Sam Newell of The Brattle Group, BCG's Vivian Lee, and Wood Mackenzie CEO Jason Liu. The Brattle Group, Boston Consulting Group, Wood Mackenzie. Senior advisors are focusing on AI-driven power demand in the energy sector. US is emerging as a major hub for global computational demand growth. Energy consulting services are experiencing rapid growth due to AI power needs. AI is rewriting the rules of power demand — and the energy industry is racing to keep up. That shift is forcing a rethink of long-held assumptions. Rather than planning for steady, predictable growth, companies are now modeling sharp demand spikes tied to the rapid buildout of data centers — especially in the US, which is emerging as a global hub for compute, leaders at firms like Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey, and The Brattle Group told Business Insider. That's revved up demand for energy-related consulting services. "Energy and resources is set to hit double-digit growth," research firm Source Global said in its State of US Consulting 2026 report. It noted that it was the fastest-growing sector in 2025, growing at 9.4% to hit $15.5 billion. Energy and resources practices are set to be the joint-fastest-growing in 2026, and projected to grow at 11% to $17.3 billion. The tension that consulting partners are most focused on is the widening mismatch between the pace of the AI boom and the slower timelines required to build the power systems needed to support it, partners told Business Insider. All of that has made the energy transition more complicated, accelerating short-term investment in natural gas as companies put aside decarbonization efforts. The most forward-looking consultants, however, are already forecasting the possibility of a greener future marked by widespread automation. Baringa partner Tom Harper told Business Insider that one uncertainty in the energy market is that AI will diminish energy demand in other parts of the economy by "replacing workers and their energy needs." Meet 8 top energy consultants with their pulse on the future of energy. Jamie Webster, Boston Consulting Group Jamie Webster is a a partner at Boston Consulting Group and associate director for its Center for Energy Impact. Boston Consulting Group BCG partner Jamie Webster has been at the center of many conversations about how AI is upending the energy world. "What has been clear is that almost every organization has revised its belief about total energy demand," Webster told Business Insider. With that has come the recognition that the energy transition runs at different speeds depending on where you are in the world, he added. Natural gas is now the center of attention as more data centers come online. The key question is whether natural gas can be delivered where it's needed, Webster said, noting that in the past the focus was simply on producing and transporting the fuel. "That's the marginal fuel," he said. "That's the fuel that's kind of in the middle," he said. As a consultant, the middle is where the "interesting questions" emerge — where something works in some cases but not in others, he said. Webster, who is also the director of BCG's Center for Energy Impact — an internal think tank that's focused on the energy transition — told Business Insider that a big portion of his work centers on identifying the macro trends that drive the energy industry, and translating them into strategy recommendations for the firm's clients. Webster typically advises large energy companies, providing recommendations to chief economists, strategy leaders, and high-ranking executives. He's also testified before Congress a handful of times and has advised presidential administrations and campaigns. Jesse Noffsinger, McKinsey & Company Jesse Noffsinger is a partner at McKinsey & Company. McKinsey & Company Jesse Noffsinger has typically split time between Singapore, Japan, Australia, and Europe — but more recently, the US has become a central priority. The Seattle-based McKinsey partner has spent 15 years at the firm building tools, solutions, and intelligence around the energy sector, he told Business Insider in an interview. Over the past two years, however, his attention has shifted to AI, data centers, and compute. Noffsinger said the US accounts for about 15% of global power demand today but could account for 45% of global compute demand by 2030. "It's punching above its weight in terms of compute need," he said. "We're not used to growing in the power sector. We're used to maintaining," he said. Noffsinger's clients range from utilities companies and equipment manufacturers to investors and public sector entities. The energy industry, he said, is not used to moving as quickly as the tech industry. They are grappling with whether power demand will persist, how reliable it is, and what the tech ecosystem needs most in terms of power. Sam Newell, The Brattle Group The Brattle Group In 2012, Sam Newell worked on a project that would help define his career in energy consulting, advising Texas policymakers on investment incentives to ensure grid reliability. Rather than advocating for a single solution, Newell said he laid out the full range of options and their trade-offs for policymakers and stakeholders. His report became widely cited and sparked a wave of follow-up assignments, but it also taught him a key lesson he's carried through his career: The role of a consultant is not to prescribe answers, but to deliver rigorous, objective analysis that helps decision-makers navigate complex choices. Now, Boston-based Newell is leading The Brattle Group's 65-person electricity practice, advising clients ranging from utilities and infrastructure investors to regulators, tech companies, and system operators. The Brattle Group has around 500 employees globally and specializes in financial analysis and litigation support for businesses and policymakers. Demand has surged since 2024, when big data center projects were announced, driving five times the demand seen over the past two decades, said Newell. What clients want to know is how to provide enough generation and transmission capacity, and how to price it, he said: "What you'll hear is, how do you meet all this new load growth and do it reliably and keep electricity affordable for everybody?" Much of his work now focuses on answering that question — from finding ways to get more out of existing grids using "grid-enhancing technologies" to advising large energy users on how to better integrate into the system. Nuclear is also attracting growing interest, and The Brattle Group is working on a "nuclear master plan" for New York, tackling questions around how to expand nuclear and which financing structure to use, Newell said. There are "huge questions" about how to reduce the cost curve and which business structures will pay for nuclear plants, he said, adding that new nuclear capacity is unlikely to meaningfully add to US supply until around 2040. Working in energy offers the chance to help build the infrastructure, commercial models, and regulatory frameworks needed to accommodate AI, said Newell. "There's more room to innovate now than ever, and actually a lot of the innovations are coming from the younger people," he said. Vivian Lee, Boston Consulting Group Vivian Lee is a partner at BCG Boston Consulting Group Renewables have been central to the energy transition — but, as Vivian Lee sees it, they're not enough on their own. Lee, a managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group, advises utilities, and power and renewable companies navigating a system under increasing strain from AI. That vantage point has made her especially focused on the limits of today's energy mix. "The AI-driven surge in data center demand is exposing a gap between ambition and reality when it comes to clean power," Lee told Business Insider. In her conversations with clients, renewables are still viewed as essential, but insufficient, particularly as demand for constant, large-scale power rises. "What's shifting is the focus toward solutions that can actually deliver that reliability today," Lee said, pointing to growing interest in options like natural gas paired with carbon capture. Her perspective is shaped in part by a nontraditional path: she began her career in law and public service before moving into energy strategy, where she now works closely with CEOs and senior leaders on decisions spanning infrastructure, investment, and technology. That lens also informs her perspective on the energy transition. In the long-term, though, Lee believes AI can enable the transition by optimizing renewable generation, improving grid management, and reducing downtime. "It's raising the bar on how quickly systems need to scale while also creating new tools to manage that complexity," she said. Tom Harper, Baringa Tom Harper is a partner at Baringa. Baringa Tom Harper, a partner at Baringa, has spent 14 years in energy. Now, his focus is the collision between AI's explosive growth and the global push to decarbonize. Across regions, that tension is already reshaping investment. Even as policy uncertainty clouds the outlook, spending on new energy projects continues — driven in large part by AI's soaring power needs. In the US, policy uncertainty slowed low-carbon infrastructure last year, but a surge in AI-driven demand offset the dip, Harper said. In Europe, political support for decarbonization remains broadly intact, but concerns about affordability are mounting. And in the Middle East, recent geopolitical tensions have heightened the urgency around energy security — reinforcing the case for expanding energy supply, including low-carbon sources. The result is a paradox: AI is accelerating energy investment while making the transition to cleaner power more difficult. "It will slow the transition simply because we are creating more demand to decarbonize," Harper said. At the same time, interest in alternatives is growing — from restarting nuclear plants to exploring geothermal and long-duration storage. But these options remain years away from scaling enough to meet AI's immediate needs. Much of the uncertainty around global energy markets comes back to AI, with one exception: the war in Iran. This is a "new uncertainty that is creating huge risk around affordability and security of supply concerns in the next 6-12+ months, particularly in Europe," Harper wrote. Jason Liu, Wood Mackenzie Wood Mackenzie Jason Liu took over Wood Mackenzie at a moment when energy has moved from a backwater industry to a central force shaping the global economy. Energy was once a "sleepy industry," said Liu, who joined Wood Mackenzie as CEO in 2024. "Now it's all of a sudden front and center." Wood Mackenzie, one of the largest research firms in the energy space, is known for its extensive proprietary dataset — including real-time tracking of global oil, gas, and shipping flows. The firm provides what Liu called an "unprecedented level of analysis and information across global energy markets." Alongside its data platforms, around 20% of its business is strategy consulting, Liu said. Liu joined the firm in 2024, drawn by what he described as "a super fascinating time" for energy and the opportunity to bring his data and technology expertise into a sector that has historically been slower to evolve its capabilities. Alongside the demands from AI infrastructure in developed companies, much of the growth in demand will come from the Global South, where two billion people still use firewood as their primary energy source, he said. In the short term, the uncertainty in markets and supply chain disruption caused by the Iran conflict has driven an "incredible increase" in demand, said Liu. Energy is becoming central to national competitiveness, so much so that the phrase "knowledge equals power" has been flipped, said Liu: "The more a country can generate power, the more AI can be developed and the more intelligence they can bring to their countries." That shift is broadening Wood Mackenzie's client base. Liu said that tech companies, retailers, and manufacturers are increasingly turning to Wood Mackenzie for insights into power markets as energy becomes a core input to their operations. Clients want predictability, said Liu: "They want to be able to look out in the future and understand price, demand, and supply." Steve Wanner, EY EY Steve Wanner has spent more than 30 years at EY — and he says the role of energy companies is being rewritten. As EY Americas' Industrials & Energy Leader, he's responsible for helping utilities, energy providers, and large industrial companies shift from supplying power to enabling the digital economy and national competitiveness. That transformation of their responsibilities means a lot of work for consultants, Wanner told Business Insider. Energy companies have to deliver more while simultaneously modernizing operations, decarbonizing, and maintaining affordability and reliability. AI is compressing timelines on everything and raising the stakes by making reliability and resilience non‑negotiable, he said. "The bright spot is that this pressure is driving innovation," he said. Wanner said there is a growing opportunity for the next generation of talent entering the field. His advice is to build depth in a core area — like grid operations or power markets — while also understanding of how technology, regulation, capital, and talent intersect. There's also a need for early-career professionals who can bridge traditional engineering and operations knowledge with AI capabilities, he said. "The ability to translate data and analytics into operational decisions is becoming even more valuable in today's environment." Larry Abramson, PwC PwC In the first thirty seconds of Larry Abramson's interview with Business Insider about the energy sector in 2026, he used the word "exciting" three times. Abramson is PwC's US Energy, Utilities & Resources Advisory leader. He's also a lead client partner for Houston-based oil producer ConocoPhillips and a member of PwC's US advisory leadership team. The whole sector is an "extremely exciting place right now" because integration between energy and growth and business is accelerating, and power itself is shaping major business decisions, he said. Three main drivers are coming together to cause the global expansion of energy infrastructure: large-load growth (meaning the rise of data centers and other energy-intensive facilities), energy security, and energy diversity. For those entering the field, Abramson said the complexity of the issues clients face offers both rapid growth and unusually broad career paths. "It's a great place to have a career," he said, pointing to the "interesting environments" that PwC's employees work in, spanning everything from offshore energy systems to large-scale infrastructure projects. Read the original article on Business Insider

Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI In 2023, Allison Hale realized her mother could no longer live on her own. Though she was relatively young at 67, her recent retirement had exacerbated a longtime struggle with drinking. She declined quickly, culminating in a diagnosis of Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a dementia-like condition caused by alcohol-induced brain damage. Suddenly, she needed 24/7 assistance. For Hale, who works full-time as a marketing director for a retirement plan adviser and is raising two teens on her own in Washington state, the only option was to move her mother into a residential memory-care facility in Oregon. None of its $9,000 monthly fee was covered by insurance. Multiple times each week, Hale has made three-hour round-trip drives to check on her mom. She's also been on countless email threads and phone calls to navigate the labyrinthine private-care system. And then there's the sleep she's lost over what might happen once her mother's meager retirement savings — some $60,000 in total — ran out. All she knew was that the problem was on her to figure out. Her sole sibling, a brother, lives over 1,200 miles away. "As the only daughter, it falls to me," Hale says. While some millennials will soon be beneficiaries of the $100 trillion "great wealth transfer" from their aging boomer parents, most Americans "will have little left to pass onto future generations after depleting assets to pay for long-term care costs," according to a new policy brief from the Roosevelt Institute. The expenditures extend well beyond the roughly $7,200 in out-of-pocket charges US caregivers incur each year, according to the AARP. And daughters are often the ones who are left holding the bag. The US Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 75 to 80% of US eldercare hours are performed by informal caregivers, an army of loved ones deputized into unpaid care roles by sheer necessity. The majority of those caregivers (61%) are women: the wives, close friends and, especially, daughters of the nation's elderly and infirm. Women account for nearly 70% of caregivers providing constant, round-the-clock care. Some, including Hale, rely on part- or full-time paid help. Most do not. Many must balance caregiving tasks with raising kids and holding down jobs. When the load becomes too much to handle, their jobs and earnings often take a hit. Paid hours get surrendered; promotions get missed. Many leave the workforce entirely. These missed opportunities add up. By one recent estimate, unpaid family care costs American women an average of $295,000 in lost wages and retirement savings over the course of a lifetime. The daughterhood penalty isn't merely a tax on adult daughters' time and emotional well-being; it's their and their family's whole financial future. Seven in ten Americans over 65 will one day require long-term care, and at least one in five will need it for five or more years. Yet, according to recent polling, more than 60% of adults over 50 don't realize that long-term care is not covered by Medicare. Many are unprepared for the associated expenses. Last year, the national median cost for assisted living and in-home care was nearly $80,000 per year. For a private room in a nursing home, that figure rose to $129,000 — more than double the $57,000 median household income of Americans 65 and older. High costs, skilled-worker shortages, and a rapidly aging US population have compounded into a national caregiving crisis for which adult daughters are the frequent stopgap solution. I'm not going to let him die just so I can have my career back.Hannah, who has cared for her father full-time since 2020 Hannah, a former federal government contractor in Louisiana in her early 50s, became her father's primary caregiver in December 2020 after he got sick in the memory-care facility where he'd spent the last several months. At the time, she was earning a $70,000 salary in a remote role that gave her the flexibility to help her dad, who has dementia and heart failure. It wasn't easy, but she made it work. Then, in 2023, Hannah was laid off. Due to her father's ever-intensifying medical requirements and the high cost of professional care, she hasn't worked full-time since. "Even if I found a job right now, I would make less than the cost of a semi-private room in a really subpar nursing home," says Hannah, who requested I use a pseudonym for her for fear of personal and professional retribution. She says that her brother, despite having been close to their father, has made clear that he wants no part of the personal or financial responsibility. Hannah and her father are now both living from his retirement income and assets, effectively depleting what would have been her inheritance. She alternates between feeling like "the CEO in another person's life" and "an unemployed loser," but it's the best of the bad options at hand. "I'm not going to let him die just so I can have my career back," she says. But the longer she is out of work, the harder it is to imagine a path forward. Her government security clearance has now lapsed, limiting her future job prospects. She has depleted her savings and stopped paying into her modest retirement account, which she may have to tap into if her father lives long enough — or if his medical costs intensify — to burn through what's left of his own. "I'm doing this because I love my dad," Hannah says. "But it's a bad situation and, honestly, I don't know what the solution is. I kind of just accept that it sucks." When daughters become caregivers early in their careers, the long-term penalties are especially steep. Tatianna Badichon was 23 when her mother underwent surgery to correct a degenerative spine disorder. Complications from the procedure caused severe nerve damage to her legs, which left her bedridden for four months and permanently limited her mobility, leaving her at a high risk for falls. Within a year, Badichon quit her job managing a beauty-supply store in New York City to care for her mom full-time. In 2025, the national median cost for assisted living and in-home care was nearly $80,000 per year. For a private room in a nursing home, that figure rose to $129,000. Michael Probst/AP Badichon is now nearly 41. For the past 17 years, she and her mother have relied on her mother's pension, disability income, and Medicare to survive. Several years ago, the pair gave up the rent-controlled West Village apartment they shared, and where Badichon grew up, to relocate to a mid-sized Pennsylvania city with a lower cost of living. They now occupy a "run-down" two-bedroom apartment for $1,200 per month. Her brother and only full sibling is estranged from the family, which she believes is for the best. Though she doesn't resent her mother for needing care, she worries about the financial future she has jeopardized to take on the responsibility. "Every day, I think about my retirement," Badichon admits. "I think about where I'm going to live if something happens, because I don't have any family." She's also burned out and exhausted from the labor itself: helping her mom shower, get dressed, use the bathroom, and keep her wounds clean and dressed, on top of doing all the shopping and cleaning. "I always wish I had a sister who could help out; that would be great." Even though financial privilege can make the sacrifices of caregiving easier to bear, it does not eliminate them. Gendered caregiving expectations still come into play. Sandy, a physician in New England, feels fortunate to have had career flexibility, medical expertise, and housing that could accommodate her mother-in-law's caregiving needs during the year leading up to her death in 2025. She had grown up in a multigenerational home with her elderly grandmother and felt strongly that, when the time came for her own elderly parents and in-laws, she wanted them to stay with her, her husband, and their children. (Sandy is using a pseudonym to prevent personal and professional blowback.) What she did not expect was that her mother-in-law's home hospice team would assign her the primary caregiving role — not because of her medical training, but because of her position as the proxy daughter. More than 3 in 5 Americans say that daughters are expected to become primary caregivers over sons, according to a recent BURD Home Health survey. Though her husband was always present thanks to a well-timed early-retirement package, caregivers expected Sandy to be the recordkeeper, medication-monitor, and question-answerer in her mother-in-law's care. I'm going to prioritize making sure that I have a big enough nest egg so that my kids don't have to go through what I'm going through.Allison Hale, marketing director Sandy admits, "I felt more sensitive about it because of what I was giving up." For the better part of a year, while helping with her mother-in-law's care, she was unable to take on flexible paid work offers that would have netted her some $300,000 in wages, which may have stalled her professional momentum. Researchers and caregiver support professionals I spoke with said that women encounter greater workplace stigma, and career consequences, for working alongside caregiving duties. A 2021 study of family caregivers participating in the National Family Caregiver Support program found that women are significantly more likely than men to report career impacts including time conflicts, shifting from full-time to part-time work, loss of employment benefits, and missed promotions due to caregiving. They are also more likely to use vacation time, take leaves of absence, and work fewer hours. Without the cushion to absorb the associated financial setbacks, the daughterhood penalty can spill over to subsequent generations' financial trajectories. It is a cycle that Hale, the single mom in Washington, is determined to break. After weighing her options, Hale made the difficult decision to move her mother into a private care facility that accepts Medicaid conversion so that, when she spends through what's left of her retirement savings, she will have a place to live that Hale won't need to pay for. It isn't an ideal fix — her mother will probably need to move into a shared room — but it's what makes the most sense. "I'm going to prioritize making sure that I have a big enough nest egg so that my kids don't have to go through what I'm going through right now," Hale explains. For Hannah, who lacks a nest egg of her own, resignation has taken the place of planning for old age. "If you don't have a daughter or a son, or somebody who's willing to step up and just do what has to be done, there's no system," she says. "I don't have any kids. My plan is, my ass is gonna die." Kelli María Korducki is a journalist whose work focuses on work, tech, and culture. She's based in New York City. Read the original article on Business Insider

