Banks Sound Alarm on AI Shopping Agents: Fraud Risks Outpace Safeguards

Big banks are growing uneasy. A coalition of global lenders warned Tuesday that AI agents making purchases for consumers could drive higher rates of scams, fraud and data-privacy problems. The technology, they say, is advancing faster than rules or systems can handle.

The report, titled Building Trust in Agentic Commerce, comes from six institutions: Bank of America, Capital One, ING, NatWest, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and New Zealand’s ASB Bank. It paints a picture of consumer excitement colliding with practical dangers. Customers like the idea of AI handling shopping tasks. Yet many worry the agents won’t act in their best interests.

“Consumers are unclear if AI will act in their interests,” the banks stated in the paper. “They are concerned that AI agents may buy the wrong thing or spend too much – or even worse, lose their money to scams and fraud. They are not sure whether they will be protected or who they will need to go to if things go wrong.”

Those words capture the tension. People want convenience. Banks see liability headaches ahead. And the pace of change feels relentless. British retailer John Lewis reported AI-driven search traffic jumped to 2.5% from 0.3% a year earlier, according to a report in The Independent.

The concerns run specific. AI agents might ask users for card details then enter them directly on merchant sites. They could steer shoppers toward payment methods with weaker consumer protections. Bad actors could compromise the agents themselves or impersonate merchants. New forms of social engineering become possible. Disputes and chargebacks could surge for reasons outside merchants’ control.

PYMNTS Intelligence research shows the hesitation in practice. About 50% of Americans have used AI for some retail purchase. Only 22% start product research with the tools. When it comes to letting an agent actually shop and pay, that drops to 24%. “The change stops as the agent gets closer to the money,” the firm noted in its September report “Will the 2026 Shopping Season Go Agentic?”.

Banks Push for Transparency and Audit Trails

Issuers and acquirers often lack real-time visibility into an agent’s identity, the true merchant of record or the customer’s exact intent. Routine payment authorization doesn’t answer whether the agent bought what the person actually wanted. The banks propose solutions. They want clear disclosure whenever an AI agent participates in a transaction. Greater transparency into how agents reach decisions. Stronger safeguards around customer data. And full audit trails from initial customer instruction through authentication, intent, transaction steps, warnings, interventions and final outcome.

These records would help investigate problems, recover funds and settle disputes. Liability, the banks argue, should reflect where error or risk entered the chain. The principles remain voluntary for now. The group plans to take its proposals to policymakers and follow up with a second paper on implementation. The original Gizmodo coverage first highlighted the banks’ discomfort with autonomous shopping, available at gizmodo.com.

But the worries extend beyond retail. Recent Reuters coverage on the same day detailed how the banks see agentic commerce introducing new safety risks with potential for higher scam and fraud rates. The story is at reuters.com. PYMNTS followed with deeper analysis on the need for audit trails from instruction to payment outcome, linked here: pymnts.com.

Payment giants have started to lean in. Mastercard joined Visa in enabling AI bots to handle purchases with virtual cards carrying spending limits. That WSJ article from last week shows the industry bracing for this shift, at wsj.com. Yet the same story notes executives rethinking fraud models and what happens with rogue agents.

Consumer comfort varies by task. Experian’s recent study found 54% of consumers open to AI agents applying for credit on their behalf. Far more trust the tools to compare loans or hunt for better rates. Still, handing over actual payment authority crosses a line for many. The gap between research and execution reveals deep caution.

So the banks aren’t alone. Regulators watch closely. Bank of England officials have discussed kill switches for autonomous AI in markets. European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has called AI a major risk to financial stability. Singapore’s central bank now ranks AI-assisted cyber and operational threats at the top of its concerns.

The report also flags risks to merchants. Higher dispute volumes could follow even when they deliver exactly what the agent ordered. Chargebacks might rise because the human never reviewed the final choice. And liability questions remain unresolved. Does authorizing an agent equal authorizing every purchase it makes? Courts haven’t tested that scenario yet.

Technology firms push forward. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta promote chatbots as shopping assistants. Early pilots have moved to live tests and limited scaling. The banks acknowledge customer demand. They just want guardrails before problems multiply.

One proposal stands out. Every participant in the transaction should know when an AI agent is involved and who it represents. Simple in theory. Complex in practice when agents act across multiple steps and services. The banks call for interoperability standards too. Without them, fragmented systems could create more blind spots.

Adoption data suggests acceleration. What was experimental a year ago now shows measurable traffic on major retail sites. That momentum won’t slow. Banks, for their part, aim to shape development rather than resist it. Their paper offers a framework. Whether policymakers and tech companies adopt the ideas will determine how safely this technology scales.

Fraud protections built for human shoppers don’t map neatly onto autonomous agents. Intent becomes harder to prove. Authentication layers multiply. Data flows grow more intricate. The coalition’s call for preserved evidence from start to finish addresses exactly these gaps. Without such records, sorting responsibility after a bad transaction turns messy fast.

And messy disputes hurt everyone. Customers lose trust. Merchants face costs. Banks handle the chargebacks and fraud claims. The principles paper tries to head off that cycle. It won’t solve every problem. But it marks a serious first step from the institutions that ultimately bear much of the financial risk.

The conversation has begun. Today’s warnings from major lenders could shape tomorrow’s rules. Consumers stand to gain powerful tools. They also face new vulnerabilities. Getting the balance right matters. The banks have laid out their view. Now the rest of the industry must respond.

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South Korea’s Central Bank Weighs Next Moves as AI Boom Fuels Growth and Price Pressures

SEOUL — The Bank of Korea raised its benchmark interest rate twice in quick succession this summer. It now sits at 3%. Yet the debate over further tightening has only grown sharper.

Inflation refuses to settle near the 2% target. Growth has surprised to the upside, powered by semiconductor exports tied to the global surge in artificial intelligence. Household debt climbs. Housing prices in the Seoul area accelerate. Policymakers tread carefully.

