Technology News
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Lessons for IT leaders from Monday’s massive European blackout
The massive power outage that is impacting much of Spain and Portugal, and that left parts of France without electricity, is remarkable both for its speed and also its reach, an industry analyst said Monday.
The outage began around 12:30 p.m. central European time (8:30 a.m. eastern daylight saving time (EDT)), and as of 5:30 p.m. EDT, according to the BBC live feed, “some electricity supplies are being restored, both in Spain and Portugal. But the disruption continues to be massive.” In France, parts of the country’s Basque region were also affected for part of the day, but power there has since been restored.
John Annand, practice lead at Info-Tech Research Group, said from what he has seen online so far, at this time, “both [Spanish power distributor] Red Eléctrica de España and REN [the entity responsible for maintaining Portugal’s electrical grid] have said that the failure happened at the 400 kV backbone that ties the Iberian grid to the rest of continental Europe.”
There is, he said, “some speculation that the cause may have been an ‘extremely rare atmospheric phenomenon’ or a fire on a French transmission line, but it seems officials have also not ruled out anything cyber so far. This is interesting, because the first two potential causes are physical, and the third one is digital. Our modern grids today live in both realms … and are very vulnerable in both.”
“For tech leaders, the lesson isn’t the exotic cause, but the cascade that follows it,” Annand said. “Europe has been shifting towards weather-dependent renewables, and its grid is moving away from the comforting spin of gigantic turbines.”
Now, he said, “it has to lean harder on software, SCADA links, and inverter controls. These systems are definitely improving, but the will to fund those upgrades typically spikes only after a high-visibility failure, like the one we’re seeing now.”
While enterprises may not be able to harden a transmission backbone, Annand said that “they can close their own resilience gaps and take on responsible business continuity planning. With greater and greater demand (because of things like AI), there’s less slack in the national/international systems to provide redundancy in the event of an outage.”
He added, “if an IT leader can’t trust their vendor (even their power vendor), then it’s up to them to ensure they take steps to close their own resilience gaps. They can check that their generators have enough fuel for more than a day, that their cloud architectures can fail over to outside regions, and that their telecom providers offer extended battery or satellite back-up for last-mile links.”
“The gap between national infrastructure incidents and corporate downtime is just one flicker of the lights,” Annand said, “and the time to patch that gap is before the next rare event, not after.”
With files from Computerworld Spain.
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How Brave wants to stop cookie notifications in the browser
By now, most online users are probably tired of all the notifications asking whether to allow or block cookies when browsing the web.
Since 2022, the Brave browser has offered built-in blocking of these notifications, but the feature does not display some sites correctly. Brave’s solution to the problem is Cookiecrumbler, a new extension that uses AI to block the notifications without affecting page display.
Cookiecrumbler is based on open-source code, and since the blocking is done via Brave’s servers, there should be no danger to privacy, Bleeping Computer reports.
Cookiecrumbler will eventually be integrated into Brave, but if users want to test the extension now, it’s available for free from Github.
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How tariffs will likely hit you in your smart home
With the global rollout of tariffs, the smart home accessories market — valued at approximately $30 billion — is entering new territory. Consumers should brace for higher prices, company closures, and even market consolidation across the sector.
The issue is the uneven nature of these additional tariff taxes on trade. While some of the big players, including Apple, might find ways to manage their way through the uncertainty, smaller vendors might not.
This realistically means they will be forced to swallow steep tariffs, and smaller vendors lack the scale to carry the burden themselves. They have little choice but to increase prices, meaning the costs of smart home accessories will inevitably go up, though the chaos may yet benefit some larger players with eyes on the space.
What happens when prices rise?
There will be several consequences.
In general, people will likely buy less. And as smart home accessories are surely seen to some extent as a luxury, that’s going to mean a sales slowdown. That’s going to drive smaller companies out of business, while larger ones will seek to combine to share IP rights, manufacturing costs and increased share. In other words, market consolidation is inevitable, which means you’ll be paying more for whatever still gets sold, and you’ll have less choice.
This isn’t unique to smart home accessory makers, of course.
