Technology

• Android's earthquake warnings reached 11.4m Venezuelans last week
• The feature is now installed on 2.5 billion Android phones
• If you live in a country covered by the feature, it should be enabled by default

Since 2021, Android phones have come with a built-in earthquake detection feature — and according to Google's figures, it was able to give 11.4 million people advance warning of the devastating double earthquakes that hit Venezuela on June 24.

That number comes from the New York Times, with the early alert arriving up to two minutes before the earth started trembling. The first alerts were dispatched just nine seconds after the earthquake started underground, according to Google.

The system works by using the accelerometers built into Android phones to detect faster, milder seismic waves known as p-waves. This data is automatically anonymized and reported in the background to Google, and once there are enough matching reports, an alert gets pinged out to all Android users who might be affected.

Phones have to be stationary to qualify as earthquake detectors — measurements from phones on the move aren't counted — and the earthquake has to be a magnitude 4.5 or greater to trigger a warning. For more densely populated areas, with more Android phones in them, the alerts get pushed out more quickly.

In three specific US states — California, Washington, and Oregon — the Android warnings rely on actual seismic monitoring data from a network of 1,675 sensors that make up the ShakeAlert system, run by the US Geological Survey.

How to enable earthquake warnings

Safety information is also included (Image credit: Google / Future)

The Android Earthquake Alerts System is enabled by default on modern Android phones: to check from Settings, tap Safety and emergency then Earthquake alerts. You do need to be in one of the 98 supported countries though, listed by Google here, which include Australia and the United States.

How close you are to the epicenter affects the alerts you see in the event of an earthquake. The most serious warnings will break through any Do Not Disturb settings you've got in place, take up the full screen, and play a loud sound. If less serious shaking is expected, you might just get a normal pop-up notification.

As of last year, Google says the Android Earthquake Alerts System has detected more than 18,000 earthquakes worldwide, and sent out over 2,000 alerts. The feature means that at least 2.5 billion people worldwide have access to an earthquake early warning system, even if nothing is in place at the government level.

This isn't something you can currently get on iPhones however, not even with a Google app. What iOS can do is pass on official warnings from authorities, including for earthquakes: From Settings, tap Notifications, and you'll see toggle switches for Extreme Alerts and Severe Alerts.

It's not clear how many deaths or injuries may have been prevented by the Android warning system in the case of the Venezuela quake, but it seems millions got alerts at least a few seconds in advance that something was about to happen.

• Mullvad VPN's co-founder Daniel Berntsson donated 5M SEK to the Örebro Party
• Mullvad confirms the donation "is not part of Mullvad's values or mission"
• Örebro party's leader, Markus Allard, is known for controversial views

Daniel Berntsson, co-founder and co-owner of Mullvad VPN, has donated 5 million Swedish kronor (around $514,000) of his personal funds to the controversial populist Örebro Party.

First reported by local news outlet Flamman, the 2025 donation accounted for 72% of the party's total income last year.

"This is a donation from me personally," Berntsson told reporters, saying that he supports the party's anti-corruption stance. In a post on social media, Mullvad confirmed that it was a "private donation," which "is not part of Mullvad's values or mission."

The disclosure has sparked backlash online, with some users threatening to switch VPN providers. The Örebro Party and its leader, Markus Allard, are known for controversial populist stances, particularly regarding "remigration" policies.

Mullvad's response

Speaking to TechRadar, Mullvad co-CEO Fredrik Strömberg confirmed that neither Mullvad VPN AB, its parent company Amagicom AB, nor its sister company Tillitis AB played any role in supporting the political party.

"Speaking for myself, I don’t like that he made this donation, and I know this view is shared by many of my colleagues. Speaking as the co-CEO of Mullvad, we will continue to protect the universal right to privacy," Strömberg said.

The firm also addressed the controversy publicly. In a statement posted to X, the team reiterated that Mullvad operates as a "political company" dedicated to fighting for freedom of speech, freedom of information, and the universal right to privacy.

Mullvad is a political company. We fight for freedom of speech, freedom of information and the right to privacy. These are firmly held values of the founders of Mullvad.Mullvad protects the right for people to express things we don't agree with. We protect the right of everyone…June 27, 2026

"We also live these values by being tolerant in our daily work," the post continues. "No matter what their other opinions are and no matter whether the founders or anyone else in Mullvad dislike them. The founders themselves fundamentally disagree on several important issues."

Mullvad said it would "gladly refund" any customers who choose to cancel their subscriptions or switch to another provider due to philosophical disagreements.

The news has attracted criticism, in fact.

