• An ExxonMobil lawsuit against activist investors was filed in January.
• Activist investors not acting in the interests of shareholders?
• Everyone in the industry is watching closely – keen for a way to make climate activists shut up?

Facing dozens of lawsuits that claim it lied for decades about its role in climate change and the dangers of burning fossil fuels, ExxonMobil has gone on the offensive. Sure, it could reflect on its climate impact, but the company feels its time and resources are better spent on a lawsuit targeting investors who want the company to slash its pollution.

As the world burns, ExxonMobil might as well dive into the flames headfirst, go down swinging and all that.

To try to shape corporate policies in publicly-traded companies, investors can file shareholder proposals that are voted on at annual meetings. ExxonMobil says a pair of investor groups are abusing the system by filing similar proposals year after year in an effort to micromanage its business.

At a time when global temperatures are rising and corporate analysts say most companies aren’t on track to meet their emissions targets, there are growing tensions between companies and investors. Pesky activists calling for corporations to cut climate impact!

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“Exxon is really upping the ante here in a big way by bringing this case,” says Josh Zinner, chief executive of an investor coalition called the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, whose members include a defendant in the ExxonMobil case. “Other companies could use this tactic not just to block resolutions,” Zinner says, “but to intimidate their shareholders from even bringing these [climate] issues to the table.”

There’s potential for other companies to unleash litigation against climate activists – who aren’t getting enough heat already, right?

ExxonMobil said it’s suing Arjuna Capital and Follow This because the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) isn’t enforcing rules that dictate when investors can resubmit shareholder proposals.

Apparently, the case “is not about climate change,” and court is “the right place to get clarity on SEC rules,” according to ExxonMobil.

The shareholder proposal from Arjuna and Follow This called for ExxonMobil to cut emissions faster from its own operations and from its supply chain. That includes pollution created when customers burn its oil and natural gas. This is known as Scope 3 emissions and accounts for 90% of ExxonMobil’s carbon footprint.

The proposal that Arjuna and Follow This put forward is similar to others that the groups submitted in recent years. ExxonMobil says historically the motions received little support from other shareholders.

All eyes are on the case. “If companies are decreasingly able to get the SEC to allow them to exclude proposals that are obviously politically motivated, then the next question is, well, can the courts succeed where the SEC has failed — or, more accurately, not even tried?” commented Charles Crain – vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, which represents ExxonMobil and other industrial companies.

After they were sued in federal court in Texas in January, Arjuna and Follow This withdrew the proposal and promised not to submit it to the company again, but ExxonMobil refuses to drop the case.

Follow This founder Mark Van Baal said the ExxonMobil lawsuit is trying to stifle shareholders.

“Apparently, Exxon does not want shareholders to vote on whether the company should accelerate its efforts to reduce emissions,” van Baal said. “This is the concern of more and more investors who want [to] safeguard the long-term future of the company and the global economy in view of the climate crisis.”

The threat of complete climate disaster is putting pressure on companies to cut down their emissions and other contributions to global warming – poor them. Many, including ExxonMobil, say they’re trying to eliminate or offset their greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 but, according to independent researchers, few companies have shown credible plans to achieve their targets.

The number of publicly listed corporations aiming for net zero rose from 417 to 929 between 2020 and 2023, according to the Net Zero Stocktake report. A basic checklist was applied to corporate claims including setting interim targets and covering all the emissions a company is responsible for – including Scope 3 emissions.

Fewer than 5% of the companies examined passed the test.

So it’s really no wonder that they’re all watching the ExxonMobil lawsuit closely; is the best way to offset emissions suing the people holding you accountable?

Industry group the American Petroleum Institution says the lawsuits are meritless and politicized. ExxonMobil’s take is that since it’s acknowledged that climate change is real and, noted in its statement to NPR, is pursuing more than $20 billion of “low emission investments” between 2022 and 2027 then it shouldn’t have to answer to activist investors.

The oil and gas company doesn’t have a good track record.

The investment its making is on top of nearly $5 billion it spent buying a company specializing in carbon dioxide capture. The thing is, if it’s really so committed to the climate cause, why do shareholder proposals about its emissions annoy the company so much?

If you look at the numbers, its dedication suddenly seems… smaller.

The amount that ExxonMobil spends on its traditional energy business is staggering: last year it struck a deal to buy oil and gas company Pioneer Natural Resources, valued at almost $60 billion.

Activist investors use shareholder proposals to push corporations on climate. Experts say other investors, from whom Arjuna and Follow This struggle to get support, are hesitant to back new climate proposals when companies already have policies to disclose and cut emissions.

Investors worry proposals have become too prescriptive and might interfere with how companies are run.

It seems at least possible that changing how companies are run is the answer to cutting carbon emissions, but that it may reduce the profit investors see – a conundrum indeed within a capitalisic snowglobe, while everyone else burns.

ExxonMobil says it’s dedicated to cutting emissions from its operations but the idea that activist investors like Arjuna and Follow This can quickly push the company out of the oil and gas business with new climate policies is “simplistic and against the interests of the vast majority of ExxonMobil shareholders.”

ExxonMobil told NPR that while shareholders are entitled to submit proposals to the company, they don’t have “an unlimited right to put forth any proposal to do anything.

“Their intent is to advance their agenda rather than creating long-term value for shareholders,” ExxonMobil said of Arjuna and Follow This.

This appears to insist that having a planet to stand on is somehow not in the long-term interest of ExxonMobil shareholders. Which is how conspiracy theories get started.

Corporate America doesn’t like the shareholder proposals process and became increasingly frustrated by it after the SEC issued guidance in 2021 that made it harder to turn away some resolutions.

