The founder of David Protein, maker of popular high-protein nutrition bars, announced on X on Monday that longevity guru Dr. Peter Attia “has stepped down from his role as Chief Science Officer at David.”

The announcement comes after Attia’s name appeared in more than 1,700 documents, including email correspondence, released on Friday as part of a massive file dump related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, according to The New York Times. Attia served on the executive team of the food startup and was also an early investor.

For those unfamiliar, Attia is a Canadian American physician who has become one of the most prominent voices in longevity and preventive health. He’s best known for his bestselling book “Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity” and his now seven-year-old podcast, wherein he explores optimization strategies. He was also hired just last month as a contributor to CBS.

Three-year-old, New York-based David Protein raised a $75 million Series A funding round in May of last year led by Greenoaks, with participation from Valor Equity Partners. The company has experienced significant growth since launching its flagship protein bar in September 2024, a product it describes as having 28 grams of protein, zero sugar, and 150 calories.

In a lengthy post on X, Attia wrote that he was “ashamed” of some of the crude content in his emails with Epstein, but he also said he was not involved in criminal activity and never visited Epstein’s island or traveled on his plane. Attia also discussed at length how he came to know Epstein and why he stayed involved with him even after Epstein’s 2008 conviction.

The fallout appears to extend beyond David Protein. It also appears that Biograph, the healthcare testing and longevity startup that Attia co-founded with entrepreneur John Hering, may be distancing itself from the physician. The company declined to comment on Attia’s ongoing participation with the startup or about the pages on its website that used to mention him but now omit his name or return a “file not found” error.

Biograph came out of stealth a year ago, TechCrunch previously reported, with backing from investors that include Vy Capital, Human Capital, Alpha Wave, and WndrCo, along with angel investors, including Balaji Srinivasan. Like a growing number of concierge medical service companies, Biograph offers premium preventive health services to subscribers who pay between $7,500 and $15,000 per year. Attia was previously named on the company’s press release and site as a co-founder.

“We argue that these attacks are straightforward to test, verify, and execute at scale,” the researchers, from the universities of New Mexico, Arizona, Louisiana, and the firm Circle, wrote. “The threat model can be realized using consumer-grade hardware and only basic to intermediate Web security knowledge.”

SMS messages are sent unencrypted. In past years, researchers have unearthed public databases of previously sent texts that contained authentication links and private details, including people’s names and addresses. One such discovery, from 2019, included millions of stored sent and received text messages over the years between a single business and its customers. It included usernames and passwords, university finance applications, and marketing messages with discount codes and job alerts.

Despite the known insecurity, the practice continues to flourish. For ethical reasons, the researchers behind the study had no way to capture its true scale, because it would require bypassing access controls, however weak they were. As a lens offering only a limited view into the process, the researchers viewed public SMS gateways. These are typically ad-based websites that let people use a temporary number to receive texts without revealing their phone number. Examples of such gateways are here and here.

With such a limited view of SMS-sent authentication messages, the researchers were unable to measure the true scope of the practice and the security and privacy risks it posed. Still, their findings were notable.

The researchers collected 322,949 unique SMS-delivered URLs extracted from over 33 million texts, sent to more than 30,000 phone numbers. The researchers found numerous evidence of security and privacy threats to the people receiving them. Of those, the researchers said, messages originating from 701 endpoints sent on behalf of the 177 services exposed “critical personally identifiable information.” The root cause of the exposure was weak authentication based on tokenized links for verification. Anyone with the link could then obtain users’ personal information—including Social Security numbers, dates of birth, bank account numbers, and credit scores—from these services.

The raid pertains to an investigation launched into the social media site in January 2025.

French cybercrime prosecutors have raided X’s offices in the country, and summoned the social media platform’s owner Elon Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino for questioning.

“A search is being carried out at X’s French offices by the Paris prosecutor’s office cybercrime unit”, a translated post from the Paris prosecutor’s office on X read. The post is no longer viewable after the office also closed its X account today.

The raid pertains to an investigation launched into the social media site in January 2025 when authorities began looking into X’s content algorithm. The probe was later expanded to include Grok after reports highlighted the chatbot for its alleged role in disseminating Holocaust denials and sexual deepfakes.

