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AI startups are poised to disrupt the $300 billion business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, as advances in language models and voice technology enable automation of tasks traditionally handled by human workers. The BPO market, which reached $300 billion in 2024 and is projected to hit $525 billion by 2030, faces mounting pressure from AI companies offering faster, more scalable alternatives to manual processing of customer support, IT services and financial claims, venture capital firm a16z wrote in a thesis post. Early AI implementations have shown promising results, with customer service startup Decagon reporting 80% resolution rates and improved satisfaction scores. In healthcare, AI company Juniper said its clients saw 80% fewer insurance claim denials and 50% faster processing times. Major BPO providers are responding to the threat, with Wipro reporting a 140% increase in AI adoption across projects and Infosys deploying over 100 AI agents. However, industry analysts say BPOs face structural challenges in transitioning from their labor-based business model to AI-first operations. The shift threatens traditional BPO companies like Cognizant, Infosys and Wipro, which reported revenues between $10-20 billion in their latest fiscal years.

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The Cupola continues to offer the best views in the universe

It has been 15 years since the ultimate selfie booth, the Cupola, was attached to the International Space Station (ISS).…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The U.K. government wants to make a hard pivot into boosting its economy and industry with AI, and as part of that, it's pivoting an institution that it founded a little over a year ago for a very different purpose. Today the Department of Science, Industry and Technology announced that it would be renaming the AI Safety Institute to the "AI Security Institute." (Same first letters: same URL.) With that, the body will shift from primarily exploring areas like existential risk and bias in large language models, to a focus on cybersecurity, specifically "strengthening protections against the risks AI poses to national security and crime." Alongside this, the government also announced a new partnership with Anthropic. No firm services were announced but the MOU indicates the two will "explore" using Anthropic's AI assistant Claude in public services; and Anthropic will aim to contribute to work in scientific research and economic modeling. And at the AI Security Institute, it will provide tools to evaluate AI capabilities in the context of identifying security risks. [...] Anthropic is the only company being announced today -- coinciding with a week of AI activities in Munich and Paris -- but it's not the only one that is working with the government. A series of new tools that were unveiled in January were all powered by OpenAI. (At the time, Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for Technology, said that the government planned to work with various foundational AI companies, and that is what the Anthropic deal is proving out.) "The changes I'm announcing today represent the logical next step in how we approach responsible AI development -- helping us to unleash AI and grow the economy as part of our Plan for Change," Kyle said in a statement. "The work of the AI Security Institute won't change, but this renewed focus will ensure our citizens -- and those of our allies -- are protected from those who would look to use AI against our institutions, democratic values, and way of life." "The Institute's focus from the start has been on security and we've built a team of scientists focused on evaluating serious risks to the public," added Ian Hogarth, who remains the chair of the institute. "Our new criminal misuse team and deepening partnership with the national security community mark the next stage of tackling those risks."

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... weeks after US titan was outvoted by other members to let Microsoft join the Euro cloud trade association

Amazon's Web Services wing has exited the board of CISPE (cloud infrastructure service providers in Europe), following a recent update to the Articles of Association that means only corporations based in the region can serve.…

Officer says mistakenly published police details were shared 'a considerable amount of times'

Two suspected New IRA members were arrested on Tuesday and charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 after they were found in possession of spreadsheets containing details of staff that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) mistakenly published online.…

Union estimates up to 1,600 job on the line

Vodafone and Three have detailed the exec line-up taking the reins of post-merger UK biz, yet there is no word on when the deal will close, what name it will take, or how many staff face the chop to cut role duplication.…

Alibaba will partner with Apple to support AI features on iPhones in China, sending Alibaba's shares surging over 9% to a three-year high. Reuters reports: "They talked to a number of companies in China. In the end they chose to do business with us. They want to use our AI to power their phones. We feel extremely honored to do business with a great company like Apple," Tsai said at the World Government Summit in Dubai. Apple continues to work with Baidu on AI features for iPhones in China, The Information reported on Thursday, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter. While Apple's phones outside China utilize a combination of its proprietary Apple Intelligence and OpenAI's ChatGPT, Tsai did not specify whether the Alibaba partnership would follow a similar model. In China, consumer-facing AI products require regulatory approval, and The Information reported earlier that both Alibaba and Apple have already submitted materials to authorities. "Instead of viewing the Alibaba-Apple partnership through the lens of China's AI strength, the partnership is mainly a recognition of Alibaba's AI capability," said Lian Jye Su, a chief analyst at tech research firm Omdia.

