When OpenAI released a free web app called ChatGPT in late 2022, it changed the course of an entire industry--and several world economies. Millions of people started talking to their computers, and their computers started talking back. We were enchanted, and we expected more. Well, 2025 has been a year of reckoning. For a start, the heads of the top AI companies made promises they couldn't keep. At the same time, updates to the core technology are no longer the step changes they once were.

Tue 16 Dec 2025 08.00 ESTLast modified on Tue 16 Dec 2025 08.02 EST The sign outside Tom Hermes's farmyard in Perkins Township in Ohio, a short drive south of the shores of Lake Erie, proudly claims that his family have farmed the land here since 1900. Today, he raises 130 head of cattle and grows corn, wheat, grass and soybeans on 1,200 acres of land. For his family, his animals and wider business, water is life. So when, in May 2024, the Texas-based Aligned Data Centers broke ground on its NEO-01, four-building, 200,000 sq ft data center on a brownfield site that abuts farmland that Hermes rents, he was concerned. "We have city water here. That's going to reduce the pressure if they are sucking all the water," he says of the data center.

After Amazon's acquisition fell apart, it ran out of options. It plans to sell all assets to its primary supplier, the Chinese company Picea Robotics. Investors "will experience a total loss and not receive recovery on their investment" if the deal is approved, iRobot said. The company didn't discuss how the move might affect its employees in the US or elsewhere. Amazon dropped its $1.7 billion acquisition of the company last year after a veto threat from European regulators, leaving the Roomba maker with no other option.

The head of Amazon Web Services has big plans to offer AI tools to businesses, but says that replacing coders with AI is "a non-starter for anyone who's trying to build a long-term company." Amid the breathless coverage and relentless AI hype of recent years, one of the world's biggest tech companies--Amazon--has been notably absent. Matt Garman, the CEO of Amazon Web Services, is looking to change that. At the recent AWS re:Invent conference, Garman announced a bunch of frontier AI models, as well as a tool designed to let AWS customers build models of their own. That tool, Nova Forge, allows companies to engage in what's known as custom pretraining--adding their data in the process of building a base model--which should allow for vastly more customized models that suit a given company's needs. Sure, it doesn't quite have the sexiness of a Sora 2 announcement, but that's not Garman's goal: He's less interested in mass consumer use of AI and more interested in enterprise solutions that'll integrate AI into all of AWS's offerings--and have a material impact on a corporate P&L. For this week's episode of, I caught up with Garman after AWS re:Invent to talk about what the company announced, whether he feels behind in the AI race, how he thinks about managing huge teams (and managing internal dissent), and why he's not convinced that AI is (or should be) the great job thief of our era. We always start these conversations with some very quick questions, like a warmup. If AWS had a mascot, what would it be? We have a big S3 bucket sometimes that goes around, so we'll call it that. Sorry, what is an S3 bucket? An S3 bucket is like a thing that you store your S3 objects in, but we actually have a large foam big bucket that walks around and actually looks like a paint bucket. So you do have a mascot. Well, S3 has a bucket, it has a mascot. It's probably the closest we have, and I like it. What's the most expensive mistake you've ever made? Personally, the most expensive mistake I ever made was playing basketball too long and I tore my Achilles. So that cost me about nine months of being able to walk. I probably should have known that into my thirties I was well past basketball-playing age.

A.I., of course--but there were also other, less obvious stories and trends that are going to shape how we understand the news. Media is a famously myopic and sclerotic industry. The big changes that take place within it often go unnoticed, at first, by the people who are paid to set its future course. Sometimes, the stuff that we in the industry miss out on is obvious to the rest of the world. We were not the first to notice, for example, that features and news stories were being cannibalized by social media, slowly at first, and then thoroughly.

Quantum navigation could solve the military's GPS jamming problem The rise of GPS vulnerability is putting more resilient, atom-based navigational tools on the map. The Royal Navy partnered with Infleqtion to test a quantum clock on the uncrewed submarine XV Excalibur. In late September, a Spanish military plane carrying the country's defense minister to a base in Lithuania was reportedly the subject of a kind of attack --not by a rocket or anti-aircraft rounds, but by radio transmissions that jammed its GPS system. The flight landed safely, but it was one of thousands that have been affected by a far-reaching Russian campaign of GPS interference since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The growing inconvenience to air traffic and risk of a real disaster have highlighted the vulnerability of GPS and focused attention on more secure ways for planes to navigate the gauntlet of jamming and spoofing, the term for tricking a GPS receiver into thinking it's somewhere else. US military contractors are rolling out new GPS satellites that use stronger, cleverer signals, and engineers are working on providing better navigation information based on other sources, like cellular transmissions and visual data.

A campaign fronted by popstars including Elton John and Dua Lipa to protect artists' works from being mined to train AI models without consent has received a boost after almost every respondent to a government consultation backed their case. Ministers subsequently dropped that preference in the face of a backlash. Liz Kendall, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, told parliament on Monday there was "no clear consensus" on the issue and the government would "take the time to get this right", and promised to make policy proposals by 18 March 2026. "This means keeping the UK at the cutting edge of science and technology so UK citizens can benefit from major breakthroughs, transformative innovation and greater prosperity. "It also means continuing to support our creative industries, which make a huge economic contribution, shape our national identity and give us a unique position on the world stage."

Ben & Jerry's row deepens as three board members removed Three members of Ben & Jerry's independent board will no longer be eligible to serve in their roles, after the ice cream company introduced a new set of governance practices. These include a nine-year limit set on board members' terms. Chair Anuradha Mittal, who earlier said she had no plans to resign under pressure, is among those affected. The move was criticised by the company's co-founder Ben Cohen, who called it a blatant power grab designed to strip the board of legal authority and independence. His remarks are the latest in a long-running row between Ben and Jerry's and its owner over the Cherry Garcia maker's social activism and the continued independence of its board.

What is in the 28-point US plan for Ukraine? 'Ukraine is running out of men, money and time' Can the US get all sides to end the war? Why is Europe opposing Trump's peace plan? A Russian drone attack killed a 62-year-old Ukrainian man as he was riding a bicycle in the Velyka Pysarivka community of Ukraine's Sumy region, Governor Oleh Hryhorov said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. Russian forces launched 850 attacks on Ukraine's Zaporizhia region in a single day, injuring 14 people and damaging houses, cars and infrastructure, Governor Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram.

UK launches taskforce to'break down barriers' for women in technology The government has launched a new taskforce it says will help women enter, stay and lead in the UK tech sector. Led by technology secretary Liz Kendall, it will see female leaders from tech companies and organisations advise the government on how to boost diversity and economic growth in the industry. BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, recently suggested women accounted for only 22% of those working in IT specialist roles in the UK. Ms Kendall said the Women in Tech group would break down the barriers that still hold too many people back. When women are inspired to take on a role in tech and have a seat at the table, the sector can make more representative decisions, build products that serve everyone, she said.