Computerworld.com [Hacking News]

Nominations for the 2025 Best Places to Work in IT program are now closed. We are currently reviewing the submissions. The list of honorees will be announced in our Special Report in December.

About the Best Places to Work in IT program

Computerworld conducts an annual survey to identify the best places to work for IT professionals. We invite readers, PR professionals and other interested parties to nominate companies they consider great employers for IT workers. You may nominate your own company. We then ask those nominated companies that meet our basic criteria to participate in our survey.

Once again, we are excited to extend this program, which has a 31-year history in the United States, to companies worldwide.

The employers in the Best Places list are evaluated by company size: Large companies have 5,000 or more employees; midsize have between 1,001 and 4,999 employees; and small companies employ from 100 to 1,000.

For a list of the 2024 honorees and more, please see our Best Places to Work in IT 2024 special report.

To be eligible, companies must have a minimum of 5 IT employees and a minimum of 100 total employees. We consider IT employees to be those IT workers who provide technology support and services to their own company — or to multiple companies through their work at an IT service provider. Workers who would *not* be included are administrative support staff for the IT department, staff who work in communications or PR for the technology department, IT contractors, or those staff whose primary role is in product development for outside sales.

Best Places to Work in IT is a global program. We ask that companies submit no more than one survey within any one country. If your company operates in multiple countries and you would like to submit a survey for your location only, please note this in the company name field (e.g., “Foundry North America” or “Foundry Germany”). If no location is specified in the company name, we will assume that the entry represents all locations worldwide.

In most cases, we prefer to have the parent company, rather than subsidiaries or affiliates, apply for the Best Places to Work in IT list. However, a subsidiary or affiliate may be eligible, providing that it stands out as a separate entity from the parent company, with separate business functions, IT leadership and so on. A subsidiary may also be eligible to apply separately if its parent company is a holding company. In those cases, the parent company and subsidiary may be able to apply separately. We encourage companies to complete the nomination form or contact us at [email protected], and our Best Places research team will evaluate the submissions on a case-by-case basis.

Questions about the Best Places to Work in IT program can be emailed to [email protected].

Frequently asked questions Survey requirements and eligibility Does my company have to be nominated to complete the survey?

No. Companies may participate even if they were not nominated. In lieu of a nomination, please send an email to [email protected] with the name and contact information (including email address) of the individual who should receive the company survey and other information; we’ll take care of the rest.

Does the Best Places to Work in IT list include public companies only?

No. The survey includes private as well as public companies.

What criteria must my company meet to participate?

To be considered for our Best Places to Work in IT list:

• Companies must have a minimum of 5 IT employees.
• Companies must have a minimum of 100 total employees worldwide.
• In most cases, we prefer to have the parent company, rather than subsidiaries or affiliates, apply for the Best Places to Work in IT list. However, a subsidiary or affiliate may be eligible, providing that it stands out as a separate entity from the parent company, with separate business functions, IT leadership and so on. A subsidiary may also be eligible to apply separately if its parent company is a holding company. In those cases, the parent company and subsidiary may be able to apply separately. We encourage companies to complete the nomination form or contact us at [email protected], and our Best Places research team will evaluate the submissions on a case-by-case basis.

Who should complete the survey?

An individual familiar with employment statistics, benefits, policies and programs of your IT department and your company should complete the survey. This could be a human resources representative, a CIO or corporate PR representative — or a team of all the above.

Survey contents and procedures What does the company survey ask?

Our online survey includes questions about companies’ benefits, training and development, IT salary changes, percent of IT employees promoted, IT turnover rates, and the percentage of women employees in management in IT departments. In addition, we will collect information about diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, remote/hybrid working, and company growth.

Which employees are considered “IT workers” in this survey?

Answers to the survey should be based on those IT workers who provide technology support and services to their own company — or to multiple companies through their work at an IT service provider. Workers who wouldn’t be included are administrative support staff for the IT department, staff who work in communications or PR for the technology department, IT contractors, or those staff whose primary role is in product development for outside sales.

What happens if I leave a question blank on the survey?

You can’t leave a question blank if it is required. Many of the questions on the survey are required; the survey can’t be processed if they aren’t answered. Please answer to the best of your ability for questions with lists or options included. If any open-ended/text based questions aren’t applicable to your company, please indicate “NA” for “not applicable.” If there is a question you can’t answer fully given the format of the survey, you may briefly explain your answers in an addendum field that follows each survey section.

Companies that withhold information used to rank the finalists will have points deducted from their ranking. Answers that are left blank or have unexplained N/As will be assumed to be 0 (zero).

Companies must provide answers to questions related to data we run in our feature story and graphics in order to be considered. Please see below for the types of required information that are typically shared publicly.

Can I save my survey and come back to it at a later date?

Yes. You will be able to save your partially completed survey and can save a partially completed survey as many times as necessary. Please save your unique URL to re-enter the survey. When you return to the survey, you will be able to review/modify questions that you have already answered. However, we will continue to provide a printer-friendly version of the survey, and we recommend that you complete this survey, then enter your answers online.

How should I send my company’s information to Computerworld?

We accept company information from the online survey only. Please enter all data as accurately as possible. Provide company name, location, web address and other information, as you would like it to appear in print.

Can I get a copy of the survey to review before I go to the online survey and submit my company’s information?

Yes. A printer-friendly version of the 2025 Best Places company survey can be downloaded for reference. We encourage participants to complete the printer-friendly version offline before filling out the online survey.

Download: 2025 Best Places to Work in IT Company Survey
Printer-friendly copy of the 2025 Best Places to Work in IT company survey. Will Computerworld provide us with a copy of our submitted survey?

Upon request, Computerworld will email you a PDF of your company’s survey responses.

Is there an employee portion to the survey?

There is no longer an employee survey portion to the survey. Computerworld decided to make this change in the 2023 program to streamline the process for global participation and to enable companies with smaller IT departments to participate. In lieu of the employee survey portion of the program, Computerworld will be inviting a panel of judges consisting of industry experts to evaluate entries and confirm this year’s honorees.

