Category: 3. Business

Cornell’s NanoScale Science and Technology Facility (CNF) hosted its 2025 Annual Meeting on November 18 at the Statler Hotel, bringing together researchers, industry partners, faculty, students, and national collaborators to spotlight CNF’s leadership in micro- and nanotechnology. 

The program showcased advances in photonics, quantum devices, semiconductor fabrication, sustainability, life sciences and workforce development. Speakers across academia and industry emphasized a shared mission: strengthening U.S. semiconductor leadership through collaboration and a robust innovation pipeline

Decision-Making Amid Uncertainty 

Invited keynote speaker Cheryl Strauss Einhorn, Cornell Graduate, author and founder of Decisive, a decision sciences company, chose to address the audience through an informal interview/Q&A led by Prof.  Judy Cha, Director of the CNF. It was an engaging conversation providing insight into complex problem solving and decision-making process.   

IBM: Wafer Scale Semiconductor Lab to Fab Process Development and Prototyping 

Dr. Dirk Pfeiffer, Director of IBM’s Microelectronics Research Laboratory (MRL), was a plenary speaker at the CNF Annual Meeting. In his presentation, Dirk outlined MRL’s core mission of accelerating semiconductor technologies from early-stage innovation to wafer-scale development and manufacturing, bringing concepts effectively from “lab to fab”.  Dirk highlighted the importance of academic partners like the CNF that remain vital for understanding emerging materials before they reach manufacturing. 

Driving Innovation Through Community and Collaboration

The meeting also featured talks from Cornell researchers, including flying microrobots developed in Itai Cohen’s lab, advances in assisted reproduction from Alireza Abbaspourrad’s group, and new Creative Technologies for Teaching and Workforce Training led by Becky Lane at the Center for Teaching Innovation.

CNF Director Judy Cha presented the Nellie Whetten Award to Ph.D. student Yeryun Cheon recognizing the achievements of women in science, while a special panel of CNF staff introduced a new suite of tools.  Attendees were able to ask questions and hear directly from CNF experts about the equipment and the expanded capabilities now available to the research community. Throughout the day, participants engaged with vendors and student posters featuring emerging work in nanofabrication, materials research, and device innovation.

Across presentations, one theme resonated: CNF’s unique position as a national nanofabrication user facility for research, prototyping, product development, nanofabrication training, and cross-disciplinary discovery. As quantum and nanofabrication technologies continue to accelerate, CNF is helping to equip researchers, industry partners, and future engineers for the next wave of innovation.

The event was made possible with support from CNF’s sponsors: AJA International, JEOL, Oxford Instruments, REYNOLDSTECH, Corning, 3C Technical, ASML, Edwards, EFC Gases and Advanced Materials, Evident, GenISys, Heidelberg Instruments, IEEE, Kurt J. Lesker, LAB 14, Lam Research, Pozzetta, Plasma-Therm, Samco, Semi, Tescan, Xallent, Applied Energy Systems, RedBarnHPC, C&D Semiconductor Services, The Cornell Store, and Wegmans.

 

As for Wilcox, he’s long been one of that small group of privacy zealots who buys his SIM cards in cash with a fake name. But he hopes Phreeli will offer an easier path—not just for people like him, but for normies too.

“I don’t know of anybody who’s ever offered this credibly before,” says Wilcox. “Not the usual telecom-strip-mining-your-data phone, not a black-hoodie hacker phone, but a privacy-is-normal phone.”

Even so, enough tech companies have pitched privacy as a feature for their commercial product that jaded consumers may not buy into a for-profit telecom like Phreeli purporting to offer anonymity. But the EFF’s Cohn says that Merrill’s track record shows he’s not just using the fight against surveillance as a marketing gimmick to sell something. “Having watched Nick for a long time, it’s all a means to an end for him,” she says. “And the end is privacy for everyone.”

Merrill may not like the implications of describing Phreeli as a cellular carrier where every phone is a burner phone. But there’s little doubt that some of the company’s customers will use its privacy protections for crime—just as with every surveillance-resistant tool, from Signal to Tor to briefcases of cash.