On Tuesday, board member Chang Yong-sung laid out the framework. The central bank will set the timing and pace of additional rate hikes by watching inflation, economic growth and financial stability conditions. “Going forward, factors such as accumulating financial imbalances, sector-specific income improvements, global market trends and geopolitical risks will likely shape financial stability,” he said in remarks released with the Reuters report.

Chang stressed coordination. Monetary policy and macroprudential tools must work together. Fiscal and financial authorities need to address difficulties for vulnerable groups. The message was clear. No predetermined path exists. Data will decide.

BOK Shifts Stance After Years of Accommodation

The shift began in July. The Monetary Policy Board lifted the base rate 25 basis points to 2.75%. All seven members backed the move. It marked the first hike in three and a half years. Inflation had climbed above 3%. Semiconductor exports roared ahead. Domestic demand showed signs of recovery.

August brought another 25 basis point increase. The rate reached 3%. Six members voted yes. One dissented. The central bank revised its 2026 growth forecast sharply higher to 3.3% from 2.6%. The 2027 projection rose to 2.9%. Inflation forecasts held at 2.7% this year and 2.3% next. Core inflation, however, was marked up. It is now seen at 2.5% for both years.

Governor Shin Hyun Song explained the back-to-back action. Preemptive steps help anchor expectations. They limit the eventual cost of reining in prices. Yet he also signaled caution. The board would assess the effects of the two hikes before deciding on more.

By September, the tone remained measured. The BOK’s own Monetary Policy Report stated it would decide additional hikes while closely monitoring inflation, economic developments and financial stability. Inflation is projected to stay above target for a prolonged period. Growth should remain solid, supported by exports, investment and recovering consumption. Housing prices and household loans are both picking up speed. (Bank of Korea)

Short sentences. Clear risks. Persistent price pressures. Stronger domestic demand. These forces collide.

Analysts have taken notice. JPMorgan Chase stands out for its hawkish view. The bank sees upside to its already bold call for the policy rate to reach 3.75%. It expects hikes in November, February and May of next year. Semiconductor-driven expansion could stoke even stronger inflation, provided credit and financial markets hold steady. That terminal rate exceeds the 3.5% median in Bloomberg surveys. (Bloomberg, published Sept. 21, 2026)

But not everyone agrees on the pace. Minutes from the August meeting, released in mid-September, revealed divisions. Dissenter Hwang Kun-il argued for holding rates. He pointed to rising delinquencies and the need to support growth. A stronger won had given room to evaluate prior moves. Such splits suggest future decisions may come more slowly. (Reuters)

And markets have priced in more. Some forecasts see the 1-year forward 3-month rate near 4.2%. That implies roughly four hikes from current levels. Economists at Goldman Sachs see only one additional 25 basis point move, taking the rate to 3.25%. The gap between market pricing and bank projections creates trading opportunities in rates markets.

Geopolitics adds uncertainty. Tensions in the Middle East have kept oil prices elevated. That feeds imported inflation in an energy-dependent economy. The won’s path matters too. A weaker currency amplifies cost pressures. Recent strength helped, yet volatility persists.

Financial stability concerns loom large. Household debt in South Korea ranks among the highest relative to income in major economies. Apartment prices in the capital region have accelerated. Consumer loans grow. The central bank has warned repeatedly about these imbalances. Chang’s comments Tuesday reinforced the need for complementary policies to prevent them from deepening.

So the board watches incoming numbers. August and September inflation readings. Business sentiment. Nominal GDP. Spillovers from the semiconductor sector into wages and consumption. Each data point shapes the next vote.

The October meeting will test the mood. Many expect no change then. But the door stays open for November. One more hike this year would bring the rate to 3.25%. Further moves in 2027 remain possible if growth stays hot and prices fail to moderate.

Korea’s economy shows a clear split. Export powerhouses in chips thrive on AI demand. Domestic sectors lag. This bifurcation complicates policy. Strong headline growth gives room to tighten. Yet uneven gains risk leaving parts of the economy behind.

Shin has emphasized flexibility. Each decision stays live. No mechanical path forward. That approach fits the moment. Global central banks navigate similar crosscurrents. The Federal Reserve recently hiked. Other major banks adjust. Korea cannot ignore external forces.

Yet its choices remain homegrown. Assess the data. Balance growth against prices. Guard financial stability. Chang’s remarks Tuesday captured the essence. The central bank holds the tools. It will use them as conditions warrant. No more. No less.

Investors, businesses and households wait for the next signal. The semiconductor cycle could extend. Oil prices could spike again. Domestic demand could accelerate faster than expected. Any of these would tilt the board toward tighter policy.

For now, the stance is restrictive. Rates at 3% after two quick moves. Inflation forecasts above target. Growth upgraded. The BOK has moved from accommodation to restraint. How far it goes depends on the balance of those three factors — inflation, growth, stability. The coming months will reveal whether more hikes lie ahead or if the current level suffices to cool pressures.

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Linux 7.3-rc4 Released with Fixes for x86, ARM64, Btrfs, EXT4 and More

The Linux kernel development cycle continues its steady pace with the release of version 7.3-rc4. Linus Torvalds announced the fourth release candidate on the kernel mailing list, noting that the update arrives with a typical mix of fixes across various subsystems while maintaining overall stability for what has become a routine part of the merge window process.

This latest candidate brings together contributions from hundreds of developers, addressing issues that surfaced after the initial code merges for the 7.3 series. According to the Phoronix report, the patch volume sits at a moderate level compared to previous candidates, suggesting that the kernel team has already resolved many of the larger structural changes and now focuses on polishing specific areas that showed problems during testing.

Several architecture-specific updates appear in this release. The x86 maintainers included corrections for memory management and virtualization components, particularly around Intel and AMD hardware support. These changes help ensure consistent behavior across different processor generations, especially when dealing with newer instruction set extensions and power management features. ARM64 developers contributed fixes related to interrupt handling and memory barrier semantics that could have caused rare but problematic race conditions on multi-core systems.