List publication and notification When will the list of honorees be published?

The Best Places to Work in IT honorees will be announced in December 2024 on Computerworld.com.

When can I find out if my company is on the list?

Computerworld will notify companies that will be honored as a 2025 Best Place to Work in IT several weeks in advance of publication. Computerworld’s marketing group contacts honorees to offer assistance with press releases.

Is there a timeline to which I can refer for survey action items?

Below is the 2025 Best Places to Work in IT timeline.

Week of April 8, 2024

Nominations open for the 2025 Best Places to Work in IT. Nominated companies receive an email with a unique link to the Best Places company survey from Computerworld by the second week of April. Thereafter, company surveys will be sent on a rolling basis.

Monday, July 15, 2024

DEADLINE: Completed Best Places company survey is due to Computerworld.

November 2024

Best Places to Work in IT honorees are notified of their status.

December 2024

List of Best Places to Work in IT honorees is available online.

What information will be shared publicly?

Computerworld tries to avoid printing information that a company may consider competitive. The following information may appear publicly:

• Company name
• Location
• Industry
• Website
• Total number of employees
• Total number of IT employees
• Percentage of IT employee turnover
• Percentage of IT employee promotions
• Number of training days offered per IT employee
• Information from a 300-word essay outlining what’s special about your company and IT department

Please note that revenue, overall IT budget and other sensitive information will not be reported. Such information will be used only in aggregate format or for ranking purposes.

What if I have a question that was not answered in this FAQ?

Please email your questions to the following address: [email protected].

In the subject line, please include your company name and be as descriptive as possible in the subject line as to the nature of your inquiry.

Avail, an AI research firm that focuses on the media industry, today launched Corpus, a platform it said enables creators and media rights holders to license their work to AI model developers.

Corpus, the Brooklyn, New York-based firm said in a release, enables “rights holders to seek compensation for both catalog content and real-time answers derived from their work.”

A company FAQ describes it as a “monetization platform for creators, media companies and rights holders of all kinds. We connect content owners with AI companies interested in licencing their work for training purposes or real-time chatbot answer retrieval.” The Corpus homepage contains a valuation calculator that provides creators an estimate of their catalog’s worth based on recent benchmarks, Avail said.

On the site, it states that it has partnered with OpenAI, Anthropic, film production and distribution company 30West, AI-based wealth management firm Range, and venture capitalists General Catalyst and Seven Seven Six.

Bill Wong, AI research fellow at Info-Tech Research Group, viewed the launch of Corpus as a positive move for creators, and necessary in order to reset “expectations that Big Tech vendors have regarding their use of copyrighted data.”

While, he said, an initiative such as this has the potential to be beneficial not only to content creators, but also to those firms who train AI models, “there will be challenges in resetting expectations and making this work in an efficient manner. The advantage of accessing curated data is that it provides a higher quality of data to train the model. However, the administration of this may be a challenge, such as calculating the right costs, perhaps implementing new types of watermarks, etc.”

Wong added that Avail’s Corpus tool “flies in the face” of recent comments made by Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, in an interview at the recent Aspen Ideas Festival. “While attempting to define what kind of content is protected by publishers, he proceeded to say: ‘With respect to content already on the open web, the social contract of that content since the 1990s has been that it is fair use. Anyone can copy it, recreate it, or reproduce it. That has been freeware, if you like; that’s been the understanding.’”

Had the internet had a tool like Corpus available in the 1990s, said Wong, “I am sure content creators would have been properly acknowledged and compensated for their content. Today, the jury is still assessing whether copyright data for LLM training should fall under ‘fair use,’ but accessing data in real-time should be recognized as of value to both users and vendors, and this content should not be considered freeware.”

Today, he said, the US copyright office has not prevented “LLM vendors from using copyrighted data to train their models. The vendors typically state that the use of the copyrighted data falls under the legal concept of ‘fair use,’ which allows people/companies to use limited portions of the work for non-commercial, educational, or transformative uses.”

According to Wong, “It is the ‘transformative’ use the vendors argue that is how the LLMs are using the data. Ingested data is not simply reproduced by the LLM; the content is transformed and used to generate new content for new uses. However, I don’t believe that when the ‘fair use’ doctrine was first defined, they considered a program that would ingest all the data, be used for commercial purposes, and disrupt the industry of the creators.”

The launch of Corpus follows an announcement late last month that seven companies that license music, images, videos, and other data used for training AI systems have formed a trade association to promote responsible and ethical licensing of intellectual property. To be known as the Dataset Providers Alliance (DPA), the primary goals are to standardize the licensing of intellectual property for AI and ML datasets, facilitate industry collaboration, be an advocate for content creators’ rights and protect intellectual property.

What can potentially happen if an organization does end up getting caught for copyright violations? Consider: in March, France’s competition authority fined Google, its parent company Alphabet, and two subsidiaries a total of €250 million ($271 million) for breaching a previous agreement on using copyrighted content for training its Bard AI service, now known as Gemini.

The Autorité de la concurrence said that the search giant failed to comply with a June 2022 settlement over the use of news stories in its search results, News and Discover pages. Google avoided a fine at that point by pledging to enter into good-faith negotiations with news providers over compensation for their content, among other actions.

Next read this:

• AI language models need to shrink; here’s why smaller may be better
• LLM deployment flaws that catch IT by surprise
• The AI data-poisoning cat-and-mouse game — this time, IT will win

Anthropic released an iOS version of its popular chatbot Claude for the iPhone in May; now, it’s time for an Android version.

The artificial intelligence (AI) company announced the Android iteration on Tuesday.

With the help of Claude, users can have conversations in a number of languages, including English, German, French, Spanish and Italian. The new app reportedly can be used with all subscriptions, which includes Pro and Team. Business users have the option to sign up for a monthly subscription that costs roughly $31 per user. The minimum number of users that can be registered is five.