The Wall Street Journal explains that smaller electrical device makers in the tech sector are all deeply uncertain as to how they will be impacted, but many might attempt to convert customers to subscription-based services. Software is cheaper and easier to import than hardware, after all – plus, you know, personal data appears to have become the new gold in this digitally-connected age. Privacy needs fighting for, and is being lost, one unread but accepted usage agreement at a time.
Even products assembled in the US are not immune. That’s because while assembly may take place there, many of the components and rare earth elements used in them come from abroad; that means they will be liable to some tariffs.
There might be some benefits
To some extent, there may be some positives. The smart home industry has been characterized by deep fragmentation, which led to the existence of a multitude of connectivity standards, most of which have now been brought together within the all-encompassing Matter/Threads partnership.
Consolidation in the market could actually help improve consumer experiences, while the higher prices will feed higher consumer expectations, which may yet generate better customer support and product life spans.
Hold your breath, prepare for rain
We won’t see all these things happen overnight.
Vendors are currently working through existing inventory. But on May 2, tariffs on Chinese imports costing $800 or less will begin to be applied. Many electrical brands also have anxious manufacturing partners in China who might currently hold a large quantity of stock and will be anxious to be paid.
If they don’t get paid, that’s going to have a huge impact on trust for US brands. And given that trust is also a currency, some will leave the business when they can’t find reputable manufacturers to work with. Manufacturers talk to each other, too.
Meanwhile, the chaos and confusion around these tariffs has also affected global shipping costs, increasing them dramatically and creating logistical problems ensuring transit is available in the fight place. Right now, everything that is being sold in your local stores was probably imported before the tariffs were declared.
What happens next
Once you put all these factors in the reality-distortion blender, it’s pretty clear you can expect the following things to happen across the lower end of the consumer technology market:
- Prices will increase.
- Production quality will decrease as manufacturers across the supply chain seek to cut corners.
- Choice will dwindle.
- You’ll be pushed toward subscriptions.
- People working at these companies will lose their jobs.
- New product introductions will slow.
- Many companies will quit the business because they cannot carry the costs of migrating manufacturing to zones of lower tariffs.
We’ll see many of these events unfold within the coming six to 12 months.
These factors will erode consumer demand, which will reduce economic productivity.
Threats and opportunities
But there are also opportunities. Larger companies will acquire smaller competitors. The simplification of choice in the market for smart home accessories might in the end help promote product quality. Apple’s own smart home automation plans could benefit by filling the available space, even as the company takes the opportunity to build a production line, possibly in Brazil.
To some extent, this may provide consumer benefits, though devices will cost more and as vendors leave the business you can expect many existing smart home products to be left orphaned, with no software or security updates available — creating highly attractive security vulnerabilities in many homes.
If one or more of your devices fails, and your manufacturer happens to be one of those that’s gone out of business or abandoned the market, you’ll probably be left whistling Dixie rather than being realistically able to get replacement or repair. You can’t both change the game and expect things to stay as they are.
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Agentic AI – Ongoing coverage of its impact on the enterprise
Over the next few years, agentic AI is expected to bring not only rapid technological breakthroughs, but a societal transformation, redefining how we live, work and interact with the world. And this shift is happening quickly.
“By 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI, up from less than 1% in 2024, enabling 15% of day-to-day work decisions to be made autonomously,” according to research firm Gartner.
Unlike traditional AI, which typically follows preset rules or algorithms, agentic AI adapts to new situations, learns from experiences, and operates independently to pursue goals without human intervention. In short, agentic AI empowers systems to act autonomously, making decisions and executing tasks — even communicating directly with other AI agents — with little or no human involvement.
One key driver is the growing sophistication of large language models (LLMs), which provide the “brains” for these agents. Agentic AI will enable machines to interact with the physical world with unprecedented intelligence, allowing them to perform complex tasks in dynamic environments, which could be especially useful for industries facing labor shortages or hazardous conditions.
The rise of agentic AI also brings security and ethical concerns. Ensuring these autonomous systems operate safely, transparently and responsibly will require governance frameworks and testing. Preventing the law of unintended consequences will also require human vigilance.