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Thomas Kurian’s Google Cloud Next keynote framed Google’s agentic AI vision. Here are five key takeaways for IT leaders. The post Google Cloud Next AI Keynote: 5 Takeaways for IT Leaders appeared first on TechRepublic.

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Lenny Rachitsky / Lenny's Newsletter: Q&A with Evan Spiegel on why distribution is the most important moat in consumer tech, investing in Specs, 2026 as a “crucible” moment for Snap, and more  —  Snap's co-founder on why only two consumer apps broke through in 15 years, how every major Snapchat feature was cloned …

Financial Times: Many US rural communities oppose AI data center buildout; Pew says 67% of planned data centers are in rural areas, while 87% of existing ones are in urban areas  —  Many rural communities are viscerally opposed to AI infrastructure, putting them at odds with the White House In Tazewell County …

Matthew Gault / 404 Media: An analysis of Internet Archive data: by mid-2025, ~35% of new websites published since ChatGPT's launch in November 2022 were AI-generated or AI-assisted  —  Researchers found the internet is becoming aggressively positive as AI-generated text floods the web.

<p><strong><a href="https://ichard26.github.io/blog/2026/04/whats-new-in-pip-26.1/">What&#x27;s new in pip 26.1 - lockfiles and dependency cooldowns!</a></strong></p> Richard Si describes an excellent set of upgrades to Python's default <code>pip</code> tool for installing dependencies.</p> <p>This version drops support for Python 3.9 - fair enough, since it's been EOL <a href="https://devguide.python.org/versions/">since October</a>. macOS still ships with <code>python3</code> as a default Python 3.9, so I tried out the new Python version against Python 3.14 like this:</p> <pre><code>uv python install 3.14 mkdir /tmp/experiment cd /tmp/experiment python3.14 -m venv venv source venv/bin/activate pip install -U pip pip --version </code></pre> <p>This confirmed I had <code>pip 26.1</code> - then I tried out the new lock files:</p> <pre><code>pip lock datasette llm </code></pre> <p>This installs Datasette and LLM and all of their dependencies and writes the whole lot to a 519 line <code>pylock.toml</code> file - <a href="https://gist.github.com/simonw/ff52c33f4d3a381b8e53c6a3aa0213f8">here's the result</a>.</p> <p>The new release also supports dependency cooldowns, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2026/Mar/24/package-managers-need-to-cool-down/">discussed here previously</a>, via the new <code>--uploaded-prior-to PXD</code> option where X is a number of days. The format is <code>P-number-of-days-D</code>, following <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Durations">ISO duration format</a> but only supporting days.</p> <p>I shipped a new release of LLM, version 0.31, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2026/Apr/24/llm/">three days ago</a>. Here's how to use the new <code>--uploaded-prior-to P4D</code> option to ask for a version that is at least 4 days old.</p> <pre><code>pip install llm --uploaded-prior-to P4D venv/bin/llm --version </code></pre> <p>This gave me version 0.30. <p><small></small>Via <a href="https://lobste.rs/s/w2oiaq/what_s_new_pip_26_1_lockfiles_dependency">Lobste.rs</a></small></p> <p>Tags: <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/packaging">packaging</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/pip">pip</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/python">python</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/security">security</a>, <a href="https://simonwillison.net/tags/supply-chain">supply-chain</a></p>

Golden Child is launching with two "five-star" products: a fresh frozen meal system and, more intriguingly, a "drizzle." It has also raised $37 million in funding.