The National Association of Manufacturers has argued that forcing companies to publish shareholder proposals that deal with “contentious issues unrelated to [their] core business or the creation of shareholder value,” including climate change, violates their First Amendment right of free speech.

Crain says activists spend too much time pursuing a “political goal” and should instead try to help companies “understand and mitigate those climate related risks or opportunities for their operations.”

Critics of the ExxonMobil say its lawsuit is part of a broader effort to curtail shareholder activism, especially around social and environmental issues. “And the reason is because it’s one of the few effective avenues left to hold companies accountable,” says Zinner of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.

So is the ExxonMobil lawsuit political or not?

Will ExxonMobil go down swinging?

The post Oil and gas company says suing climate activists isn’t political appeared first on TechHQ.

• Technically, the US has a shortage of transmission lines.
• Interregional transmission lines would help provision – but potentially hit utility profits.
• Power Vs. profit – the ultimate American standoff…

Without the power grid, there would be nothing. Or at least nothing for us to write about, and nothing to write it on; the human condition has become reliant on electricity for more or less everything. So, the system that provides it and ensures it gets across the country, must be well-planned and beneficial to as many people as possible. Right?

That depends on where you are: there aren’t enough transmission lines in the US to connect regional power networks, driving up the cost of electricity, reducing grid reliability and hampering the deployment of renewable energy.

High voltage transmission lines are what move large amounts of energy across long distances, linking power generation to power consumption. If done right, the transmission network contains a web of connections that create a reliable, redundant power supply system of huge scale.

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Electricity makes money for utility companies who, being good capitalists with shareholders to satisfy, want to keep hold of as much of it as possible. That means they refuse to pursue (potentially expensive) interregional transmission projects and go as far as actively impeding them, because new projects threaten their profits and disrupt industry alliances.

Utility companies are lobbying against reforms that would lose them money: addressing transmission shortages has long been on the agenda in Washington, but utility firm lobbying continue to ensure delays.

As things currently stand, around 40 corporations own the vast majority of transmission lines in America. Their hold on the backbone of US grids should be scrutinized.

With more transmission lines comes more capacity and connectivity, letting new power plants connect and more power to move between transmission networks. Utility companies don’t want that kind of competition, or for their allies to lose regional control – and so transmission expansion is something they oppose.

The existing transmission networks across America were built largely during the last century by for-profit companies. Nonprofit utility providers organized by governments and communities had some part in it too – but by comparison, a very minor one.

The geographical equations of transmission lines

It makes sense that transmission lines tend to be concentrated around fossil fuel reserves and population centers, but there’s another force at play, deciding where the lines are routed: historic utilities alliances.

Where agreements were made between companies to trade energy, sufficient transmission was built that would allow power to move between their local service territories. Over time, alliances have expanded but there are still non-allied utility companies with comparatively very weak connections.

Expansion opens opportunities for new power plant and transmission developers to undercut profits, taking control over the rules shaping the industry. The value of linking networks is widely accepted around the world – but it doesn’t make money for the American companies currently in control of the grid.

Connecting regional networks is critical to the incorporation of renewable energy. For example, four proposed high voltage lines totaling 600km along the seam of regional networks in the upper Midwest would connect at least 28 gigawatts of wind and solar energy. Although the plans have been around for years, utility companies in neighboring regions haven’t moved forward.

Proposed new transmission lines in the upper Midwest. Via Joint Targeted Interconnection Queue Study (JTIQ), MISO, SPP.

We might learn from the European Commission which in 2018 set a target that each member country would transmit across its borders at least 15% of the electricity produced in its territories. By the end of 2022, 23 gigawatts of cross-border connections in Europe were under construction or in advanced stages of permitting; it’s unlikely those losing profit over the changes were totally on board, but the change has gone ahead all the same.

In the US, building the line across the Midwest would cost $1.9bn, which is a staggering number – until you compare it with the cost of rebuilding aged transmission infrastructure every year.

Not only that, but interregional transmission for renewable energies also significantly reduces the cost of use for consumers. Even if renewables aren’t considered, costs would be massively reduced given that better integrated networks reduce the amount of generation capacity needed and decrease energy market cost. Reliability goes up, too.

What limited interregional connection there was proved paramount in preventing total disaster when Storm Elliott disabled power plants and pipelines from Dakota to Georgia in 2022. Imagine a reality in which localized disruption didn’t mean blackouts for entire states.

Won’t someone think of the profits?!

That isn’t how utilities companies see it, of course. For them, it means a whole bunch of drawbacks. More connections open the door for competitors who might undercut them on price; with profits in mind, having a monopoly is the more efficient choice, but interregional lines threaten utilities’ dominance over the nation’s power supply.

Also, building a whole new power plant in one area generates more money than just building transmission lines from an existing one. Transmission projects also mean competing against other developers for profit from that construction.

There’s some hope in the BIG WIRES Act introduced BIG WIRES Act introduced in September by Senator John Hickenlooper and Representative Scott Peters. The acronym, that’s so handily pertinent to the cause, stands for Building Integrated Grids With Inter-Regional Energy Supply. [Do you ever get the feeling politicians sometimes find the acronym first and work backwards? – Ed]

Hard not to see a case for nationalizing the power grid, but we won’t spell it out. Climate emergency and all, best to keep an eye on the electricity companies though, eh?

Unless you happen to know a friendly neighborhood god of thunder, you’d probably better look to your transmission lines.

The post Connectivity cuts profits for utilities corporations appeared first on TechHQ.

• Data storage solutions underpin the forward-going technologies like generative AI and machine learning.
• That means there’s a need for cleverer, more streamlined and ecological data storage.
• Hammerspace  is making its HPC parallel file system available as an NAS.