Because job displacement is a potential outcome, strategies for retraining and upskilling workers will be needed as the technology necessitate a shift in how people approach work, emphasizing collaboration between humans and intelligent machines.
To stay on top of this evolving technology, follow this page for ongoing agentic AI coverage from Computerworld and Foundry’s other publications.
Agentic AI news and insights
Cisco automates AI-driven security across enterprise networks
April 28, 2025: Cisco announced a range of AI-driven security enhancements, including improved threat detection and response capabilities in Cisco XDR and Splunk Security, new AI agents, and integration between Cisco’s AI Defense platform and ServiceNow SecOps.
Agents are here — but can you see what they’re doing?
April 23, 2025: As the agentic AI models powering individual agents get smarter, the use cases for agentic AI systems get more ambitious — and the risks posed by these systems increase exponentially.A multicloud experiment in agentic AI: Lessons learned
Agentic AI might soon get into cryptocurrency trading — what could possibly go wron
April 15, 2025: Agentic AI promises to simplify complex tasks such as crypto trading or managing digital assets by automating decisions, enhancing accessibility, and masking technical complexity.
Agentic AI is both boon and bane for security pros
April 15, 2025: Cybersecurity is at a crossroads with agentic AI. It’s a powerful tool that can create reams of code in a blink of an eye, find and defuse threats, and be used so decisively and defensively. This has proved to be a huge force multiplier and productivity boon. But while powerful, agentic AI isn’t dependable, and that is the conundrum.
AI agents vs. agentic AI: What do enterprises want?
April 15, 2025: Now that this AI agent story has morphed into “agentic AI,” it seems to have taken on the same big-cloud-AI flavor that enteriprise already rejected. What do they want from AI agents, why is “agentic” thinking wrong, and where is this all headed?
A multicloud experiment in agentic AI: Lessons learned
April 11, 2025: Turns out you really can build a decentralized AI systemthat operates successfully across multiple public cloud providers. It’s both challenging and costly.
Google adds open source framework for building agents to Vertex AI
April 9, 2025: Google is adding a new open source framework for building agents to its AI and machine learning platform Vertex AI, along with other updates to help deploy and maintain these agents. The open source Agent Development Kit (ADK) will make it possible to build an AI agent in under 100 lines of Python code. It expects to add support for more languages later this year.
Google’s Agent2Agent open protocol aims to connect disparate agents
April 9, 2025: Google has taken the covers off a new open protocol — Agent2Agent (A2A) — that aims to connect agents across disparate ecosystems.. At its annual Cloud Next conference, Google said that the A2A protocol will enable enterprises to adopt agents more readily as it bypasses the challenge of agents that are built on different vendor ecosystems not being able to communicate with each other.
Riverbed bolsters AIOps platform with predictive and agentic AI
April 8, 2025: Riverbed unveiled updates to its AIOps and observability platform that the company says will transform how IT organizations manage complex distributed infrastructure and data more efficiently. Expanded AI capabilities are aimed at making it easier to manage AIOps and enabling IT organizations to transition from reactive to predictive IT operations.
Microsoft’s newest AI agents can detail how they reason
March 26, 2025: If you’re wondering how AI agents work, Microsoft’s new Copilot AI agents provide real-time answers on how data is being analyzed and sourced to reach results. The Researcher and Analyst agents take a deeper look at data sources such as email, chat or databases within an organization to produce research reports, analyze strategies, or convert raw information into meaningful data.
Microsoft launches AI agents to automate cybersecurity amid rising threats
March 26, 2025: Microsoft has introduced a new set of AI agents for its Security Copilot platform, designed to automate key cybersecurity functions as organizations face increasingly complex and fast-moving digital threats. The new tools focus on tasks such as phishing detection, data protection, and identity management.
How AI agents work
March 24, 2025: By leveraging technologies such as machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), and contextual understanding, AI agents can operate independently, even partnering with other agents to perform complex tasks.
5 top business use cases for AI agents
March 19, 2025: AI agents are poised to transform the enterprise, from automating mundane tasks to driving customer service and innovation. But having strong guardrails in place will be key to success.