At the time, X’s Global Government Affairs account published a lengthy statement calling the investigation “politically motivated” and “criminal”.

X said at the time that it categorically denied the allegations, adding that the investigation threatened platform users’ rights to privacy and free speech. Both X and Grok are owned by xAI, which has just merged with Musk’s space venture SpaceX in a $1.25trn deal.

Today’s (3 February) search was undertaken alongside the French police’s national cyber unit and Europol.

In a statement, prosecutors added that Musk and Yaccarino have been called in for voluntary questioning on 20 April “in their capacity as de facto and de jure managers of the X platform at the time of the events”. Yaccarino quit as X’s CEO in July 2025 after serving in the role for two years.

France’s investigation into X is looking at the social platform’s alleged complicity around spreading child sexual abuse material and sexually explicit deepfakes.

The EU launched its own Digital Services Act probe into X late last month to assess whether the social media site properly assessed and mitigated risks stemming from its in-platform AI chatbot Grok.

Alongside this, the EU is continuing with a separate years-long investigation into X to assess if the platform mitigated risks stemming from its recommender systems, including the impact of the recently announced switch to a Grok-based recommender system.

Meanwhile, UK media regulator Ofcom has also launched an investigation into X over concerns that Grok may have produced child sexual abuse material.

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For Gen Alpha, social girlhood no longer takes place only in school or on the playground. It plays out online, through social media and online trends that will be the topics of discussion with friends the next day.

To better understand how girls feel about and use digital platforms, the Girl Scouts of the USA commissioned a survey of 1,000 Black and Hispanic girls last summer. The results shed light on why girls spend time online and how they feel about the digital spaces they occupy.

The discourse comes at a time when schools across the country are rolling out cellphone bans in hopes of ensuring students focus on classwork, and federal lawmakers are discussing outright banning children under 13 from using social media.

“Ultimately, the takeaway isn’t that devices are inherently good or bad — it’s that intentional use, and intentional disconnection, matter,” Danielle Shockey, Girls Scouts of the USA’s chief experience officer, told EdSurge via email.

A recent report from France’s health agency adds to evidence that girls are more vulnerable than boys to the negative effects of social media: bullying, gender shaming and social pressure.

“Social networks contribute to adolescent socialization and social construction, they provide continuity with the world offline, encompassing both its good points and its flaws,” Thomas Bayeux, a socio-economic project manager with the agency, told the Conversation France. “There is no watertight barrier between what happens offline and what happens on social media”

Shockey says it’s normal for kids and teens to feel they’re missing out when they’re not online, but grown-ups can help them learn to unplug and manage those feelings confidently.

“As girls become more socially aware, they naturally want to stay connected and included. But when that fear of missing out is constant, it can deepen feelings of loneliness — something we know is already prevalent among girls, based on our 2024 research,” she says. “When adults normalize FOMO and help girls practice re-engaging, we reduce the power social media has to make them feel left behind.”

Pressure to Be Online

Nearly all the girls who were surveyed said they spend time online, with about 60 percent of girls ages 5 to 7 logging online daily. Among girls ages 8 to 13, 43 percent said they’re online three or more hours per day.

A large proportion — 46 percent — of girls said they felt pressure to be online even when they didn’t feel like it for fear of missing out on what their friends were talking about. Girls 11 to 13 felt that pressure the most strongly.

Alongside social pressure, older girls especially were likely to also say they went online to stay connected to friends and family and to learn or improve on activities they enjoy. Like adults, girls go online to stay on top of trends that interest their age group.

The Girl Scouts survey took a creative route to gauge girls’ attachment to their devices and feelings about disconnecting: by asking how they would feel going on vacation to a place with no internet. About 40 percent of girls of all ages said they would rather skip vacation than go somewhere without online access.

Shockey says it’s normal for kids to feel a little conflicted about vacations, which means being away from friends.

“What’s changed is that, with phones and social media, kids rarely have to actually be disconnected. A vacation without Wi-Fi is now a genuinely unfamiliar experience for many of them, and our data reflects that,” she says. “We included this question to understand how attached kids are to their devices, and how the prospect of being disconnected — or missing out — shapes their emotions, expectations, and decision-making.”

