https://techxplore.com/rss-feed/business-tech-news/ en-us The latest news on the technology businesses, technology business, technology companies and tech business news. What happens when companies on digital labor platforms no longer decide for themselves how much to pay their workers, but leave this to learning algorithms? Researchers at TU Darmstadt, Bielefeld University and the Université Côte d'Azur have demonstrated in computer simulations that, where only a few firms compete with one another, such artificial intelligence (AI) systems can "learn" to set wages at a very low level without communicating with one another or having been programmed to collude. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-08-algorithm-wages.html Business Fri, 21 Aug 2026 10:40:07 EDT news706526941 When an artificial intelligence image generator produces a portrait, whose work went into it? The question sits at the center of lawsuits, licensing deals and proposed regulations worldwide. Artists want credit. Companies want clarity. Policymakers want a way to assign responsibility. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-08-ai-art-author-generated-images.html Business Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:40:10 EDT news706282562 Modern artificial intelligence (AI) platforms can summarize reports, analyze documents and answer questions in seconds. But when information is spread across dozens of slides, charts and tables, even advanced models can miss important details. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-08-workplace-ai-humans-documents-multiple.html Business Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:00:04 EDT news706278661 For investors trying to make sense of a company going public, one of the most important documents is often the most difficult to understand. Initial public offering (IPO) filings are dense disclosures submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. They can stretch hundreds of pages and combine legal language, financial data and visuals like charts and infographics. Even experienced analysts struggle to read them end to end, leaving many everyday investors relying on headlines or summaries. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-08-ai-complex-ipo-easier.html Business Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:40:05 EDT news706261022 A few months ago, AI made headlines for cracking a mathematical puzzle that had stumped experts for decades. Mathematician Paul Erdős posed the unit-distance conjecture, predicting how many pairs of points could lie the same distance apart. AI proved it wrong by tracking down a group of infinite counterexamples to the solution Erdős proposed. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-08-credit-ai-team-rethinking-idea.html Business Mon, 17 Aug 2026 10:20:06 EDT news706180622 Moving away from oil and gas and toward solar, wind and hydropower: that is the energy transition. To stop global warming, we must shift our energy infrastructure toward renewable sources in the coming years. The large-scale construction of solar cells and wind turbines requires, among other things, minerals and metals. At the same time, the existing fossil fuel infrastructure is becoming obsolete. So, could we recycle parts of our old energy system to build a new one? Researchers from Empa's Technology and Society laboratory investigated this question in a study. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-07-recycling-fossil-fuel-infrastructure-trillions.html Business Tue, 28 Jul 2026 11:40:06 EDT news704456761 As retailers increasingly embrace artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and autonomous vehicles, a new retail model is beginning to emerge: mobile stores that drive directly to customers instead of waiting for customers to come to them. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-07-ready-mobile-wheels-outperform-traditional.html Business Fri, 24 Jul 2026 11:40:22 EDT news704110981 In an increasingly competitive job market, some applicants are quietly trying to outsmart AI hiring tools. Now, new research focused on rooting out the practice of "prompt injection" shows how widespread this tactic is. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-07-thwarting-hidden-resume-hacks-ai.html Business Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:20:07 EDT news703947962 A new modeling study finds that weak AI regulation may be worse than no regulation at all when it comes to the safety of AI products and services. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-07-weak-ai-worse.html Business Mon, 20 Jul 2026 17:20:03 EDT news703784881 Two sets of roles emerge when couples consider installing solar panels on their house, a new study shows: in sync, when partners with shared goals and defined tasks end up adopting solar, and oppositional, marked by discord and not making the solar investment. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-07-rooftop-solar-hinge-household-champion.html Business Thu, 09 Jul 2026 05:00:03 EDT news702711310 Agentic workflows are artificial intelligence-powered software systems that chain together multiple models and external tools to tackle complicated tasks, like analyzing a video and answering questions about it. But the way these highly fragmented systems are designed and deployed often causes inefficiencies that can lead to wasted computation, energy and cost. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-06-plain-language-ai-workflow-tool.html Business Thu, 25 Jun 2026 11:40:11 EDT news701604282 More and more robots are assisting workers in factories. However, human-robot collaboration is still far from seamless. Researchers from Prof. Lorenzo Masia's team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have now developed a solution that enables a factory worker wearing an exoskeleton to work closely and, above all, safely, with a robotic arm. This reduces the physical strain on workers and improves production processes. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-06-exoskeleton-robotic-arm-factory-strain.html Business Wed, 24 Jun 2026 13:20:05 EDT news701524201 A critique from the University of St Andrews published in the journal Nature provides evidence that Microsoft's claimed quantum computing "breakthrough" was built on flawed foundations. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-06-microsoft-quantum.html Business Wed, 24 Jun 2026 11:40:03 EDT news701519822 The carbon-reduction benefits of electric vehicles vary across cities in China, as richer cities can transfer much of their carbon emissions from power generation to less developed cities, burdening them with additional costs, a new study led by UCL researchers has found. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-06-china-ev-boom-shifts-power.html Business Wed, 24 Jun 2026 09:20:05 EDT news701511481 If the future of warehouse work belongs to humans and robots working side by side, a key question remains: What is the most effective way for them to collaborate? https://techxplore.com/news/2026-06-ways-humans-robots-requires-swarm.html Business Wed, 03 Jun 2026 15:40:01 EDT news699719221 For decades, the idea that artificial intelligence can beat humans at number-crunching tasks like high-frequency trading has been widely accepted. But strategic foresight—the ability to predict the success of high-stakes, uncertain business ventures—has long been held as a uniquely human superpower. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-ai-human-tournament-tech-ventures.html Business Tue, 26 May 2026 19:20:01 EDT news699017683 When a bartender checks an ID, they quickly verify a customer's date of birth and identity before serving them. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-online-age-pointless-privacy.html Internet Mon, 25 May 2026 08:20:01 EDT news698915882 As electric vehicle (EV) adoption grows in the United States and globally, the demand for EV batteries and their critical materials—such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, and graphite—is expected to surge dramatically. This makes the resilience of the supply chain underpinning battery production increasingly important. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-ev-battery-imports-domestic.html Business Thu, 21 May 2026 11:40:02 EDT news698582221 At any given time, technology does two things to employment: It replaces traditional jobs, and it creates new lines of work. Machines replace farmers, but enable, say, aeronautical engineers to exist. So, if tech creates new jobs, who gets them? How well do they pay? How long do new jobs remain new, before they become just another common task any worker can do? https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-technology-jobs-young-skilled-workers.html Business Thu, 21 May 2026 10:01:36 EDT news698576317 The case for investing in direct air capture weakens substantially once it is directly compared against solar and wind, according to an analysis published in Communications Sustainability. The paper is titled "Direct air capture has substantial health and climate opportunity costs." https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-renewable-energy-effective-air-capture.html Business Mon, 04 May 2026 05:00:03 EDT news696852301 Production of drones and autonomous robots is expected to explode by the late 2030s—by up to 10× for commercial drones and 100× for humanoid and quadruped robots. Publishing in Chem Circularity, researchers estimate how this boost in production could impact US and global supply chains of 18 raw materials used in robots and drones. They predict that incremental demand for rare earth metals and carbon fiber could pose supply problems and recommend that technology developers piggyback off existing capacity from other industries such as electric vehicles to prevent shortages. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-chain-issues-drone-robot-production.html Business Fri, 01 May 2026 11:00:04 EDT news696767222 Electric vehicle sales in China and Europe have reached a threshold or "tipping point" that has triggered an irreversible shift away from their petrol and diesel-powered equivalents. For their article published in Nature Communications, researchers analyzed global sales from 2016–23 and observed that EV sales were increasing exponentially across 32 countries, with the global fleet of electric and hybrid vehicles doubling every 1.5 years. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-05-electric-vehicles-europe-china.html Business Fri, 01 May 2026 09:20:08 EDT news696845701 As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes embedded in critical decisions about health, safety, finance, and governance, a key challenge is no longer whether people and AI will collaborate, but rather how to structure this collaboration to achieve true complementarity. In the new paper, "Toward a Science of Human–AI Teaming for Decision Making: A Complementarity Framework," researchers present a framework for understanding and designing human–AI teams for decision making. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-intelligence-framework-human-ai-teams.html Business Thu, 30 Apr 2026 16:00:03 EDT news696783482 The development of batteries for electric vehicles has progressed much faster than experts and policymakers had anticipated. New research shows that the market is well equipped to cope with both raw material shortages and price increases. This raises questions about which materials are actually critical to the energy transition, according to the researchers. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-ev-battery-fragile-swap-key.html Business Wed, 22 Apr 2026 13:20:04 EDT news696080162 Before big tech engineers can improve the fairness of recommendation systems, such as social media feeds and online shopping results, they need to define what "fairness" even means. Should an app show people only the content it predicts they will like most, or should it boost newer creators, small businesses or historically underrepresented groups? Should an online store rank products purely by past clicks and sales, or make sure independent sellers can compete with dominant brands? https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-big-tech-algorithms-fair-harder.html Business Wed, 22 Apr 2026 10:40:01 EDT news696072661 Fusion power plants are sites at which electricity could be generated via a process known as nuclear fusion, which entails the merging of two atomic nuclei into a single heavier nucleus. This process is known to generate very high amounts of energy, such as the energy required to light up the sun and other stars, yet its potential for the production of electricity has yet to be demonstrated. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-fusion-power-competitive-renewables.html Business Sun, 19 Apr 2026 09:20:01 EDT news695467315 In an era when most TikTok videos are prerecorded, can a band with a new single create a tighter bond with fans by debuting via livestream instead? Can a business do the same when promoting a new product? https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-online-viewers-livestreams.html Business Thu, 09 Apr 2026 20:40:04 EDT news694959170 Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said that AI could surpass "almost all humans at almost everything" shortly after 2027. While AI's capabilities are certainly improving, such rapid progress might seem at odds with findings that show AI is still failing at 95%+ of remote freelance projects, and continues to struggle with hallucination, long term planning, and forms of abstract reasoning that humans find easy. But recent work from METR has found evidence that LLMs can gain capabilities in rapid surges—jumping from succeeding almost never to almost always in just a few years. If this is true across the economy, it could mean that workers could be blindsided by AI advances. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-04-tides-overturning-prior-views-ai.html Business Thu, 02 Apr 2026 16:20:01 EDT news694364439 Soft, dark-gray graphite is not just useful in pencils: The highly conductive and heat-resistant mineral is uniquely suited for advanced manufacturing. Yet the United States imports nearly half of the graphite it needs to forge steel, batteries, and manufacturing equipment from China, which currently supplies the majority of global graphite. But what if the United States could produce that graphite domestically—from waste we would normally toss into a landfill or burn? https://techxplore.com/news/2026-03-biomass-graphite-critical-mineral.html Business Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:00:08 EDT news693675061 In the iconic Star Wars series, captain Han Solo and humanoid droid C-3PO boast drastically contrasting personalities. Driven by emotions and swashbuckling confidence, Han Solo often ignores C-3PO's logic-driven caution. That human-droid relationship is exemplified in Solo's famous statement, "Never tell me the odds!" as he dismisses C-3PO's advice against navigating an asteroid field with a 3,720-to-1 chance of survival, odds that had been painstakingly calculated by the shiny sidekick. https://techxplore.com/news/2026-02-humans-ai-cognitive-alignment.html Business Thu, 19 Mar 2026 05:58:30 EDT news691407956