Nvidia launches AgentIQ toolkit to connect disparate AI agents
March 21, 2025: As enterprises look to adopt agents and agentic AIto boost the efficiency of their applications, Nvidia this week introduced a new open-source software library — AgentIQ toolkit — to help developers connect disparate agents and agent frameworks..
Deloitte unveils agentic AI platform
March 18, 2025: At Nvidia GTC 2025 in San Jose, Deloitte announced Zora AI, a new agentic AI platform that offers a portfolio of AI agents for finance, human capital, supply chain, procurement, sales and marketing, and customer service.The platform draws on Deloitte’s experience from its technology, risk, tax, and audit businesses, and is integrated with all major enterprise software platforms.
The dawn of agentic AI: Are we ready for autonomous technology?
March 15, 2025: Much of the AI work prior has focused on large language models (LLMs) with a goal to give prompts to get knowledge out of the unstructured data. So it’s a question-and-answer process. Agentic AI goes beyond that. You can give it a task that might involve a complex set of steps that can change each time.
How to know a business process is ripe for agentic AI
March 11, 2025: Deloitte predicts that in 2025, 25% of companies that use generative AI will launch agentic AI pilots or proofs of concept, growing to 50% in 2027. The firm says some agentic AI applications, in some industries and for some use cases, could see actual adoption into existing workflows this year.
With new division, AWS bets big on agentic AI automation
March 6, 2025: Amazon Web Services customers can expect to hear a lot more about agentic AI from AWS in future with the news that the company is setting up a dedicated unit to promote the technology on its platform.
How agentic AI makes decisions and solves problems
March 6, 2025: GenAI’s latest big step forward has been the arrival of autonomous AI agents. Agentic AI is based on AI-enabled applications capable of perceiving their environment, making decisions, and taking actions to achieve specific goals.
CIOs are bullish on AI agents. IT employees? Not so much
Feb. 4, 2025: Most CIOs and CTOs are bullish on agentic AI, believing the emerging technology will soon become essential to their enterprises, but lower-level IT pros who will be tasked with implementing agents have serious doubts.
The next AI wave — agents — should come with warning labels. Is now the right time to invest in them?
Jan.13, 2025: The next wave of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption is already under way, as AI agents — AI applications that can function independently and execute complex workflows with minimal or limited direct human oversight — are being rolled out across the tech industry.
AI agents are unlike any technology ever
Dec. 1, 2024: The agents are coming, and they represent a fundamental shift in the role artificial intelligence plays in businesses, governments, and our lives.
AI agents are coming to work — here’s what businesses need to know
Nov. 21, 2024: AI agents will soon be everywhere, automating complex business processes and taking care of mundane tasks for workers — at least that’s the claim of various software vendors that are quickly adding intelligent bots to a wide range of work apps.
Agentic AI swarms are headed your way
November 1, 2024: OpenAI launched an experimental framework called Swarm. It’s a “lightweight” system for the development of agentic AI swarms, which are networks of autonomous AI agents able to work together to handle complex tasks without human intervention, according to OpenAI.
Is now the right time to invest in implementing agentic AI?
October 31, 2024: While software vendors say their current agentic AI-based offerings are easy to implement, analysts say that’s far from the truth.
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Two-thirds of jobs will be impacted by AI
AI is either taking over routine tasks typically performed by younger employees or requiring them to learn how to use the tech to be more effective in their jobs.
Nearly four in 10 Americans, for instance, believe genAI could diminish the number of available jobs as it advances, according to a study released in October by the New York Federal Reserve Bank.
And the World Economic Forum’s Jobs Initiative study found that close to half (44%) of worker skills will be disrupted in the next five years — and 40% of tasks will be affected by the use of genAI tools and the large language models (LLMs) that underpin them.
According to data from Goldman Sachs, AI could impact up to 300 million full-time jobs worldwide with significant effects in advanced economies like the United States and Europe. The report projected that up to 18% of work worldwide could be automated.
For example, the share of software development job postings has been in a downward trend. As the number of postings decrease, employers may heighten their requirements as they have a larger pool of applicants to choose from, according to job site Indeed.