Considering the Consequences

The Girl Scouts’ report authors worried that messages are not reaching girls about how what they post online now could affect them in life later.

Nearly 80 percent of girls ages 11 to 13 said they understand that what they post online now can affect them later in life. That figure drops to 52 percent and below for younger age groups.

Shockey says that it’s important for girls to understand that while what they post online may seem harmless, their digital footprint can be tough to erase. A negative comment about a school, company or person could matter if the girl applies for a job, internship or leadership opportunity down the road.

“That content may resurface years later and shape how they’re perceived as students, employees, or community members,” Shockey says. “These findings reinforce the importance of early guidance — both from parents and trusted adults — and the role of digital literacy education. By helping girls think critically about what they share and why, and by giving them tools to navigate online spaces safely and confidently, we can empower them to protect themselves now and set themselves up for future success.”

Learning to Unplug

Girls say they’re not the only ones who are habitual scrollers. Roughly half of girls said they have trouble getting their parents’ attention because the adults in the house are distracted by their own phones.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, more than half of girls go online to combat boredom.

Recent research found that while screen time alone doesn’t appear to have a negative effect on teens’ mental health, adults shouldn’t ignore how young people are experiencing interactions like “hurtful messages, online pressures and extreme content.” It echoes the Girl Scouts report’s point that parents have the greatest power to influence how girls interact with and think about their relationships with digital platforms.

“Rather than blaming technology itself, we need to pay attention to what young people are doing online, who they’re connecting with and how supported they feel in their daily lives,” Neil Humphrey, a University of Manchester professor and study co-author, told the Guardian.

Shockey hopes that adults can use the report’s findings to help girls build healthier online habits and encourage in-person connection.

“We want parents to use this research as a starting point to check in with their girls about how screen time fits into their lives, and how it makes them feel,” she says. “Many of us — adults included — can relate to being online without really enjoying it, mindlessly scrolling and wondering where the time went.”

from the seems-bad dept

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As the operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement have intensified over the past year, politicians and journalists alike have begun referring to ICE as a “paramilitary force.”

Rep. John Mannion, a New York Democrat, called ICE “a personal paramilitary unit of the president.” Journalist Radley Balko, who wrote a book about how American police forces have been militarized, has argued that President Donald Trump was using the force “the way an authoritarian uses a paramilitary force, to carry out his own personal grudges, to inflict pain and violence, and discomfort on people that he sees as his political enemies.” And New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie characterized ICE as a “virtual secret police” and “paramilitary enforcer of despotic rule.”

All this raises a couple of questions: What are paramilitaries? And is ICE one?

Defining paramilitaries

As a government professor who studies policing and state security forces, I believe it’s clear that ICE meets many but not all of the most salient definitions. It’s worth exploring what those are and how the administration’s use of ICE compares with the ways paramilitaries have been deployed in other countries.

The term paramilitary is commonly used in two ways. The first refers to highly militarized police forces, which are an official part of a nation’s security forces. They typically have access to military-grade weaponry and equipment, are highly centralized with a hierarchical command structure, and deploy in large formed units to carry out domestic policing.

These “paramilitary police,” such as the French Gendarmerie, India’s Central Reserve Police Force or Russia’s Internal Troops, are modeled on regular military forces.

The second definition denotes less formal and often more partisan armed groups that operate outside of the state’s regular security sector. Sometimes these groups, as with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, emerge out of community self-defense efforts; in other cases, they are established by the government or receive government support, even though they lack official status. Political scientists also call these groups “pro-government militias” in order to convey both their political orientation in support of the government and less formal status as an irregular force.

They typically receive less training than regular state forces, if any. How well equipped they are can vary a great deal. Leaders may turn to these informal or unofficial paramilitaries because they are less expensive than regular forces, or because they can help them evade accountability for violent repression.

Many informal paramilitaries are engaged in regime maintenance, meaning they preserve the power of current rulers through repression of political opponents and the broader public. They may share partisan affiliations or ethnic ties with prominent political leaders or the incumbent political party and work in tandem to carry out political goals.