Storage and file system improvements form another significant portion of the changes. The Btrfs file system received multiple patches that address edge cases in its RAID implementation and snapshot handling. Users who rely on Btrfs for complex storage setups will benefit from these refinements, which reduce the chance of metadata corruption during heavy write workloads. EXT4 also saw attention, with updates that improve handling of inline data and directory indexing under high contention.

The block layer and SCSI subsystem picked up several important corrections. These address potential deadlocks and error handling paths that became apparent during stress testing with modern solid-state drives and high-performance storage arrays. The device mapper component, which underpins technologies like LVM and software RAID, received fixes that enhance reliability when resizing logical volumes or handling transient device failures.

Networking remains a constant area of activity in kernel development, and 7.3-rc4 continues that tradition. The TCP stack saw improvements to congestion control algorithms and packet scheduling, helping to reduce latency in certain network conditions. WiFi drivers for popular chipsets from Intel, MediaTek, and Realtek gained bug fixes that resolve connectivity drops and power management issues reported by users on laptops and embedded devices. The Bluetooth subsystem also received attention, particularly around Low Energy device pairing and audio streaming stability.

Graphics and display support continue to evolve with this candidate. The AMD graphics drivers incorporated corrections for power management transitions and display output handling on newer GPU generations. Intel’s i915 driver team addressed several race conditions that could lead to screen corruption or system instability when switching between different display configurations. The Nouveau driver for NVIDIA hardware picked up minor fixes that improve compatibility with recent Mesa userspace components.

One area that has seen consistent attention throughout the 7.3 cycle involves Rust integration within the kernel. While still considered experimental, the infrastructure for writing kernel modules in Rust has received refinements that make the binding layer more reliable. These changes primarily affect how Rust code interacts with core kernel APIs for memory allocation and synchronization primitives. The Phoronix coverage highlights that these updates represent incremental progress rather than major new capabilities, which aligns with the cautious approach the kernel community has taken toward introducing new programming languages.

Hardware support continues to expand in expected ways. The sound subsystem gained better compatibility with newer audio codecs found in recent laptops and mobile devices. USB updates address enumeration problems with certain high-speed peripherals, while the PCI subsystem received patches that improve resource allocation on systems with complex bridge configurations.

Performance monitoring and debugging tools also benefited from this release candidate. The perf subsystem incorporated fixes that restore accurate event counting on certain CPU models, which should please developers who rely on precise measurements for optimization work. The tracing infrastructure saw improvements to probe handling that reduce overhead when using kprobes on hot code paths.

Security-related changes appear throughout the candidate, though many take the form of hardening rather than fixes for newly discovered vulnerabilities. The memory management code received additional checks that help prevent certain classes of use-after-free errors. The SELinux and AppArmor security modules both saw refinements to their policy handling that eliminate potential inconsistencies when dealing with complex namespace setups.

Testing and quality assurance efforts have clearly influenced the content of this release candidate. The kernel test robot and various automated validation systems flagged issues that developers then addressed before this snapshot. This process helps catch problems that might otherwise only surface after wider deployment. The moderate size of the diffstat for rc4 suggests that the development cycle has moved past the period of major feature integration and into a phase where stability takes priority.

For those following the kernel release schedule, this candidate arrives roughly on the expected timeline. The merge window for 7.3 closed several weeks ago, and the community has since focused on integrating bug reports from early testers and continuous integration systems. If the pattern from previous cycles holds, we can expect one or two more release candidates before the final 7.3 version arrives, assuming no major regressions appear in the coming days.

The involvement of major technology companies remains evident in the contributor list. Engineers from Intel, AMD, Google, Red Hat, SUSE, and various hardware vendors have all submitted patches that made their way into this candidate. This broad participation reflects the diverse requirements that the Linux kernel must satisfy, from enterprise servers and cloud infrastructure to consumer laptops and mobile devices.

Users who track kernel development through git trees can pull this candidate immediately for testing. The tag linux-7.3-rc4 is available in the main kernel repository, and distribution maintainers will likely begin incorporating it into their development branches soon. Those running earlier candidates or the 7.2 stable series may want to consider upgrading if they have encountered any of the specific issues addressed in this update.

The ongoing development process demonstrates how the kernel community balances the introduction of new features with the need for reliability. Each release candidate serves as both a snapshot of current progress and an opportunity for wider testing before finalization. The 7.3 series appears to be following this established pattern, with rc4 providing another step toward what should be a solid release when it eventually arrives.

Looking at the broader context of kernel development, the 7.3 cycle has incorporated several notable changes beyond the bug fixes highlighted in this candidate. Earlier merge windows brought updates to scheduling algorithms, memory management improvements, and expanded support for newer hardware platforms. The Rust integration work, while still in its early stages, continues to expand the options available to developers who want to write safer kernel code without sacrificing performance.

The file system updates deserve particular attention because they affect data integrity across countless deployments. The improvements to Btrfs and EXT4 in this candidate build upon years of refinement that have made these file systems suitable for demanding production environments. Similar attention to the networking stack ensures that Linux remains competitive in high-throughput data center applications while maintaining the responsiveness needed for desktop and mobile use cases.

Driver updates for modern hardware continue to arrive at a steady pace. As new processors, graphics cards, and peripheral devices reach the market, kernel developers work to ensure compatibility and optimal performance. This rc4 release includes work that helps prepare the kernel for hardware that vendors have only recently announced, demonstrating the proactive nature of much kernel development work.

The security enhancements, though sometimes less visible to end users, play a vital role in maintaining trust in the platform. By continuously improving memory safety, access controls, and cryptographic primitives, the kernel team helps protect systems against both known and emerging threats. These changes often result from collaboration between academic researchers, industry security teams, and independent developers who identify potential weaknesses before they can be exploited.

Performance work in this candidate focuses on reducing latency and improving efficiency rather than introducing dramatic new optimizations. The accumulated effect of many small improvements across subsystems often leads to measurable gains when running real-world workloads. Users who test this candidate on their specific hardware configurations may notice smoother operation in areas that previously showed occasional hiccups.

The documentation updates included in rc4, while not always the most exciting changes, help ensure that both new and experienced kernel developers can understand the current state of the code. Updated comments, improved explanations in the documentation directory, and clearer error messages all contribute to a more maintainable codebase over time.