Phreeli won’t, at least, offer a platform for spammers and robocallers, Merrill says. Even without knowing users’ identities, he says the company will block that kind of bad behavior by limiting how many calls and texts users are allowed, and banning users who appear to be gaming the system. “If people think this is going to be a safe haven for abusing the phone network, that’s not going to work,” Merrill says.

But some customers of his phone company will, to Merrill’s regret, do bad things, he says—just as they sometimes used to with pay phones, that anonymous, cash-based phone service that once existed on every block of American cities. “You put a quarter in, you didn’t need to identify yourself, and you could call whoever you wanted,” he reminisces. “And 99.9 percent of the time, people weren’t doing bad stuff.” The small minority who were, he argues, didn’t justify the involuntary societal slide into the cellular panopticon we all live in today, where a phone call not tied to freely traded data on the caller’s identity is a rare phenomenon.

Ly shows that one function this serves is to send versions of a protein to different parts of the cell. Many proteins contain ZIP code-like sequences that tell the cell’s machinery where to deliver them so the proteins can do their jobs. Ly found many examples in which longer and shorter versions of the same protein contained different ZIP codes and ended up in different places within the cell.

In particular, Ly found many cases in which one version of a protein ended up in mitochondria, structures that provide energy to cells, while another version ended up elsewhere. Because of the mitochondria’s role in the essential process of energy production, mutations to mitochondrial genes are often implicated in disease.

Ly wondered what would happen when a disease-causing mutation eliminates one version of a protein but leaves the other intact, causing the protein to only reach one of its two intended destinations. He looked through a database containing genetic information from people with rare diseases to see if such cases existed, and found that they did. In fact, there may be tens of thousands of such cases. However, without access to the people, Ly had no way of knowing what the consequences of this were in terms of symptoms and severity of disease.

Meanwhile, Cheeseman, who is also a professor of biology at MIT, had begun working with Boston Children’s Hospital to foster collaborations between Whitehead Institute and the hospital’s researchers and clinicians to accelerate the pathway from research discovery to clinical application. Through these efforts, Cheeseman and Ly met Fleming.

One group of Fleming’s patients have a type of anemia called SIFD — sideroblastic anemia with B-cell immunodeficiency, periodic fevers, and developmental delay — that is caused by mutations to the TRNT1 gene. TRNT1 is one of the genes Ly had identified as producing a mitochondrial version of its protein and another version that ends up elsewhere: in the nucleus.

Fleming shared anonymized patient data with Ly, and Ly found two cases of interest in the genetic data. Most of the patients had mutations that impaired both versions of the protein, but one patient had a mutation that eliminated only the mitochondrial version of the protein, while another patient had a mutation that eliminated only the nuclear version.

When Ly shared his results, Fleming revealed that both of those patients had very atypical presentations of SIFD, supporting Ly’s hypothesis that mutations affecting different versions of a protein would have different consequences. The patient who only had the mitochondrial version was anemic, but developmentally normal. The patient missing the mitochondrial version of the protein did not have developmental delays or chronic anemia, but did have other immune symptoms, and was not correctly diagnosed until his 50s. There are likely other factors contributing to each patient’s exact presentation of the disease, but Ly’s work begins to unravel the mystery of their atypical symptoms.

Cheeseman and Ly want to make more clinicians aware of the prevalence of genes coding for more than one protein, so they know to check for mutations affecting any of the protein versions that could contribute to disease. For example, several TRNT1 mutations that only eliminate the shorter version of the protein are not flagged as disease-causing by current assessment tools. Cheeseman lab researchers, including Ly and graduate student Matteo Di Bernardo, are now developing a new assessment tool for clinicians, called SwissIsoform, that will identify relevant mutations that affect specific protein versions, including mutations that would otherwise be missed.

“Jimmy and Iain’s work will globally support genetic disease variant interpretation and help with connecting genetic differences to variation in disease symptoms,” Fleming says. “In fact, we have recently identified two other patients with mutations affecting only the mitochondrial versions of two other proteins, who similarly have milder symptoms than patients with mutations that affect both versions.”