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Germany's Federal Cartel Office voices concerns iPhone maker may be breaking competition law

Apple is feeling the heat over its acclaimed iPhone privacy policy after a German regulator's review of iOS tracking consent alleged that the tech giant exempted itself from the rules it enforces on third-party developers.…

Outsourcing is not supposed to involve taking clients’ hardware out of their building to your house

On Call If it's Friday, it's time for another edition of On Call, our reader contributed column in which you tell tales of crimes against tech support.…

A new study reveals that widely used pink wildfire suppressants contain high levels of toxic heavy metals like cadmium, arsenic, and chromium, with concentrations up to 3,000 times above drinking water limits. While the government and chemical makers have long concealed up to 20% of the suppressants' ingredients as "trade secrets," researchers have confirmed their role in environmental pollution, raising concerns over their extensive use in residential areas. The Guardian reports: The suppressants are a mix of water, fertilizer, and undisclosed ingredients, while the pink color comes from added dye to show firefighters where it has been sprayed. Metals are likely used as anti-corrosion agents to prevent the plane's tankers from disintegrating, they authors wrote. The mix works by coating vegetation and lowering the amount of oxygen that could fuel the fire. The substance was dropped by as many as 25 aircraft daily to contain the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, and photos from it vividly convey the trade off, showing homes and property covered in hot pink suppression. The metal levels in the suppressants meet federal guidelines and the authors were initially most worried about environmental contamination, but the heavy use in residential areas this year raises a new set of concerns, Daniel McCurry, one of the study's co-authors, told the Guardian. "Are the hazardous waste thresholds the appropriate bar for these to clear, or, if they're being used in a massive scale in populated neighborhoods, do we need to get stricter on permissible concentrations of toxic compounds?" McCurry asked. [...] The producer of one of the suppressants has said a new generation of the product is "greener," McCurry said, but he added "until we are able to come across some of this material and test it, we really don't know."

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Analyst argues stopping the deal benefits Switchzilla by preventing rise of strong challenger for AI networks

HPE has fired back at the US Department of Justice’s objection to its takeover of Juniper Networks, with arguments that include an assertion that blocking the deal will benefit Huawei and therefore have national security implications.…

New ‘Deep Search’ thinking and planning bot to go up against peoples’ champion DeepSeek

Chinese AI continued to march onto the world stage this week, with Alibaba and Baidu both taking major strides.…

Talk about court red-handed

Demonstrating yet again that uncritically trusting the output of generative AI is dangerous, attorneys involved in a product liability lawsuit have apologized to the presiding judge for submitting documents that cite non-existent legal cases.…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A groundbreaking NHS trial will attempt to boost patients' mood using a brain-computer-interface that directly alters brain activity using ultrasound. The device, which is designed to be implanted beneath the skull but outside the brain, maps activity and delivers targeted pulses of ultrasound to "switch on" clusters of neurons. Its safety and tolerability will be tested on about 30 patient in the 6.5 million-pound trial, funded by the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria). [...] The latest trial will test a device developed by the US-based non-profit Forest Neurotech. In contrast to invasive implants, in which electrodes are inserted into a specific location in the brain, Forest 1 uses ultrasound to read-out and modify activity. Aria describes the device as "the most advanced BCI in the world" due to its ability to modify activity across multiple regions simultaneously. This widens potential future applications to a huge patient population affected by conditions such as depression, anxiety and epilepsy, which are all "circuit level" conditions rather than being localized in a specific brain region. The NHS trial will recruit patients who, due to brain injury, have had part of their skull temporarily removed to relieve a critical buildup of pressure in the brain. This means the device can be tested without having to perform surgery. When placed beneath the skull, or in individuals with a skull defect, ultrasound can detect tiny changes in blood flow to produce 3D maps of brain activity with a spatial resolution of about 100 times that of a typical fMRI scan. The same implant can deliver focused ultrasound to mechanically nudge neurons towards firing, providing a way to remotely dial activity up at precise locations. Participants will wear the device on their scalp at the site of the skull defect for two hours. Their brain activity will be measured and researchers will test whether patients' mood and feelings of motivation can be reliably altered. There are safety considerations, as ultrasound can cause tissue to heat up. Prof Elsa Fouragnan, a neuroscientist at the University of Plymouth, which is collaborating on the project, said: "What we're trying to minimize is heat. There's a safety and efficacy trade-off." She added that it would also be important to ensure that personality or decision-making were not altered in unintended ways -- for instance, making someone more impulsive. The study will run for three and a half years starting from March, with the first eight months focused on securing regulatory approval. If successful, Forest hopes to move into a full clinical trial for a condition such as depression. Aimun Jamjoom, a consultant neurosurgeon at the Barking, Havering and Redbridge university hospitals NHS trust, who is leading the project, said: "[T]he ability to offer a safer form of surgery is very exciting. If you look at conditions like depression or epilepsy, [up to] a third of these patients just don't get better. It's those groups where a technology like this could be a life-changing solution."

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Some employees steal sticky notes, others 'borrow' malicious code

A crew identified as a Chinese government-backed espionage group appears to have started moonlighting as a ransomware player – further evidence that lines are blurring between nation-state cyberspies and financially motivated cybercriminals.…

Amazon is removing the "Download & Transfer via USB" feature for Kindle e-books starting February 26th, closing a loophole that allowed users to download older, easily crackable DRM formats. "At the very least, you'll still be able to transfer your e-books over Wi-Fi, and of course, transferring your e-books through Calibre will still work, too," notes Android Police. "[S]o it's not like we are losing access to dragging and dropping files onto a Kindle, we are simply losing access to a tool that facilitated easy piracy by pushing older formats of retail books from the website to your Kindle over USB."