Users who can’t download the app from Google Play or the App Store, can still access Claude via the web at claude.ai .

Next read this:

• 7 efficiency-enhancing Android apps
• This classic Android app is tapping into the ghost of Google Now
• 13 useful Google apps you should be using on Android
• The best note-taking apps for Android
• 7 handy hidden Android features you probably forget to use

On June 18, 2024, the first round of Copilot+ PCs arrived, including offerings from Microsoft, HP, Asus Acer, Dell, and Lenovo. I was lucky enough to land a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x on June 21st and have been digging into its capabilities and limitations ever since.

Over the weekend, I stumbled upon a situation that is both unsurprising and disturbing — namely, that there are very, very few image backup and restore tools that work with the ARM64-based version of Windows 11 24H2 that ships on all currently available Copilot+ PCs.

Searching for working image backup packages

Indeed, a concerted series of Google and Bing searches have turned up exactly three software programs that can back up and restore ARM64 versions of Windows (all of which run only on Snapdragon X CPUs at present, though AMD64 versions on Intel and AMD CPUs are expected in the next month or two).

Two of those three options are at least mildly questionable, as I’ll explain:

1. Zinstall FullBack is a full-featured backup and restore package that performs constant incremental backups to a local or networked drive, or into the cloud. Zinstall has been active in the ARM side of Windows backup since Microsoft released early versions of Windows on ARM (WoA) for the Surface Pro X in November 2019. The vendor offers a free 30-day trial, and then charges US$14.90 per month thereafter to use the software.

A bare-metal restore to a non-booting PC will first require a clean Windows install on that machine (I’d recommend an ARM64 ISO from UUP dump), and then installing the Zinstall application. After that, you can restore a backup from your collection of prior snapshots and overwrite the temporary install with that install to pick up where it left off.

2. Microsoft’s Backup and Restore (Windows 7) Control Panel item is still available in Windows 11 24H2. As you can see in this Microsoft Learn article, Windows 7 Backup and Restore has been deprecated since the release of Windows 8 in 2012. This tool is intended to restore existing Windows 7 backups to newer Windows PCs, but it can back up and restore newer versions as well. It’s not a production-grade tool.

3. Version 6.0 of the Veeam Agent (which works with the company’s various backup and replication enterprise-grade solutions) has been force-fit to back up on ARM-based CPUs as of March 2023 (see the end of this R&D Forums note). It can be restored using a Veeam Agent running on an X64 PC. Here again, this appears to be something of a kludge.

Just for grins, I checked all of the backup packages mentioned in Tim Fisher’s November 2023 Lifewire article 32 Best Free Backup Software Tools. None of them supports ARM64 CPUs, either.

The Windows Backup option

When I asked Microsoft to comment on the situation, a spokesperson pointed me to the Microsoft support page for the Windows Backup app built into Windows 11, indicating that this tool provides a backup and recovery solution for ARM-based PCs. It does, but not completely.

As I discuss in a recent article on the new backup, recovery, and repair tools in Windows 11, the Windows Backup app is undoubtedly a useful tool for backing up files and folders, apps, settings, and credentials and restoring same. But its restore operation is not as seamless as when using dedicated image backup software, and it doesn’t easily scale up for enterprise use. Indeed, it requires one-at-a-time reinstall of all Windows apps and applications (through links in the Start menu) to fully restore a Windows 11 PC to match its backed-up installation state.

In other words, making complete image backups that can be quickly and easily restored requires third-party image backup software.

Get real about backup and restore in Copilot+ PCs

Realistically, Zinstall FullBack appears to be the only viable option for backing up and restoring Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus CPU models. (Elite models include X1E-00-1DE, X1E-84-100, X1E-80-100, and the X1E-78-100 found in the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7X; Plus models include X1P-64-100.)

Buyers considering an investment in the current crop of Copilot+ PCs should ponder this potential limitation (among others) carefully. They should also consider that the upcoming collection of Intel- and AMD-based Copilot+ PCs will work with all currently available Windows 11-compatible image backup and restore tools and platforms.

Related reading:

• Microsoft Copilot+ PCs: Finally, a reason to buy a new computer
• 5 Copilot+ PC AI features you can use at launch
• Will your business apps run on the latest Copilot+ PCs?

If personal privacy remains a human right, one day Apple’s approach to artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (genAI) will be emulated by the industry, at least to some extent. Because Apple is going where public opinion already is and will benefit from that stance with Apple Intelligence.

This view comes after Ive looked over the 10th Mobile Ecosystem Forum (MEF) Consumer Trust Study, which shows a growing public consciousness around data collection, use, and privacy. And it also tells us that people trust the companies that handle their data less and less.

Tech firms, consumers don’t trust you any more

This should be alarming at this stage of the evolution of AI and shows the clear advantage Apple has as it works to create a trusted, private, powerful model of personal AI. The idea of edge-based, completely private intelligence seems to reflect what users want, rather than feeding the fast-growing industry around surveillance capital.

Apple’s core message about personal privacy — and its recognition that if you are giving up control of your data to use a product, you are the product — were ahead of their time when the company began to promote those thoughts. And now, it is precisely where consumers are going.

Apple’s attempt to deliver a trusted AI may be difficult to accomplish, but the company has already shown a pragmatic awareness of how to get there. Yes, you can use third-party services with Apple Intelligence if you want. But the company will also provide far more private services you can use for specific domains. 

I expect the goal is that eventually the tasks people most want genAI to do for them will be available at the edge, or in trusted iCloud.

What’s changed? 

Convenience isn’t as attractive as it used to be. MEF tells us consumers are less convinced by arguments around ease and convenience and far more likely to question the hidden privacy costs of so-called “free” services. That consciousness means they are searching for and will migrate to trusted services offering high degrees of privacy and control. 

At present in Big Tech, only Apple really provides this.