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Skims cofounder Emma Grede says remote work could be contributing to wider social issues that many people ignore. Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Emma Grede Skims cofounder Emma Grede says the downsides of working from home don't get enough attention. She said it's "so crazy" not to draw a link between remote work and growing social issues such as loneliness. "The key to a long and happy life is your close relationships," she said. Skims cofounder Emma Grede, 43, says the real cost of working from home isn't being talked about enough. Speaking on the "Leaders with Francine Lacqua" podcast episode released on Monday, Grede said that remote work could have broader social consequences that people are overlooking. "Working from home is career suicide. And we only talk about the upside of working from home," Grede told podcast host Francine Lacqua. The downsides aren't what people want to hear, but Grede says she believes the effects are already visible in everyday life. "Think about what's happening in the world. Declining birth rates, declining marriage rates, and the loneliness epidemic. And we think that none of that is linked to the number of people that like, don't see people because they're doing Zoom calls from the living room?" Grede said. Grede, who is also the CEO of Good American and the first Black female investor to appear on "Shark Tank," said that it's "so crazy" not to make that correlation. "The key to a long and happy life is your close relationships," she added. For Grede, being in the room matters from the very start of a career. "Listen, I did a lot of unpaid internships and I did it while being somebody that didn't have a lot of money. And that was a real struggle for me," Grede said. Despite that, she said she saw the value of those opportunities. "It was a huge unlock for me, the ability to go into an organization and get under the hood without having any qualifications or right to really be there. I think that there have to be certain protections on it, but I'd like to lift the lid because there's so much to be learned," she said. It's not the first time Grede has taken a hard line on workplace expectations. In May 2025, she said she considers it a red flag when job candidates ask about work-life balance during the interview process. "Work-life balance is your problem. It isn't your employer's responsibility," Grede said. In an April interview with The Wall Street Journal, Grede also sparked an online debate after describing herself as a "max three-hour mum" on weekends focused on creating "high-impact, core memories" with her kids. Grede is part of a growing number of CEOs pushing back on remote work. In May 2023, Elon Musk said he views remote work as "morally wrong," saying it's unfair for some workers to stay home while others must be physically present to do their jobs. "It's like, really, you're going to work from home and you're going to make everyone else who made your car come work in the factory?" Musk said. In March, JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon said that working from home simply "doesn't work" for many younger employees, who will benefit from in-person guidance from their colleagues. "They learn by going on a sales call with you," Dimon said. "They learn by seeing you make a mistake. They learn by how you deal with the mistake." Since mid-2025, several major companies, including JPMorgan, Amazon, and Google, have implemented return-to-office policies. Read the original article on Business Insider

Amjad Masad says that you should only go into CS now if you are passionate about computers. Bloomberg/Getty Images Replit's CEO advises against studying computer science only for the money. Masad said there is still room for people deeply passionate about computer science. Some tech leaders agree on the enduring value of a CS education despite AI's impact on coding. Don't pursue computer science just for the money, says Replit's CEO. On an episode of the "20VC" podcast released on Saturday, Amjad Masad said that young people who are not deeply interested in CS should not study it. "If you don't feel like you're drawn to it like a fly drawn to a light, then don't go into it because someone told you you're going to make a boatload of money working for Google," he said. "It's pretty dumb to tell people to go into computer science if they're not really intrinsically interested in it." Masad cofounded Replit, an integrated coding environment, in 2016. The company has since pivoted into an AI-agent-led application builder and now competes with Microsoft's GitHub, Cursor, and vibe-coding tools like Lovable and Emergent. It's backed by investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Coatue, and Y Combinator. On the podcast, Masad added that in the early 2000s, people went into the field because they were passionate about understanding computers and programming. But after that, it became a "hyped up" subject, and college CS departments "exploded" because it became the easiest industry to make money in, he said. With AI, that is no longer the case. "Now, if you're interested in it, there's still ways to contribute. You could get into ML and AI and go work at the big labs or a company like ours," he said, referring to machine learning. He said that even as AI models progress, fundamentals like data structures and algorithms won't change, and tech will always need people who understand the "underpinnings" of CS. A 'wonderful major' Masad joins a group of tech leaders who say a CS education is still valuable. On a podcast appearance earlier this month, venture capitalist and Affirm CEO Max Levchin said that writing good code is an art, and AI can't take that away. "I don't think the LLMs are going to naturally always deliver beautifully crafted, elegant, and yet scientifically correct code," Levchin said. He added, "As a programmer, without having a solid foundation in computer science, I wouldn't be able to have that." In an interview with Business Insider published in December, AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton said that AI is replacing some coding tasks, but that doesn't mean a CS degree isn't valuable. "Many people think a CS degree is just programming or something," Hinton said. "There's a lot more to coding than writing the code," he added. "Computer science is a wonderful major to learn systems thinking." Read the original article on Business Insider

