July 7, 2025

Producing tangible business benefits from modern iPaaS solutions

When a historic UK-based retailer set out to modernize its IT environment, it was wrestling with systems that had grown organically for more than 175 years. Prior digital transformation efforts had resulted in a patchwork of hundreds of integration flows spanning cloud, on-premises systems, and third-party vendors, all communicating across multiple protocols.  The company needed…

Technology

The Download: how the military is using AI, and AI’s climate promises

April 11, 2025
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military For much of last year, US Marines conducting training exercises in the waters off South Korea, the Philippines, India, and Indonesia were also…

Love or immortality: A short story

April 11, 2025
1. Sophie and Martin are at the 2012 Gordon Research Conference on the Biology of Aging in Ventura, California. It is a foggy February weekend. Both are disappointed about how little sun there is on the California beach. They are two graduate students—Sophie in her sixth and final year, Martin in his fourth—who have traveled…

How AI is interacting with our creative human processes

April 11, 2025
In 2021, 20 years after the death of her older sister, Vauhini Vara was still unable to tell the story of her loss. “I wondered,” she writes in Searches, her new collection of essays on AI technology, “if Sam Altman’s machine could do it for me.” So she tried ChatGPT. But as it expanded on…

Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military

April 11, 2025
For much of last year, about 2,500 US service members from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit sailed aboard three ships throughout the Pacific, conducting training exercises in the waters off South Korea, the Philippines, India, and Indonesia. At the same time, onboard the ships, an experiment was unfolding: The Marines in the unit responsible for…

Why the climate promises of AI sound a lot like carbon offsets 

April 11, 2025
The International Energy Agency states in a new report that AI could eventually reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, possibly by much more than the boom in energy-guzzling data center development pushes them up. The finding echoes a point that prominent figures in the AI sector have made as well to justify, at least implicitly, the gigawatts’ worth…

The US Secretary of Education referred to AI as ‘A1,’ like the steak sauce

April 10, 2025
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon attended the ASU+GSV Summit this week, where experts in education and technology gathered to discuss how AI will impact learning. While speaking on a panel about AI in the workforce, McMahon repeatedly referred to AI as “A1,” like the steak sauce. “You know, AI development — I mean, how […]

YouTube rolls out a free AI music-making tool for creators

April 10, 2025
YouTube is launching a new feature that will allow creators to use AI technology to generate instrumental backing music that can be added to their videos. In an update published to its Creator Insider channel this week, the company shared that it’s beginning to roll out an update to its Creator Music marketplace that will […]

The Download: AI co-creativity, and what Trump’s tariffs mean for batteries

April 10, 2025
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How AI can help supercharge creativity Existing generative tools can automate a striking range of creative tasks and offer near-instant gratification—but at what cost? Some artists and researchers fear that such technology could…

How AI can help supercharge creativity

April 10, 2025
Sometimes Lizzie Wilson shows up to a rave with her AI sidekick.  One weeknight this past February, Wilson plugged her laptop into a projector that threw her screen onto the wall of a low-ceilinged loft space in East London. A small crowd shuffled in the glow of dim pink lights. Wilson sat down and started…

Tariffs are bad news for batteries

April 9, 2025
Update: Since this story was first published in The Spark, our weekly climate newsletter, the White House announced that most reciprocal tariffs would be paused for 90 days. That pause does not apply to China, which will see an increased tariff rate of 125%. Today, new tariffs go into effect for goods imported into the…