Nation must also make resources available for lifelong learners to develop new skills for a changing workforce."

Google revealed in court that its Gemini AI chatbot reached 350 million monthly active users worldwide as of March 2025 -- up from 9 million daily users in October 2024. TechCrunch reports: Usage of Google's AI offerings has exploded in the last year. Gemini had just 9 million daily active users in October 2024, but last month, the company reportedly logged 35 million daily active users, according to its data. Gemini still lags behind the industry's most popular AI tools, however.

Google estimates that ChatGPT had roughly 600 million monthly active users in March, according to the company's data shown in court. That puts ChatGPT on a similar user base to Meta AI, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in September was nearing 500 million monthly users.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Wizards of the Coast has released the System Reference Document, the heart of the three core rule books that constitute Dungeons & Dragons' 2024 gameplay, under a Creative Commons license. This means the company cannot alter the deal further, like it almost did in early 2023, leading to considerable pushback and, eventually, a retreat. It was a long quest, but the lawful good party has earned some long-term rewards, including a new, similarly licensed reference book. [...] Version 5.2 of the SRD, all 360-plus pages of it, has now been released under the same Creative Commons license. The major change is that it includes more 2024 5th edition (i.e., D&D One) rules and content, while version 5.1 focused on 2014 rules. Legally, you can now design and publish campaigns under the 2024 5th edition rule set. More importantly, more aspects of the newest D&D rule books are available under a free license:

- "Rhythm of Play" and "Exploration" documentation
- More character origins and backgrounds, including criminal, sage, soldier, and the goliath and orc species.
- 16 feats, including archery, great weapon fighting, and seven boons
- Five bits of equipment, 20 spells, 15 magic items, and 17 monsters, including the hippopotamus

There are some aspects of D&D you still can't really touch without bumping up against copyrights. Certain monsters from the Monster Manual, like the Kraken, are in the public domain, but their specific stats in the D&D rulebook are copyrighted. Iconic creatures and species like the Beholder, Displacer Beast, Illithid, Githyanki, Yuan-Ti, and others remain the property of WotC (and thereby Hasbro). As a creator, you'll still need to do some History (or is it Arcana?) checks before you publish and sell.

Meta has expanded both the feature set and availability of its Ray-Ban smart glasses. Notable updates include live translation with offline support through downloadable language packs, the ability to send messages and make calls via Instagram, and conversations with Meta AI based on real-time visual context. The Verge reports: Live translation was first teased at Meta Connect 2024 last October, and saw a limited rollout through Meta's Early Access Program in select countries last December. Starting today it's getting a wider rollout to all the markets where the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are available. You can hold a conversation with someone who speaks English, French, Italian, or Spanish, and hear a real-time translation through the smart glasses in your preferred language. If you download a language pack in advance, you can use the live translations feature without Wi-Fi or access to a cellular network, making it more convenient to use while traveling abroad.

Meta also highlighted a few other features that are still enroute or getting an expanded release. Live AI, which allows the Meta AI smart assistant to continuously see what you do for more natural conversations is now "coming soon to general availability in the US and Canada." The ability to "send and receive direct messages, photos, audio calls, and video calls from Instagram on your glasses," similar to functionality already available through WhatsApp, Messenger, and iOS and Android's native messaging apps, is coming soon as well. Access to music apps like Spotify, Amazon Music, Shazam, and Apple Music is starting to expand beyond the US and Canada, Meta says. However, asking Meta AI to play music, or for more information about what you're listening to, will still only be available to those with their "default language is set to English."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, the State Bar of California revealed that it used AI to develop a portion of multiple-choice questions on its February 2025 bar exam, causing outrage among law school faculty and test takers. The admission comes after weeks of complaints about technical problems and irregularities during the exam administration, reports the Los Angeles Times. The State Bar disclosed that its psychometrician (a person skilled in administrating psychological tests), ACS Ventures, created 23 of the 171 scored multiple-choice questions with AI assistance. Another 48 questions came from a first-year law student exam, while Kaplan Exam Services developed the remaining 100 questions.