I was curious about what my collection of 500 cards would be worth if I tried to sell it. Cheryl Teh I have a collection of around 500 Pokémon and K-pop photo cards. Some cards are worth a lot of money, and I wanted to put a value on mine. A professional card assessor gave me some advice about card investing. Hello, my name is Cheryl, and I'm a card-collecting addict. In the last year, I've gone down the rabbit hole of collecting binders full of K-pop photo cards. I've also dabbled in collecting trading cards, mainly from Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering. Cards can be a million-dollar investment: Logan Paul sold a graded Pikachu card for more than $16 million in February. I wondered — have the hundreds of dollars I've spent on these cards been a complete waste? How much is my collection worth? Would I be able to flip $1,000 worth of cards for $10,000? I took my cards to Johnathan Lim at Singapore's Oxley Grading, a business that helps collectors assess cards before they decide whether or not to send them in for grading at businesses like PSA and CGC. Grading tells potential buyers how much it's worth, and pegs it against the market price of similar cards. The card also gets put in a protective slab to preserve it. Speed-grading Johnathan Lim pre-grades cards for customers at Oxley Grading who want to know if they have gold or dust on their hands. Cheryl Teh Lim, a banker by trade, does eight-hour weekend shifts at Oxley Grading, where he evaluates cards. Oxley handles the shipping and insurance. Every week, Lim looks at 200 to 300 cards. He says he can tell within seconds if a card has any chance of getting a PSA 9 or "Mint 10" grade. Post-grading, a PSA 10 could be 100 times the price of a PSA 1 — a card marked as being in poor condition. Cut and color matter Lim took a close look at my "Magic: The Gathering" cards. Cheryl Teh "We look at the centering, surface, edges, and condition of the card. When I assess the card, I will tell the people their percentage of getting a '10,' to manage their risk and their expectations," Lim said. A common flaw is centering. A card needs to be printed with an even border around all sides, or it has no chance of getting a high grade. Lim speed-graded my cards, pointing out small flaws I hadn't noticed when I was getting them, from small dents to centering that leaned left. He took around five seconds for each card. Storage is key Turns out the fluffy ring binder I keep my cards in isn't great for long-term storage. Cheryl Teh My storage system is horrific. Lim pointed out that my Pokémon cards were stored in plastic sleeves, then slotted into a cute Pikachu case. The case's gaps on the side means part of the card is exposed to light, he said, and that can lead to discoloration. And my K-pop cards are at risk stored in my ring binder, he said, because the metal rings dent cards. Lim recommends collectors get a binder without rings. Know the market My favorite cards — a set of Japanese "Pokémon" Deerling and Sawsbuck cards — aren't very popular in the market. Cheryl Teh Lim likened collecting of valuable Pokémon cards to the stock market. Charizards and Pikachus, he said, are a safe bet, like Magnificent Seven stocks. "Those cards are what people generally buy and sell all the time. It's like a safe haven for collectors. You will not have problems selling a Charizard, but you might have trouble selling a Rattata," he told me, referring to the tiny rat Pokémon. "What if I'm a Rattata enthusiast?" I asked. "That's like buying a meme stock," Lim said, explaining I'd have to watch the market for anomalous surges and sell the cards at the right time. Bad luck for me: Two of my favorite cards, the Deerling and Sawsbuck Japanese Pokémon full art cards, are niche at best. Big money cards Lim has some prized cards, including these autographed 1999 Charizards. Cheryl Teh Lim showed me some of his high-value pieces, including two autographed 1999 Charizard cards. PSA 10 versions of the card without the autograph are changing hands for $20,000 to $35,000. Autographed versions are more valuable — someone with a similar card is trying to sell it for upward of $100,000 on eBay, but they have no takers yet. My binder isn't worth much This card from my "Magic: The Gathering" might be worth grading. Cheryl Teh Of my close to 50 Pokémon cards, Lim said only one or two might get a PSA 9 or 10 when graded. Unfortunately for me, these were neither popular cards nor limited edition ones, and they hover around the $6 to $10 price point. Investing in the grading process, which costs around $40 per card if I submit in bulk, doesn't feel wise. My "Magic: The Gathering" collection fared a lot better. One card of the "Final Fantasy" character Sephiroth — which I was gifted — is in great condition, Lim said, and I can consider grading it to lock in its value. eBay listings show the card can go for $5,000 if it's graded a PSA "Mint 10." The K-pop photocards aren't a great investment I bought these photocards of Seventeen's Joshua Hong in South Korea for around $11 a piece. Cheryl Teh As for the K-pop cards, Lim said I'd likely be at the mercy of market volatility. These cards don't often get traded or pegged to a last-sale value the way a prized Charizard Pokémon card might. Some of my pieces of boy paper are limited edition cards — they go for hundreds of dollars in the K-pop boy band's Seventeen fandom. But I'd have to do the legwork to seek buyers out, at concerts or online, then negotiate. On the resale market, a K-pop photocard that comes with an album can sell for between $12 and $60. Some rare cards I've been gifted or bought — between $30 to $50 — can be flipped for $200. No regrets I collect Seventeen photocards purely for the love of the game. Cheryl Teh I'm OK with my collection being — at least monetarily speaking — largely worthless. Based on Lim's pre-grading, it doesn't look likely that I'll secure a $100,000 valuation on my badly-cut Flareon Pokémon card. Some of these cards were gifted to me by close friends. And I had fun, too, trading cards and befriending other Seventeen fans at concerts in Seoul and Japan. Boy paper brought us together — and that's what matters. I wasn't planning to sell my collection, even if Lim had told me it was worth $10,000. After all, I'm in it for the love of the game. Read the original article on Business Insider