One Reddit user said they "deeply regret recommending Mullvad to people over Proton," adding that they will personally switch to Windscribe.

Asked about users thinking of dropping their Mullvad subscription, Strömberg told TechRadar that people should feel safe using Mullvad regardless of their political affiliation.

Why is the donation so controversial?

Defining itself outside the traditional left-right spectrum, the Örebro Party began as a local party in Örebro before launching its parliamentary election campaign this year.

Berntsson's donation appears to have been vital in elevating the party's campaign capabilities ahead of the upcoming election.

According to data collected by DonationWatch, 2025 was the most lucrative year in the party’s history, netting a total of 5.58 million SEK. For comparison, the party received just 202,000 SEK in total donations throughout 2024.

While tech founders are entirely free to hold personal political affiliations, this incident raises broader questions regarding the growing influence of tech wealth in political campaigns. It also forces a conversation about whether privacy-focused firms should be entangled with political groups—regardless of where they sit on the ideological spectrum.

Ultimately, the number of users who choose to cancel their Mullvad subscriptions in protest will serve as a strong indicator of how deeply the privacy-conscious community values neutrality.

More of your information than ever is uploaded to the internet these days - and while you might be putting some out there yourself, such as through social media, but much of your personal information is out in cyberspace without you even knowing.

Luckily, LifeLock Total has all the tools you need to secure your online identity, and right now LifeLock Total is just $29.17/mo (was $34.99/mo). With this privacy protection package, you can scrub your personal data from the internet, secure your social media, and remain safe in the knowledge that if your identity is stolen, you can claim up to $1 million in reimbursement for identity restoration and stolen funds.

Additionally you'll also have access to financial account monitoring across personal, investment, and 401(k) accounts, with stolen wallet protection, credit lock and credit score monitoring.

• See all LifeLock deals

Today's top LifeLock deal

LifeLock Total protects your data and social media accounts, monitors data brokers and the dark web for your personal info, and can help secure your accounts if they are breached. Even if your identity is stolen, you'll have LifeLock experts on hand to get your life back on track. Prices are for first year only.View Deal

LifeLock Total helps to keep your personal data off the web with automatic data broker removal scans over 30 of the most prolific data brokers, with checkups every 90 days to ensure your data is kept off the web. LifeLock also monitors the dark web for traces of your credentials, and notifies you in the event that it discovers any leaked or compromised passwords.

Your social media accounts are also protected, with LifeLock monitoring for suspicious activity and account takeovers, helping to preventing account theft and fraud. You will also be sent alerts when a registered sex offender moves into your neighborhood.

LifeLock Total almost keeps your accounts (Credit, Checking, Savings, 401K, Investment) secure with LifeLock's monitoring services, which will notify you of any suspicious activity or unauthorized transactions and withdrawals. The credit monitoring and reporting will provide annual 3 bureau credit reports, and a monthly 1 Bureau report to keep you up to date with changes to your financials.

LifeLock Total also 100% guarantees identity restoration in the event of identity theft, with a reimbursement of up to twelve months of your subscription payment if your identity isn't restored to good standing. In case you aren't fully satisfied, LifeLock also offer a 60-day money back guarantee.

• Take a look at our full guide to the best identity theft protection

At WWDC, Apple finally unveiled the long-delayed, genuinely rebuilt version of Siri — a more context-aware assistant that can understand what’s on your screen, use your personal data across apps, respond more naturally, and work both inside iOS/macOS and as a standalone Siri AI app.

The prospect of having a more intelligent Siri to talk to is hugely exciting, but there were plenty of other smaller announcements made at the recent Worldwide Developers Conference that got overshadowed by the big Siri AI reveal.

In fact, I might actually be more excited about these features than the new Siri. Here’s what I’m looking forward to most:

1. AI-powered Safari tab organization @techradar

♬ original sound - TechRadar

If you’re anything like me, your Safari browser is a shocking mess of tabs. I try to close them, but they seem to breed like rabbits whenever I’ve been using Safari for more than 10 seconds. In macOS Golden Gate, Safari can use Apple Intelligence to group your open tabs into relevant topics without you having to do anything.

So, if you’re planning a trip, all your open tabs related to that topic will be pulled together into a single group. “Topics” is the word Apple uses to describe this organization. In the case of your holiday, it would likely pick a name for the topic — probably the destination — and all the open tabs would then be accessible from within that topic.