Hammerspace is the instantly accessible storage area in fiction, the imaginary extra dimension that hammers, say, appear from when Tom needs to set a trap for Jerry. It’s also the name of the US-based data storage company on a mission to change how people use their data.

It’s Hammer time!

Data is always in motion and, much like an anvil pulled from behind the back just in time, should be accessible as-and-when needed. Unlike its eponymous cartoon concept though, Hammerspace the company doesn’t require you to suspend your disbelief.

Welcoming Brian Pawlowski (who you might know from his work at Quantum) as VP of performance engineering, late last week Hammerspace announced the availability of its HPC parallel file system as an enterprise NAS for the first time.

A response to the need for a new storage architecture in an increasingly data-driven world, Hammerspace answers to the demands of the next data cycle.

Clear gaps are emerging in the way data is being used: the storage of unstructured data for deep learning sees silos form and it becomes difficult to access and unify data sources; the high performance demands necessary to keep GPUs utilized aren’t met by existing NAS, which isn’t designed for large compute performance.

From Hammerspace.

We all know that AI and ML are generating waves that wash upon every industry, but when it comes to data, the implications are particularly huge: there isn’t AI without data, and the emerging industry’s demands are forcing a reckoning on data storage methods.

Hammerspace is simplifying data pipelines for these new technologies by aggregating data into a single file system that’s globally accessible. It’s also directly enabling the future of AI, which demands performance rates not met by legacy NAS architectures.

Hyperscale NAS architecture speeds time-to-market and time-to-insight. Read the technical brief from Hammerspace here.

“We have traditionally separated scale-out file systems, commonly known as parallel file systems, from NAS precisely due to the nature of their performance for very large HPC/ AI environments. As we enter into this next generation of AI, new technologies, particularly in data infrastructure, are needed,” said Camberley Bates, VP and practice lead at The Futurum Group.

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Available globally and a world first, the Hammerspace data environment includes two broad sets of capabilities – hyperscale NAS and data orchestration. Available as a standard capability of the Hammerspace Global Data Environment and included in the cost of Hammerspace software licensing, the new offering answers to most data storage demands.

Data storage sustainability

While not every change in data storage systems directly pertains to sustainability, the data storage industry cannot be separated from its ecological implications.

Enabling the proliferation of AI by extension means increasing the strain on a climate emergency that’s already the realization of worst-case scenarios. The secrecy that surrounds data centers is one indicator – though, of course, security is also a factor in this – that best practice doesn’t always include the environmental angle.

Proving a cut above the rest must now mean proving a commitment to green initiatives. Hammerspace works to connect users with their data on any vendor’s data center storage or public cloud services so that their customers don’t have to compromise on the solution that they choose – a solution that should center environmental best practice.

Hammerspace has also expanded its third-party storage support to include tape storage, a method that supports ESG initiatives by reducing energy consumption and carbon footprint, but now doesn’t mean lengthier processing.

When it comes to hammer-based solutions…you probably have to be worthy of them.

The post Data living in motion – Hammerspace appeared first on TechHQ.

With season 6 of Netflix’s hugely successful Drive to Survive hitting screens on Friday, motorsport fans will be tuning in to reminisce about the highs and lows of the 2023 F1 World Championship. But what viewers may not realize is just how much can be learned more broadly from watching racers driving around a track. Motorsport, it turns out, has lessons for businesses of various types in understanding how employees will interact as company fortunes rise and fall.

“Sports – particularly motorsports – can be a good proxy for several other industries as they are extremely competitive: if you don’t perform and progress you may be out,” comments Hans Frankort – a strategy expert at Bayes Business School – City, University of London. “Workers in sectors such as consultancy and financial services face similar pressures.”

[10/12] This is the first study published in #management that uses @MotoGP data and analyzes hundreds-of-thousand overtakes between 2004 and 2020 as riders’ competitive actions. We have also used qualitative insights from top teams such as @ducaticorse . pic.twitter.com/dEtoBPy9cK

— Paolo Aversa (@aversapaolo) January 18, 2024

Frankort, together with the other authors of the study – dubbed ‘Revving up or backing down? Cross-level effects of firm-level tournaments on employees’ competitive actions’, used overtake data from riders competing in MotoGP from 2004 to 2020 to generate motorsport lessons for business leaders.

“Our findings reveal how riders adjust their internal and external overtakes based on their team’s competitive threats and opportunities, and on the relative resource endowments of the teams supplying such threats or opportunities,” writes the team in its paper.

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Translating this behaviour from the racetrack to the office, the experts note how ambitious workers will change their approach depending on whether their employer is doing well – in other words, leading the competition – or finding business conditions more challenging.

Considering the MotoGP data, teammates were less likely to overtake each other when the team as a whole was struggling. “If a firm is facing threats, such as losing market share to smaller rivals, workers may feel that infighting is poor form,” said Frankort. “Instead, they would focus on competing against rival firms.”

More motorsport lessons for business

There are other observations too – for example, replacement riders (whom the researchers liken to agency workers) are keen to challenge their teammates when the team is doing well, and all competitors when their employer is struggling. The explanation given is that those without a permanent contract will try much harder to impress than riders and drivers embedded within a team.

So how do all of these insights help CEOs and other senior management become better leaders? One of the strong takeaways is the link between how a company’s performance is pitched to employees and the competitive actions of that firm’s staff.

If employees believe that things are going well they may be more tempted to poach a colleague’s clients and position themselves as being the engine of success, according to the study’s authors.