Long term, the researchers hope that their discoveries could aid in understanding the molecular basis of disease and in developing new gene therapies: Once researchers understand what has gone wrong within a cell to cause disease, they are better equipped to devise a solution. More immediately, the researchers hope that their work will make a difference by providing better information to clinicians and people with rare diseases.

“As a basic researcher who doesn’t typically interact with patients, there’s something very satisfying about knowing that the work you are doing is helping specific people,” Cheeseman says. “As my lab transitions to this new focus, I’ve heard many stories from people trying to navigate a rare disease and just get answers, and that has been really motivating to us, as we work to provide new insights into the disease biology.”

Go high or go wide? DeepSeek and ByteDance, the two leaders of China’s AI industry, are adopting vastly different strategies.

On Monday, DeepSeek released DeepSeek V3.2, another open-weight model that anyone can tinker with. The startup says it performs on par with the latest models from OpenAI and Google, and it even beats them on some key mathematics benchmarks.

That same day, ByteDance, whose dominance in AI applications we covered previously, introduced even more ways for people to use its chatbot, Doubao. ByteDance is now working with a Chinese smartphone manufacturer to embed Doubao into the operating system, giving it access to different apps and allowing it to conduct agentic tasks with them. In other words, it’s coming for Apple’s Siri.

Both ByteDance and DeepSeek have AI apps with over 140 million monthly users. But their latest announcements represent two diverging trends in China’s AI industry. While some companies are still competing with their Western counterparts to build ever more capable models, others have quietly withdrawn from that game and are focusing on how they can integrate their AI tools into people’s everyday lives.

DeepSeek Resurfaces

DeepSeek’s latest open-weight model may have disappointed some of its most loyal followers, who are still waiting for R2, a much-anticipated update to the initial model that rocked Silicon Valley in January. Instead, DeepSeek released V3.2 and V3.2-Speciale, which are better-optimized versions of its previous model V3.2-Exp, released in September.

Still, V3.2 caused a stir in the AI industry because DeepSeek claims it can solve the type of advanced math questions asked at the International Mathematical Olympiad, and its performance on other coding and reasoning tasks is supposedly on par with or above GPT 5 and Gemini 3. “It suddenly dawned on me why they call the company DeepSeek with the whale as a motif. Because just like a whale, it rarely surfaces, but every time it surfaces, it always makes a massive splash,” says Jen Zhu Scott, an AI investor and the cofounder and CEO of Power Dynamics, a modular data-center solutions firm.

However, I can’t help but feel like this arms race of AI models is getting a little tiring, particularly because so many new ones have been released in the last month, each claiming to take humanity one step higher. In less than 20 days, we had OpenAI’s GPT 5.1, Google’s Gemini 3 Pro, Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.5; throw in Chinese open source models like Moonshot’s Kimi K2 and DeepSeek’s V3.2, and it becomes a total mess. My attention span can be summarized by this perfect meme.

“At the end of the day, we can’t keep up with all these hairline differences between different models, different releases,” Zhu says. “It actually doesn’t make a huge difference, apart from some kind of stock market speculation on who’s gonna win.”

Early benefits are visible. While 53% of Irish firms report productivity gains from AI agents, only 38% see cost savings. This highlights the gap between task efficiency and enterprise impact. Trust is particularly thin: just 7% express high trust in agents across multiple functions.

Why trust is the bottleneck

The impact of low trust is not abstract; especially for specific high stakes activities. No Irish respondents report high trust in agents to conduct financial transactions, only 4% for autonomous customer interactions, and 9% for data analysis and insights.

Companies hesitate to hand over critical decisions to systems they can’t fully audit, govern, or explain. This explains why measurable value is lagging despite investment intent.

In parallel, the 2026 Global Digital Trust Insights Survey shows a world grappling with other data-related tensions: 41% of Irish organisations are adopting AI and machine learning to strengthen their cyber defence, while globally managed services are being used to support AI (38%), threat management (28%), data protection (27%) and third-party risk (17%).

Yet, 39% of respondents globally indicate that a data breach has cost their organisation over $500,000 in the last three years, and most companies (83%) split spend evenly between proactive and reactive measures — a sign that resilience and trust mechanisms are still maturing.