In Haiti, President François “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s Tonton Macouts provided a prime example of this second type of paramilitary. After Duvalier survived a coup attempt in 1970, he established the Tonton Macouts as a paramilitary counterweight to the regular military. Initially a ragtag, undisciplined but highly loyal force, it became the central instrument through which the Duvalier regime carried out political repression, surveilling, harassing, detaining, torturing and killing ordinary Haitians.

Is ICE a paramilitary?

The recent references to ICE in the U.S. as a “paramilitary force” are using the term in both senses, viewing the agency as both a militarized police force and tool for repression.

There is no question that ICE fits the definition of a paramilitary police force. It is a police force under the control of the federal government, through the Department of Homeland Security, and it is heavily militarized, having adopted the weaponry, organization, operational patterns and cultural markers of the regular military. Some other federal forces, such as Customs and Border Patrol, or CBP, also fit this definition.

The data I have collected on state security forces show that approximately 30% of countries have paramilitary police forces at the federal or national level, while more than 80% have smaller militarized units akin to SWAT teams within otherwise civilian police.

The United States is nearly alone among established democracies in creating a new paramilitary police force in recent decades. Indeed, the creation of ICE in the U.S. following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is one of just four instances I’ve found since 1960 where a democratic country created a new paramilitary police force, the others being Honduras, Brazil and Nigeria.

ICE and CBP also have some, though not all, of the characteristics of a paramilitary in the second sense of the term, referring to forces as repressive political agents. These forces are not informal; they are official agents of the state. However, their officers are less professional, receive less oversight and are operating in more overtly political ways than is typical of both regular military forces and local police in the United States.

The lack of professionalism predates the current administration. In 2014, for instance, CBP’s head of internal affairs described the lowering of standards for post-9/11 expansion as leading to the recruitment of thousands of officers “potentially unfit to carry a badge and gun.”

This problem has only been exacerbated by the rapid expansion undertaken by the Trump administration. ICE has added approximately 12,000 new recruits – more than doubling its size in less than a year – while substantially cutting the length of the training they receive.

ICE and CBP are not subject to the same constitutional restrictions that apply to other law enforcement agencies, such as the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure; both have gained exemptions from oversight intended to hold officers accountable for excessive force. CBP regulations, for instance, allow it to search and seize people’s property without a warrant or the “probable cause” requirement imposed on other forces within 100 miles, or about 161 kilometers, of the border.

In terms of partisan affiliations, Trump has cultivated immigration security forces as political allies, an effort that appears to have been successful. In 2016, the union that represents ICE officers endorsed Trump’s campaign with support from more than 95% of its voting members. Today, ICE recruitment efforts increasingly rely on far-right messaging to appeal to political supporters.

Both ICE and CBP have been deployed against political opponents in nonimmigration contexts, including Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon, in 2020. They have also gathered data, according to political scientist Elizabeth F. Cohen, to “surveil citizens’ political beliefs and activities – including protest actions they have taken on issues as far afield as gun control – in addition to immigrants’ rights.”

In these ways, ICE and CBP do bear some resemblance to the informal paramilitaries used in many countries to carry out political repression along partisan and ethnic lines, even though they are official agents of the state.

Why this matters

An extensive body of research shows that more militarized forms of policing are associated with higher rates of police violence and rights violations, without reducing crime or improving officer safety.

Studies have also found that more militarized police forces are harder to reform than less-militarized law enforcement agencies. The use of such forces can also create tensions with both the regular military and civilian police, as currently appears to be happening with ICE in Minneapolis.

The ways in which federal immigration forces in the United States resemble informal paramilitaries in other countries – operating with less effective oversight, less competent recruits and increasingly entrenched partisan identity – make all these issues more intractable. Which is why, I believe, many commentators have surfaced the term paramilitary and are using it as a warning.

Erica De Bruin, Associate Professor of Government at Hamilton College

Filed Under: cbp, donald trump, ice, militarized police, paramilitary forces

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s Qwen team of AI researchers has emerged in the last year as one of the global leaders of open source AI development, releasing a host of powerful large language models and specialized multimodal models that approach, and in some cases, surpass the performance of the proprietary U.S. leaders such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI.

Now the Qwen team is back again this week with a compelling release that matches the “vibe coding” frenzy that has arisen in recent months: Qwen3-Coder-Next, a specialized 80-billion-parameter model designed to deliver elite agentic performance within a lightweight active footprint.