There are numerous additional relevant insights buried in the MEF report:

• The rise of the “Savvy Consumer” — people who are cautious about data sharing and demand greater control and transparency. They want to be in control of their own data. 
• Consumers are becoming more aware of how data is collected and used and less happy to share their information. Just 12% of online users are unconcerned about data control, and that number is shrinking.
• People are also increasingly concerned about identity theft and data breaches, which once again makes them less likely to share information.  MEF claims 67% of users globally avoid sharing personal data.
• Consumers want clear privacy policies and transparent tools that put them in control of the information they share.
• In the absence of these tools, people limit what they share in an attempt to control what’s known about them. This is a direct challenge to businesses that exploit personal data, particularly for advertising, and for some of the emerging business models around those.

So, where does this leave Apple and AI?

Consumers understand the link between data and privacy

The MEF survey makes it crystal clear that the frontier era of internet privacy has moved into history. While a lot of people became super-rich through various velvet-gloved business plans that involved privacy abuse, the lack of security, care, transparency and respect for consumers has had its cost; people now demand better.

It is true that users continue to be concerned at the overarching power of Big Tech (including Apple), the need to prevent proliferation of harmful content, and a desire to eliminate misleading advertising. But consumers are now also developing awareness of the connection between AI and data privacy.

That they have developed such awareness should be an alarm to incumbents in this space, as that recognition will translate into changing consumer behavior and regulation in double-quick time. It also means Apple’s unique combination of privacy and convenience looks a lot better than what rivals are doing.

People have become ambivalent about technology

MEF tells us the awareness of the challenges of data and privacy is fostering a deep sense of disappointment in technology on an existential level. “Levels of positivity towards tech advancements have stopped increasing, and most users felt either ambivalent or negative towards developments such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality,” MEF said in its executive report.

That’s a bad thing for tech, even for Apple. It’s probably an inevitable disappointment, as utopian promises devolve into increasingly dystopian reality. “The focus is on collaboratively building the next paradigm for a data economy that prioritizes user trust and data control,” wrote MEF CEO Dario Betti.

And which company is already doing more than any other to build something like that? Apple, of course, which has been on precisely this journey since Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered a speech in the EU to warn: “This is surveillance,” and the company intensified its work to build a data economy that prioritizes user trust and data control.

It is fair to say Apple has faced resistance since it set off on this path. Being ahead of your time can generate headwinds. But enterprise and consumer users are catching up fast.

The industry will need to keep up

A pro-privacy, pro-data protection approach will be a key stratagem to put wind under the wings of Apple Intelligence. But it is also the approach consumer and enterprise users will demand from all services in this space.

In this, Apple is already ahead of the game.

Please follow me on Mastodon, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.

More by Jonny Evans:

• RCS now works on iPhones running the iOS 18 beta
• Where does Apple Intelligence come from?
• Will Apple stop at Messages via Satellite?

Proof News has published a new audit showing that major tech companies such as Apple, Nvidia, Anthropic, and Salesforce used subtitle data from 173,536 YouTube videos to train their artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

The companies plan to use the “Youtube Subtitles” data collection, created by EleutherAI; it contains transcripts from news channels such as Khan Academy, MIT, Harvard, The Wall Street Journal, NPR and BBC, as well as entertainment channels such as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and Jimmy Kimmel Live.

The data collection also contains subtitles for videos belonging to big YouTube stars such as MrBeast, Swedish PewDiePie, and Jacksepticeye. According to Youtube’s rules, companies are not allowed to harvest material from the platform without permission.

EleutherAI has so far not commented on Proof News’ review.

More tech news:

• FTC is looking into Amazon’s deal with AI startup Adept
• UK regulators probe Microsoft’s hiring of former Inflection staff
• AI chip battleground shifts as software takes center stage
• OpenAI whistleblowers seek SEC probe into ‘restrictive’ NDAs with staffers
• EU accuses X/Twitter of breaching the Digital Services Act

French AI startup Mistral has launched a new large language model (LLM) that can help generate longer tranches of code comparatively faster than other open-source models, such as CodeGemma-1.1 7B and CodeLlama 7B.

“Unlike transformer models, Mamba models offer the advantage of linear time inference and the theoretical ability to model sequences of infinite length. It allows users to engage with the model extensively with quick responses, irrespective of the input length,” the startup said in a statement.

Earlier this year, Atlassian was subjected to a massive cyberattack, leading to sensitive information about the software company’s customers ending up in the wrong hands.

According to Bleeping Computer, data on 15 million users of the popular planning tool Trello, including account information, names and email addresses, has now been put up for sale on a hacker forum.

Given that it only costs about $3.66 to access the information, users can expect many scammers to take advantage of the “offer.”

To be safe, Trello users should change their login credentials as soon as possible.

More tech news:

• FTC is looking into Amazon’s deal with AI startup Adept
• UK regulators probe Microsoft’s hiring of former Inflection staff
• AI chip battleground shifts as software takes center stage
• OpenAI whistleblowers seek SEC probe into ‘restrictive’ NDAs with staffers
• EU accuses X/Twitter of breaching the Digital Services Act

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sought details from Amazon about the recruitment of key personnel from the AI startup Adept, according to a Reuters report.

The request follows the announcement that Adept CEO David Luan, along with other top executives, will be joining Amazon, which is also set to license some of Adept’s technologies.

This underscores the growing scrutiny by the FTC and other regulatory bodies worldwide on AI-related deals, especially partnerships between major technology companies and leading AI startups.

Earlier this week, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced an inquiry into a similar move by Microsoft, which recruited most of the employees from startup, Inflection, for its consumer AI group. In June, the FTC too had launched an investigation to determine whether there actually was an undisclosed acquisition through the hiring of key personnel and the licensing agreement with Inflection.

AI growth amid scrutiny

Expanding AI capabilities has become inevitable for tech companies. Faisal Kawoosa, chief analyst at Techarc, pointed out that Amazon has been lagging in its AI journey compared to other big tech companies, necessitating a search for inorganic growth strategies.