Data foundations still decide outcomes

Ireland’s trust gap is anchored in data readiness. Four in ten organisations cite data issues as the top barrier to realising value from agents. Integration with legacy systems is also more acute locally than in the US.

The Digital Trust Insights Survey aligns with this finding: Irish firms are increasing cyber risk investment (57%), but knowledge gaps and unclear risk appetite remain prominent barriers to using AI for cyber defence.

Without high quality, well governed, securely accessible data, agent performance, trust and return on investment will stall.

From back office to the front line

Adoption patterns are shifting. Customer service is now the leading use case in Ireland, ahead of operations and finance. But adoption remains patchy in sales and marketing, and only a minority are using agents to redesign processes or create new products.

That hesitancy mirrors cyber trends: while 78% of organisations expect cyber budgets to rise and 41% are adopting AI and machine learning to strengthen their cyber defence, many teams admit to skills and knowledge gaps in applying AI responsibly.

Until governance, assurance and risk ownership are crystal clear, leaders will keep agents near the “human in the loop” perimeter and away from autonomous decisions in revenue critical journeys.

What Irish leaders can do now

Build transparent guardrails: Treat trust as a design requirement, not an afterthought. Define “high stakes” thresholds (such as financial postings, contractual commitments or regulated customer interactions, for example) and require explainability, human validation and auditable logs for those flows. The Digital Trust Insights Survey data shows boards are backing cyber and data risk investment; use that momentum to embed Responsible AI policies and model risk controls alongside your existing cyber frameworks.

Fix data at the source: Prioritise the datasets that feed your first scaled agents and apply basic hygiene: lineage, quality rules, access controls and retention. Integrate with legacy systems via standardised APIs to limit brittle point-to-point builds. Our AI Agent Survey indicates that data issues and integration are the biggest Irish barriers; solving them will lift both performance and confidence.

Make cyber and AI one conversation: Security leaders are already prioritising AI capabilities; align this with your agent roadmap so threat detection, data loss prevention and identity controls are tuned to agent behaviours (for example, elevated scope service accounts or automated actions). Given that only a small fraction of organisations report full capability across data risk measures, closing this gap raises assurance and accelerates adoption.

Upskill for oversight, not just usage: The surveys point to knowledge and skills gaps as top obstacles. Train for oversight, not just usage. Governance, failure modes, red-teaming and incident playbooks matter as much as daily operations. This supports safe autonomy where it matters and reduces reliance on ad hoc controls.

Measure enterprise value, not task wins: Link agent outcomes to cost to serve, cycle time and revenue metrics, not just task time saved. With only 38% reporting cost savings despite widespread productivity gains, shifting measurement will force process redesign and accountability at the business unit level. Start with two or three journeys where you control both the data and the decision rights.

The destination is trusted autonomy

Irish leaders agree: AI agents will reshape work. But without trusted autonomy built on secure data and transparent governance, the promise will stall.

Start earning trust now, and enterprise-scale value will follow.   

This article was first published on www.businesspost.ie

 

MINNEAPOLIS, MN — Reese’s Puffs cereal is entering a new era with its first new flavor combo since the cereal debuted in 1994. Reese’s Puffs cereal Dark Chocolate Naturally Flavored is a richer, deeper take on the beloved peanut butter and chocolate combo, made with Hershey’s cocoa, real Reese’s Peanut Butter and the signature Reese’s Puffs cereal crunch fans love.

For more than three decades, Reese’s Puffs cereal has taken on many forms — from Big Puffs and Minis to limited-edition Bunnies and Bats. But aside from a Peanut Butter-only drop, the brand has never strayed from its original milk chocolate flavor. Until now.

“We’ve seen how much people enjoy Reese’s Puffs outside the morning routine, especially late night, and dark chocolate continues to grow within the Reese’s portfolio,” said Megan Brooks, Business Unit Director at General Mills. “Reese’s Puffs Dark Chocolate Naturally Flavored brings that deeper chocolate flavor to a cereal experience people already know and enjoy, any time of day.”