Jimmy Kimmel spoke about Trump calling for his firing after a joke about Melania Trump. Randy Holmes/Disney via Getty Images Jimmy Kimmel joked about his feud with Melania Trump, saying he woke up to threats of being fired. This comes after Donald and Melania Trump both slammed Kimmel for calling Melania an "expectant widow." This is the second time the late-night host has been in the president's crosshairs. Jimmy Kimmel joked about his ongoing feud with the first lady Melania Trump in the first minute of his show on Monday. In the episode of "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" the late-night host said, "You know, sometimes you wake up in the morning, and the first lady puts out the statement demanding you be fired from your job? We've all been there, right?" He said on the show that his "widow" joke on Thursday went unnoticed until Monday, when he "greeted the day facing yet another Twitter vomit storm." Kimmel made his initial joke during a sketch on Thursday's show, which was taped a few days before the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, DC. During the sketch, he said the first lady "had a glow like an expectant widow." Melania Trump slammed Kimmel in a Monday X post, saying his "hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country." She said Kimmel "shouldn't have the opportunity to enter our homes each evening to spread hate," and called for ABC to take a stand against him. In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump said that Kimmel should be "immediately fired by Disney and ABC," and that his comments were "really shocking." Kimmel was not present at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday, when a gunman entered the venue and fired shots. Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Melania Trump were evacuated off the stage unharmed. The host doubled down on the widow joke during Monday's episode, saying it referred to the age difference between Trump and Melania Trump. He also responded to the first lady's criticisms, saying he has been "very vocal" about gun violence and adding that "hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject." The late-night host has been in the crosshairs with Trump before. Last September, his show was suspended by ABC for comments he made on the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, which were condemned by the Federal Communications Commission's chair, Brendan Carr. The show went back on air less than a week after an outcry of support from free-speech advocates around the country. This is the first major challenge for the newly installed Disney CEO, Josh D'Amaro, under the Trump administration. He is already facing the fallout from a failed OpenAI deal that would have brought AI-generated videos to Disney+. Read the original article on Business Insider

The $500 million superyacht Nord was off the coast of Oman on Sunday, indicating that it passed through the strait. Lam Yik/Bloomberg via Getty Images A superyacht linked to a Russian tycoon passed through the Strait of Hormuz this weekend. The Nord, the world's 12th-largest yacht, is one of the few private vessels to obtain passage. The vessel is linked to Alexei Mordashov, the Russian steel magnate. A multi-deck superyacht linked to one of Russia's richest men has sailed through the Strait of Hormuz, obtaining rare passage through the blockaded shipping lane. Maritime tracking data showed that the Nord, a 464-foot vessel often estimated to be worth $500 million, crossed the strait on Saturday morning local time after leaving Dubai on Friday. On Sunday, the yacht was transmitting its location off the coast of Muscat, Oman's capital. The Nord, the world's 12th-largest superyacht, is closely linked to Russian billionaire Alexei Mordashov, the owner of the steel giant Severstal. Mordashov doesn't formally own the yacht, but is widely considered its de facto owner — vessel records show that a firm registered under his wife's name held the yacht in 2022. Media outlets worldwide, including the BBC and Reuters, have also reported on the yacht traversing the Strait. Mordashov is estimated to be Russia's richest man by Bloomberg's Billionaire Index, which lists his net worth at $29.4 billion, and Forbes, which says his family is worth $37 billion. With Mordashov under international sanctions, US authorities have sought to seize the Nord for years. It's unclear how the vessel obtained permission to sail through the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has been attacking ships attempting to pass since late February. Severstal did not respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider. The US military is also blockading the strait, turning back Iranian vessels and any ship leaving or heading to Iranian ports. Russia and Iran are close allies, and the two have been in close talks since the US and Israel launched their war with Tehran. On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to mediate in the conflict during a meeting with Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in St. Petersburg. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has plummeted since hostilities began; the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported last week that 187 vessels had transited through the waterway since March 4. Before the war began, about 125 to 140 ships were sailing through the strait daily. Most of these vessels have been commercial ships or tankers, making the Nord one of the very few private vessels to approach the strait. The yacht, built by German shipyard Lurssen, can accommodate 36 passengers and features a gym, swimming pool, movie theater, elevator, beauty salon, and two helicopter pads. Read the original article on Business Insider