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Motorsport series such as F1 and MotoGP are often described as pathfinders for new technologies that will one day end up in road cars or motorcycles, but they have also provided numerous case studies for business leaders. For example, Paolo Aversa – one of the authors of the MotoGP study – has made a career of using sports data to advance management theory.

Over the years, Aversa has chaired multiple ‘Competing in turbulent environments: Lessons from Formula One’ events, which are soon sold out. The seminars, some of which are still available to watch on YouTube, bring together race car designers, motorsport CEOs, and lecturers in management and business strategy.

Tech firms such as Netflix have also done well from F1 and one of the motorsport lessons learned is that drama on and off track makes for great entertainment. On paper, the idea of having a thousand people produce two cars that drive in circles sounds like it’d be a hard sell to viewers, but the popularity of Drive to Survive tells a different story.

And motorsport fans will need no reminding that F1 pre-season testing gets underway today in Bahrain, where teams and fans will get a first impression of the pecking order for the 2024 season.

The post Motorsport lessons: what can tech CEOs learn from MotoGP & F1? appeared first on TechHQ.

• Ruling says Air Canada must refund customer who acted on information provided by chatbot.
• The airline’s chatbot isn’t available on the website anymore.
• The case raises the question of autonomous AI action – and who (or what) is responsible for those actions.

The AI debate rages on, as debates in tech are wont to do.

Meanwhile, in other news, an Air Canada chatbot suddenly has total and distinct autonomy.

Although it couldn’t take the stand, when Air Canada was taken to court and asked to pay a refund offered by its chatbot, the company tried to argue that “the chatbot is a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions.”

After the death of his grandmother, Jake Moffat visited the Air Canada website to book a flight from Vancouver to Toronto. Unsure of the bereavement rate policy, he opened the handy chatbot and asked it to explain.

Now, even if we take the whole GenAI bot explosion with a grain of salt, some variation of the customer-facing ‘chatbot’ has existed for years. Whether just churning out automated responses and a number to call or responding with the offkey chattiness now ubiquitous with generative AI’s output, the chatbot provides the primary response consumers get from really any company.

And it’s trusted to be equivalent to getting answers from a human employee.

So, when Moffat was told he could claim a refund after booking his tickets, he went ahead and, ceding to encouragement, booked flights right away safe in the knowledge that – within 90 days – he’d be able to claim a partial refund from Air Canada.

He has the screenshot to show that the chatbot’s full response was:

If you need to travel immediately or have already travelled and would like to submit your ticket for a reduced bereavement rate, kindly do so within 90 days of the date your ticket was issued by completing our Ticket Refund Application form.

Which seems about as clear and encouraging as you’d hope to get in such circumstances.

He was surprised then to find that his refund request was denied. Air Canada policy actually states that the airline won’t provide refunds for bereavement travel after the flight has been booked; the information provided by the chatbot was wrong.

Via Ars Technica.

Moffat spent months trying to get his refund, showing the airline what the chatbot had said. He was met with the same answer: refunds can’t be requested retroactively. Air Canada’s argument was that because the chatbot response included a link to a page on the site outlining the policy correctly, Moffat should’ve known better.

We’ve underlined the phrase that the chatbot used to link further reading. The way that hyperlinked text is used across the internet – including here on TechHQ – means few actually follow a link through. Particularly in the case of the GenAI answer, it functions as a citation-cum-definition of whatever is underlined.

Still, the chatbot’s hyperlink meant the airline kept refusing to refund Moffat. Its best offer was a promise to update the chatbot and give Moffat a $200 coupon. So he took them to court.

Moffat filed a small claim complaint in Canada’s Civil Resolution Tribunal. Air Canada argued that not only should its chatbot be considered a separate legal entity, but also that Moffat never should have trusted it. Because naturally, customers should of course in no way trust systems put in place by companies to mean what they say.

Christopher Rivers, the Tribunal member who decided the case in favor of Moffat, called Air Canada’s defense “remarkable.”

“Air Canada argues it cannot be held liable for information provided by one of its agents, servants, or representatives—including a chatbot,” Rivers wrote. “It does not explain why it believes that is the case” or “why the webpage titled ‘Bereavement travel’ was inherently more trustworthy than its chatbot.”

Rivers also found that Moffat had no reason to believe one part of the site would be accurate and another wouldn’t – Air Canada “does not explain why customers should have to double-check information found in one part of its website on another part of its website,” he wrote.

In the end, he ruled that Moffatt was entitled to a partial refund of $650.88 in Canadian dollars (CAD) (around $482 USD) off the original fare, which was $1,640.36 CAD (around $1,216 USD), as well as additional damages to cover interest on the airfare and Moffatt’s tribunal fees.

Ars Technica heard from Air Canada that it will comply with the ruling and considers the matter closed. Moffat will receive his Air Canada refund.

The AI approach

Last year, CIO of Air Canada Mel Crocker told news outlets that the company had launched the chatbot as an AI “experiment.”

Originally, it was a way to take the load off the airline’s call center when flights were delayed or cancelled. Read: give customers information that would otherwise be available from human employees – which must be presumed to be accurate, or its entire function is redundant.

In the case of a snowstorm, say, “if you have not been issued your new boarding pass yet and you just want to confirm if you have a seat available on another flight, that’s the sort of thing we can easily handle with AI,” Crocker told the Globe and Mail.

Over time, Crocker said, Air Canada hoped the chatbot would “gain the ability to resolve even more complex customer service issues,” with the airline’s ultimate goal being to automate every service that did not require a “human touch.”

Crocker said that where Air Canada could, it would use “technology to solve something that can be automated.”

The company’s investment in AI was so great that, she told the media, the money put towards AI was greater than the cost of continuing to pay human workers to handle simple enquiries.