As the kernel approaches what may be its final release candidates, the focus will increasingly shift toward identifying and resolving any remaining issues that could affect stability. The community relies on users who run these pre-release versions to report problems promptly so developers can address them before the version number increments to the final release.

This steady progression through the release cycle reflects years of experience in managing a project of this scale and complexity. The Linux kernel has grown to support an enormous range of hardware and use cases, yet the development process remains structured around these regular merge windows and release candidates. Each step brings the project closer to delivering another version that will serve as the foundation for operating systems and embedded devices worldwide for months or even years to come.

The contributions that make up 7.3-rc4 represent countless hours of development, testing, and review by individuals and teams spread across different time zones and organizations. Their collective effort ensures that Linux continues to meet the diverse needs of its users while preparing for the technological demands of the future. As testing of this candidate expands, feedback from the broader community will help shape the final form of the 7.3 release and influence the direction of subsequent development cycles.

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Microsoft: AI Licenses Alone Fail—Workflow Redesign Drives 20% Sales Boost and 75% Faster Supply Chains

Microsoft has spent the last several years treating its own workforce as a living laboratory for artificial intelligence adoption. The results, shared in a September 17 blog post by Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan, show that simply handing out licenses produces limited returns. Real performance gains arrive only after teams redesign the underlying processes that define how work actually happens.

Hogan’s account stands out because it comes from inside the company that sells Copilot to the world. Rather than promotional language, the post offers a candid assessment of what happened when Microsoft turned the same tools on itself. The numbers cited are concrete: sales teams that rebuilt their deal workflows around AI recorded 20 percent higher close rates, supply chain groups shortened cycle times by as much as 75 percent, and one nine-person product team delivered a major release in just 35 days. These outcomes did not appear on adoption dashboards that tracked login counts or prompt volume. They surfaced only after leaders stopped measuring usage and started measuring changed business results.

The distinction between adoption and transformation sits at the center of the lessons Microsoft learned. Early in the rollout, the company distributed licenses to more than 100,000 employees. Usage climbed, yet many managers reported that daily rhythms felt unchanged. Meetings still ran long, decision loops remained slow, and output quality showed only marginal improvement. The pattern repeated across departments. Engineers used Copilot to accelerate code completion, but the broader development lifecycle stayed anchored to the same handoffs and approval gates that existed before the tools arrived. Sales representatives generated better first drafts of proposals, yet the end-to-end sales motion continued to follow legacy stages that no longer matched the speed of the new material.

That realization prompted a shift in focus. Instead of asking “how many people are using the tools,” Microsoft began asking “which workflows produce measurably better outcomes when AI is embedded inside them.” The question forced teams to map every step of their current process, identify which steps consumed the most time or introduced the most error, and then redesign those steps around AI capabilities. The resulting changes looked different in every function, but they shared a common trait: AI stopped being an optional assistant and became part of the standard operating procedure.

Nowhere was this redesign more visible than inside the sales organization. Traditional deal reviews involved lengthy slide decks, multiple alignment meetings, and manual updates to customer relationship management records. After the transformation, teams built prompts that automatically pulled customer history, competitor data, and pricing guardrails into a single living document. The document updated in real time as new information arrived, eliminating the need for separate status reports. Sales managers could query the document directly instead of scheduling yet another sync call. The compressed cycle allowed representatives to spend more time with customers and less time on internal coordination. The 20 percent lift in close rates emerged from that time reallocation, not from any single prompt trick.

Supply chain teams followed a similar path. Legacy processes relied on batch reporting that arrived days or weeks after events occurred. When disruptions hit, teams spent hours reconciling data from separate systems before they could even begin to model alternatives. The redesigned workflow connected Copilot directly to live telemetry streams from factories, ports, and logistics partners. Planners could ask natural-language questions about inventory buffers, lead-time variances, or alternative sourcing options and receive answers grounded in current data. The system flagged anomalies before they became crises. Cycle times that once stretched into multiple weeks shrank dramatically. In one documented case, a procurement team reduced the end-to-end sourcing process from 28 days to seven. The 75 percent reduction cited by Hogan reflects the aggregate impact across dozens of such improvements.

Product development offered perhaps the clearest illustration of speed gains. A small team tasked with modernizing an internal administrative portal decided to treat the entire build as an AI-augmented effort. Rather than writing detailed specifications and handing them to developers, the group maintained a living requirements document that Copilot referenced continuously. Developers described features in plain language, received working code snippets, and iterated inside the same chat thread. Quality assurance, normally a separate phase, ran in parallel because the model could generate test cases and edge-condition scenarios on demand. The result was a production-ready service delivered in 35 days by nine people, a timeline that would have been unthinkable under the previous staged approach.

These examples share more than impressive metrics. Each required leaders to relinquish the comfort of measuring activity and instead embrace accountability for outcomes. Adoption dashboards still exist inside Microsoft, but they now serve as diagnostic tools rather than success indicators. When usage in a particular team remains high yet business metrics stay flat, the diagnosis almost always points to an unchanged workflow. The remedy is not more training on prompt engineering. It is a structured redesign exercise that brings together the people who do the work, the leaders who own the results, and the AI specialists who understand the models’ current limits.

Hogan emphasizes that this redesign work is harder than distributing software. It demands psychological safety so employees will admit which parts of their current process are inefficient. It requires time from senior leaders who must participate in mapping sessions rather than simply endorsing them. And it forces uncomfortable trade-offs when legacy controls, designed to reduce risk, now slow down the very outcomes leaders claim to want. Many teams discovered that their most deeply held assumptions about necessary approvals or mandatory documentation crumbled under scrutiny once real-time AI verification became available.

