CIOs are moving beyond AI copilots to autonomous agents. Learn where agents deliver value, how to govern them, and how to integrate with legacy tech.
The post Why Autonomous AI Agents Will Redefine Enterprise IT Strategy appeared first on TechRepublic.
CIOs are moving beyond AI copilots to autonomous agents. Learn where agents deliver value, how to govern them, and how to integrate with legacy tech.
The post Why Autonomous AI Agents Will Redefine Enterprise IT Strategy appeared first on TechRepublic.
A new Harmonic Security report reveals a sharp rise in sensitive data shared with generative AI tools like ChatGPT, increasing the risk of security breaches, compliance violations, and data exposure across global organizations.
The post Report: Massive Amounts of Sensitive Data Being Shared with GenAI Tools appeared first on Security Boulevard.
Bill Gates had a front-row seat for the rise of AI, from his longtime work at Microsoft to early demonstrations of key breakthroughs from OpenAI that illustrated the technology’s potential. Now he’s urging the rest of us to get ready.
Likening the situation to his pre-COVID warnings about pandemic preparedness, Gates writes in his annual “Year Ahead” letter Friday morning that the world needs to act before AI’s disruptions become unmanageable. But he says that AI’s potential to transform healthcare, climate adaptation, and education remains enormous, if we can navigate the risks.
“There is no upper limit on how intelligent AIs will get or on how good robots will get, and I believe the advances will not plateau before exceeding human levels,” Gates writes.
He acknowledges that missed deadlines for artificial general intelligence, or human-level AI, can “create the impression that these things will never happen.” But he warns against reaching that conclusion, arguing that bigger breakthroughs are coming, even if the timing remains uncertain.
He says he’s still optimistic overall. “As hard as last year was, I don’t believe we will slide back into the Dark Ages,” he writes. “I believe that, within the next decade, we will not only get the world back on track but enter a new era of unprecedented progress.”
But he adds that we’ll need to be “deliberate about how this technology is developed, governed, and deployed” — and that governments, not just markets, will have to lead AI implementation.
More takeaways from the letter:
Job disruption is already here. He says AI makes software developers “at least twice as efficient,” and that disruption is spreading. Warehouse work and phone support are next. He suggests the world use 2026 to prepare, citing the potential for changes like a shorter work week.
Bioterrorism is his top AI concern. Gates warns that “an even greater risk than a naturally caused pandemic is that a non-government group will use open source AI tools to design a bioterrorism weapon.”
Climate will cause “enormous suffering” without action. Gates cautions that if we don’t limit climate change, it will join poverty and infectious disease in hitting the world’s poorest people hardest, and even in the best case, temperatures will keep rising.
Child mortality went backward in 2025. Stepping outside AI, Gates calls this the thing he’s “most upset about.” Deaths for children under 5 years old rose from 4.6 million in 2024 to 4.8 million in 2025, the first increase this century, which he traced to cuts in aid from rich countries.
AI could leapfrog rich-world farming. Gates predicts AI will soon give poor farmers “better advice about weather, prices, crop diseases, and soil than even the richest farmers get today.” The Gates Foundation has committed $1.4 billion to help farmers facing extreme weather.
Gates is using AI for his own health. He says he uses AI “to better understand my own health,” and sees a future where high-quality medical advice is available to every patient and provider around the clock.
AI is now the Gates Foundation’s biggest bet in education. Personalized learning powered by AI is “now the biggest focus of the Gates Foundation’s spending on education.” Gates says he’s seen it working firsthand in New Jersey and believes it will be “game changing” at scale.
Read the full letter here.
Experts predict 2026 will bring less AI hype and more governance, delayed enterprise spending, AI moving into OT, smarter cyberattacks, and faster cooling tech.
The post AI and the Future of Work: 5 Predictions for 2026 appeared first on TechRepublic.
Experts predict 2026 will bring less AI hype and more governance, delayed enterprise spending, AI moving into OT, smarter cyberattacks, and faster cooling tech.
The post AI and the Future of Work: 5 Predictions for 2026 appeared first on TechRepublic.
Microsoft’s annual shareholder meeting Friday played out as if on a split screen: executives describing a future where AI cures diseases and secures networks, and shareholder proposals warning of algorithmic bias, political censorship, and complicity in geopolitical conflict.
One shareholder, William Flaig, founder and CEO of Ridgeline Research, quoted two authorities on the topic — George Orwell’s 1984 and Microsoft’s Copilot AI chatbot — in requesting a report on the risks of AI censorship of religious and political speech.
Flaig invoked Orwell’s dystopian vision of surveillance and thought control, citing the Ministry of Truth that “rewrites history and floods society with propaganda.” He then turned to Copilot, which responded to his query about an AI-driven future by noting that “the risk lies not in AI itself, but in how it’s deployed.”
In a Q&A session during the virtual meeting, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company is “putting the person and the human at the center” of its AI development, with technology that users “can delegate to, they can steer, they can control.”
Nadella said Microsoft has moved beyond abstract principles to “everyday engineering practice,” with safeguards for fairness, transparency, security, and privacy.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, said broader societal decisions, like what age kids should use AI in schools, won’t be made by tech companies. He cited ongoing debates about smartphones in schools nearly 20 years after the iPhone.
“I think quite rightly, people have learned from that experience,” Smith said, drawing a parallel to the rise of AI. “Let’s have these conversations now.”
Microsoft’s board recommended that shareholders vote against all six outside proposals, which covered issues including AI censorship, data privacy, human rights, and climate. Final vote tallies have yet to be released as of publication time, but Microsoft said shareholders turned down all six, based on early voting.
While the shareholder proposals focused on AI risks, much of the executive commentary focused on the long-term business opportunity.
Nadella described building a “planet-scale cloud and AI factory” and said Microsoft is taking a “full stack approach,” from infrastructure to AI agents to applications, to capitalize on what he called “a generational moment in technology.”
Microsoft CFO Amy Hood highlighted record results for fiscal year 2025 — more than $281 billion in revenue and $128 billion in operating income — and pointed to roughly $400 billion in committed contracts as validation of the company’s AI investments.
Hood also addressed pre-submitted shareholder questions about the company’s AI spending, pushing back on concerns about a potential bubble.
“This is demand-driven spending,” she said, noting that margins are stronger at this stage of the AI transition than at a comparable point in Microsoft’s cloud buildout. “Every time we think we’re getting close to meeting demand, demand increases again.”
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