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Arm will reportedly start making its own chips this year after signing Meta as a customer, according to the Financial Times (paywalled). TechCrunch reports: The chip is expected to be a CPU for servers in large data centers and can be customized for various customers. Arm will outsource its production. The first in-house Arm chip will be unveiled as early as this summer, the Financial Times also reported. This is a notable change in strategy for the semiconductor company, which usually licenses its chip blueprints to companies like Apple and Nvidia. Making its own chips will turn some of its existing customers into competitors.

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According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple will restore TikTok to the U.S. App Store on Thursday (source paywalled; alternative source), following a letter from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. From the report: Apple, along with Alphabet's Google, removed TikTok in the US to comply with a law passed last year. In a Jan. 20 executive order, Trump said he instructed the attorney general "not to take any action to enforce the act for a period of 75 days from today to allow my administration an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward." Apple confirmed the app will return "Thursday evening." You can find the App Store listing for TikTok here. Developing...

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Reddit's recent earnings report revealed that AI licensing deals with Google and OpenAI account for about 10% of its $1.3 billion revenue, totaling approximately $130 million. With Google paying $60 million, OpenAI is estimated to be paying Reddit around $70 million annually for content licensing. Adweek reports: "It's a small part of our revenue -- I'll call it 10%. For a business of our size, that's material, because it's valuable revenue," [said the company's COO Jen Wong]. The social platform -- which on Wednesday reported a 71% year-over-year lift in fourth-quarter revenue -- has been "very thoughtful" about the AI developers it chooses to work with, Wong said. To date, the company has inked two content licensing deals: one with Google for a reported $60 million, and one with ChatGPT parent OpenAI. Reddit has elected to work only with partners who can agree to "specific terms ... that are really important to us." These terms include user privacy protections and conditions regarding "how [Reddit is] represented," Wong said. While licensing agreements with AI firms offer a valuable business opportunity for Reddit, advertising remains the company's core revenue driver. Much of Reddit's $427.7 million Q4 revenues were generated by the ongoing expansion of its advertising business. And its ad revenue as a whole grew 60% YoY, underscoring the platform's growing appeal to brands. [...] Helping to accelerate ad revenue growth is Reddit's rising traffic. While Reddit's Q4 user growth came in under Wall Street projections, causing shares to dip, its weekly active uniques grew 42% YoY to over 379 million visitors. Average revenue per unique visitor was $4.21 during the quarter, up 23% from the prior year. While Google is "nicely reinforcing" Reddit's growth in traffic, Wong said, she added that the site's logged-in users, which have grown 27% year-over-year, are "the bedrock of our business."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Conde Nast and several other media companies sued the AI startup Cohere today, alleging that it engaged in "systematic copyright and trademark infringement" by using news articles to train its large language model. "Without permission or compensation, Cohere uses scraped copies of our articles, through training, real-time use, and in outputs, to power its artificial intelligence ('AI') service, which in turn competes with Publisher offerings and the emerging market for AI licensing," said the lawsuit (PDF) filed in US District Court for the Southern District of New York. "Not content with just stealing our works, Cohere also blatantly manufactures fake pieces and attributes them to us, misleading the public and tarnishing our brands." Conde Nast, which owns Ars Technica and other publications such as Wired and The New Yorker, was joined in the lawsuit by The Atlantic, Forbes, The Guardian, Insider, the Los Angeles Times, McClatchy, Newsday, The Plain Dealer, Politico, The Republican, the Toronto Star, and Vox Media. The complaint seeks statutory damages of up to $150,000 under the Copyright Act for each infringed work, or an amount based on actual damages and Cohere's profits. It also seeks "actual damages, Cohere's profits, and statutory damages up to the maximum provided by law" for infringement of trademarks and "false designations of origin." In Exhibit A (PDF), the plaintiffs identified over 4,000 articles in what they called an "illustrative and non-exhaustive list of works that Cohere has infringed." Additional exhibits provide responses to queries (PDF) and "hallucinations" (PDF) that the publishers say infringe upon their copyrights and trademarks. The lawsuit said Cohere "passes off its own hallucinated articles as articles from Publishers." Cohere said in a statement to Ars: "Cohere strongly stands by its practices for responsibly training its enterprise AI. We have long prioritized controls that mitigate the risk of IP infringement and respect the rights of holders. We would have welcomed a conversation about their specific concerns -- and the opportunity to explain our enterprise-focused approach -- rather than learning about them in a filing. We believe this lawsuit is misguided and frivolous, and expect this matter to be resolved in our favor." Further reading: Thomson Reuters Wins First Major AI Copyright Case In the US

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