But the fears that robots will take everyone’s jobs are fearmongering nonsense, obviously.

In this case, liability might have been avoided if the chatbot had given a warning to customers that its information could be inaccurate. That’s not good optics when you’re spending more on it than humans at least marginally less likely to hallucinate refund policies out of thin data.

Because it didn’t include any such warning, Rivers ruled that “Air Canada did not take reasonable care to ensure its chatbot was accurate.” The responsibility lies with Air Canada for any information on its website, regardless of whether it’s from a “strategic page or a chatbot.”

This case opens up the question of AI culpability in the ongoing debate about its efficacy. On the one hand, we have a technology that’s lauded as infallible – or at least on its way to infallibility, and certainly as trustworthy as human beings, with their legendary capacity for “human error.” In fact, it’s frequently sold as a technology that eradicates human error, (and, sometimes, the humans too) from the workplace.

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So established is the belief that (generative) artificial intelligence is intelligent, when a GenAI-powered chatbot makes a mistake, the blame lies with it, not the humans who implemented it.

Fears of what AI means for the future are fast being reduced in the public media to the straw man that it will “rise up and kill us” – a line not in any way subdued by calls for AI development to be paused or halted “before something cataclysmic happens.”

The real issue though is the way in which humans are already beginning to regard the technology as an entity separate from the systems in which it exists – and an infallible, final arbiter of what’s right and wrong in such systems. While imagining the State versus ChatGPT is somewhat amusing, passing off corporate error to a supposedly all-intelligent third party seems like a convenient “get out of jail free card” for companies to play – though at least in Canada, the Tribunal system was engaged enough to see this as an absurd concept.

Imagine for a moment that Air Canada had better lawyers, with much greater financial backing, and the scenario of “It wasn’t us, it was our chatbot” becomes altogether more plausible as a defence.

Ultimately, what happened here is that Air Canada refused compensation to a confused and grieving customer. Had a human employee told Moffat he could get a refund after booking his flight, then perhaps Air Canada could refuse – but this is because of the unspoken assumption that said employee would be working from given rules – a set of data upon which they were trained, perhaps – that they’d actively ignored.

In fact, headlines proclaiming that the chatbot ‘lied’ to Moffat are following the established formula for a story in which a disgruntled or foolish employee knowingly gave out incorrect information. The chatbot didn’t ‘know’ what it said was false; had it been given accurate enough training, it would have provided the answer available elsewhere on the Air Canada website.

At the moment, the Air Canada chatbot is not on the website.

Feel free to imagine it locked in a room somewhere, having its algorithms hit with hockey sticks, if you like.

It’s also worth noting that while the ruling was made this year, it was 2022 when Moffat used the chatbot, which is back in the pre-ChatGPT dark ages of AI. While the implications of the case impact the AI industry as it exists here and now, the chatbot’s error in itself isn’t representative, given that it was an early example of AI use.

Still, Air Canada freely assigned it the culpability of a far more advanced intelligence, which speaks to perceptions of GenAI’s high-level abilities. Further, this kind of thing is still happening:

“No takesies backsies.” There’s that chatbot chattiness…

Also, does it bother anyone else that an AI chatbot just hallucinated a more humane policy than the human beings who operated it were prepared to stand by?

The post Oh, Air Canada! Airline pays out after AI accident appeared first on TechHQ.

• Where in the world can you get the highest tech salary?
• Why are some traditional bastions of high salary tech roles falling by the wayside?
• Australia – a case study of innovation.

Despite job shortage squeezes, a tech salary is highly sought because, at the risk of seeming grubby, tech saaries are traditionally high compared to salaries in “non-tech” industries. In the US, big tech means big money and that’s partly what keeps computer science classes populated. Luckily, global demand for engineers isn’t dropping, according to staffing service firm Human Resocia.

But in Japan, for instance,  IT engineers were only paid, on average, $36,061 in 2023. That figure sees Japan drop six places in worldwide rankings and come in at 26 out of 72 companies for best tech sector salary.

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“Even disregarding the effects of a weak yen, (Japan’s) competitiveness is receding when looking at salaries,” a member of the research team said. “There are concerns that Japan is becoming a less attractive destination.”

Switzerland was top of the charts, with an average salary of $102,839 followed by the US where the average tech sector salary is $92,378.

Pay for IT workers in Japan rose only 0.4% compared to the last year, which is a miniscule amount – especially when the US saw growth of 3.6% and China jumped 16.9%.

The number of people employed in IT across 109 countries analyzed by Human Resocia rose by an estimated 26.81 million, up 13.3% from the previous year. The largest growth happened in the US, where 4.45 million people were added to the workforce.

India’s IT workforce grew by 3.34 million people and China 3.28 million. Despite unfavorable wages, Japan’s staff growth was ranked 4^th, increasing by 1.44 million.

Japan, alongside the UK, entered a recession last week. Although previously a giant in the technology sector, it has been flagging.

That doesn’t mean the government isn’t trying. It plans to spend as much as ¥45 billion ($300 million) to back a research group developing chip technology – another step in a national push to catch up in semiconductor manufacturing.

Of course, Japan isn’t so much establishing ground in the chip market as reclaiming it. In 1988, Japanese firms accounted for 51% of chip sales worldwide. So what went wrong? Does the hardly competitive salary mean that the best Japanese engineers are leaving the country and putting their skills towards technological advance elsewhere?

Australian tech sector hard to enter

For years now Australia has been unable to train enough IT professionals to fill local requirements. Visas for skilled workers from offshore have been the solution so far, but the process is about to change.