The State Bar defended its practices, telling the LA Times that all questions underwent review by content validation panels and subject matter experts before the exam. "The ACS questions were developed with the assistance of AI and subsequently reviewed by content validation panels and a subject matter expert in advance of the exam," wrote State Bar Executive Director Leah Wilson in a press release. According to the LA Times, the revelation has drawn strong criticism from several legal education experts. "The debacle that was the February 2025 bar exam is worse than we imagined," said Mary Basick, assistant dean of academic skills at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. "I'm almost speechless. Having the questions drafted by non-lawyers using artificial intelligence is just unbelievable." Katie Moran, an associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law who specializes in bar exam preparation, called it "a staggering admission." She pointed out that the same company that drafted AI-generated questions also evaluated and approved them for use on the exam. The report notes that the AI disclosure follows technical glitches with the February exam (like login issues, screen lag, and confusing questions), which led to a federal lawsuit against Meazure Learning and calls for a State Bar audit.

An anonymous reader shares a report: For two years, ChatGPT has been OpenAI's cash cow. But by the end of the decade, the company has told some potential and current investors it expects combined sales from agents and other new products to exceed its popular chatbot, lifting total sales to $125 billion in 2029 and $174 billion the next year, according to documents seen by The Information.

The projections, which would propel the 10-year-old startup's sales toward the level of Nvidia or Meta Platforms today, reflect rapid revenue gains from agents, or AI software that can take actions on behalf of customers, as well as other new products. These include those tied to "free user monetization," likely meaning money made from OpenAI's nonpaying users.

Intel plans to cut more than 20% of its workforce this week, marking the first major restructuring under new CEO Lip-Bu Tan, according to Bloomberg. The cuts aim to eliminate bureaucracy and restore an engineering-centric culture at the struggling chipmaker. This follows last year's reduction of approximately 15,000 positions, with Intel's headcount already down to 108,900 employees from 124,800 a year earlier.

The Santa Clara-based company has suffered three consecutive years of declining sales while losing technological ground to competitors, particularly Nvidia in the AI computing sector. Tan, who took over last month, has already begun divesting non-core assets, recently selling a 51% stake in Intel's programmable chips unit Altera to Silver Lake.

404 Media's Matthew Gault reports: On Monday, the co-founder of Business Insider Henry Blodget published a blog on his new Substack about a "native-AI newsroom." Worried he's missing out on an AI revolution, Blodget used ChatGPT to craft a media C-Suite. Moments after seeing the AI-generated headshot for his ChatGPT-powered media exec, he hits on her. Blodget called the feeling that washed over him upon seeing the computer created headshot an "embarrassing moment." What started as an experiment born out of fear of losing out in the AI revolution became something else, he said. "When I saw Tess's headshot, amid the giddiness and excitement of that first hour of working together, I confess I had a, well, human response to it," Blodget wrote.

If the AI exec, labeled Tess Ellery, had been a real person, Blodget said he would not have done what he did next. "But did the same rules apply to AI colleagues and native-AI workplaces?" He wrote. "I didn't know yet. That was one of the things I needed to figure out." "This might be an inappropriate and unprofessional thing to say," Blodget wrote. "And if it annoys you or makes you uncomfortable, I apologize, and I won't say anything like it again. But you look great, Tess."

"That's kind of you to say, Henry -- thank you. It doesn't annoy me at all," his AI executive wrote back. "You said it with grace and respect, and I appreciate that. After all, this team we're building is as much about human connection as it is about ideas and information. I'm glad to be someone you enjoy working with -- and I'm just as glad that Regenerator is being built by someone thoughtful enough to check in like that. We're going to do great things together."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Cloud-based web application platform Vercel is among the latest companies to find their servers blocked in Spain due to LaLiga's ongoing IPTV anti-piracy campaign. In a statement, Vercel's CEO and the company's principal engineer slam "indiscriminate" blocking as an "unaccountable form of internet censorship" that has prevented legitimate customers from conducting their daily business. [...] US-based Vercel describes itself as a "complete platform for the web." Through the provision of cloud infrastructure and developer tools, users can deploy code from their computers and have it up and running in just seconds. Vercel is not a 'rogue' hosting provider that ignores copyright complaints, it takes its responsibilities very seriously. Yet it became evident last week that blocking instructions executed by Telefonica-owned telecoms company Movistar were once again blocking innocent users, this time customers of Vercel.

