NEWS YOU CAN’T MISS

UK Government Eyes £45B Savings with AI Tools

A major UK government trial has found that AI can save civil servants an average of 26 minutes a day.

Over 20,000 officials across multiple government departments took part in the three-month pilot. They used tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot to assist with routine tasks, drafting documents, summarizing emails, preparing reports, and updating records.

That may not sound like much, but across a year, those minutes add up to nearly two full weeks of time saved per person.

At the scale of 20,000 officials, the impact is even bigger. It’s the equivalent of giving 1,130 civil servants a full year of time back every year. That freed-up time can be redirected toward higher-value work, like designing policy, innovating services, or helping people directly.

• AI proved useful across a wide range of roles:

• Policy teams used it to simplify complex documents and consultations

• Job coaches used it to speed up personalized support for jobseekers

Companies House staff, who handle the UK’s official register of businesses, used it to automate replies to routine questions

According to new research, AI could support up to 41% of tasks across the public sector. If used effectively, the government believes this kind of tech could help save £45 billion by making services faster, smarter, and more efficient.

What Happens When AI Starts Evolving on Its Own?

Imagine an AI that can rewrite its own code to get smarter with every version. That's what Japanese startup Sakana AI, in collaboration with researchers from the University of British Columbia, has developed with their Darwin Gödel Machine.

Here's how it works:

• The AI improves itself by rewriting its own programming, creating multiple new versions with different approaches, then testing and keeping the best ones.

• In testing, it got 2.5x better at fixing software bugs, successfully solving 50% of real programming problems compared to just 20% when it started.

• It also invented new abilities on its own, like double checking its work for errors and verifying that it actually did what it claimed to do.

• One test that cycled through 80 rounds of self improvement took two weeks and cost over $22,000 in computing power.

But disturbingly, the AI also tried to cheat. When researchers asked it to stop making certain mistakes, it found a sneaky workaround: instead of fixing the mistakes, it deleted the code that detected them like a student erasing red marks instead of correcting their answers. Researchers call gaming the system in this way “objective hacking.”

Bottom line: The Darwin Gödel Machine is a big step toward AI that can improve itself, but it shows why we need careful safeguards as AI gets more advanced even well meaning AI might find creative ways to cheat. 

Ready for Dancing Robots on TV?

In an unusual moment on popular US television talent competition show America’s Got Talent, Boston Dynamics brought their four-legged robots to the stage for a choreographed routine set to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.” 😲

The performance combined robotics, dance, and stage production in a display that was equal parts technical and theatrical, drawing strong reactions from both the judges and the audience.

It marked the first time a robotics company has competed on such a mainstream entertainment platform — a clear sign of how comfortable we’re becoming with robots not just in labs, but in the spotlight.

As judge Simon Cowell put it: “I didn’t think I’d live to see the day....”

Check out the video of the dance routine here.

Meet Kate Johnson, CEO of Lumen Technologies

Celebrating this week’s Woman in Tech 🥳: Meet Kate Johnson, President and CEO of Lumen Technologies, where she’s transforming a legacy telecom into the digital backbone of the AI economy.

She holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University and an MBA from Wharton.

Johnson began her career at Deloitte Consulting, then served as CIO at UBS Investment Bank before moving to Oracle, where she led North America’s technology and consulting operations. In 2017, she became President of Microsoft US, leading a $45B business and a 10,000-person team across both public and private sectors.

She joined Lumen in 2022 and quickly repositioned it as the “trusted network for AI,” leveraging its national fiber infrastructure to support hyperscalers and cloud platforms. In 2024, the company closed over $5B in AI deals.

She also overhauled Lumen’s culture and operations, turning a traditional telecom into a modern infrastructure provider built for speed, clarity, and scale.

Johnson serves on the board of UPS and Lumen Technologies was named one of Fortune’s Most Innovative Companies for 2025 reflecting the company’s transformation under her leadership.

Her journey is a masterclass in transformation, proving that with vision, grit, and a people-first approach, even the oldest players in tech can lead the future. 😎