2. Natural-language Shortcuts @techradar

♬ original sound - TechRadar

Shortcuts already exist in macOS, and they’re awesome. Shortcuts in macOS let you automate repeated actions on your Mac, either with a click, a keyboard shortcut, Siri, the menu bar, Finder, the Share Sheet, or sometimes from inside apps. You can use them to resize images, extract text from PDFs, create calendar events or reminders, and much more.

They can, however, be a little tricky to create. That’s going to change with the new version of Apple’s software. macOS Golden Gate is going to use Apple Intelligence to make creating shortcuts easier. Instead of building fiddly automations manually, you can simply describe what you want using natural language and Shortcuts will build it for you.

3. Improved Photos editing @techradar

♬ original sound - TechRadar

Clean Up, Extend, and Reframe are coming to Photos to make editing pictures on your iPhone a whole lot easier, thanks to Apple’s on-device AI models, which can enhance your photos in ways that wouldn’t be possible without AI.

First, Clean Up is already part of Photos and is useful for removing distractions, but it’s getting a big upgrade in the next OS. The old version could get tripped up by busy backgrounds and complex textures, but the new version is much more adaptable and works on old photos and photos not taken on an iPhone.

Next, Extend is a way to add more background to any photo, or adjust its aspect ratio. Apple Intelligence simply fills in the new areas after the fact.

Finally, Reframe looks like a very powerful way of improving your photos. It uses Apple’s on-device AI model so you can change the angle a photo was taken at — just drag your finger around on the image in real time to change the angle the camera was pointing in. It looks a little bit like magic, and it’s very cool.

4. AirPods custom EQ

This may look like a small feature for AirPods owners, but it’s a big quality-of-life win, especially if you’ve ever wished that AirPods had more personal sound control, so you can adjust the sound to your tastes, not Apple’s.

So what does it do? Well, you’re able to adjust bass, mids, and treble, although it doesn’t give you exact frequencies or a numerical scale showing how much you’re affecting them. The good news is that older models like the AirPods Pro 2 will support Custom EQ, as well as the newer AirPods Pro 3 and AirPods 4.

5. Smarter parental controls @techradar

♬ original sound - TechRadar

I don’t know if these features are “smarter” or simply “less confusing,” but I’m all in. Having tried to set up parental controls before for my children on iPhones, I’m in favor of anything that makes the process less tortuous.

Features like the new Ask to Browse, where a child can ask if they can look at a particular website before you grant permission, sound like they’re just making everything easier for the parent to set up. Ask to Buy is another feature that sounds self-explanatory, and exactly what busy parents need. Time Allowances for entertainment, games, and social media also look great and give a handy starting point for concerned parents.

These aren't the AI features you're looking for

A lot of the new features I’m looking forward to here use AI, but they are benefit-first features rather than another excuse to use AI for something nobody actually wants. Siri AI may well be a great step forward for the next generation of Apple devices, but there are plenty of other ways that AI is going to benefit Apple users too — and some of them might turn out to be more useful in everyday life than talking to Siri.

• NordVPN discovered adware campaign operating across 50,000 websites
• The malware collects highly specific device data to profile and track you
• The adware can detect and bypass ad blockers with domains that change daily

Who doesn't love a free movie? Unfortunately, a recently uncovered cyber threat is proving the old adage true: if the product is free, you are the product. NordVPN’s Threat Intelligence team has exposed a highly sophisticated adware campaign that has successfully infected at least 50,000 active websites, turning the hunt for free content into a cybersecurity minefield.

The campaign is specifically targeting high-risk corners of the internet, including illegal streaming platforms, torrent portals, underground forums, and adult websites.

Once a user lands on an infected page, the adware — a type of malware that hides behind online ads — deploys invasive tracking scripts to build a persistent profile of the user's device, harvesting data that ranges from their hardware specs to whether they use a crypto wallet.

"If you’re not paying for a product, you are often the product," says Marijus Briedis, CTO at NordVPN, explaining that what looks like a free stream or download can quickly become a gateway to tracking, scams, and malware.

According to NordVPN, the scale of the threat is immense. Every single month, hundreds of thousands of the company's users encounter infection attempts tied directly to this specific adware kit.

How the adware campaign works

The operation works by loading a hidden JavaScript tag the moment a real person visits an infected website. To ensure maximum profit, the adware utilizes a fingerprinting module to build a persistent visitor ID stored directly on your device, allowing operators to track you even without using traditional cookies.

The sheer volume of data collected by this script is staggering. It scopes out your CPU cores, RAM, operating system, and installed plugins.

But it goes further than standard tracking. The adware actively hunts for browser-injected crypto wallet tools like MetaMask, checks for motion signals like accelerometer and gyroscope availability, and even uses favicon checks to figure out if you are logged into YouTube.

