The world’s leading internet firms are actively collaborating with regulators in the European Union to ensure compliance with the bloc’s stringent data protection rules. According to Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which serves as the lead EU regulator for major tech companies including Alphabet’s Google, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, and OpenAI, these firms are taking extensive measures to ensure that their AI products do not violate data privacy regulations.

Pat Moorhead and Daniel Newman sat down with Sam Burd to discuss AI PCs at Dell Tech World. These new PCs include significant new AI integrations, and Dell expects these to initiate a “super cycle” of PC upgrades. We discussed the importance of Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite earlier in the program, but what should we make of the market for AI PCs? This and more announcements from Dell Tech World on The Rundown.

New technology standards can’t anticipate how users will consume content and applications and revisions to the standards will be adopted to meet their needs. In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Ron Westfall, Drew Lentz, and Rocky Gregory as they discuss where Wi-Fi 7 falls short.

Join Tech Field Day for the luckiest mobility-focused event yet! Hear presentations from Juniper, Fortinet, Celona, Arista, Cisco, Ubiquiti, and introducing eino! Read on for more details about presentation times and how to join the conversation.

The annual security party known as RSA kicked off this week and one of the things you can count on is big announcements from companies at the event and we’ve collected a few of them.

Red Hat Summit 2024 is also happening this week. The big news from the event is all about AI. The first big announcement is InstructLab, an open-source project aimed at improving LLM outputs. The other big news is Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI, a platform designed to run IBM Granite LLMs.

You don’t need an algorithm to know that AI is the hottest invements right now outside of frozen concentrated orange juice. Investors are seeing the mountain of money that Nvdia is making and giving startups all the funding they could hope for. While massive funding for startups in Silicon Valley is old news this recent wave has seen the huge investments coming in the very early stages instead of later rounds after a product has been developed and is ready to be put on the market. 2023 saw almost $22 billion in AI startup funding, with an average deal of $55 million per company, which is well above the $8 million startup average. Investors are starting to ask questions about revenue and startups are having a hard time answering. This and more on the Rundown.

In a landmark ruling from the US Federal Trade Commission, non-compete clauses in employment agreements are no longer valid and all existing non-compete clauses are null and void starting in 120 days. The government argues that non-competes stifle wages and reduce the talent pool for companies to draw from. Businesses counter that argument with the need to protect intellectual property. The ruling came after nearly 26,000 public comments. After the ruling was issued, the US Chamber of Commerce immediately filed suit, challenging the ruling and the standing of the FTC to decide it. Simliar action was expected from the National Labor Relations Board in the near future, with some saying the FTC action may have been a race to see who could get the news out the fastest.

Security audits are painful and often required for compliance but they aren’t adversarial unless you have a bad auditor or bad policy compliance. In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth sits down with Teren Bryson, Skye Fugate, and Ben Story to discuss the nuances of audits.

Our eyes were on Google Cloud Next last week, as the hyperscaler announced new ARM chips, lots of partnerships, and of course wall-to-wall AI. Google’s Vertex AI Agent Builder allows no-code deployment of agents, Google Vids targets video editing, and the search giant is leaning into Retrieval-Augmented Generation or RAG.

Recent advances in AI for IT have shown the huge potential for changing the way that we do work. However, AI can’t replace everyone in the workforce. In this episode, Tom Hollingsworth is joined by Rita Younger, Josh Warcop, and Rob Coote as they look at how the hype surrounding AI must inevitably be reconciled with the reality of real people doing work.