Lena Hall let his 5-year-old use a voice-based coding tool to build a game. Lena Hall A mother who works in tech guided her 5-year-old to vibe code a game. Her son dictated to OpenAI's Codex and picked up skills like refining an idea after feedback. Lena Hall tells BI she also put guardrails in place to ensure AI wouldn't harm him. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lena Hall, a senior director of developer and AI strategy at Akamai Technologies and cofounder of an AI startup. It's been edited for length and clarity. My son woke up one morning determined to build a game. It wasn't a passing idea; he talked about it all day in the way curious kids sometimes do. I handed him paper and asked him to sketch it out. He sketched the levels, characters, and what he imagined it would feel like to play. That's when I thought we could try something. I remembered OpenAI's Codex app had a dictation mode. I wanted to see whether a voice-based coding tool could turn a young child's idea into something playable, even without technical vocabulary. My son was really excited about vibe coding a game My son lit up the moment he realized we were going to try to make a real game. I started by showing him the tool. I opened the app and explained it simply: It could take what he said and turn it into something on the computer. I showed him the dictation button, and he was immediately captivated by the bar that displayed sound waves. He said he wanted a game where typing a word would turn the user into a character. He pressed the dictation button himself and sent the prompt. He watched Codex work and asked why it was taking its time. At one point, he asked with complete sincerity, "Humans think faster, right mama?" I laughed, as it was apparent to me at that moment that, in contrast to engineers appreciating how much AI accelerates work, a child doesn't yet have the context of how much sophisticated reasoning or complex computations are being performed. A few minutes later, it was done. Codex had generated a browser game, but not quite the way he'd imagined. I told him we could go back and ask Codex to fix it. His next prompt was more specific: "I want names of specific characters. And I want the characters to jump up and collect coins as it goes." My role throughout was pretty simple. I explained the tool, asked questions that helped him say out loud what he already knew he wanted, and stayed present. My child's learning came from play I didn't sit my child down and say, "We're going to learn about AI." He came to me with an idea, and I found a way to take that idea seriously. The learning was a consequence of the play, not the other way around. When children lead with genuine interest, they absorb skills and concepts deeply because they're motivated from within. I saw articulation, persistence, and the ability to refine an idea after feedback — a set of skills that are hard to teach directly. He also naturally broke the game into parts — characters, movement, and collecting coins — which is an early form of structured thinking. That kind of sustained creative commitment in a young child is something I want to nurture, and this experience rewarded it. How I made sure using AI wasn't harmful at his age The most important principle for us is that AI should never replace thinking. It should extend it. The moment a child offloads their curiosity, decision-making, or creative struggle to an AI, the most valuable part of the experience disappears. I try to make sure he understands, in age-appropriate ways, that AI isn't a person. It's a tool made by people, not a friend or an authority. This matters because children are naturally wired to form emotional bonds and attribute human qualities to things that respond to them. Building that understanding early is foundational. It shapes how they'll relate to these systems for the rest of their lives. Before we started, we reviewed a simple rule. We don't share personal information with apps — real names, where we live, school, or family details. I'm also deliberate about screen time. We keep it limited and focused on creating rather than consuming. The whole session was under twenty minutes. He spent more time drawing the game on paper that day than he did building it. Do you have a story to share about vibe coding? Contact this reporter at cmlee@businessinsider.com. Read the original article on Business Insider

arXiv:2604.22781v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Proactive alert prediction in computer networks is critical for mitigating evolving cyber threats and enabling timely defensive actions. Temporal Graph Neural Networks (TGNs) provide a principled framework for modeling time-evolving interactions; however, existing TGN-based methods predominantly rely on unidirectional or single-mechanism temporal aggregation, which limits their ability to capture recursive, multi-scale temporal patterns commonly observed in real-world attack behaviors. In this paper, we propose BiTA, a Bidirectional Gated Recurrent Unit-Transformer Aggregator for temporal graph learning. Rather than introducing a deeper or higher-capacity model, BiTA redesigns the temporal aggregation function within the TGN framework by jointly encoding bidirectional sequential dependencies and long-range contextual relations over each node's temporal neighborhood. This aggregation strategy enables complementary temporal reasoning at different scales while preserving the original TGN memory and message-passing structure. We evaluate BiTA on real-world alert datasets, demonstrating significant improvements in key performance metrics such as area under the curve, average precision, mean reciprocal rank, and per-category prediction accuracy when compared to state-of-the-art temporal graph models. BiTA outperforms baseline methods under both transductive and inductive settings, highlighting its robustness and generalization capabilities in dynamic network environments. BiTA is a scalable and interpretable framework for real-time cyber threat anticipation, paving the way toward more intelligent and adaptive intrusion detection systems.

arXiv:2604.22782v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Serving transformer language models with high throughput requires caching Key-Values (KVs) to avoid redundant computation during autoregressive generation. The memory footprint of KV caching is significant and heavily impacts serving costs. This work proposes to lessen these memory requirements. While recent work has largely addressed KV cache reduction via compression and eviction along the temporal axis, we argue that the \emph{depth} dimension offers an orthogonal and robust avenue for optimization. Although prior research suggests that a full cache for every layer is redundant, implementing cross-layer cache sharing remains a practical challenge; existing methods typically suffer from reduced throughput or increased time-to-first-token. In this paper, we demonstrate that dropping a layer's cache offers efficient optimization without information loss. We propose a simple training approach: random cross-layer attention. During training, layers randomly choose to attend either to their own KV states or those of a preceding layer. This stochastic process adapts the model to be robust to various depth-wise cache sharing strategies, ensuring flexibility for unknown hardware constraints at deployment time. Our evaluations show that applying this scheme during pre-training or fine-tuning enables depth-wise cache sharing for various model families. Furthermore, for larger models in data-constrained settings, this approach is suggestive of a regularization-like effect, frequently preserving or improving performance while significantly reducing the cache's memory footprint.

arXiv:2604.22779v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Enabling large language models (LLMs) to appropriately abstain from answering questions beyond their knowledge is crucial for mitigating hallucinations. While existing reinforcement learning methods foster autonomous abstention, they often compromise answer accuracy because their static reward mechanisms, agnostic to models' knowledge boundaries, drive models toward excessive caution. In this work, we propose KARL, a novel framework that continuously aligns an LLM's abstention behavior with its evolving knowledge boundary. KARL introduces two core innovations: a Knowledge-Boundary-Aware Reward that performs online knowledge boundary estimation using within-group response statistics, dynamically rewarding correct answers or guided abstention; and a Two-Stage RL Training Strategy that first explores the knowledge boundary and bypasses the "abstention trap", and subsequently converts incorrect answers beyond the knowledge boundary into abstentions without sacrificing accuracy. Extensive experiments on multiple benchmarks demonstrate that KARL achieves a superior accuracy-hallucination trade-off, effectively suppressing hallucinations while maintaining high accuracy across both in-distribution and out-of-distribution scenarios.