The cultural dimension of this shift receives equal attention in the blog post. Microsoft had to retrain managers to evaluate performance based on delivered value rather than hours logged or documents produced. Some employees initially worried that visible AI assistance would make their contributions look smaller. Leaders countered by celebrating outcomes publicly and by sharing specific examples of how human judgment, not machine output, remained the decisive factor. A sales representative might use AI to generate a compelling proposal, but only the representative’s relationship insight could close the deal. A supply chain analyst might receive instant scenario models, but only the analyst’s experience with supplier behavior could select the right path. Making those distinctions explicit helped reduce anxiety and increased willingness to experiment.

Another lesson involved the pace of capability improvement. Microsoft’s own models advanced rapidly during the period covered by the blog post. Features that required custom development in the first quarter became native capabilities by the third. Teams that had invested weeks building bespoke connectors found those connectors suddenly unnecessary. The realization pushed the company toward lighter, more adaptable integration patterns. Rather than locking workflows into rigid custom code, architects now favor composable prompts and reusable prompt libraries that can be updated as models evolve. This approach reduces technical debt and keeps the focus on business process rather than infrastructure maintenance.

Data governance also surfaced as a critical workstream. Early experiments sometimes pulled information from sources whose freshness or permission levels had not been fully validated. The resulting hallucinations, though infrequent, damaged trust. Microsoft responded by building clear data lineage into every AI-assisted workflow. Users now see source citations alongside generated content, and sensitive fields are automatically masked or restricted. The governance layer did not slow adoption once teams understood it protected rather than hindered their work. On the contrary, confidence in the outputs increased, which encouraged even broader use.

The blog post also addresses the scaling challenge. What works for a nine-person product team does not automatically translate to a division of 3,000. Microsoft created a central transformation office that maintains a library of proven workflow patterns. Teams can browse patterns for sales forecasting, code review, contract analysis, or incident response and then adapt the closest match to their context. This approach prevents every group from starting from scratch while still allowing local ownership of the final design. The central team also tracks which patterns deliver the highest return on effort so that future investment can concentrate on the most promising areas.

Perhaps the most sobering lesson concerns the limits of AI on its own. Hogan repeatedly returns to the idea that technology alone does not change behavior. Without deliberate process engineering, the tools become faster ways to do the same old things. The 100,000 licenses distributed early in the program provided a useful on-ramp, yet they did not constitute transformation. Only when leaders accepted the harder work of redesign did measurable business value appear. That distinction, she argues, separates organizations that will capture AI’s full potential from those that will simply automate yesterday’s inefficiencies.

Microsoft continues to refine its approach. New experiments explore multi-agent systems that hand work between specialized models without human intervention at every step. Other teams are testing how AI can participate in strategic planning sessions by synthesizing market signals in real time. Each experiment follows the same discipline: begin with the business outcome, redesign the workflow that produces it, then embed AI where it adds the most leverage. The company has made the methodology available to customers through its advisory services, suggesting that the lessons learned internally now inform external guidance.

For organizations still early in their own AI efforts, the Microsoft experience offers a practical sequence. First, resist the temptation to declare victory based on license counts or monthly active users. Second, identify a handful of high-impact workflows where delay or error carries measurable cost. Third, assemble cross-functional teams to map those workflows in detail, highlighting every handoff, approval, and data translation step. Fourth, prototype new designs that place AI at the center rather than the periphery. Fifth, measure the revised process against the original baseline using the same key performance indicators that mattered before the tools arrived. Where the gap is large and sustained, scale. Where it is not, revisit the design.

The blog post ends on a note of cautious optimism. Microsoft has seen tangible improvements in speed, quality, and employee experience, yet leaders acknowledge that the work has only begun. New model capabilities will continue to arrive, and each wave will require fresh examination of existing processes. The organizations that embed continuous redesign into their operating rhythm, rather than treating it as a one-time project, stand the best chance of staying ahead.

By sharing both the successes and the stumbles, Microsoft has provided a reference point more valuable than any marketing campaign. The message is straightforward: licenses are easy, transformation is not. The difference between the two explains why some companies see only modest productivity gains while others, like the teams inside Microsoft that fully embraced workflow redesign, achieve step-change improvements in the metrics that matter most to their business.

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AI Coding Tools Now Generate Over Half of Developers’ Code, Up 3X in a Year

The adoption of artificial intelligence tools among software developers has accelerated sharply over the past year, according to fresh data from BairesDev. The share of developers who now rely on AI to produce half or more of their code has climbed from 12 percent to 42 percent year over year. This finding comes from a survey of 705 developers and 41 enterprise chief technology officers conducted by the nearshore software development company. The results paint a picture of a profession in transition, where productivity gains exist alongside new responsibilities that keep total working hours from shrinking.

The survey, released in mid-September, offers one of the more detailed snapshots yet of how AI coding assistants are reshaping daily work. Respondents reported saving roughly 13 hours per week that would otherwise have gone to writing fresh code. Those reclaimed hours, however, have not translated into shorter workweeks or lighter workloads. Instead, developers are channeling the time into reviewing AI-generated output, debugging errors introduced by models, and mastering the rapidly changing array of tools at their disposal. Only 21 percent of developers still dedicate more than half their weekly hours to writing new code entirely from scratch. The rest have shifted toward verification, refinement, and integration tasks.

VentureBeat first highlighted the jump in AI-assisted coding volume, noting that the pattern holds across experience levels and company sizes. Developers with fewer than five years in the field showed slightly higher adoption rates, but even seasoned engineers reported incorporating AI into at least a quarter of their output. Overall, 72 percent of developers now use AI tools for 25 percent or more of their code, according to the same dataset recapped by Fudzilla.

The shift carries implications for both individual contributors and organizational strategy. As AI assumes a larger role in initial code generation, human attention concentrates on quality assurance. Sixty-seven percent of developers say they spend more time reviewing AI-produced code than they did a year ago. Fifty-two percent report increased debugging efforts aimed at issues that the models themselves introduced. These patterns suggest that while AI accelerates the creation phase, it simultaneously inflates the verification phase.

Chief technology officers appear to recognize this trade-off. Seventy-eight percent of the CTOs surveyed by BairesDev have increased spending on review, quality assurance, and validation processes. Rather than reducing headcount or budgets, many organizations are redirecting resources toward strengthening the human layer that sits atop automated generation. This includes hiring or training specialists in AI tool fluency, data engineering for model improvement, AI-specific quality assurance, and security practices tailored to machine-generated code.