This highly specific profile is then likely sold to third parties or used to target you with customized scams.

"This campaign shows how cybercriminals turn user attention, personal data, and risky browsing habits into revenue at industrial scale," said Briedis.

(Image credit: NordVPN)

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of this adware is how aggressively it hijacks your browsing experience.

You don't even need to click on a visible advertisement to fall victim. Simply clicking on an ordinary, non-advertising part of the infected webpage can trigger a redirect, immediately sending you to phishing campaigns, malware download sites, or push-subscription traps.

If you think your current ad blocker is enough to keep you safe, think again. The adware actively detects when filtering protections are running in your browser. If it spots an ad blocker, it switches to a proxy bypass mechanism, dubbed "adblock-proxy-super-secret" by its creators, which generates at least three brand new domains every 24 hours.

This constant shifting allows the malware to effortlessly dodge standard security blocklists. It even hides its malicious behavior if it detects a search engine bot, ensuring the infected pirate sites look completely harmless to Google.

How to stay safe

To protect your digital life, NordVPN's CTO Marijus Briedis recommends taking the following precautions:

• Avoid "free" premium content: Stay away from piracy and illegal streaming sites, as these environments are hotbeds for adware and phishing.
• Use tracker protections: Employing reputable ad and tracker blockers limits malicious scripts from executing in your browser.
• Reject push notifications: If a sketchy website asks for permission to send you notifications, deny the request immediately.
• Update your software: Keep your browser and security tools up to date to ensure they can catch the latest malicious scripts and deceptive redirects.

If you’re on a retired plan, it will automatically be moved to a newer plan that could cost more.

Prime Day may be over for another year, but that doesn't mean that deals have completely vanished from Amazon. While the sheer volume of offers has dropped dramatically since last week's mega sale, I've spotted a handful of strong offers still live at the retailer this week. Here are my 15 top picks that I think are worth buying.

• See all of today's best deals at Amazon UK

One standout that was not on our radar during Prime Day is the fantastic Nothing Ear (a) for £49 (was £69). These five-star buds rival the AirPods and other premium options in sound quality, noise cancellation, and battery life — all for a fraction of the cost.

Some deals I did actually spot last week and are either still available at the same low price, or are only marginally more expensive. They include the Philips OneBlade 360 for £42.99 (was £54.99), the Anker Soundcore Portable Speaker for £21.97 (was £29.99), and the Warmco Portable Handheld Fan for £25.49 (was £29.99).

Details on all of these deals and more from Amazon UK are below.

Today's 15 best deals at Amazon UK

These have been some of the most surprising earbuds we've ever tested, scoring a sweet five stars in our Nothing Ear (a) review – and now you can get them for their lowest price ever. Considering the latest AirPods are closer to £100, the fact that these offer massively superior sound and great active noise cancellation for half the price of Apple's popular buds makes these a no-brainer.View Deal

I actually bought a Levoit Core Mini for myself when moving into a new house that hadn't been lived in for a while to get rid of the dust and debris, and I also think it works as a great option for any allergy problems. What I like most is that it's small and quiet, so it is perfect for all sorts of spaces, such as the living room and bedroom. It's now also very affordable at 20% off.View Deal

This Warmco Portable handheld fan is a slightly more high-tech and serious-looking device. Again, we haven't reviewed it, but it does have good Amazon reviews and the price is right thanks to this deal. According to the user reviews, this looks to be a surprisingly powerful little fan that's capable of 2.5 hours of operation per charge.View Deal

The Philips OneBlade 360 is a quick, simple and affordable electric razor that's suitable for a wide variety of face and body grooming needs. This jam-packed bundle was a little cheaper over Prime Day, but today's offer is still a solid one. This bundle includes the handle, as well as two spare blades, four combs, a body kit, and a USB-A charging cable.View Deal

I'm not sure how I feel about smart rings, but our fitness editor, Matt Evans, is a big fan of the Oura Ring 4. He said it was "nearly the perfect fitness tracker" in our review, praising the design, ease-of-use, long-lasting battery and detailed health information it offers. This fascinating bit of tech is now down to its lowest-ever price on Amazon — but be warned that many sizes and colours have sold out.View Deal

The Nespresso Vertuo Pop is one of the best entry-level coffee machines around and it's now 50% off at Amazon. Use it with the included pods, and it does all the hard work for you with one-touch brewing, with the option of different brew sizes depending on how much you want to drink. As well as the Vertuo Pop machine, the bundle comes with coffee pods, mugs, spoons, and a milk frother.View Deal