In April of 2022, 3.2% of software development postings advertised entry-level jobs, compared to 2.1% in 2023, 1.5% in 2024 and 1.2% in 2025, Indeed’s data showed.
Earlier this month, Indeed CEO Chris Hyams said in an interview with Fortune that two-thirds of jobs posted on the company’s site list skills that AI can already handle.
According to Indeed’s research, the share of US job postings mentioning genAI or related terms has skyrocketed over the past year, up 170% from January 2024 to January 2025. That said, those postings are only 2.6% of overall job postings globally, according to Indeed’s vice president of AI, Hannah Calhoon.
“Most jobs will change dramatically in the next three to four years, at least as much as the internet has changed jobs over the last 30,” Calhoon said. “Every job posted on Indeed today, from truck driver to physician to software engineer, will face some level of exposure to genAI-driven change.”
But AI won’t be fully replacing jobs anytime soon, she also noted.
Research from the Indeed Hiring Lab found that out of over 2,800 work skills, zero were found “very likely” to be fully replaced by genAI tools that exist today. And just one in five jobs (19.8%) listed on Indeed are considered “highly” exposed to genAI, showing that while the technology can learn to do tasks within a specific job, today’s genAI is unlikely to fully replace many jobs.
So, at its core, AI isn’t about replacing people but empowering them, Calhoon said.
“At Indeed, we believe AI and human judgment together are stronger than either alone,” she said. “Moving forward for any organization to be successful with AI, every single employee needs to have a basic understanding of AI and how their company is using it.”
That said, Calhoon emphasized it’s essential that professionals stay on top of the evolving needs of the market and the skills that are most in demand and adjust their focus areas accordingly.
Sarah Hoffman, director of AI research at AlphaSense, is an IT strategist and futurist. Formerly vice president of AI and Machine Learning Research at Fidelity Investments, Hoffman believes genAI tools in business will allow workers to move away from repetitive jobs and into more creative endeavors — as long as they learn how to use the new tools and even collaborate with them.
What will emerge is a “symbiotic” relationship with an increasingly “proactive” technology that will require employees to constantly learn new skills and adapt.
“AI can manage repetitive tasks, or even difficult tasks that are specific in nature, while humans can focus on innovative and strategic initiatives that drive revenue growth and improve overall business performance,” Hoffman said in an interview earlier this year. “AI is also much quicker than humans could possibly be, is available 24/7, and can be scaled to handle increasing workloads.”
As AI takes over repetitive tasks, workers will shift toward roles that involve overseeing AI, solving unique problems, and applying creativity and strategy. Teams will increasingly collaborate with AI—like marketers personalizing content or developers using AI copilots. Rather than replacing humans, AI will enhance human strengths such as decision-making and emotional intelligence. Adapting to this change will require ongoing learning and a fresh approach to how work is done.
Arthur O’Connor, academic director of data science at the CUNY’s School of Professional Studies, said the impact of AI on jobs is crucial but poorly studied. Behavioral scientists often swing between extremes — doom or utopia — chasing headlines instead of clarity.
O’Connor, who wrote a book on AI in the workplace titled Organizing for Generative AI and the Productivity Revolution, said one reason for the mixed messages is that the research comes from a mix of sources. For example, case studies often come with unverifiable claims of savings or productivity. Task exposure models, such as Indeed’s, take educated guesses about which tasks AI might automate, based mostly on descriptions and not real-world performance.
Controlled experiments offer the most reliable insights by comparing AI-assisted work to a control group, according to O’Connor. “But even the controlled experiments are flawed,” he said. “Most studies measure whether AI was used or not — not how well it was used. Not surprisingly, the results are all over the place.”
Researchers in the “doom and gloom” camp are accurate in noting that new AI jobs are narrow and exclusive, he said. But they miss Jevons’ paradox: as AI becomes cheaper and more widespread, demand grows, which sparks entirely new industries, as the internet once did.
“But I do share their concerns that our society’s track record at managing large-scale changes in the labor market is dismal. Just look at what happened to communities in areas that were once called ‘America’s industrial heartland’ that became the ‘Rust Belt’ starting in the 1980’s,” O’Connor said.