The WebProNews analysis of the same BairesDev numbers framed the situation clearly: not one hour came back. Time saved on writing is consumed by oversight. Accountability, the article noted, remains firmly with the humans who ultimately ship the software. Developers cannot delegate liability for defects, security vulnerabilities, or performance problems to a language model. As a result, the profession is acquiring a new specialty—AI code reviewer—that demands skills in prompt engineering, output validation, and contextual understanding that models still lack.

This evolution raises questions about how software teams will measure productivity going forward. Traditional metrics focused on lines of code written or features delivered per sprint may become less relevant when half the lines arrive pre-written. Organizations may instead track defect density in AI-generated sections, time spent in code review, or the speed with which teams can safely integrate and deploy machine-assisted contributions. Some CTOs are already piloting new evaluation frameworks that weigh the accuracy of AI suggestions against the effort required to make them production-ready.

The survey also revealed regional and sectoral differences. North American teams reported slightly lower adoption rates than their Latin American and European counterparts, possibly reflecting stricter compliance requirements in regulated industries such as finance and healthcare. In contrast, startups and mid-sized technology firms showed the highest uptake, with many developers using multiple AI tools in parallel—GitHub Copilot for autocompletion, Claude for architectural suggestions, and specialized agents for test generation.

Training programs have begun to adapt. Several CTOs mentioned expanding internal academies to include modules on effective prompting, recognizing hallucinated code, and performing differential testing between AI and human implementations. Universities are starting to incorporate similar topics into computer science curricula, although the pace of change in industry continues to outstrip academic response.

Security concerns feature prominently in the findings. With AI models trained on public code repositories, the risk of introducing known vulnerabilities or inadvertently leaking proprietary patterns remains real. Thirty-eight percent of developers admitted they had discovered security flaws traceable to AI suggestions within the past six months. In response, many organizations now route all AI-generated code through static analysis tools and require human sign-off before merging into main branches. Some have implemented private model instances trained only on approved internal codebases, although this approach increases infrastructure costs.

The human factors dimension deserves equal attention. Developers who participated in the survey expressed mixed emotions about the technology. A majority appreciated the reduction in boilerplate work and the ability to explore alternative implementations quickly. Yet many also described a sense of cognitive overload when switching between writing, reviewing, and correcting AI output within the same hour. The context-switching tax appears to offset some of the raw productivity gains.

One senior engineer quoted in the Fudzilla coverage described the new workflow as “writing less but thinking more.” Instead of focusing on syntax, developers now concentrate on system behavior, edge cases, and alignment with business requirements. This shift may ultimately produce higher-quality software, provided teams can maintain focus amid the additional review burden.

Looking ahead, the BairesDev data suggests continued growth in AI coding assistance. Eighty-four percent of CTOs plan to increase investment in these tools over the next 12 months. The areas receiving funding include better integration with existing development environments, improved model specialization for domain-specific languages, and enhanced collaboration features that allow multiple engineers to critique the same AI suggestion in real time.

At the same time, expectations are becoming more realistic. Early hype around fully autonomous coding agents has given way to a more measured view that positions AI as a powerful junior pair programmer rather than a replacement for experienced staff. The survey found that only 9 percent of respondents believe AI will eliminate the need for human developers within five years. The overwhelming majority see the technology as augmenting rather than supplanting their roles.

This balanced perspective may prove healthy for the industry. By acknowledging both the time savings and the new obligations that accompany them, organizations can design workflows that play to the strengths of both humans and machines. Developers can focus on creative problem solving and architectural decisions while AI handles repetitive patterns and standard implementations. The key lies in building processes that keep humans in the loop without overwhelming them with review volume.

The BairesDev survey offers a useful benchmark for tracking progress. Future editions will likely explore how these patterns evolve as models improve in accuracy and as organizations refine their governance approaches. For now, the data confirms that AI has moved from experimental side project to core component of the modern development stack. Forty-two percent of developers generating at least half their code with AI represents a threshold that seemed distant only a year ago.

Companies that treat this transition strategically—investing in training, updating review practices, and measuring the right outcomes—stand to gain the most. Those that simply deploy tools without adjusting team structures or success metrics may find themselves spending the promised time savings on an expanded debugging backlog instead of innovation.

The story of AI in software development is still being written, but the latest chapter makes one outcome clear: the balance between generation and verification has shifted, and the humans who maintain ultimate responsibility are adapting their days accordingly. Whether this leads to shorter release cycles, fewer defects, or simply different kinds of work remains to be seen. What the numbers already show is that the profession is changing in measurable, concrete ways that demand attention from both practitioners and leaders.

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Trump Launches ‘AI Force’ to Outpace China and Silence Safety Warnings

President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Saturday with a blunt declaration. He is forming an “AI Force.” He will soon name an AI “czar.” Only “High I.Q. individuals need apply.”

The announcement lands as leading voices in the technology sector issue urgent calls to slow the breakneck pace of artificial intelligence development. Trump dismisses those concerns outright. He labels them the latest in a string of hoaxes pushed by political opponents. But the move reveals a calculated strategy. Speed up American innovation. Centralize oversight. Keep the U.S. ahead of China at all costs.

“Over the years, there have been many Hoaxes, all generated by the Radical Left Dumocrats, for purposes of destroying our Country,” Trump wrote. “And now, the decimation, or destruction, of AI, commonly known as Artificial Intelligence — And I, as President of the United States, will not stand by and let this happen.”

Short. Direct. Classic Trump. He compared the new entity to the Space Force he created during his first term. That initiative, he noted, proved a “tremendous SUCCESS.” The AI Force, he suggested, would protect the industry from interference while allowing it to flourish. “We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry. Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows!”

Yet Trump added a caveat. The government would watch for misuse. “However, we will also be looking for BAD, and we can do that, very easily, with our already existing Criminal and Civil Justice System.” No new regulations. No heavy bureaucracy. Existing laws suffice. The message aligns with months of executive actions that prioritize rapid adoption across national security agencies.