To mark the launch, Reese’s Puffs cereal is introducing a new universe on the back of the box in partnership with Vault49, called “Reese’s After Dark.” This collectible box transforms the cereal aisle into a glowing neon city where dark chocolate takes over. The universe is filled with hidden Easter eggs — from UFO-shaped Reese’s Cups to secret neon messages — creating an experience as bold as what’s inside the box.

Reese’s Puffs cereal Dark Chocolate Naturally Flavored is hitting retailers nationwide this month. For fans of the original, don’t worry — the classic Reese’s Puffs cereal with milk chocolate flavor isn’t going anywhere. The new Dark Chocolate flavor simply gives cereal lovers another way to enjoy that iconic peanut butter and chocolate combo.

PLEASANTON, Calif., Dec. 4, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY), the enterprise AI platform for managing people, money, and agents, has been named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning Software¹ for the fourth consecutive year. A complimentary copy of the report is available here.

Workday helps financial planning and analysis (FP&A) teams anticipate change, analyze multiple scenarios on the fly, and improve cross-functional collaboration to navigate uncertainty and provide strategic insights. Leading organizations including Blackberry Limited, Boston Scientific Corporation, Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, Spotify USA Inc., and more trust Workday Adaptive Planning to deliver agile plans and financial forecasts that drive deeper insights and faster decisions.

“Today’s finance teams need a smarter, faster way to plan, one that puts them in the driver’s seat. With AI at the core, Workday empowers finance to truly own their planning process, allowing them to make quick changes and adapt with ease, without relying on IT or consultants,” said Ben Pierce, general manager, Adaptive Planning, Workday. “We believe this recognition reflects what we hear from customers every day: the future of planning is AI-enabled, owned by the business, and designed for simplicity and immediate results.”

Workday delivers the modern, intuitive financial planning tools that help organizations thrive. With Workday, organizations can:

• Quickly adapt plans and forecasts as business conditions change to make planning and analysis more accurate and efficient.
• Use predictive analytics to stay ahead of market trends with Workday’s growing portfolio of agentic AI solutions – including Planning Agent, which can help organizations reduce data exploration and analysis by 30%.
• Improve collaboration and alignment across departments and regions, integrating financial and operational data across ERP, CRM, marketing and HR systems, and data warehouses to support consistent, accurate financial and operational processes. 

Gartner Peer Insights documents customer experience through verified ratings and peer reviews. As of December 2, 2025, Workday reviews include the following:

• “Workday Adaptive Planning has solved our budget process needs seamlessly. Since we implemented it over 6 years ago, we have gained back several hours per month on process steps, while enabling our analysts to spend more time on value-add.” – VP of Finance in the manufacturing industry [read full review]
• “We are extremely happy with all aspects of Adaptive Planning, including the user-friendly and easy to navigate interface, the expert implementation consultants, the ease of ongoing maintenance as well as the readily available post-implementation resources and support.” – Director of Financial Planning and Analysis in the transportation industry [read full review]
• “I feel like anything I have needed to do to improve my company’s corporate financial model has been achievable directly because of Workday Adaptive Planning. The automation and scalable features, the ability to have custom integrations, and the speed at which any support tickets are resolved are all second to none.” –  Finance Manager in the software industry [read full review]

For More Information

Gartner Disclaimer
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally, MAGIC QUADRANT and PEER INSIGHTS are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences, and should not be construed as statements of fact, nor do they represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in this content nor makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this content, about its accuracy or completeness, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Workday
Workday is the enterprise AI platform for managing people, money, and agents. Workday unifies HR and Finance on one intelligent platform with AI at the core to empower people at every level with the clarity, confidence, and insights they need to adapt quickly, make better decisions, and deliver outcomes that matter. Workday is used by more than 11,000 organizations around the world and across industries – from medium-sized businesses to more than 65% of the Fortune 500. For more information about Workday, visit workday.com.

