Tech companies' renewed emphasis on cost coincides with business customers scrutinizing AI spending. Three prominent artificial intelligence developers released new models over the past week. They all promise to be more advanced, but their biggest immediate selling point may not be what they can do, but how little they charge to do it. OpenAI said its most advanced offering, GPT-5.6, is designed to complete more work while using significantly fewer tokens, a unit of data processed by AI models. This will make the software far more cost efficient for customers. Grok 4.5, from Elon Musk's SpaceXAI, is billed as having twice the token efficiency as comparable models from other firms.

Seeking out a better deal from your broadband, pay TV and energy suppliers? While you know it could save hundreds of pounds, you might be wondering if it's worth the hassle. But often it only needs one call or a couple of clicks - and banks even pay an incentive to people who switch their main current accounts. Regulators have made the switching process easier in recent years, encouraging people to shop around when cost of living pressures have intensified. Which deals are the best for you still depends on your circumstances, but here are some of the ways that switching works.

In a closed-door simulation, insurers played out their response to a mass disruption by China's Volt Typhoon hackers--and found a nightmare scenario. It's around an hour and 10 minutes into the role-playing game I've been invited to observe, a simulated catastrophic cyberattack on US water utilities, when the whole thing begins to feel less like a fun afternoon playing Dungeons & Dragons and more like a plausible threat to civilization. A full 24 hours of in-game time have passed since hackers disrupted 5,000 water utilities across the United States in this imagined scenario. Joshua Corman, the former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency strategist serving as our dungeon master, stands at the front of a conference space in an office tower high above Times Square, narrating the latest updates to the game's participants, a few dozen insurance executives set up in six teams. All of them have gone disturbingly silent. It's about to get harder," Corman says. "I'm going to share a few things, and it's going to hurt." It is, of course, still the same April afternoon as when we started--but in game time, the second-order effects of widespread water outages have started to become clear. Food refrigeration systems are failing at cold storage warehouses. Water-dependent drug and chemical manufacturing has been bottlenecked, leading to insulin shortages. Data centers' cooling systems are failing, causing outages of cloud services. Most critically, 2,000 hospitals are without water, hampering patient care and in some cases leading to evacuations as HVAC systems shut down and the July heat--the game takes place just before Independence Day in 2027--bakes facilities. Worse yet, Corman is playing a looping video onscreen, at the front of the room, showing a burst water main: The hackers have managed to trigger not just IT disruption but also, in at least some cases, real physical destruction that will take far longer to fix. "Everyone downstream is without water pressure," Corman says. "There are no breaks in real incident response," Corman explains just before the giant water pipe starts gushing onscreen. "If you have to go to the bathroom, go to the bathroom.

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset . Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions . Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by LSEG . NASA's Chandra telescope reveals Milky Way's outer reaches may stretch farther than previously known'Milestone': Scientists claim to build synthetic cell, raising concerns in step toward artificial life Artemis crew says they wanted to'connect with humanity,' show what can be done when they put their mind to it Scientists revive ancient 24,000-year-old'zombie worm' from Arctic ice -- then it reproduced'Gigantic' ancient octopus used jaws to crush prey and hunted alongside the dinosaurs 100M years ago: study Scientists uncover identity of mysterious'golden orb' discovered miles underwater in 2023 Perfectly preserved Inca potatoes offer rare glimpse into empire's food system Greg Gutfeld: These are the 2 things I don't want to think about'Seen and Unseen': Kamala Harris's word of the day is'hope' Is Spielberg's new UFO film more fact than fiction?

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. A new federal lawsuit by California drivers accuses major gas chains, including Walmart and 7-Eleven, and technology company Kalibrate of using AI software to collude and keep pump prices artificially high.

Agriculture is ready for AI, but its data isn't Data accuracy, structure, and governance are foundational components required for agricultural AI. Artificial intelligence is transforming what is possible in agriculture, but industry leaders should be wary of investing in AI without first laying the groundwork. The use cases are promising, especially for an industry navigating volatile fertilizer costs, unpredictable weather, and margins that leave little room for error. Research shows AI-enabled predictive models can improve crop yield by 26%, reduce water use by 41%, and cut chemical usage by 33%. However, what AI vendors usually won't tell you is that these solutions are only effective if you have a clean, solid data foundation. However, at Reltio, we have experience in this area, including leading technology strategy at a major agricultural distributor and building a data platform used by enterprises worldwide-we've seen it first hand.

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Are Humanoid Robots Ready to Be Deployed? Neo and a dozen other robots with human forms are scheduled to hit the market. "The same robot that can land a backflip might not be able to walk up a flight of stairs," a researcher said. On a recent sunny day in Silicon Valley, I visited the industrial headquarters of 1X Technologies. Security was tight, so I had to put a sticker over my cellphone's camera and talk my way out of signing an N.D.A. before I was brought into an enormous space to meet Neo, the company's home robot. Neo stands five feet six and has no facial features except for two black cameras in place of eyes. The robot is a humanoid--its design is inspired by the human form--and its proportions are a blend of those of the median American male and those of the median American female. But Neo has no skin. Instead, it wears a beige nylon turtleneck bodysuit, gloves, and padded shoes over a see-through carapace. Under that is a skeleton made up of more than a hundred whizzing motors and cordlike artificial tendons that control Neo's limbs. Neo's cozy, minimalist aesthetic allows it to blend into the background. If it served me an espresso at a café, I'm not certain I would look up from my phone. The robot weighs just sixty-six pounds, and I was able to pick it up in a bridal carry. It communicates through a speaker in its chest, using several different voices; the default one is in a calm but authoritative masculine register, an A.I.-modulated mixture of several voice actors. Neo can talk, listen, and respond to commands.

OpenAI Has New AI Models. The White House asked OpenAI to delay the rollout of its GPT-5.6 AI models, two weeks after Anthropic had to take its most advanced AI models offline. OpenAI is delaying the public release of its next generation of AI models, GPT-5.6, at the request of Trump's White House, the company confirmed on Friday. OpenAI said it would first share the models with a small set of customers, which will be preapproved by the US government. It will then work with the administration to slowly expand access.

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