“We’ve seen a similar approach with Apple, which acquired a startup like DarwinAI due to uncertainties in their ecosystem,” said Kawoosa. “As for this investigation, it appears to be preliminary to determine if it warrants a deeper look. Regulators are assessing whether anything in this transaction violates trade practices.”

This could further raise concerns for companies considering partnerships with the likes of Amazon, as regulatory hurdles can be daunting, said Thomas George, president of Cybermedia Research. The main concerns involve information privacy, copyright infringement, and antitrust issues.

“This forces organizations to think critically to avoid legal risks, especially when handling sensitive customer data or formulating contracts that do not give one company too much influence over the market,” George said. “Given prevailing trends, regulatory bodies like the FTC require a forward-thinking approach to compliance to ensure partnerships align with shifting regulations through transparency.”

Impact of regulatory intervention

Given its benefits, the trend of integrating AI startups will likely continue, with both deep tech and big tech companies trying to enhance their capabilities and quickly develop their large language models.

For instance, Kawoosa pointed out that such acquisitions provide Amazon with rapid access to advanced AI technologies. The widespread use of AWS enables Amazon to offer enhanced AI services to its many enterprise customers.

This could naturally lead to increased regulatory scrutiny in the industry. The bigger issue would be the two-fold impact on AI innovation and adoption in enterprises. On one hand, this might slow down aggressive acquisition strategies as companies navigate regulatory landscapes.

“On the other, this could create a better competitive environment by preventing market monopolization and ensuring smaller AI innovators can compete and collaborate within the ecosystem on equal footing,” George said. “Finally, while such scrutiny could pose some obstacles in the near term, it can foster a more diverse and robust innovation landscape that would benefit the entire industry, thereby facilitating the equitable development of AI technologies.”

Despite the well-publicized success of four-day workweek pilots around the globe, it’s still a relatively uncommon way of working.

“There is a lot of traditional thinking and managerial resistance in most organizations against four-day workweeks,” says Leslie Joseph, principal analyst at Forrester.

Companies that have experimented with four-day workweeks have generally gotten positive results, so long as there is systemic support in the organization, Joseph says. “They found that their employees actually appreciated it and found themselves to be more productive. Individual mental health and individual work-life balance [also] improved.” 

But the perception remains that employees can’t possibly get as much done in a 32-hour workweek as in a 40-hour one. Whether or not that’s true with traditional ways of working, some organizations are finding that automation and new AI tools — particularly generative AI — have proven to be a key factor in making their four-day workweeks a success.

Working asynchronously with the help of AI

Colin Bryce, managing director of Cobry, a Google Cloud partner in the United Kingdom, introduced a four-day workweek to the organization two and a half years ago. The timing was notable because it preceded the emergence of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools by a few months, giving the organization a snapshot of four-day workweeks before and after genAI.

Before the move, Bryce’s research into the four-day workweek showed that phased transitions, where different parts of the organization are brought onto the new schedule in batches, often did not work well because companies fell into a kind of “analysis paralysis.”

“It usually ends up with people just getting spooked and reversing course. So if you’re going to do it, just go for it,” Bryce advises.

When the four-day workweek was rolled out company-wide at Cobry, Bryce asked all employees to remember several principles to increase efficiency even as they reduced working hours. “Automate where you can, eliminate where you can, outsource or delegate where you can, and educate if there’s a need for some learning to improve efficiency,” he says.

According to Bryce, the arrival of ChatGPT and other tools introduced another principle: “How can we use AI to make the four-day week work better?”

This principle was crucial because Cobry’s approach to four-day workweeks led to some operational challenges. Internally referred to as “20% time,” the policy allows employees to take off 20% of every day, two half days, or one whole day each week. However, if two colleagues opt for one day off on different days, they will only overlap for three days a week, leading to a necessary rise in asynchronous work.

But Cobry was in a fortuitous position because of its existing tools, Bryce says. “We have a really modern, cloud-based tech stack” that includes Asana for work management, Notion as a knowledge base, Hubspot for CRM, and Looker for business intelligence, all built around Google Workspace. With the addition of Google’s Gemini AI model to the mix, each component now has “a significant amount of genAI woven into it,” Bryce says.

Across this tech stack, AI is particularly helpful for documentation and lower-level tasks that free up employees for face-to-face tasks during shared working hours,  Bryce says. Cobry uses AI for transcribing meetings, writing strategy documents, and even information-sharing through special bots custom-written by Cobry. Available 24/7, the bots support asynchronous work by providing various pieces of data that are useful for internal teams, such as the latest updates from Google Cloud, a current list of who is on holiday, and even birthday announcements.

These use cases fall right in line with the four principles Cobry emphasizes to make the four-day workweek possible: automate, eliminate, outsource or delegate, and educate.

“With AI tools coming into play, we immediately had an incredibly powerful fifth method to facilitate a successful four-day week. We became able to progress, and often solve, issues that would previously have needed much more work and often the input of an external subject matter expert. Using AI tools closed many of those loops, and therefore made us more efficient,” he says.

More time to think — and grow the business

John Readman, CEO of Ask Bosco, a marketing AI company based in the UK, founded the business in 2019, implementing four-day workweeks from the get-go. The company allows employees to have Wednesday or Friday as a day off. He says that the rise of AI has helped the business grow without increasing headcount or staffers’ hours.

“We can actually win more business and still maintain the four-day week without having to recruit more people, so it’s meant our ability to produce more work within the time we’re working,” Readman says. AI tools have also improved “the quality of the work we’re doing, because we’ve got more time to think about it rather than just rushing it out the door,” he says.

The organization’s current applications for AI are diverse, including using ChatGPT and Midjourney for content production for search engine optimization; note-taking for meetings, which teams use to align their task lists and agendas; automated expense reporting for employees; and even voice cloning their tech experts so that the marketing team can create technical walkthroughs without recording audio.