By design, getting a work visa for Australia is complicated: you have to convince an “assessing authority” you’ve got the educational achievements and skills that Australia needs. For tech sector professionals, only one organization is a certified assessor – the Australian Computer Society (ACS).

The process for applicants hoping to work in the technology sector involves filling in a PDF. Sounds simple, but according to the ACS chief growth officer, Siobhan O’Sullivan, it results in 80% of applications arriving in an unfit state to be assessed.

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The complexity of the form – particularly tricky for those who don’t speak English as a first language – means that often, they’re submitted incomplete, omitting important documents or information.

More than half of applicants submit two forms, because another requirement to score a visa is to demonstrate that skills match the Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations (ANZSCO). More than 20 such ANZSCO codes apply to tech jobs. Applicants therefore submit multiple applications in the hope their skills match at least one ANZSCO code.

In an effort to make the application process simpler, O’Sullivan said it should offer an experience akin to that of consumer-facing apps like food delivery services. That would also cut down the ACS processing time; the organization finds itself with thousands of unprocessed applications and a response time of up to 14 weeks.

Next month, a new, interactive web form will be introduced. Identity documents will be sent to a third party for verification, meaning the ACS will no longer store them. It will also access assessments using an API instead of storing and securing sensitive personal information.

Another major change is that applicants will be able to specify three ANSZCO codes in one application.

All of this comes at a price, though: the cost of an application has more than doubled. Still, the argument is, current applicants are having to fill out multiple forms at around AU$550 ($360) apiece. The new fee, standing at AU$1100 ($720) will thus be cheaper overall.

Australia has emerged as a global technology powerhouse, and despite being affected by global technology layoffs, the country is arguably better off than Japan as a prospect for those looking for a high tech salary right now.

The post Where to work in tech around the world appeared first on TechHQ.

• A recent report shows the rapid changes IT infrastructure is undergoing.
• Legacy tech can slow down an organization’s whole IT modernization program.
• IT leaders reveal the infrastructure problems they’re having – and what they forecast for the future.

Legacy infrastructure is a sustainability issue for IT professionals, who rank energy efficiency and sustainability as important, but don’t feel confident about meeting their green targets.

All this and more has been revealed by research by Daisy Corporate Services on legacy tech with a focus on the cloud. Researchers heard from more than 250 senior IT decision makers at large private and public sector organizations in the UK, uncovering what they consider to be the key IT infrastructure challenges facing them and their teams – and how to overcome them.

The report provides insights into IT decision makers’ challenges including the global IT talent shortage, the drivers for IT outsourcing and factors for on-premises vs. hosted IT infrastructure.

75% fully (24%) or partly (51%) outsource their organization’s IT infrastructure management to a managed service provider. Partly due to the global talent shortage, IT decision makers felt that their organizations lack the necessary skills and expertise to stay in-house.

If that wasn’t enough, the report further details predictions, barriers and benefits of moving more of the IT estate to the cloud and looks at IT budgets, investments, and the impact of and opinions on new tech like AI – thought it’d been left out?

Over the last five years, businesses have had to manage the significant evolution of business systems and IT landscapes, with the pandemic a driver of that change. Increasing competition and globalization have affected the operating environment, which has further changed as a result of political and supply chain instability.

The increasing range of technologies and applications was in joint first place for contributing most to IT complexity alongside cloud services (57% each). Full visibility into infrastructure performance is made difficult by both of these factors.

90% of IT decision makers say building, managing and maintaining their IT landscape has become more complex and simplifying IT infrastructure is a priority for 89%.

Moving your IT infrastructure to the cloud – an unstoppable trend?

Despite that, though, the benefits of cloud use are obvious, so it’s increasing.

The ability to harness the cloud is dependent on the existing IT landscape at a company, with the biggest barrier to success being that the greater complexity of existing IT infrastructure, the greater is the work needed to migrate to the cloud.

Another significant threat to organizations looking to move more of their IT estate to the cloud are data security concerns.

Too often, organizations find they’re using a cloud hybrid system by accident, not design. Which means falling at the first hurdle in a world where it’s vital that an organization’s infrastructure is secure and able to dynamically adjust to workload demands.

The multitude of different environments and tools in use make it hard for organizations already struggling to gain the end-to-end visibility necessary for consistent security and reliability.

There is a strategic impact from sustainability as the issue becomes a business differentiator; the importance of green policy use means that consumers look to a company’s sustainability as a major factor of their appeal.

The focus on corporate and social responsibility filters through to IT teams as businesses turn their attention to the sustainability and efficiency of their IT operations.

The biggest hurdle to a clean, green transition is legacy and on-premise infrastructure: legacy tech was described by 63% of IT decision makers as a “sustainability nightmare.” 86% say sustainability and efficiency is important to IT operations, and 84% that their organization has IT sustainability targets in place – but only 51% of them are “very confident” they’ll meet them.

And it isn’t just contributing to a difficult transition to greener systems: legacy hardware contributes to 37% of organizations’ overall IT power consumption.

Spending is also coming under pressure as the global economic slowdown means businesses are having to adapt for survival – driving efficiencies is one tactic for survival that has huge impact on IT teams.

IT leaders are under pressure to reduce expenditure, many resorting to cloud services to turn capital infrastructure expenses into opex costs.

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“Sustainability is a vital component of any modern business, and IT departments have a growing role in helping the wider organisation achieve green targets. But legacy technology is a cause for concern among IT teams, with ageing equipment still contributing significantly to power consumption,” comments Andy Bevan, head of propositions and strategy consulting at Daisy.