From Executive Orders to a Dedicated Force

This latest declaration builds directly on earlier steps. In June, the White House issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum on Artificial Intelligence in the National Security Enterprise. It directed agencies to accelerate uptake of advanced models. Partnerships with commercial providers expanded. Talent pipelines strengthened. The goal was clear: give American warfighters and intelligence professionals decisive technological overmatch. (White House Fact Sheet)

An accompanying executive order from early June established a voluntary framework for frontier AI models. Developers could submit systems for government review before public release. The focus stayed on innovation paired with basic safeguards. Cybersecurity hardening. Protection of critical systems. Avoidance of any measures that might cede ground to Beijing. (White House Executive Order)

Trump’s Saturday post repeats themes from those documents. AI could represent as much as 25 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. It stands as the next Industrial Revolution. Larger than the internet. The United States leads China and the rest of the world. He intends to keep it that way. The race, in his view, leaves no room for hesitation.

Industry leaders see different risks. Executives at Anthropic and OpenAI recently warned about the dangers of unchecked progress toward superintelligence. They called for coordinated slowdowns. Trump responded sharply earlier in the week. He branded such fears a “SICK conspiracy.” He singled out Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. The president claimed his administration already possesses “tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies.” (CNN Politics)

So the AI Force arrives at a tense moment. Details remain sparse. White House officials have not clarified whether it will function as a new military branch, a cross-agency task force, or something else entirely. The czar’s exact authorities stay undefined. Questions linger about staffing, reporting lines, and integration with existing bodies such as the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

But the intent shines through. Central coordination without regulatory drag. Private-sector talent injected into government operations. A structure that echoes the US Tech Force program announced late last year. That effort aimed to recruit roughly 1,000 AI engineers and specialists. It embedded them across departments including Defense and Treasury. Companies like AWS, Apple, and others signed on. (CBS News)

David Sacks, who previously served in a dual AI and crypto czar role, offered an earlier model. His tenure championed light-touch policies. The new czar will likely follow suit. Trump wants high-caliber minds. People who share his vision of unbridled American AI dominance.

Critics worry the approach leaves critical gaps. Public opinion polls show growing unease. A majority of Americans now view AI more as a potential harm than a benefit. Lawmakers from both parties have pushed for stronger guardrails on safety, bias, and job displacement. Trump’s stance puts him at odds with that sentiment heading into midterm elections.

And the international dimension complicates matters further. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with Chinese counterparts this weekend. AI rivalry sits high on the agenda ahead of Trump’s upcoming summit with President Xi Jinping. Beijing advances its own models at a rapid clip. U.S. officials once described a multi-month lead. Industry voices now call it neck and neck. Export controls on advanced chips remain a flashpoint. Allegations of technology copying persist.

Trump’s announcement signals no retreat. Quite the opposite. The AI Force, in his framing, ensures the United States stays ahead. It counters what he sees as self-sabotage by domestic critics. Data center construction faced backlash over energy use and local impact. Trump likened that pushback to failed attacks on other priorities. The pattern, he argues, repeats with AI itself.

Supporters applaud the clarity. A single point of accountability. Fast decision-making. Reduced overlap between agencies. Skeptics counter that real risks demand more than existing statutes and a high-IQ appointee. Autonomous weapons. Misinformation at scale. Cybersecurity vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure. These issues have grown more pressing as models grow more capable.

The June national security memo addressed some of those points. It required annual reviews of autonomy guidance for weapon systems. It stressed clear chains of command. It barred any commercial entity from disabling AI tools that warfighters rely upon without approval. Practical measures. Yet they stop short of the comprehensive safety testing many experts advocate.

Trump’s latest move sidesteps that debate. He frames regulation itself as the threat. Slowing down hands advantage to adversaries. The AI Force exists to prevent that outcome. To watch over growth. To apply justice system tools where misuse appears. Simple in concept. Execution will prove far more complex.

Reactions poured in quickly on X. Some hailed the announcement as decisive leadership. Others questioned whether another layer of government coordination would accelerate anything. A few noted the irony. After years of complaints about bureaucratic bloat, Trump proposes yet another specialized body. But this one carries his personal brand. Modeled on a signature first-term achievement. Positioned as a bulwark against decline.

History offers mixed lessons. The original Space Force overcame early skepticism. It integrated space operations more effectively across military branches. Whether an AI Force can deliver similar focus remains untested. The technology evolves far faster than orbital mechanics. Models improve weekly. New capabilities emerge without warning. Any oversight structure must keep pace. Or risk irrelevance.

For now, the president has set the direction. Unleash AI. Appoint top talent. Maintain the lead. Details will follow. The choice of czar will signal priorities. Will the pick come from industry? Academia? National security circles? Trump has not said. He only set the bar. High intelligence. Alignment with his growth-first philosophy.

The coming weeks will test whether this approach satisfies lawmakers, reassures a wary public, or simply amplifies existing tensions. One thing appears certain. The U.S. government is doubling down on artificial intelligence as a core strategic asset. No slowdown. No apologies. Full speed ahead. The AI Force has been called into existence. Its real work begins when the czar takes the helm.

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Fed Examiners Saw SVB’s Fatal Flaws a Year Early but Held Back, Fearing a Wrong Call

More than three years after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in a spectacular March 2023 run, a new independent review has laid bare a striking truth. Federal Reserve supervisors knew or should have known about the bank’s deadly vulnerabilities as early as March 2022. They simply didn’t act with the force required.

The findings come from an outside examination commissioned by Michelle Bowman, the Fed’s vice chair for supervision. Starling Advisory Group conducted the work. Its conclusions, released Friday, paint a picture of paralysis born from fear. Examiners believed it safer to do nothing than risk getting a call wrong.

Bowman laid out the results in pointed remarks. “Our supervisory staff knew, or should have known, about these vulnerabilities as early as March 2022,” she said. Yet “supervisory staff did not take prompt and decisive action to encourage or require Silicon Valley Bank to reduce its interest rate risk or concentration of vulnerabilities.”