© 2025 Workday, Inc. All rights reserved. Workday and the Workday logo are trademarks of Workday, Inc. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding Workday’s plans, beliefs, and expectations. These forward-looking statements are based only on currently available information and our current beliefs, expectations, and assumptions. Because forward-looking statements relate to the future, they are subject to inherent risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and many of which are outside of our control. If the risks materialize, assumptions prove incorrect, or we experience unexpected changes in circumstances, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements, and therefore you should not rely on any forward-looking statements. Risks include, but are not limited to, risks described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), including our most recent report on Form 10-Q or Form 10-K and other reports that we have filed and will file with the SEC from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. Workday assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release, except as required by law.

Any unreleased services, features, or functions referenced in this document, our website, or other press releases or public statements that are not currently available are subject to change at Workday’s discretion and may not be delivered as planned or at all. Customers who purchase Workday services should make their purchase decisions based upon services, features, and functions that are currently available.

¹ Gartner Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning Software, Regina Crowder, Sid Sahoo, Mike Lashinsky, 2 December 2025

 

SOURCE Workday Inc.

More than 250,000 cases of shredded cheese distributed across 31 states and Puerto Rico are the subject of a voluntary recall due to possible contamination with metal fragments, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The recall by Great Lakes Cheese Co. affects more than 1 million bags of shredded cheese, including mozzarella and parmesan blends. The recall includes Happy Farms by Aldi and Publix Italian Six Cheese Blend.

A complete list of products, UPC codes, batch numbers, sell-by dates and states affected are available on the FDA website.

In a question-and-answer interview with Northeastern Global News, Northeastern University professor and food safety policy expert Darin Detwiler explained why the recall affected so many different products and how metal contamination can harm consumers.

How is it possible for food products to become contaminated with metal fragments?

Food is produced with a lot of moving parts. In a cheese plant, stainless steel equipment shreds, conveys and packages the cheese. If a blade wears down, a bolt loosens or a part breaks, tiny metal pieces can enter the product stream.

Any food run through mechanical equipment can be exposed to metal fragments from a worn or broken part. That includes cereal, frozen vegetables, ground meats, baked goods, candy and other commercially processed, produced and packaged ready-to-eat foods or meals.

Plants use metal detectors, X-ray machines and magnets to catch these fragments. But no system is perfect, which is why when a piece is found, companies often pull entire lots out of caution.

What is the danger to consumers of exposure to metal fragments?

The FDA gave this a Class II recall, meaning the chance of severe harm is considered remote but there is still a risk of temporary or reversible injury.

Possible effects include scratches or cuts in the mouth; chipped teeth; cuts to the throat or digestive tract and abdominal pain or, in rare cases, internal bleeding.

Larger or sharper fragments can cause real harm. The advice is simple: Don’t eat it. Toss it or return it.

Why did this one recall affect dozens of shredded cheese products? 

Many store brands come from the same handful of large manufacturing plants.

A single cheese processor may produce dozens of “private label” cheeses. Think of it like one bakery making cookies for many different grocery stores. Same cookie, different labels.

So if one production line has an issue, every brand that used that line during that window is included in the recall.

Great Lakes Cheese Co. is one of the biggest cheese manufacturers in the country, which explains why the impact stretches across 31 states and many retail chains.

Just two years ago, in August 2023, Great Lakes Cheese Co. recalled 7,218,700 pounds of cheese due to incorrect refrigeration instructions on the packaging.

And last year, in May 2024, Schreiber Foods recalled over 830,000 units of cream cheese spreads because of potential salmonella contamination.

Why are the recalls considered voluntary?

Under U.S. law, most food recalls are voluntary, but this does not mean they are optional.

The FDA typically requests or strongly advises a recall, and companies nearly always comply. 

Typically, the FDA identifies an issue such as contamination, mislabeling or undeclared allergens, provides evidence to the firm and strongly advises a recall.

The firm is required to perform all corrective actions and report progress to the FDA.

Companies almost always comply because this protects consumers as well as protecting the company from greater liability by showing regulators they are acting responsibly. This also helps with their insurance companies if they are sued by a customer.

The system is called voluntary, but there is nothing casual about it. This is a coordinated public health action. 

If a company refused, the FED could escalate with public warnings, detentions and seizure of the product. In rare cases, it could use its authority to mandate a recall.

The real measure of food safety is not the absence of recalls. It is how quickly and transparently companies act when something goes wrong. 