It’s been released on a permissive Apache 2.0 license, enabling commercial usage by large enterprises and indie developers alike, with the model weights available on Hugging Face in four variants and a technical report describing some of its training approach and innovations.

The release marks a major escalation in the global arms race for the ultimate coding assistant, following a week that has seen the space explode with new entrants. From the massive efficiency gains of Anthropic’s Claude Code harness to the high-profile launch of the OpenAI Codex app and the rapid community adoption of open-source frameworks like OpenClaw, the competitive landscape has never been more crowded.

In this high-stakes environment, Alibaba isn’t just keeping pace — it is attempting to set a new standard for open-weight intelligence.

For LLM decision-makers, Qwen3-Coder-Next represents a fundamental shift in the economics of AI engineering. While the model houses 80 billion total parameters, it utilizes an ultra-sparse Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture that activates only 3 billion parameters per forward pass.

This design allows it to deliver reasoning capabilities that rival massive proprietary systems while maintaining the low deployment costs and high throughput of a lightweight local model.

Solving the long-context bottleneck

The core technical breakthrough behind Qwen3-Coder-Next is a hybrid architecture designed specifically to circumvent the quadratic scaling issues that plague traditional Transformers.

As context windows expand — and this model supports a massive 262,144 tokens — traditional attention mechanisms become computationally prohibitive.

Standard Transformers suffer from a “memory wall” where the cost of processing context grows quadratically with sequence length. Qwen addresses this by combining Gated DeltaNet with Gated Attention.

Gated DeltaNet acts as a linear-complexity alternative to standard softmax attention. It allows the model to maintain state across its quarter-million-token window without the exponential latency penalties typical of long-horizon reasoning.

When paired with the ultra-sparse MoE, the result is a theoretical 10x higher throughput for repository-level tasks compared to dense models of similar total capacity.

This architecture ensures an agent can “read” an entire Python library or complex JavaScript framework and respond with the speed of a 3B model, yet with the structural understanding of an 80B system.

To prevent context hallucination during training, the team utilized Best-Fit Packing (BFP), a strategy that maintains efficiency without the truncation errors found in traditional document concatenation.

Trained to be agent-first

The “Next” in the model’s nomenclature refers to a fundamental pivot in training methodology. Historically, coding models were trained on static code-text pairs—essentially a “read-only” education. Qwen3-Coder-Next was instead developed through a massive “agentic training” pipeline.

The technical report details a synthesis pipeline that produced 800,000 verifiable coding tasks. These were not mere snippets; they were real-world bug-fixing scenarios mined from GitHub pull requests and paired with fully executable environments.

The training infrastructure, known as MegaFlow, is a cloud-native orchestration system based on Alibaba Cloud Kubernetes. In MegaFlow, each agentic task is expressed as a three-stage workflow: agent rollout, evaluation, and post-processing. During rollout, the model interacts with a live containerized environment.

If it generates code that fails a unit test or crashes a container, it receives immediate feedback through mid-training and reinforcement learning. This “closed-loop” education allows the model to learn from environment feedback, teaching it to recover from faults and refine solutions in real-time.

Product specifications include:

• Support for 370 Programming Languages: An expansion from 92 in previous versions.

• XML-Style Tool Calling: A new qwen3_coder format designed for string-heavy arguments, allowing the model to emit long code snippets without the nested quoting and escaping overhead typical of JSON.

• Repository-Level Focus: Mid-training was expanded to approximately 600B tokens of repository-level data, proving more impactful for cross-file dependency logic than file-level datasets alone.

Specialization via expert models

A key differentiator in the Qwen3-Coder-Next pipeline is its use of specialized Expert Models. Rather than training one generalist model for all tasks, the team developed domain-specific experts for Web Development and User Experience (UX).

The Web Development Expert targets full-stack tasks like UI construction and component composition. All code samples were rendered in a Playwright-controlled Chromium environment.

For React samples, a Vite server was deployed to ensure all dependencies were correctly initialized. A Vision-Language Model (VLM) then judged the rendered pages for layout integrity and UI quality.