AI has been so valuable to the company that Readman has actively solicited new AI use case ideas through a company-wide competition. Employees had to identify which tool would be used, how it would be used, and, perhaps most relevantly, how much time they expected to regain. Three winners received a cash prize for their ideas.

While Readman is bullish on rolling out AI and automation to every area of the organization, there is one area Ask Bosco will not touch. “We’re not using AI to monitor and watch what people are doing. I know some companies do that, but I think that’s sort of counterintuitive,” he says.

Facilitating information exchange

Safeguard Global, a workforce management software vendor headquartered in the United States, has a flexible work policy known as “work in any way.” This policy allows people to work how they want and when they want, says chief technology officer Duri Chitayat — and what they are measured by is what they deliver rather than how many hours they put in.

“Teams will establish a working agreement,” says Chitayat. “So, for example, one of my peers, a chief product officer, prefers to take off Fridays. I, on the other hand, like to use my Fridays for kind of spillover meetings.”

Chitayat says that AI supports work in any way because it lowers the time and effort spent to exchange information. Gathering the right data and getting it to the right people used to be a time-consuming process with various bottlenecks along the way. “AI strips the delay in information, the queuing of things in systems,” Chitayat says.

To this end, Safeguard uses a variety of genAI tools, including open-source projects like LangChain and LangGraph for agent orchestration, Vercel AI SDK for UX and developer experience, and LLMs from OpenAI and other vendors for natural language processing. The exact use cases vary — recruiting, knowledge management, workforce analytics, spend analytics, and client service management — but they all make the access and exchange of information more efficient.

In fact, information exchange has become so efficient that “highly skilled people — the place where you want to get the information to — those people become the new bottleneck,” Chitayat says. “They’re the wall socket that everything gets plugged into. AI just makes it easier to get them that stuff.”

The risk of this efficiency is that employees burn out and leave the organization. Flexible working arrangements, such as work-in-any-way or four-day workweeks, give people time to recharge, Chitayat says, and they’re more likely to stick around.

“By offering people an easier time, the ability to take a day when you need it, you’re messaging to people what you value, which is outcomes — not just showing up,” he says.

A valuable recruiting and retention tool

Flexible working is beneficial not just for employee retention, but for recruiting as well. Bryce calls Cobry’s four-day workweek a “joker card” to play against other firms.

“People are really, really shocked. They’re like, ‘Wow, what do you mean?’ I’ve had people not believe me in interviews. They think they have to take a 20% pay cut to get it,” he says.

This advantage has distinguished Cobry from other companies in a competitive market. “I don’t think there’s another Google Cloud partner that has the four-day week,” he says.

Ultimately, Cobry’s four-day work policy is an extension of its employee experience, Bryce says. “We’ve always been very careful about no work in the evenings, no work on the weekends and things like that. So I guess it was a further extension of that to try and really respect people’s lives and to give them a work-life balance,” he says.

In the era of hustle culture, one might assume that employees are using the extra time to freelance or work another job part-time. Readman has found otherwise at Ask Bosco. The company administered an anonymous general employee happiness survey and found that most people used the additional time off for “life admin” tasks like chores, errands, and other upkeep.

Readman says a four-day workweek helps both the organization and the employee. “That means you can enjoy your weekend, and then that helps with your mental health. And I also think that helps with being focused in the four days you’re working because you’re not thinking, ‘Ohh, I’ve got the man coming to fix the fridge or sort out the dishwasher whilst I’m meant to be on a call,’” he says.

The four-day week as a litmus test

Bryce says Cobry’s four-day workweek has been a barometer for the overall business.

“It’s almost like a magnifying glass to assess how well the business is operating in general,” he says. “It’s been a big driver in forcing focus: If this can’t be done in four days, how come? Is the process bad? Is everyone using their own tools? Is the person not skilled? You know, it’s very provocative,” he says.

Chitayat says that work-in-any-way has been similarly revelatory for Safeguard Global.

“The old way of hiring people and making sure they show up at the office is not a very good management tactic. It creates a lot of ‘success theater,’ whereas now what we’re focused on is data: What does the data tell us about our outcomes? Who’s succeeding? Who’s not? [We’re learning] how to ask the right questions, how to be able to get under the covers and find out why things are happening the way that they’re happening.” he says.

As a result, Chitayat says, more leaders are data-informed or data-driven.

Forrester’s Joseph says this data-driven approach can eventually help organizations that are not currently on four-day workweeks achieve that goal. He cited the example of an Indian company that Forrester works with. Although the company had a four-day workweek as a stated goal, they did not transition wholesale immediately. Instead, they launched a three-month pilot, asking both employees and clients for feedback.

At the end of the pilot, clients scored the firm’s output at more than 4 on a 5-point scale, and employee satisfaction scores rose from the usual 3.2 or 3.3 to well above 4. At that point the company made the four-day week permanent.

Joseph advises other businesses to consider the transition with a similarly pragmatic lens. “What should we be measuring? And how do the metrics that we’re collecting point to the impact of a four-day workweek on the long-term health across various metrics of our organization and of the employees?” he asks.

Organizations should not consider a four-day workweek in isolation but as part of a broader program to improve the employee experience across the board, Joseph says. And organizations should be deliberate about how they want work to happen.

He points to Amazon, which famously tries to minimize meetings by asking executives to articulate their thoughts in six-page memos rather than PowerPoints, as an example.

“These are all signals wherein organizations are shaping culture and aligning the tools — whether that be collaboration tools or automation tools or AI tools — around those objectives to create a certain work environment where people can come in, be their best at work, be their most productive in what they’re doing, and then maybe do things with the extra time that they save,” he says. “You have to look at all this holistically.”

Microsoft is talking a lot about Copilot+ PCs with exclusive AI features. Those features aren’t very useful yet, but there is a compelling package of extra features for Windows you can get on any Windows PC — for free. It’s called Microsoft PowerToys.