While those predictions might sound extreme, they’re not just plausible, they’re likely, said Geoffrey Hinton—the British computer scientist widely known as the “Godfather of AI.” The transition, he warned, could trigger a sweeping economic reshuffling that leaves millions of workers behind.

“It seems very likely to a large number of people that we will get massive unemployment caused by AI,” Hinton said in a recent discussion with Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at Georgetown University.

“And if you ask where are these guys going to get the roughly trillion dollars they’re investing in data centers and chips… one of the main sources of money is going to be by selling people AI that will do the work of workers much cheaper. And so these guys are really betting on AI replacing a lot of workers.”

Hinton has grown increasingly vocal about what he sees as Big Tech’s misplaced priorities. The industry, he recently told Fortune, is driven less by scientific progress than by short-term profits—fueling a push to replace human workers with cheaper AI systems.

His warnings come as the economics of AI face new scrutiny. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, isn’t expected to turn a profit until at least 2030 and may need more than $207 billion to support its growth, according to HSBC estimations.

The future of AI is behind a fog of war

Hinton’s journey from AI insider to outspoken critic underscores the high stakes of the technology he helped create. After quitting his Google job in 2023 to speak more freely about AI’s risks, he has become one of the most prominent skeptics. Last year, his pioneering work in machine learning earned him the Nobel Prize.

He also acknowledged that AI will create new jobs, as many tech leaders predict. But he added that he does not expect the number of new roles to come close to the number eliminated. Even so, he cautioned that all predictions—including his own—should be treated with heavy skepticism. 

“Trying to predict the future of it is going to be very difficult,” he told Sanders. “It’s a bit like when you drive in fog. You can see clearly for 100 yards and at 200 yards you can see nothing. Well, we can see clearly for a year or two, but 10 years out, we have no idea what’s going to happen.”

What is clear, however, is that AI isn’t going away, and experts say workers who adapt—and use the technology to amplify their skills—will stand the best chance of navigating the coming upheaval.

100 million jobs are at risk, Bernie Sanders warns

Sanders has attempted to quantify the stakes. In a report released in October—based partly on estimates generated by ChatGPT—he warned that nearly 100 million U.S. jobs could be displaced by automation. Workers in fast food, customer service, and manual labor face some of the highest risks, but white-collar roles in accounting, software development, and nursing could also see significant cuts.

“It’s not just economics,” Sanders wrote in an op-ed for Fox News. “Work, whether being a janitor or a brain surgeon, is an integral part of being human. The vast majority of people want to be productive members of society and contribute to their communities. What happens when that vital aspect of human existence is removed from our lives?”

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) has raised similar alarms, warning that the disruption could hit young people first and hardest—potentially driving unemployment among recent college graduates to as high as 25% in the next two to three years.

“Let’s look at the fact we never did anything on social media,” Warner told CNBC. “If we make that same response on AI and don’t put guardrails, I think we will come to rue that day.”

• Aging, nutrition and lifestyle affect muscles, especially after age 40. That’s why Matt Ryan, former professional quarterback and MVP, is teaming up with Abbott to drive muscle health awareness with two new Ensure Max Protein shakes
• Ensure Max Protein 42g: For physically active adults, this new shake delivers 42 grams of complete protein to help build muscle tissue alongside resistance training with 23 vitamins and minerals and two key electrolytes to support muscle function
• Ensure Max Protein 2 in 1 Muscle Support: For older adults who need help maintaining muscle as they age, this shake has 30 grams of protein and 1.5g of CaHMB (beta-hydroxy-beta-methylbutyrate) to help slow the breakdown of muscleⁱ
• New data also shows the benefit of protein on stabilizing glucose levels to support long-term wellness goals

ABBOTT PARK, Ill., Dec. 4, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — With America’s growing focus on wellness and the quality of your years, muscle is emerging as a new metric for aging. That’s why Abbott (NYSE: ABT), a global leader in science-based nutrition, today announced two new shakes designed to support muscle health and nutrition goals as part of the Ensure Max Protein line: Ensure Max Protein 42g and Ensure Max Protein 2 in 1 Muscle Support.