The User Experience Expert was optimized for tool-call format adherence across diverse CLI/IDE scaffolds such as Cline and OpenCode. The team found that training on diverse tool chat templates significantly improved the model’s robustness to unseen schemas at deployment time.

Once these experts achieved peak performance, their capabilities were distilled back into the single 80B/3B MoE model. This ensures the lightweight deployment version retains the nuanced knowledge of much larger teacher models.

Punching up on benchmarks while offering high security

The results of this specialized training are evident in the model’s competitive standing against industry giants. In benchmark evaluations conducted using the SWE-Agent scaffold, Qwen3-Coder-Next demonstrated exceptional efficiency relative to its active parameter count.

On SWE-Bench Verified, the model achieved a score of 70.6%. This performance is notably competitive when placed alongside significantly larger models; it outpaces DeepSeek-V3.2, which scores 70.2%, and trails only slightly behind the 74.2% score of GLM-4.7.

Crucially, the model demonstrates robust inherent security awareness. On SecCodeBench, which evaluates a model’s ability to repair vulnerabilities, Qwen3-Coder-Next outperformed Claude-Opus-4.5 in code generation scenarios (61.2% vs. 52.5%).

Notably, it maintained high scores even when provided with no security hints, indicating it has learned to anticipate common security pitfalls during its 800k-task agentic training phase.

In multilingual multilingual security evaluations, the model also demonstrated a competitive balance between functional and secure code generation, outperforming both DeepSeek-V3.2 and GLM-4.7 on the CWEval benchmark with a func-sec@1 score of 56.32%.

Challenging the proprietary giants

The release represents the most significant challenge to the dominance of closed-source coding models in 2026. By proving that a model with only 3B active parameters can navigate the complexities of real-world software engineering as effectively as a “giant,” Alibaba has effectively democratized agentic coding.

The “aha!” moment for the industry is the realization that context length and throughput are the two most important levers for agentic success.

A model that can process 262k tokens of a repository in seconds and verify its own work in a Docker container is fundamentally more useful than a larger model that is too slow or expensive to iterate.

As the Qwen team concludes in their report: “Scaling agentic training, rather than model size alone, is a key driver for advancing real-world coding agent capability”. With Qwen3-Coder-Next, the era of the “mammoth” coding model may be coming to an end, replaced by ultra-fast, sparse experts that can think as deeply as they can run.

Ever feel like keeping track of your finances is more harder than finding your car keys? Between budgeting, saving, investing, and the occasional shock when you check your bank balance, managing money can be pretty overwhelming. But here’s a good thing to help us: artificial intelligence (AI) is quietly making all this way simpler, stress-free, and much more personal.

Your Digital Finance Buddy

Think of AI in personal finance as a super-smart friend who never sleeps, never judges that impulsive purchase, and actually enjoys digging through spreadsheets. You probably don’t even realize it, but many of the apps on your phone already use AI behind the scenes to make your financial life easier.

And the best part is, you don’t need to be a tech or financial expert to benefit from it. AI handles the tedious, complicated stuff, so you can focus on living your life without constantly stressing over money.

Budgeting that Doesn’t Suck

One of the more exciting benefits of AI is improving access to credit. Traditional lenders mainly rely on credit scores, but AI can look beyond that by analyzing things like your utility payments and phone bills to get a better picture of your financial responsibility. This helps more people—especially those new to credit or without formal credit history—qualify for loans and cards.

This improved access can make a real difference for families or individuals trying to save up or start a business, opening doors that were previously so tight.

How to Get Started

Start small. Pick one aspect of your finances that feels overwhelming—maybe budgeting or saving—and try an AI-powered app just for that. Many apps are designed to be user-friendly, so you don’t need to overhaul your whole financial system overnight.

Remember to keep your security tight: use strong passwords, enable two-factor authentication, and always pay attention to any fraud alerts you receive. And don’t be afraid to explore different tools; one size rarely fits all when it comes to managing money.

Looking Ahead

AI in personal finance is still evolving. In the next few years, we can expect smarter, even more personalized advice, better spending predictions, and seamless integrations that help optimize everything from taxes to retirement planning.

But here’s the key thing: while AI is fantastic at organizing information and spotting patterns, the choices about what truly matters to you financially will always be yours. Think of AI as a trusted guide helping you see your options more clearly so that it will be easier to make good decisions for yourself. 