The Fitbit Charge 6 is one of the simplest fitness trackers around, but it works very well and is still at a low price following Prime Day. It has a small screen that shows the time, how many steps you’ve taken, and your current heart rate as well. It’s subtle, so it fits on your wrist well – whether you’re at work or working out. Extensive battery life of up to seven days means minimal hassle, too.View Deal

Display: 14 inches
Processor: Intel N4500
RAM: 4GB
Storage: 64GB

I want to be clear that this is far from the best laptop you can buy, but I can't deny that it's incredibly cheap. The spec is incredibly low-end, with an entry-level processor, only 4GB of RAM and a small 64GB hard drive. At least it's a Chromebook, which can get more from weaker components, but this is only a good buy if you want to spend very little money on a very basic machine for infrequent, light use.View Deal

The iO range is usually a more expensive option in Oral-B's range of electric toothbrushes, but this is a decent deal on the entry-level option that's also bundled with a few handy extras. It doesn't boast many high-end features but it has the basic ones you really need to brush your teeth effectively and efficiently, including a two-minute timer and a visible pressure sensor. Plus, you get a charger pouch, refill holder, and a carry case included for free.View Deal

The Ninja Crispi was £10 cheaper during Prime Day, but this is still a great price for the manufacturer's portable air fryer. This bundle includes the PowerPod lid, plus two resealable glass containers to carry your dishes until you're ready to cook. According to our testing, it cooks exceptionally quickly, is easy to use and a breeze to clean, making this one of the best air fryer deals I've seen this year.View Deal

Display - 15.6 inches
Processor - AMD Ryzen 7
RAM - 16GB
Storage - 512GB

This is a great price for a laptop that comes with a well-performing AMD Ryzen 7 CPU. On top of that, you get 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD for storage, and incredible battery life, which represents good value for money. Overall, I think it's a solid everyday machine for the price.View Deal

If you want a cheap and basic Bluetooth speaker, then you can't go wrong with this Anker Soundcore for almost £20. Sure, it's not going to give you the biggest and boldest audio quality, but it's still a solid option at an affordable price. Battery life is an impressive 24 hours, too, so it's great to use around the home or take it with you when on the go.View Deal

Display - 15.6 inches
Processor - Intel Core 3
RAM - 8GB
Storage - 128GB

This version of the Lenovo Chromebook offers an impressive amount of power for the price. It includes a fairly basic Intel Core 3 processor, but you do get 8GB of RAM to boost performance, boot times, and load times. There's also 128GB of storage and battery life is excellent at 12 hours on a single charge. That's more than enough to last a full working day. At close to £200, it's a bargain for school or college, or just as a home laptop that you use for light use and everyday tasks.View Deal

I've got this arm for my dual setup at home and it works really well to hold up both of my monitors, making it easier and more comfortable to work and game across the pair of them. This particular model supports displays from 13 - 27 inches. is height adjustable, can be mounted in two different ways, and supports up to 360-degree rotation.View Deal

Graphics card: RTX 4050
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7
RAM: 16GB
Storage: 512GB

It's a rare thing these days to see a gaming laptop for around £600, and better yet, this Asus TUF actually features a decent RTX 4050 graphics card. If you're looking for the basics, then this machine is definitely going to cover you well for a great price. The RTX 4050, in combination with the Ryzen 7 chipset, is going to play all the latest games — and should do well, granted you're willing to tweak a few settings here and there on the most demanding titles.View Deal

Yep, it's not a tech deal, but it's an essential we all need to stock up on, and I think this is a very good price for a massive 72 rolls. Prime Day was a good opportunity to pick up household items like this, and while similar deals were available during the event, I think this is actually better than any I spotted last week.View Deal

Not all FIFA World Cup 2026 coverage is the same, and Brazil fans would do well to take note of that as 'A Seleção' take on Japan today in Houston, Texas.

For example, in the UK, Brazil vs Japan is on the ITVX streaming service and not BBC iPlayer, and that means you can't watch all those Samba skills in glorious 4K UHD.

But Brazil fans, listen up: there is a place you can watch the match at maximum resolution, and with Portuguese commentary, and all for free too.

The free-to-air CazéTV YouTube channel has the rights to show all of the FIFA World Cup 2026 coverage in Brazil, and in 4K UHD too. If you're a Brazil national currently abroad, then you can still access the stream.

Just pick yourself up a VPN, select a server in Brazil and then tune into CazéTV as you normally would back home. If you don't already have a VPN, then give Proton VPN a try.