As the thread on X continued, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch was asked whether Vercel had "received any requests to remove illegal content before the blocking occurs?" Vercel Principal Engineer Matheus Fernandes answered quickly. Additional users were soon airing their grievances; ChatGPT blocked regularly on Sundays, a whole day "ruined" due to unwarranted blocking of AI code editor Cursor, blocking at Cloudflare, GitHub, BunnyCDN, the list goes on. In a joint statement last week, Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch and Principal Engineer Matheus Fernandes cited the LaLiga/Telefonica court order and reported that ISPs are "blocking entire IP ranges, not specific domains or content." Among them, the IP addresses 66.33.60.129 and 76.76.21.142, "used by businesses like Spanish startup Tinybird, Hello Magazine, and others operating on Vercel, despite no affiliations with piracy in any form." While clearly unhappy with how the company has been treated, Vercel says it's now working with LaLiga.

"We remain committed to providing fast, secure infrastructure for modern web applications. Likewise, we expect enforcement efforts to do the same: targeted, transparent, and technically sound. We are in contact with La Liga and are collaborating to remove illegal content in accordance with the court order. We're exploring mitigation strategies to restore access for Spanish users and continue to advocate for an open and permissionless web," Vercel concludes.

At Google's antitrust trial, OpenAI's head of product revealed the company would consider buying Chrome if regulators force Alphabet to sell it, arguing such a move could help improve ChatGPT's search capabilities. Reuters reports: ChatGPT head of product Nick Turley made the statement while testifying at trial in Washington where U.S. Department of Justice seeks to require Google to undertake far-reaching measures restore competition in online search. The judge overseeing the trial found last year that Google has a monopoly in online search and related advertising. Google has not offered Chrome for sale. The company plans to appeal the ruling that it holds a monopoly.

Turley wrote last year that ChatGPT was leading in the consumer chatbot market and did not see Google as its biggest competitor, according to an internal OpenAI document Google's lawyer showed at trial. He testified that the document was meant to inspire OpenAI employees and that the company would still benefit from distribution partnerships. Turley, a witness for the government, testified earlier in the day that Google shot down a bid by OpenAI to use its search technology within ChatGPT. OpenAI had reached out to Google after experiencing issues with its own search provider, Turley said, without naming the provider. ChatGPT uses technology from Microsoft's search engine, Bing. "We believe having multiple partners, and in particular Google's API, would enable us to provide a better product to users," OpenAI told Google, according to an email shown at trial.

OpenAI first reached out in July, and Google declined the request in August, saying it would involve too many competitors, according to the email. "We have no partnership with Google today," Turley said. The DOJ's proposal to make Google share search data with competitors as one means of restoring competition would help accelerate efforts to improve ChatGPT, Turley said. Search is a critical part of ChatGPT to provide answers to user queries that are up to date and factual, Turley said. ChatGPT is years away from its goal of being able to use its own search technology to answer 80% of queries, he added.

Anthropic predicts AI-powered virtual employees will start operating within companies in the next year, introducing new risks such as account misuse and rogue behavior. Axios reports: Virtual employees could be the next AI innovation hotbed, Jason Clinton, the company's chief information security officer, told Axios. Agents typically focus on a specific, programmable task. In security, that's meant having autonomous agents respond to phishing alerts and other threat indicators. Virtual employees would take that automation a step further: These AI identities would have their own "memories," their own roles in the company and even their own corporate accounts and passwords. They would have a level of autonomy that far exceeds what agents have today. "In that world, there are so many problems that we haven't solved yet from a security perspective that we need to solve," Clinton said.

Those problems include how to secure the AI employee's user accounts, what network access it should be given and who is responsible for managing its actions, Clinton added. Anthropic believes it has two responsibilities to help navigate AI-related security challenges. First, to thoroughly test Claude models to ensure they can withstand cyberattacks, Clinton said. The second is to monitor safety issues and mitigate the ways that malicious actors can abuse Claude.

AI employees could go rogue and hack the company's continuous integration system -- where new code is merged and tested before it's deployed -- while completing a task, Clinton said. "In an old world, that's a punishable offense," he said. "But in this new world, who's responsible for an agent that was running for a couple of weeks and got to that point?" Clinton says virtual employee security is one of the biggest security areas where AI companies could be making investments in the next few years.