“Organizations can benefit from the sustainability features of their cloud providers but are being held back by the challenges of migrating their legacy hardware. Here is where modern hybrid cloud platforms can help bridge the gap between on-site infrastructure and cloud to deliver performance and sustainability benefits.”

Many IT leaders are being asked to re-evaluate their IT spending. More than two thirds (69%) of survey respondents describe the pressure to reduce IT capital expenditure as “significant.” Many are looking to consumption-based pricing to reduce ongoing costs and increase flexibility by paying only for what they use – scaling up and using more resources at peak times, and then reducing resources and costs again afterwards.

Legacy infrastructure is a headache in this process though, as its maintenance and support incurs significant cost. New technology is the solution for some IT managers, with many expecting to see the benefits of using artificial intelligence and automation in areas like service and performance management.

Bevan adds, “At a time when IT leaders are under pressure to reduce capital expenditure many organizations are still incurring significant maintenance and support costs on their legacy hardware. By moving to the cloud and a consumption-based pricing model, organizations can reduce ongoing costs and increase flexibility by paying for what they use. For cost-constrained IT departments this should be their nirvana.”

The full research from Daisy, Faster, greener, cheaper – dealing with IT infrastructure complexity in a hybrid cloud world, is available here.

The post Legacy IT infrastructure is a sustainability nightmare appeared first on TechHQ.

• Repurposed content – more, but shorter – is the rationale behind TikTok mrketing.
• TikTok marketing has proven to be successful, and so is rewriting the rules for all marketing.
• Attention spans are going – wait, what were we saying?

In an era increasingly defined by how we interact with emerging social media trends, most prominently TikTok, marketing has had to adapt to fit our short-form attention spans.

Wendy’s combines memes with an oh so relatable voice.

Be it company Tweets that take on a startlingly relatable voice or your local pub promoting drinks deals via Instagram Reels, brand marketing has shifted out of print. That’s all well and good for companies with huge departments dedicated to TikTok marketing clips and keeping up with viral hashtags, but for small business owners, keeping up can be tough.

Adobe Express surveyed 517 small business owners to see how they’re engaging with an emerging technique for content production: repurposing content. That just means taking already published content and re-jigging it for reuse.

The results show how small businesses repurpose content to boost brand visibility, engagement, and sales.

Repurposed content is increasingly prolific, with 70% of small business owners using the technique in their marketing. On average, content is repurposed seven and a half months after the original post.

Gone are the days of running a magazine ad for months at a time; the trendcycle spins almost too fast to keep up with, and we’ve become conditioned to expect New Stuff almost daily.

“Wait, I think I’ve seen the long version of this…”

The root of the issue but also, apparently, the answer to it, is TikTok, which 83% of small business owners found most effective for engaging target audiences with repurposed content. Instagram followed with 78% and websites or blogs close behind at 75%.

Small business owners reported that the biggest challenges they face are not enough time (46%), lack of technical skills (27%), strategic direction (26%) and resources (21%).

“We got it rehashed, We got it half-assed, We’re digging up all the graves and we’re spitting on the past…” Credit: Ani DiFranco.

One way to level the playing field is by using AI to help: one in six small business owners reported that they use AI to repurpose content. Nearly two-thirds of those who use AI report increased marketing effectiveness and productivity, while 56% of small business owners who use AI to repurpose content save 1-5 hours/week.

Over half of those using AI say it increases sales and that it also funnels buyers into the sales route more quickly.

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Success was measured by small business owners through increased website traffic (62%) and engagement metrics (50%) – one-third also looked at conversion rates and revenue increase.

All of this shines a light on the fact that TikTok marketing has become the style guide for all advertising. In and of itself, that isn’t necessarily damning – but the effect it has on all media forms is.

TikTok marketing strategy – more, shorter, next!

The top strategy for repurposing content was taking existing videos and making shorter clips. Taking content and repurposing video content for Instagram Reels was also popular.

Indicative of the way we all engage with content online was the success small business owners had in creating video from written content, transforming blog posts into infographics, and making increasingly short clips for TikTok.

Apparently, we are all averse to reading, waiting for any kind of story arc to develop, stopping scrolling for more than thirty seconds.

For small business owners, this is a trend that has to be bought into for survival. Creative tools like Adobe Express can help turn old videos and images into fresh and engaging content.

Still, at some point we’ll need to examine why such a fast turnaround is necessary – is it possible to get back to a place where content lasts long enough that small business owners and content creators have time to create something new every time they post?

Welcome to the age of “TikTok Brain.”

The post Small business owners regenerate old content to keep up appeared first on TechHQ.

• ARM stock prices get a huge hike thanks to AI technology demand.
• The chip maker’s earnings announcement last week caused the stock price to soar. 

After returning to the stock market in September last year, UK chip designer ARM Holdings has seen its value almost double in less than a week. The company, based in Cambridge, reported financial results last Wednesday, showing that AI-technology demand is boosting its sales.

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This isn’t exactly a tale of the little guy making it, given that chips designed by ARM already power almost every smartphone in the world. Since the earnings announcement last week, shares have soared and are now up by more than 98%.

Nvidia, another big name in the chip sector, has actually seen its shares more than triple in value over the last year. Demand for AI chips is responsible, the boom having helped Nvidia become one of the most valuable publicly-traded companies in the world.

Its stock value is a jaw dropping $1.8 trillion, making it the fifth US company to join the “trillion-dollar club” alongside other technology giants Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon.

What’s slightly different for ARM is that its technology isn’t used directly in AI work. Instead, other chip makers including Nvidia are choosing to use it for central processing units (CPUs) that work well with AI-specific chips.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) also uses ARM’s chips. Combine these two major customers with the rest of the consumer-focused companies that buy from ARM, and you’ve got huge revenue potential.