We continuously test the best VPNs and we rate Proton very highly. It's great for streaming but, the reason we recommend it for CazéTV and Brazil is because Proton has more South American servers than an almost every other VPN provider, so you're not likely to run into capacity issues with other people trying to do the same.

But, just as importantly, Proton VPN also recorded the highest speeds over long distance connections (such as Europe to Brazil) in our recent tests, meaning that you should get a nice, clean, up-to-the-minute stream with no buffering or stuttering.

Watch Brazil vs Japan with Proton VPN Plus: $2.99 per month for 2 years

Proton VPN Plus is one of the best VPNs available. It has excellent server coverage in South America, and all over the world, and its 1548Mbps long distance connection speeds make it a great choice for super-smooth FIFA World Cup 2026 streaming of Brazil vs Japan and more. Give it a go.View Deal

Proton VPN comes with live chat support just in case you have any difficulties getting connected. It's also one of the most private and secure VPNs out there if you're looking to stay safe online, as well as do some soccer streaming.

There is a free version of Proton VPN but it's the paid one you'll need to get access to the Brazil server and the faster streaming speeds.

VPNs are completely legal to use. They're excellent for streaming your regular shows wherever your travel and providing privacy and protection from prying eyes for all of your online activities.

• The BBC has turned off its Long Wave (LW) service
• BBC 4 joins the digital-only party
• Radios will likely soon need to support digital to be viable

If you still rock a retro, decades-old radio (and live in the UK), you're probably going to have to pop down to your local electronics store, because it's well on its way to becoming defunct.

BBC 4, the last radio station in the UK to use Long Wave (LW) radio, has now been taken off the airwaves. And by that I mean, it's still going digitally and on FM analog radio, but it's the final station to be taken off BBC's Long Wave service — and thus, the power there has been switched off.

This follows a several-decades-long trend, which started in 1995 when the Beeb launched its first-ever DAB broadcast. Over time, digital-only stations and the slow shutdown of aging long-wave tech has made digital one of the preferred ways to listen.

Although several medium-wave and FM radio broadcasts persist, most people listen to their stations via digital audio in 2026, with spoken word and songs converted into binary rather than the warmer, imperfect oscillations of wave-based radio. And I've got to tell you: that's the way it'll continue.

Digital is the future

This format shutdown will reduce the complexity of the BBC's stretched multi-signal operation. In theory, it will increase accessibility — you can listen to digital signals wherever you are in the world, without needing to be within signal range — but some listeners with limited internet access or technological ability may be cut off.

For better or worse, this is the way it's going. The UK government is consulting on plans for TV to follow suit, with terrestrial TV proposed to be removed by 2034 or, possibly, 2044.

The proposals are facing the same criticism of reducing access to programming, though an eight-year lead-up gives people plenty of time to upgrade. That's especially true given that all of the best TVs these days are, let's face it, smart ones.

According to the BBC, roughly a third of a million viewers only have access to Freeview currently, and the corporation threatened that channels may be shut down if it's forced to support terrestrial for much longer. It'll depend on the consultation process.

It's too late for long wave radio though which, in the UK, now joins the dinosaurs and passenger pigeon in the category of 'things which are extinct'.

At least we know its death wasn't for nothing: it'll keep the BBC ticking along for a little while longer.

Enterprise AI has entered a new operational phase, moving rapidly from experimentation into production systems integrated into customer experiences, workflows, and software delivery pipelines.

However, as organizations operationalize AI, they are also introducing new complexity around infrastructure, governance, debugging, capacity planning, and cost control.

This complexity introduces new operational risks.

AI systems continuously evolve as prompts change, models are updated, agents become more autonomous, and infrastructure dependencies shift over time.

Without end-to-end visibility across the full AI stack, issues related to reliability, latency, output quality, or cost efficiency can gradually slip into production unnoticed: resulting in what many teams refer to as “invisible drift.”

As AI adoption scales, observability is becoming essential for helping engineering teams maintain operational control, reliability, and resilience in rapidly changing environments.

Multi-provider AI brings a new wave of platform engineering challenges

Organizations are increasingly adopting multi-model AI strategies rather than relying on a single provider. Recent research shows that more than 70 per cent of organizations now use three or more models in their production environments. This reflects a broader shift toward diversified model libraries, with teams are selecting models based on specific workload requirements such as latency, reasoning ability, operational risk, and cost efficiency.

This shift is creating a new generation of platform engineering challenges. AI environments now span evolving ecosystems of models, agents, orchestration frameworks, APIs, vector databases and infrastructure layers. As coding agents accelerate development, organizations are generating more code, dependencies, and operational overhead than teams can realistically manage manually.