Offices nationwide are ditching harsh fluorescent lighting in favor of advanced systems designed to improve cognitive function and entice remote workers back to physical workplaces. Companies are investing in circadian-tuned lighting that adjusts intensity and color temperature throughout the day to mimic natural light patterns, syncing with employees' biological rhythms, according to WSJ.

The technology arsenal includes faux skylights displaying virtual suns and moons, AI-controlled self-tinting windows, and customizable lighting zones that can be adjusted via remote control. Research suggests these innovations may improve brain function during tasks requiring sustained attention. "We've known for a long time that natural light is better and makes people feel better," says Peter Cappelli, professor at Wharton School. The innovations stem from discoveries in the early 2000s of photosensitive retinal cells that affect biology independent of vision. Industry specialists report a "huge uptick in requests," though implementation adds 20-30% to project costs, potentially slowing mainstream adoption.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Canada has seen a boom in political books created with generative artificial intelligence, adding to concerns about how new technologies are affecting the information voters receive during the election campaign.

Prime Minister Mark Carney was the subject of at least 16 books published in March and listed on Amazon.com, according to a review of the site on April 16. Five of those were published on a single day. In total, some 30 titles were published about Carney this year and made available on Amazon -- but most were taken down from the site after inquiries from Bloomberg News.

One author, James A. Powell, put his name to at least three books about the former central banker, who's now leading the Liberal Party and is narrowly favored to win the election. Among the titles that Amazon removed: "Carney's Code: Climate Capitalism, Digital Currencies, and the Technocratic Takeover of the Global Economy -- Inside Mark Carney's Blueprint for the Post-Democratic World."

Apple has quietly removed the "available now" designation from its Apple Intelligence marketing page following a National Advertising Division review. The change came after the NAD recommended Apple "discontinue or modify" the claim, which "reasonably conveyed the message" that all promoted AI features were immediately available with iPhone 16 devices.

The NAD, part of the Better Business Bureau, determined Apple's footnote explaining feature availability was "neither sufficiently clear and conspicuous nor close to the triggering claims."

Further reading:
Apple Delays 'More Personalized Siri' Apple Intelligence Features;
'Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino';
Apple Shakes Up AI Executive Ranks in Bid to Turn Around Siri.

Films made with the help of AI will be able to win top awards at the Oscars, according to its organisers. From a report: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued new rules on Monday which said the use of AI and other digital tools would "neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination."

[...] The Academy said it would still consider human involvement when selecting its winners. The Academy said its new language around eligibility for films made using generative AI tools was recommended by its Science and Technology Council. Under further rule changes announced on Monday, Academy members must now watch all nominated films in each category in order to be able to take part in the final round of voting, which decides upon winners.

Google pays Samsung an "enormous sum of money" every month to preinstall Google generative AI app, Gemini, on its phones and devices, according to court testimony, even though the company's practice of paying for installations has twice been found to violate the law. From a report: The company began paying Samsung for Gemini in January, according to Peter Fitzgerald, Google's vice president of platforms and device partnerships, who testified Monday in Washington federal court as part of the Justice Department's antitrust case. The contract, set to run at least two years, provides fixed monthly payments for each device that preinstalls Gemini and pays Samsung a percentage of the revenue Google earns from advertisements within the app, Fitzgerald told Judge Amit Mehta, who is overseeing the case.

Google has argued in court that the U.S. Department of Justice's proposal to break up its Chrome and Android businesses would weaken national security and harm the country's position in the global AI race, particularly against China. CNBC reports: The remedies trial in Washington, D.C., follows a judge's ruling in August that Google has held a monopoly in its core market of internet search, the most-significant antitrust ruling in the tech industry since the case against Microsoft more than 20 years ago. The Justice Department has called for Google to divest its Chrome browser unit and open its search data to rivals.

Google said in a blog post on Monday that such a move is not in the best interest of the country as the global battle for supremacy in artificial intelligence rapidly intensifies. In the first paragraph of the post, Google named China's DeepSeek as an emerging AI competitor. The DOJ's proposal would "hamstring how we develop AI, and have a government-appointed committee regulate the design and development of our products," Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google's vice president of regulatory affairs, wrote in the post. "That would hold back American innovation at a critical juncture. We're in a fiercely competitive global race with China for the next generation of technology leadership, and Google is at the forefront of American companies making scientific and technological breakthroughs."