Most people don’t realize that after age 40, they can lose up to 8% of muscle mass per decade.ⁱⁱ Factors like low protein intake, rapid weight loss, and inactivity can accelerate this decline.

“Muscle and protein play a key role in maintaining our strength, mobility and health as we age,” said Dominique R. Williams, MD, MPH, medical director at Abbott. “These new Ensure Max Protein shakes provide a step-level approach – with formulations that meet people where they are in their physical health to address real nutrition needs—and help prioritize muscle health.”

Inspiring adults to take charge of their muscle health is former MVP and pro quarterback Matt Ryan, who knows that strength isn’t just for game day—it’s for every day. Together, Abbott and Ryan are encouraging adults to prioritize muscle health and set bold goals.

“Your next chapter isn’t about slowing down—it’s about shifting gears,” said Ryan. “For me, it’s a chance to focus on new goals, stay motivated, and keep pushing forward. The best plays aren’t always behind you; sometimes they’re the ones you make off the field.”

Ensure Max Protein 42g Protein Shake: For Active Adults
Whether lifting weights, hitting the spin bike, flowing through yoga, or rowing for endurance—more adults over 40 are embracing strength training.  Research shows that physically active adults may need up to twice as much protein as sedentary individuals to support muscle health.^iii,iv

Ensure Max Protein 42g is designed for active adults pushing their limits. Each bottle offers:

• 42 grams of complete protein
• 23 essential vitamins and minerals to fill nutrition gaps
• 2 key electrolytes to support muscle function
• 2 grams of sugar and 220 calories

Ensure Max Protein 2 in 1 Muscle Support Shake: For Adults Focused on Preserving Muscle
Older adults may need up to 38% more protein than the recommended daily allowance to help preserve muscle.^v They can also benefit from HMB (beta-hydroxy-beta-methylbutyrate) which can help to slow muscle breakdown. HMB is produced when the body breaks down leucine, an essential amino acid found in protein-rich foods.^vi

Ensure Max Protein 2 in 1 Muscle Support is scientifically formulated with:

• 30g of high-quality protein to support muscle health
• 1.5g of CaHMB to help slow the breakdown of muscle^vii
• 26 vitamins and minerals to fill nutrition gaps

“HMB research spans more than 25 years and data suggests it can play a role in supporting muscle health,^viii” said Bridget Cassady, PhD, RDN, LD senior manager of adult nutrition at Abbott. “By combining HMB and high-quality protein in Ensure Max Protein 2 in 1 Muscle Support, we’re offering consumers a way to preserve muscle health with HMB and build muscle tissue^ix with protein. After all, muscles are the currency of longevity.”

Nutrition supports more than just muscle health—it impacts how our bodies function every day. While protein is essential for maintaining and building muscle, emerging research shows it can also influence other aspects of health, like blood sugar management. This connection underscores why prioritizing protein isn’t just about muscle—it’s about supporting overall wellness and longevity.

New Data on the Benefits of Protein on Glucose Levels
The benefits of protein go beyond muscle health. New real-world findings suggest that a simple nutritional tweak of adding a protein shake could help support blood sugar goals.

Data from more than 9,500 users of Abbott’s Lingo continuous glucose monitor, a biowearable that combines continuous glucose monitoring with behavioral insights, found that on days when users consumed protein shakes, they had 15% lower odds of elevated glucose levels.^x

Exclusively Available at Walmart Now
Ensure Max Protein 42g is available in French Vanilla and Milk Chocolate and Ensure Max Protein 2 in 1 Muscle Support is available in Chocolate and Vanilla. Consumers can find both products exclusively at Walmart and Walmart.com through March 2026, with expanded distribution to major retailers beginning April 2026.

To learn more, visit Ensure.com and follow @Ensure on Instagram and Facebook.

About Abbott:
Abbott is a global healthcare leader that helps people live more fully at all stages of life. Our portfolio of life-changing technologies spans the spectrum of healthcare, with leading businesses and products in diagnostics, medical devices, nutrition and branded generic medicines. Our 114,000 colleagues serve people in more than 160 countries.

Connect with us at www.abbott.com and on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube.

 

SOURCE Abbott