At the same time, enterprises are accumulating significant LLM technical debt as they rapidly integrate new tools and frameworks. Tool sprawl, fragmented visibility, and constantly evolving AI architectures are making systems harder to govern, troubleshoot, optimize and secure. This makes AI observability essential, providing centralized visibility into model behavior, prompts, latency, hallucinations, token usage, infrastructure performance, and operational bottlenecks across complex multi-model environments.

Scaling AI safely, reliably and at speed requires control

As organizations race to scale their AI initiatives, operational failures are becoming more visible. Recent analysis shows that two per cent of all LLM calls returned errors, with rate limit issues accounting for almost a third of these (equating to approximately 8.4 million rate limit errors in total). This highlights the operational strain on systems as AI adoption accelerates.

At the same time, pressure to remain competitive is pushing organizations to move projects into production before operational controls have fully matured. Scaling too quickly introduces significant reliability, resilience, and governance risks. Real-time observability across the AI stack gives engineering teams the visibility needed to move quickly while maintaining high performance standards.

AI agents are adding yet another layer of complexity. Adoption of agent frameworks has doubled in the past year, leading to increased “agent sprawl”. These agents autonomously interact with multiple tools, systems, APIs, and datasets, making it harder for organizations to monitor behavior, diagnose faults, manage security risks, and maintain governance controls without deeper telemetry.

To manage this complexity, organizations need enterprise-grade observability that delivers end-to-end visibility across the AI stack (from development through to production). This includes visibility into prompts, model interactions, inference pipelines, infrastructure performance, latency, failures, and downstream dependencies. With comprehensive telemetry in place, teams can accelerate AI innovation while improving reliability, security, and operational controls at scale.

Four ways observability helps organizations scale AI more reliably

Organizations moving AI into production are increasingly treating observability as a foundational operational discipline, rather than simply a monitoring capability. Four practices are becoming particularly important as enterprises scale multi-model AI environments:

1.Managing multi-model environments more effectively

Teams are implementing gateways, routing layers, and evaluation frameworks that enhance their ability to select, assess, and manage multi-model environments effectively. These systems enable organizations to compare model behaviors, evaluate outputs, optimize workload placement, and enforce governance policies across various providers. AI observability provides the real-time data needed to support these decisions.

2.Reducing operational overhead and tech debt

Centralized visibility across prompts, models, inference pipelines, and infrastructure helps teams manage increasingly distributed environments. Observability reduces operational overhead and limits the accumulation of LLM technical debt as tools and frameworks evolve.

3.Improving agent reliability and preventing infrastructure failures

AI observability improves agent reliability and helps organizations eliminate failures caused by capacity constraints and infrastructure bottlenecks. Real-time monitoring of GPU utilization, throughput, latency, request failures, and workload behavior enables engineering teams to identify emerging scaling limitations before they impact production systems or user experiences.

4.Diagnosing faults and understanding agent behavior

Detailed tracing across prompts, workflows, APIs, orchestration layers, and infrastructure dependencies provides the operational context needed to investigate anomalies and identify root causes. This is critical for understanding how AI agents behave in real-world production environments.

Moving to a state of production-ready AI

Enterprise AI is now entering its operational era. As organizations move from experimentation to production, observability becomes the backbone for managing the growing complexity of multi-model architectures, autonomous agents, and distributed AI systems.

Without deep visibility into how these systems operate in production, organizations risk increasing operational failures, accumulating technical debt, and allowing invisible drift to undermine performance, reliability and governance over time.

AI observability provides the control needed to scale AI safely and effectively. Visibility across models, prompts, infrastructure, agents, and workflows helps teams build more governable, resilient and cost-effective AI systems.

Success in the next phase of AI adoption will depend on transforming experimental AI systems into disciplined production platforms that can be continuously evaluated, improved and trusted at scale.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

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Searching for secure cloud storage often comes with navigating monthly subscriptions and trying to calculate exactly how much storage you need, often with upgrades later down the line that raise your monthly costs.

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• Take a look at our full guide to the best cloud storage

• Valve's Steam Machine has seemingly sold out straight away in Japan
• Reservations are going for up to $3,000 in the US on eBay
• If you're tempted to look at cheap alternatives from Asia given all this, be very cautious around that idea

Given the price of the Steam Machine (and some other wrinkles with the device) it's not surprising that many gamers are looking for alternatives, but you need to be careful in that regard – although you may find it difficult to believe that some people are willing to pay a lot more than the official MSRP for Valve's gaming PC.