The vulnerabilities formed a toxic mix. Unrealized losses on the bank’s securities portfolio had wiped out its capital. Its deposit base stood at 94 percent uninsured and heavily concentrated among venture capital-backed technology companies. Management lacked operational readiness to borrow from the Fed’s discount window in a crisis. Any one issue might have been survivable. Together they proved fatal.

This account sharpens earlier post-mortems. The Fed’s own 2023 review led by then-Vice Chair Michael Barr criticized lax standards after 2018 regulatory easing and slow supervisory follow-through. It pointed to a less assertive culture under previous leadership. The new report goes further. It rejects the idea that the 2018 tailoring law or directives from prior officials caused the delays. The former vice chair for supervision had stepped down in October 2021, before SVB’s problems peaked.

Instead the Starling review homes in on something more insidious. A long-standing culture of risk aversion inside the supervisory ranks. Staff saw personal safety in inaction unless they held absolute certainty. Lack of clear decision rights only made things worse. No one knew exactly who could sign off on a tough call.

And social media? It played no meaningful role in accelerating the run, the report found. Analysis by Charles River Associates, brought in by Starling, showed 96 percent of relevant social media activity occurred only after the bank’s failure had become inevitable. The run started from real weaknesses, not online rumors.

Bowman didn’t mince words about the implications. “One significant factor contributing to supervisory inaction was a long-standing culture of risk aversion,” she said. “Staff believed it was personally safer to take no action unless they were certain the action was exactly right.” A lack of clarity on decision rights compounded the problem. Responsibility, authority and accountability had become disconnected across the system.

The review arrives at a delicate moment. Bowman, nominated by President Donald Trump, has already begun overhauling supervision practices. She plans staff reductions in the division. New supervisory operating principles stress earlier identification of threats and faster action. Examination teams must now file monthly reports to top leaders flagging any uncertainty about when or whether to act. The goal is real-time visibility and less fear of being second-guessed.

Critics wasted little time pushing back. Senator Elizabeth Warren called the report “an embarrassing attempt to re-write history designed to pave the way for more dangerous deregulation that will lead to the next Silicon Valley Bank disaster,” according to a Reuters article.

Her reaction reflects deep partisan divides over bank rules. The 2023 failure shook confidence in regional lenders. It forced emergency measures to backstop deposits and prevent contagion. No depositors ultimately lost money. But the episode exposed cracks in how midsize banks are watched.

Earlier analyses had reached similar ground. The Fed’s 2023 Barr report found supervisors failed to appreciate SVB’s risks as it ballooned from $71 billion to over $211 billion in assets between 2019 and 2021. It issued findings on governance, liquidity and interest-rate risk. Yet the pace remained deliberate. The bank held 31 open supervisory matters when it failed — three times the peer average. The Federal Reserve’s 2023 review called the approach too consensus-driven and slow.

A CEPR column from August 2026 went deeper. It argued the risks at SVB were visible for years. The bank had long funded long-duration securities with concentrated uninsured deposits. Supervisors focused on process compliance rather than forward-looking risk. They acted only once losses materialized amid rate hikes. The piece described supervision as policing process instead of actual exposures.

The Starling findings echo that view but assign clearer blame to internal caution. They also dismantle some prior excuses. Tailoring rules didn’t tie supervisors’ hands. No top-down order softened scrutiny. The problem sat inside the organization itself. Examiners hesitated because the personal cost of error felt higher than the institutional cost of delay.

Bowman insists the exercise isn’t about blame. “This review is not about assigning blame. Instead, it is about learning lessons from the past to avoid repeating them in the future,” she told her audience. The Fed has started addressing the culture head-on. Monthly escalation reports aim to surface doubts quickly. Leadership gains sightlines into gray areas. The hope is examiners will flag concerns without worrying about career repercussions.

Whether these steps will stick remains an open question. Banking supervision has always balanced judgment calls against second-guessing. Rate environments shift. Business models evolve. Concentrated deposit bases can vanish overnight, as SVB proved when its tech clients pulled funds en masse.

The report lands the same week the Fed raised interest rates for the first time since 2023. Higher rates amplified SVB’s unrealized losses in 2022. Today’s environment carries different pressures. Commercial real estate exposures, for instance, have drawn fresh scrutiny at other regional players.

Industry insiders have watched the regulatory pendulum swing for decades. Post-2008 rules tightened dramatically. The 2018 Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act dialed some back for smaller institutions. SVB sat right at the edge of heightened standards. Its growth outran the gradual phase-in.

Yet the new review suggests the real failure wasn’t in the rulebook. It was in execution. Supervisors saw the problems. They documented them. They just couldn’t pull the trigger fast enough. Certainty became the enemy of timeliness.

Bowman has signaled broader changes ahead. Reduced headcount in supervision. Clearer principles. Faster escalation paths. The test will come in the next stress point. Will examiners act on early warnings, or will the same risk aversion reassert itself?

SVB’s collapse didn’t topple the system. Swift government intervention contained the damage. But the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history left a mark. It showed how quickly confidence can evaporate when uninsured depositors smell trouble. It revealed gaps in liquidity planning and interest-rate hedging at institutions that seemed sophisticated.

The Starling report won’t end the debate. Warren and others see it as cover for loosening rules. Supporters of Bowman’s approach view it as a clear-eyed diagnosis free from prior political lenses. What matters most is whether the cultural fixes take hold.

Because the next time a bank sits on large unrealized losses and a flighty deposit base, supervisors will face the same choice. Act early and risk being called heavy-handed. Wait and risk another slow-motion disaster. The new procedures aim to make that choice less fraught. History suggests it won’t be easy.

Friday’s release adds one more layer to the SVB story. It doesn’t rewrite the facts of the bank’s mismanagement. SVB’s own leadership failed to grasp or address its exposures. But it does sharpen accountability for the watchdogs. They saw it coming. They knew enough. They held back anyway. The reason, according to this latest account, was simple. They feared being wrong.

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