If you have any queries or advice for this topic, please let us know in the comments section below. 

The courses are designed to upskill Irish citizens and businesses in emerging AI technologies.

As part of SOLAS’ national upskilling initiative, Skills to Advance, the Irish Government has announced the launch of a new suite of Further Education and Training (FET) micro-qualifications in artificial intelligence (AI) at Microsoft Ireland. 

The AI programmes are aimed at upskilling citizens and Irish businesses in emerging AI technologies, with the launch marking an important step forward in providing vital upskilling opportunities amid the spread of AI in the working environment. 

The micro-credentials have been designed in collaboration with industry partners such as Microsoft Ireland and will deliver targeted training in areas such as machine learning basics, ethical AI, data analysis and practical use cases relevant to Irish businesses. There are also further plans for expansion in response to evolving industry demands. 

The micro-qualifications are highly subsidised and typically short in duration, amounting to roughly 50 hours of tutor time and self-directed learning combined. Programmes are delivered locally by the 16 Education and Training Boards around Ireland, with training available in person, online or via blended learning formats.

They are designed to be flexible, are scheduled to fit around the operating needs of businesses and are accredited by Quality and Qualifications Ireland, leading to Level 5 and 6 Special Purpose Awards on the National Framework of Qualifications.

Commenting on the news, the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science James Lawless, TD, said: “The launch of these FET AI micro‑qualifications marks an important step in ensuring people and businesses have the confidence and skills to use AI responsibly and effectively. 

“As AI continues to transform how we live and work, these targeted programmes will empower learners to upskill in meaningful ways, strengthening digital capability across enterprises of all sizes and enabling employees to excel in their chosen careers.”

Dr Kevin Marshall, the chair of the National Skills Council and head of future skilling at Microsoft Ireland, added: “The collaboration between the FET sector and industry partners is critical for the development of targeted, future-focused upskilling programmes. 

“AI is reshaping every part of our economy, and the industry-informed design of these micro‑qualifications empowers individuals and organisations with trusted, practical learning that supports Ireland’s long‑term skills needs.”

New opportunities

FET’s courses, existing and incoming, offer participants the chance to upskill across a number of key areas. The Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course will build foundational AI literacy for all learners, including how AI works, everyday applications and essential digital skills.   

Enhancing Productivity with AI will enable employees to apply AI tools ethically and effectively in the workplace, improving efficiency, communication and problem‑solving. 

AI Legal and Ethical Considerations, which is coming soon, will help organisations to understand regulatory obligations, responsible AI usage and compliance under emerging frameworks, such as the EU AI Act.

Strategic Planning for AI, also coming soon, will support leaders and managers to plan, implement and govern AI adoption within their organisations. 

The Minister of State with Special Responsibility for Further Education, Apprenticeship, Construction and Green Skills Marian Harkin, TD, said: “I greatly welcome any innovative learning avenue for our people to progress their Further Education and Training and lifelong learning journey. 

“As we all try and navigate our fast-changing reality, the launch of these micro-qualifications by SOLAS is a wonderful opportunity to meet people where they are, while enabling them to hone and shape their skills to reach their full potential.”

Nessa White, the interim CEO at SOLAS added: “Further Education and Training aims to create opportunities whilst meeting the needs of Irish society, including a rapidly evolving workforce. Our new AI FET micro-qualifications support enterprises to respond to emerging skills demands and are delivered locally through the Education and Training Board (ETB) network. 

“Ireland’s future relies on innovation and empowering people to thrive amid ongoing change. The new AI programme supports employees and businesses in developing vital technology skills, whilst encouraging lifelong learning.”

Late last month, ahead of the CAO deadline, Lawless encouraged potential applicants to consider all of their options when it comes to further education, including apprenticeships. 

He explained that applicants now have more choices than ever and whether they are considering a university degree, an apprenticeship, a further education and training course, or a new tertiary degree programme, there are a wide range of routes available for those looking to begin the next stage of their lives. 

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Artificial intelligence remains at the center of every business conversation. This year leading players in the IT space have unveiled major initiatives that are aimed at hastening the adoption of generative AI applications. These developments have led to the widespread interest among organizations willing to harness the power of AI for driving innovation, and revenue growth—both beyond, as well as the Salesforce ecosystem. As AI continues to reshape industries, organizations face the challenge of integrating it into their already existing systems. 