I’ve been a big fan of Microsoft PowerToys for years. This free and open-source package of extra tools is a must-install for nearly any Windows PC user. Many of them can give you a big productivity upgrade, saving you time whether you use your PC for work or play. You can get the latest PowerToys version from the Microsoft Store in a few clicks; the tools will work on both Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Microsoft PowerToys is a big package with dozens of individual utilities, many of which are packed with their own options. The tips listed here just scratch the surface.

Want more tips and tricks for making the most of your PC? Sign up for my free Windows Intelligence newsletter — I’ll send you three things to try every Friday. Plus, get free Windows 11 and 10 Field Guides (a $10 value) as a special welcome bonus!

Windows PowerToys tool #1: Keyboard Manager

The Keyboard Manager PowerToy lets you take a key on your keyboard and make it function as another key. Want to transform the Caps Lock key into something more useful such as a search key or a convenient Play/Pause key for controlling music playback? You can do that. Got a new laptop that comes with a Copilot key and don’t use Copilot? You can make the key do whatever you want it to do.

To remap keys, open the PowerToys settings window, select the Keyboard Manager tool, and click “Remap a key.”

Don’t use Caps Lock? Transform the key into something you will use.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Windows PowerToys tool #2: Always On Top

This PowerToy lets you keep any window always on top of other windows, leaving it visible on your screen even when you click away. To use it, just press Windows+Ctrl+T after installing PowerToys. (You can change it to any other keyboard shortcut you like in the PowerToys settings window.)

After pressing the shortcut, the window will be always front and center. It’s an excellent window-management trick I’ve always loved using, and now I don’t have to hunt down third-party utilities to get it.

Windows PowerToys tool #3: PowerToys Run

PowerToys Run is a convenient launcher that provides a better experience than the Start menu in many ways. Press Alt+Space to pull it up after installing PowerToys. You can launch applications, search for files, and do basic math calculations here.

Better yet, you can even start searching the web: Unlike the Start menu built into Windows, the PowerToys Run launcher will obey your choice of default search engine and web browser. In other words, if you prefer Google in Chrome, PowerToys Run will launch that. (The Start menu always launches Bing in Edge.)

PowerToys Run even supports community-created plug-ins for extra functionality.

PowerToys Run is a better launcher and search tool than the Start menu.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Windows PowerToys tool #4: Image Resizer

The Image Resizer PowerToy gives you a convenient way to resize multiple image files in just a few clicks. You can then choose a new size for the images and resize them all in a single click.

After installing PowerToys, select some image files in File Explorer, right-click them, and select “Resize with Image Resizer.” (You will have to click “Show more options” after opening the menu if you’re using Windows 11.)

Windows PowerToys tool #5: PowerRename

PowerRename is a convenient bulk file rename tool included in PowerToys. With it, you can quickly rename multiple files at once. It’s a nice alternative to the much more complex batch rename tools for Windows that you’ll find if you start searching the web.

After installing PowerToys, right-click some files in File Explorer and select “Rename with PowerRename” to pull it up. 

PowerRename is a powerful tool for renaming lots of files at once.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Windows PowerToys tool #6: Video Conference Mute

Video Conference Mute is a powerful tool for anyone who wants extra control of their PC’s webcam and microphone. After enabling this, you can use keyboard shortcuts to enable and disable your PC’s webcam and microphone — and it works in all apps. To activate it, open the PowerToys settings window and select Video Conference Mute.

Windows PowerToys tool #7: Awake

The Awake tool is similar to Caffeine for Mac. After installing PowerToys, you’ll get a little coffee cup icon in your system tray. You can use this tool to force your computer to stay awake. It’s convenient if you’re performing a download or another long-running task and don’t want your PC to going to sleep.

You right-click the Awake icon and tell it to keep your computer awake for a period of time — no messing with your power management settings needed.

The PowerToys Awake tool can stop your computer from sleeping.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Windows PowerToys tool #8: Text Extractor

The Text Extractor tool is incredibly useful, offering a way to scan anywhere on your screen for words and convert them into copy-pasteable text. It’s an excellent optical character recognition (OCR) trick; you just have to press Windows+Shift+T to use it.

This tool isn’t as pertinent on Windows 11 now that the Snipping Tool has OCR built in, but it has the important distinction of also working on Windows 10 — unlike the Windows-11-only Snipping Tool OCR function. This PowerToy gives Windows 10 PCs a convenient OCR option that would otherwise only be included after upgrading to Windows 11.

Windows PowerToys tool #9: Advanced Paste

The Advanced Paste PowerToy gives you more control over pasting text. One particularly useful feature: It lets you use the Windows+Ctrl+Alt+V keyboard shortcut to paste the contents of your computer’s clipboard as plain text in any application. (While you can often do this with Ctrl+Shift+V in many applications, that keyboard shortcut isn’t universal — it doesn’t work in all apps.)

This tool also has a new gimmick: “Paste with AI,” a feature that requires an OpenAI API key that will let you quickly format the contents of your clipboard with the AI model that powers ChatGPT. In the future, this type of feature might use the neural processing unit (NPU) hardware on modern Copilot+ PCs to do this locally — no OpenAI API key or cloud service necessary.

Windows PowerToys tool #10: FancyZones

The FancyZones tool is a very powerful utility for organizing windows on your desktop. This is a perfect example of PowerToys in action: Yes, Windows includes powerful keyboard shortcuts and mouse tricks for “Snapping” windows — and they’re even more powerful on Windows 11.

But FancyZones goes beyond that, providing a window management system that lets you define different zones to place windows in. You can switch between window layouts with a keyboard shortcut and even tell FancyZones to remember where you put windows and automatically place them in their last known zone when you launch them.

FancyZones is a very customizable tiling window manager for Windows.

Chris Hoffman, IDG

Microsoft PowerToys contains many more tools than this. Download PowerToys and poke around to find them — or take a look at the PowerToys website to see a complete list. Microsoft is still working on PowerToys, and new and useful utilities are being added regularly. In fact, it’s an open-source project anyone can contribute to.

