Artificial intelligence

MIT researchers tackle antimicrobial resistance with AI and synthetic biology

A pioneering research initiative at MIT is deploying AI and synthetic biology to combat the escalating global crisis of antimicrobial resistance, which has been fuelled by decades of antibiotic overuse and misuse.

The $3 million, three-year project, led by Professor James J. Collins at MIT’s Department of Biological Engineering, centres on developing programmable antibacterials designed to target specific pathogens.

The approach uses AI to design small proteins that turn off specific bacterial functions. These designer molecules would be produced and delivered by engineered microbes, offering a more precise alternative to traditional antibiotics.

Antimicrobial resistance impacts low and middle-income countries most severely, where limited diagnostic infrastructure causes treatment delays. Drug-resistant infections continue to rise globally, whilst the development of new antibacterial tools has stagnated.

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AI workshops strengthen digital skills in Wales tourism sector

Wales has launched a national programme of practical AI workshops to help tourism and hospitality businesses adopt digital tools. Funded by Visit Wales and the Welsh Government, the initiative aims to strengthen the sector’s competitiveness by assisting companies to save time and enhance their online presence.

Strong demand reflects growing readiness within the sector to embrace AI. Delivered through Business Wales, the free sessions have quickly reached near capacity, with most places booked shortly after launch. The programme is tailored to small and medium-sized enterprises and prioritises hands-on learning over technical theory.

Workshops focus on simple, immediately usable tools that improve website content, search visibility, and customer engagement. Organisers highlight that AI-driven search features are reshaping how visitors discover tourism services, making accuracy, consistency, and authoritative digital content increasingly important.

At the centre of the initiative is Harri, a bespoke AI tool explicitly developed for Welsh tourism businesses. Designed to reflect the local context, it supports listings management, customer enquiries, and search optimisation. Early feedback indicates that the approach delivers practical and measurable benefits.

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Cisco warns AI agents need checks before joining workforces

The US-based conglomerate Cisco is promoting a future in which AI agents work alongside employees rather than operate as mere tools. Jeetu Patel, the company’s president, revealed that Cisco has already produced a product written entirely with AI-generated code and expects several more by the end of 2026.

A shift to spec-driven development that allows smaller human teams to work with digital agents instead of relying on larger groups of developers.

Human oversight will still play a central role. Coders will be asked to review AI-generated outputs as they adjust to a workplace where AI influences every stage of development. Patel argues that AI should be viewed as part of every loop rather than kept at the edge of decision-making.

Security concerns dominate the company’s planning. Patel warns that AI agents acting as digital co-workers must undergo background checks in the same way that employees do.

Cisco is investing billions in security systems to protect agents from external attacks and to prevent agents that malfunction or act independently from harming society.

Looking ahead, Cisco expects AI to deliver insights that extend beyond human knowledge. Patel believes that the most significant gains will emerge from breakthroughs in science, health, energy and poverty reduction rather than simple productivity improvements.

He also positions Cisco as a core provider of infrastructure designed to support the next stage of the AI era.

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Cloudflare launches Moltworker platform after AI assistant success

The viral success of Moltbot has prompted Cloudflare to launch a dedicated platform for running the popular AI assistant. The move underscores how the networking company is positioning itself at the centre of the emerging AI agent ecosystem.

Moltbot, an open-source AI personal assistant built on Anthropic’s Claude model, became a viral sensation last month and demonstrated the effectiveness of Cloudflare’s edge infrastructure for running autonomous agents.

The assistant’s rapid adoption validated CEO Matthew Prince’s assertion that AI agents represent a ‘fundamental re-platforming’ of the internet. In response, Cloudflare quickly released Moltworker, a platform specifically designed for securely operating Moltbot and similar AI agents.

Prince described the dynamic as creating a ‘virtuous flywheel,’ with AI agents serving as the new users of the internet, whilst Cloudflare provides the platform they run on and the network they pass through.

Industry analysts have highlighted why Cloudflare’s infrastructure is well-suited to the era of agentic computing. RBC Capital Markets noted that AI agents require low-latency, secure inferencing at the network’s edge- precisely what Cloudflare’s Workers platform delivers.

The continued proliferation of AI agents is expected to drive ongoing demand for these capabilities.

Prince, who co-founded the company, revealed that Cloudflare ended 2025 with 4.5 million active human developers on its platform, providing a substantial foundation for the next wave of AI-driven applications and agents built on the company’s infrastructure.

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South Korea launches labour–government body to address AI automation pressures

A new consultative body has been established in South Korea to manage growing anxiety over AI and rapid industrial change.

The Ministry of Employment and Labour joined forces with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions to create a regular channel for negotiating how workplaces should adapt as robots and AI systems become more widespread across key industries.

The two sides will meet monthly to seek agreement on major labour issues. The union argued for a human-centred transition instead of a purely technological one, urging the government to strengthen protections for workers affected by restructuring and AI-powered production methods.

Officials in South Korea responded by promising that policy decisions will reflect direct input gathered from employees on the ground.

Concerns heightened after Hyundai Motor confirmed plans to mass-produce Atlas humanoid robots by 2028 and introduce them across its assembly lines. The project forms part of the company’s ambition to build a ‘physical AI’ future where machines perform risky or repetitive tasks in place of humans.

The debate intensified as new labour statistics showed a sharp decline in employment within professional and scientific technical services, where AI deployment is suspected of reducing demand for new hires.

KCTU warned that industrial transformation could widen inequality unless government policy prioritises people over profit.