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What’s more, self-driving technology means demand for ARM-designed chips is growing in the car making industry.

All this is a bit of a redemption arc for the company. ARM was founded in 1990 by chip makers in Cambridge and bought by SoftBank some 25 years later in 2016 for $32bn. Four years later, plans were announced to sell ARM to Nvidia.

Then, come April 2022, the deal was shelved by SoftBank after regulators around the world objected. Instead, it said it would sell shares in ARM on the New York Nasdaq stock exchange.

The rise in share value, then, is good news for SoftBank, proving the wisdom of its decisions – particularly since it’s been hit by losses due to the dropping value of other investments like WeWork, the office space firm.

SoftBank holds a roughly 90% stake in ARM and has seen its own shares grow almost 30% in the last week.

That failed plan to sell to Nvidia is also seeing some recuperation as it disclosed investments in ARM with a stake in the company now that’s worth $147.3m.

So, listen up all you AI naysayers. If there’s one thing that the technology is doing for humanity, it’s making huge sums of money for the corporations that experienced some minor losses a few years ago. And that’s worth something.

The post Big bucks for… the big guys? appeared first on TechHQ.

• A mainframe computer on a limited budget.
• Transactional processing at scale.
• ROI in months compared to hyperscale cloud.

Say the word mainframe to many IT professionals, and they immediately think of legacy computing, systems being replaced with more modern technologies to better cope with the demands on computing common in 2024. Some will have used mainframe systems in the past, perhaps in environments where computer access was via a mainframe and thin client. In those situations, the client was a dumb terminal, and the computing work was done elsewhere by a central mainframe facility.

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But mainframes are still in everyday production in some industries, and the market for new mainframe hardware and compatible software continues to grow where “transactional” computing is central to effective operations.

The new IBM LinuxONE 4 Express is a piece of hardware designed for smaller organizations, and it represents the baby of the breed, offering a low-cost of entry with pre-configured hardware options. The company also emphasizes its cyber-resilience, with hardware security systems it terms “Secure Execution.” The hardware has some high security clearance standards, including Common Criteria EAL 4 and DISA STIG certifications, and FIPS 140-3 compliance.

Users can choose their preferred software platform, with SUSE now offering its Linux Enterprise Server for IBM Z as part of a bundle that can also come with SLE Live Patching, SUSE Manager Lifecycle Management Plus, SLE High Availability, and a long-term service package. The Secure Execution hardware means multiple containerized applications can be run simultaneously in isolation. That makes the system ideal for multi-tenancy operations or parallel application spaces that are effectively separated from each other.

IBM LinuxONE Express. Image: IBM.

Mainframe computer benefits

While similar secure and powerful environments can be created using several x86 servers, mainframes represent a more sustainable approach to hardware and power use. Expansion of storage, memory, and processing capacity over time makes this style of hardware a more attractive long-term prospect: the use of fewer components obviously reduces environmental impact and makes hardware maintenance plans simpler to budget.

While the initial cost (from $135,000) may seem high as a line item on a CAPEX sheet, enterprises with large cloud provider bills may see an effective return on investment sooner than they think. Depending on use cases, third-party clouds’ abilities to scale and provide agility are often seldom used. That means large organizations pay for capabilities they may rarely make use of.

Transactional computing

The continuing existence of a thriving market in mainframe computing stems from the need for accurate transactional computing in a growing number of verticals. Transactional computing can be best described as a way that canonical records of all aspects of a single transaction can be kept, with each element of one transaction being required to be successful for a record to be made, changed, or deleted.

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For example, in an e-commerce business, a transaction would comprise of moving funds from a bank account to a vendor via a payment provider. If one of those steps fails (and each comprises several sub-steps), the transaction has not occurred, so the only record made is one flagged as a failure. Therefore, the emphasis in computing terms is not on raw processing power (the main requirement for supercomputing, for example) but on the integrity of database entries. That emphasis doesn’t necessarily require a different computing architecture, but it’s one that comes built into the design specifications of mainframes.

For that reason, banking and financial services, for example, still rely on mainframe technologies. But as the scale of internet use grows, more industries rely on the type of security, reliability, and data veracity that mainframe methodologies (still) excel at. Other use cases may be found in high-volume e-commerce marketplaces, engineering facilities that rely on multiple IIoT nodes, and power distribution networks, to name just three examples.

“Mainframe computer” by scriptingnews is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Business case for mainframe computers

Software optimized for transactional computing, whether monolithic or based on microservices, is available from several vendors: LinuxONE hardware will run Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu. The LinuxONE Express hardware range contains (at base version) 16 IBM IFL systems (Integrated Facility for Linux), expandable to 68 IFL instances. The Emperor LinuxONE range supports over 200 for those looking for more grunt.

The size and power of mainframes make them ideal for placing data and applications in the same place. IBM quotes an example of medical data and medical claims software sharing the same hardware tenancy, allowing for faster claim assessment. Similarly, for businesses looking to consolidate their server fleets, either in-house or leased from cloud providers, an Express instance can replace up to 2,000 x86 instances (manufacturer’s claim: YMMV).

Many IT decision-makers are coming to the conclusion that hyperscale cloud providers are not offering their services with end-user advantage front of mind. To grab a single example, Microsoft’s Q4 net income was $21.9 billion in 2023. While cloud computing still suits many, financial decision-makers might question the value for money their organization gets from their existing agreements with hyperscalers. That element of doubt and an increased need for reliable transactional processing will make the capital expenditure option look increasingly attractive to many.

The Express mainframe range can be sourced directly from IBM or approved partners.

The Express is not your meemaw’s mainframe.

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