Want more PC tips and tricks? Come check out my free Windows Intelligence newsletter — I’ll send you three things to try every Friday. Plus, get free supremely in-depth Windows 10 and 11 Field Guides just for stopping by.

I don’t mean to brag, but — well, my browser’s new tab page is much better than yours.

All right, so that didn’t come across quite as humble as I’d hoped. But it’s true, all right. I added an exceptional new tool into my Chrome setup a while back, and no exaggeration: It has absolutely transformed the way I get stuff done during the workday and made every standard browser setup look like child’s play in comparison.

It’s an interesting alternative to the simple sticky note canvas upgrade I mentioned for Chrome’s new tab page in my Cool Tools newsletter this morning. And while this setup is specific to the desktop computer domain, it connects to many of the same services you use on your phone — like your calendar, your tasks, and more — while also putting oodles of other useful superpowers at your fingertips.

Plain and simple, it’s one of the smartest and most effective enhancements you’ll make to your work environment all year. And it’ll take you all of two minutes to get going.

[Get fresh tips and tools in your inbox every Friday with my Android Intelligence newsletter. Three new things to try each week!]

Meet your Chrome browser efficiency booster

The wizardry at the heart of this hefty browser betterment is a simple-seeming extension I just happened to stumble onto recently.

It’s called Dashy, and while I’m using the Chrome-specific version on my computer, it’s also available for Firefox and Edge (and it should work on any other Chromium-based browser beyond that as well).

Dashy brings a customized and insanely versatile productivity dashboard into your browser. It replaces the standard space-wasting Chrome new tab page with a canvas on which you can place numerous widgets with all sorts of useful functions — like:

• A glance at your upcoming events and appointments from either Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar
• An interactive view of your pending tasks from Google Tasks, Microsoft To Do, or Todoist
• A custom world clock with the current time in whatever time zones you want
• A live look at the weather in your current area
• An on-demand language translator
• A simple voice recorder
• And an intelligent tab manager and search tool

Dashy lets you configure your own custom Chrome dashboard, with widgets for all sorts of useful purposes.

JR Raphael, IDG

You can add as many (or as few!) widgets as you want and both size and place ’em in whatever way you prefer. Your browser’s new tab page essentially becomes a rich info-packed desktop and command center, and you’ve got complete control over exactly what sort of info is included and how it all appears.

It’s kind of like a modernized and massively improved version of the old iGoogle concept, in other words — with even more utility and potential, both practical and visual.

To that end, Dashy includes an optional and customizable search box that gives you an easy place to search the web along with your Chrome browser bookmarks and history. You can also get Google suggestions there and even use it to perform calculations and other such feats — and if you’d rather use a search service other than Google, it makes it easy to do that, too.

The Dashy search box can be customized and even set to use a variety of different search providers beyond just Google.

JR Raphael, IDG

My favorite Dashy feature, though, has to be the custom web widget option. With a few seconds of simple setup, you can create your own widget that shows a live view of any web page you want — a news or stock site, for instance, or maybe your company website for easy at-a-glance monitoring.

I’ve used that option to embed a live view of my Google-Calendar-connected Notion Calendar so I can always see a clean and convenient view of the current week and add or edit events right then and there, in any new tab I open.

Dashy’s custom widget option lets you add a live embedded view of any web page to your Chrome new tab page dashboard.

JR Raphael, IDG

Dashy has all sorts of other interesting options, including a host of keyboard shortcuts and mouse-friendly hotspots you can configure to launch specific sites or actions when you click ’em. It can even integrate with your browser- and/or system-level notifications and alert you to those within its interface — visually and even aurally, if you want — to make sure you never miss anything important.

And, critically, any setup you create within Dashy will automatically sync and show up on any computer you use and sign into, so you never have to worry about losing your custom canvas or being forced to start over.

Dashy is free to use in its base form, with an optional $3-a-month Pro step-up that lifts certain limitations and makes the full set of features available.

It’s one heck of a productivity upgrade — and believe you me: Once you get used to the enhanced environment it brings into your desktop browser experience, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

Want even more useful productivity pointers? Check out my free Android Intelligence newsletter and get three new tips in your inbox every Friday!

More by JR Raphael:

• 8 AI-powered apps that’ll actually save you time
• How to make the most of Google’s Find My Device Android network
• 10 forgotten Android text selection shortcuts

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (DMA) on Tuesday announced the start of an inquiry into Microsoft’s hiring of employees from Inflection for its consumer AI group, and its approximately $650 million payment to license the company’s technology.

Inflection cofounders Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan, along with a number of other colleagues, joined Microsoft in March; Suleyman became executive vice president and CEO of the newly-formed Microsoft AI, Simonyan joined as chief scientist for the group.

[ Related: Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI facing antitrust probes, says report ]

At issue is whether Microsoft’s actions constituted what the CMA called “a relevant merger situation,” and if so, whether the moves will substantially lessen competition in the UK.

The inquiry begins July 17, with a decision on whether to proceed with further investigation to be announced Sept. 11.

“Regulators are right to challenge these practices, as they can potentially stifle innovation and competition,” said Phil Brunkard, executive counselor at Info-Tech Research Group, UK. “Start-ups thrive on the creativity and vision of their founders and the unique ideas they bring to the table.

“Competition is essential for fostering creativity and innovation, and we should encourage start-ups to grow independently, allowing competition to develop naturally,” he said. “This ensures that investment is based on merit, rather than allowing dominant players to define the rules of competition on their own terms.”

UK regulators aren’t the only ones to call the activities into question. In June, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an investigation to determine whether there actually was an undisclosed acquisition through the hiring of key personnel and the licensing agreement.

The European Union is also closely monitoring developments. Reuters reported in April that EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager was watching to see whether other companies emulate Microsoft’s strategy of a talent and technology transfer in place of a formal merger. If it becomes a trend that circumvents the rules around mergers and competition, she told Reuters, she might act.