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AI adoption leaves workers exhausted as a new study reveals rising workloads

Researchers from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business examined how AI shapes working habits inside a mid-sized technology firm, and the outcome raised concerns about employee well-being.

Workers embraced AI voluntarily because the tools promised faster results instead of lighter schedules. Over time, staff absorbed extra tasks and pushed themselves beyond sustainable limits, creating a form of workload creep that drained energy and reduced job satisfaction.

Once the novelty faded, employees noticed that AI had quietly intensified expectations. Engineers reported spending more time correcting AI-generated material passed on by colleagues, while many workers handled several tasks at once by combining manual effort with multiple automated agents.

Constant task-switching gave a persistent sense of juggling responsibilities, which lowered the quality of their focus.

These researchers also found that AI crept into personal time, with workers prompting tools during breaks, meetings, or moments intended for rest.

As a result, the boundaries between professional and private time weakened, leaving many employees feeling less refreshed and more pressured to keep up with accelerating workflows.

The study argues that AI increased the density of work rather than reducing it, undermining promises that automation would ease daily routines.

Evidence from other institutions reinforces the pattern, with many firms reporting little or no productivity improvement from AI. Researchers recommend clearer company-level AI guidelines to prevent overuse and protect staff from escalating workloads driven by automation.

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Facebook boosts user creativity with new Meta AI animations

Meta has introduced a new group of Facebook features that rely on Meta AI to expand personal expression across profiles, photos and Stories.

Users gain the option to animate their profile pictures, turning a still image into a short motion clip that reflects their mood instead of remaining static. Effects such as waves, confetti, hearts and party hats offer simple tools for creating a more playful online presence.

The update also includes Restyle, a tool that reimagines Stories and Memories through preset looks or AI-generated prompts. Users may shift an ordinary photograph into an illustrated, anime or glowy aesthetic, or adjust lighting and colour to match a chosen theme instead of limiting themselves to basic filters.

Facebook will highlight Memories that work well with the Restyle function to encourage wider use.

Feed posts receive a change of their own through animated backgrounds that appear gradually across accounts. People can pair text updates with visual backdrops such as ocean waves or falling leaves, creating messages that stand out instead of blending into the timeline.

Seasonal styles will arrive throughout the year to support festive posts and major events.

Meta aims to encourage more engaging interactions by giving users easy tools for playful creativity. The new features are designed to support expressive posts that feel more personal and more visually distinctive, helping users craft share-worthy moments across the platform.

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AI tool accelerates detection of foodborne bacteria

Researchers have advanced an AI system designed to detect bacterial contamination in food, dramatically improving accuracy and speed. The upgraded tool distinguishes bacteria from microscopic food debris, reducing diagnostic errors in automated screening.

Traditional testing relies on cultivating bacterial samples, taking days, and requiring specialist laboratory expertise. The deep learning model analyses bacterial microcolony images, enabling reliable detection within about three hours.

Accuracy gains stem from expanded model training. Earlier versions, trained solely on bacterial datasets, misclassified food debris as bacteria in more than 24% of cases.

Adding debris imagery to training eliminated misclassifications and improved detection reliability across food samples. The system was tested on pathogens including E. coli, Listeria, and Bacillus subtilis, alongside debris from chicken, spinach, and cheese.

Researchers say faster, more precise early detection could reduce foodborne outbreaks, protect public health, and limit costly product recalls as the technology moves toward commercial deployment.

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AI helps keep Saudi Arabia’s Qiddiya City megaproject on track

Qiddiya City, a purpose-built entertainment, sports and cultural destination covering nearly three times the area of Paris, involves more than 700 companies and 22,000 workers, with thousands of assets and complex data flowing across teams.

Microsoft 365 Copilot has been integrated into Qiddiya Investment Company’s project dashboards to help employees query data in natural language, saving time on reporting, email summarisation and document creation.

The technology also helps harmonise information across 20 different systems used by design and execution teams, simplifying tasks such as matching asset names and identifying discrepancies.

Copilot can extract insights that static dashboards miss, for example, flagging overdue invoices without engineer comments, enabling more informed decision-making.

QIC’s workforce has adopted Copilot for productivity beyond construction management, with the tool generating hundreds of thousands of emails and meeting summaries.

AlAli emphasises that careful planning and implementation are key to realising the benefits of AI at scale, underscoring how AI can provide an ‘unfair advantage’ when properly embedded into workflows for data-intensive projects.

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Spotify sets new user record as engagement surges thanks to Wrapped and free-tier upgrades

Swedish streaming giant Spotify reported a record 751 million monthly active users (MAUs) in the fourth quarter of 2025, an 11 per cent year-on-year increase that marks the biggest quarterly net growth in the company’s history.

The growth was led by the annual Spotify Wrapped campaign, which engaged over 300 million users and generated 630 million social media shares, as well as new free-tier features that improved discovery and user interaction.

Premium subscribers also rose 10 per cent to 290 million, helping lift total revenue to about €4.53 billion ($5.39 billion). Spotify saw gross margin expand to a record 33.1 per cent, reflecting stronger profitability driven by subscription growth and increased podcast and music ad sales, even as ad-supported revenue dipped slightly.

The surge comes as Spotify broadens its platform beyond music streaming to include podcasts, audiobooks, video content, social sharing and AI-driven features like interactive DJ tools and AI playlists.

The company expects continued user growth, forecasting 759 million MAUs and 293 million paying subscribers in the current quarter.

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