Over the years, Salesforce has invested significantly in AI through Einstein GPT and other generative AI features. These advancements have enabled businesses to transform their CRM into a smart and highly personalized platform. This is where the need for Salesforce consultants arises. These consultants assist businesses leverage the actual potential of AI through their technical capabilities and strategic approach.

What does the Integration of AI and Salesforce Hold for Organizations?

Optimizing Customer Service: Customer service is an area where consultants unlock the utmost potential of AI. With customer expectations reaching an all-time high, AI-enabled service has become an actual distinguisher for organizations struggling to deliver seamless experiences. Within Salesforce Service Cloud, consultants implement Einstein Bots to manage routine queries. By creating, installing, and training these bots, they allow organizations to provide prompt responses while enabling human agents to focus on intricate cases. Consultants also deploy intelligent case routing, where AI, by default, assigns issues to the most suitable agent based on expertise, capacity, and urgency. This not just hastens resolution times but also ensures customers receive the right support from the start. Additionally, consultants also empower businesses to harness sentiment analysis, which assesses the emotion behind client interactions across multiple channels. These insights empower organizations to take hands-on action—resolving possible issues before they escalate. This helps uncover opportunities to fortify customer loyalty.

Generative AI for Optimizing Marketing: Generative AI for Optimizing Marketing: Marketing is another area where generative AI is transforming how businesses associate with their audiences. By integrating AI within Marketing Cloud, consultants enable companies to design campaigns that are data-driven, as well as intensely personalized at scale. By creating ad copies, social media posts and more, Generative AI boosts customer engagement. These outputs are fine-tuned by experts to ensure they align with the brand voice of a company besides following regulatory guidelines. AI also assesses customer data to recognize micro-segments with shared behaviors. This enables consultants to design campaigns that align with specific groups. They also utilize AI-powered journey builders to anticipate the best channel, effectiveness, and messaging for customer engagement. This ensures every interaction seems relevant. By configuring and testing these AI-driven journeys, consultants empower organizations to make the most of marketing ROI while creating experiences that fortify customer relationships.

AI Analytics for Driving Data-powered Decisions: One of the greatest potential of Salesforce AI is its ability to transform raw data into actionable intelligence. However, organizations fail to draw value from these capabilities in the absence of a right setup. By using predictive analytics, consultants create AI models that predict outcomes. This empowers them to make smart decisions. By creating dashboards that update in real time, they manage the reporting process. This decreases the load of reporting manually while offering an explicit picture of performance metrics. Additionally, consultants also configure tools for detecting anomaly. These tools identify irregular patterns such as unanticipated hike in service requests and more, which empower businesses to reply proactively and address potential issues before they intensify. 

Streamlining Operations: AI in Salesforce isn’t limited to service, sales and marketing. It plays a vital role in augmenting efficiency. By harnessing workflow automation, consultants can configure AI to manage repetitive tasks. This not only eliminates errors but also leaves teams with sufficient time to lay emphasis on strategic tasks. AI also enables smarter optimization of resources by assessing performance data to ensure effective allocation of resources.

Adoption and Change Management: Ensuring successful adoption and effective change management is just as important as implementing advanced AI features. Salesforce consultants emphasize on driving adoption through all-inclusive training and enablement programs. They also identify that introducing AI mostly involves cultural shifts, as employees may resist altering established routines or may face job dislodgment. To address this, consultants pave the way for structured change management initiatives designed to ease transitions and encourage acceptance. needs.

Final Words:

AI is no longer a future-ready concept, it has become a driver of competitive edge. For organizations leveraging Salesforce, the real challenge is not deciding whether to adopt AI but determining how to implement it effectively. As a reputed Salesforce implementation partner, Girikon serves as the critical link between technology and business outcomes to ensure that AI isn’t just installed but also integrated into day-to-day workflows, adopted by teams, and aligned with long-term goals. The result is a faster, and more customer-oriented organization. Businesses that align the power of Salesforce with AI along with the expertise of an appropriate implementation partner are well-positioned for success.