Before we come onto the tale of how much scalpers are reselling Steam Machine reservations for, the cautionary development is the likes of what appear to be super-affordable Steam Machine clones being offered over in China.

A prime example posted on Reddit is a white Steam Machine copy which claims to be built around a Ryzen 5 5500 processor with 16GB of DDR5 RAM, alongside an AMD RX 6750 GRE graphics card with a 2TB SSD. This is selling for the equivalent of $688 in China, so compare that to what Valve's charging for the Steam Machine with 2TB of storage: $1,349 in the US.

So, on the face of it, you're looking at not far off half the price for the Chinese clone PC, but there are a fair few weighty caveats attached which I'll come back to in a moment.

Meanwhile, while there are those searching for a bargain alternative to the official Steam Machine, at the other end of the spectrum there are those willing to pay something like double the asking price to secure one of the initial Steam Machine models to roll off the production lines.

As TweakTown noticed, there are people trying to resell their reservations for a Steam Machine on eBay. In case you didn't realize, Valve offered the chance to reserve a spot to purchase its gaming PC (using a randomized lottery system, rather than first-come-first-served), and some successful folks are effectively selling their place in the line.

Some of these auction listings are up for sale at approaching $3,500 over in the US (for the 2TB model), and TweakTown notes there appears to be a confirmed sale at $2,800. It's difficult to believe someone would pay that much, but it's seemingly true (unless the seller is engaging in shenanigans somehow).

On top of that, Notebookcheck.net highlighted another apparent indication of the popularity of the Steam Machine as Valve readies to open pre-orders (for those with a reservation). In actual fact, the device is already on sale in the Asian market, and the PC has already sold out in Japan. Seemingly retailer Komodo Station put the Steam Machine straight onto its shelves (rather than using a reservation system), and the PCs didn't hang about for long before they vanished.

Analysis: reasons to be fearful

(Image credit: Valve)

There's certainly a level of demand for the Steam Machine, then, although this could, and indeed I'd argue it's likely to be, a reflection of stock levels as much as it is demand. Nonetheless, there are disgruntled gamers over in Japan complaining on social media that they can't get a device.

This is also reflected in the apparent eBay prices for reservations in the US, although there's an important point to note here: most of these haven't sold (yet). In case you were mulling this route, bear in mind that you are placing a lot of trust in the seller to fulfil your order in the end. It's not an approach I'd recommend, and neither is buying a Steam Machine clone from Asia because it seems like a bargain and a half.

What are the dangers of the latter? Well, mainly that you don't really know what you'll be getting. If we take the highlighted example of the Chinese PC on Reddit above, there are some notable red flags with the listing, including that the Ryzen CPU is paired with DDR5 RAM that the platform it runs on (AM4) doesn't support.

On top of that, the RX 6750 GRE is a relatively chunky GPU, as several Redditors point out, and it seems highly unlikely that it'll fit in the chassis which is pictured for the device. What about the thermals, cooling solution, and fan noise, too? I'd be especially worried on those fronts.

Who knows: maybe you'll get a much larger box than the illustrated case, or components that are different to those advertised. I'm not saying this will necessarily be the case with the example product shown, but this is the concern with all of these kinds of offers from Asia, and it's why I'd take a hard pass on any such buying opportunity when it's being shipped outside of China.

Remember, there's the added cost of importing the PC to be considered as well, not to mention that if the device goes wrong or runs overly hot and unstable, then good luck with the returns process. There's also the potential security risks of a PC from an unknown vendor over in China that might be loaded with a dodgy version of SteamOS to trap the unwary.

In short, there are potential pitfalls aplenty, and if you want a more affordable alternative to the Steam Machine – or a living room PC with more performance and bang-for-buck like the so-called 'Stim Machine' – then buy something locally, and from a trusted (national) retailer.

Or just take the DIY path and build your own Steam Machine, which is the other option available to those who are unimpressed with Valve's pricing. Of course, you have to bear in mind that the RAM crisis – which forced up the price of the Steam Machine in the first place – will make this a much trickier endeavor than it would have been a year ago. There are also elements of Valve's PC that a DIY build won't be able to replicate, such as HDMI CEC support.

• Samsung wants NAND layer counts to reach four digits this decade
• Future M.2 SSDs could expand from 8TB to 32TB capacities
• Cell Multi-Bonding may replace traditional approaches to NAND density growth

Samsung has mapped out a NAND strategy stretching toward 1000-layer memory designs as demand for denser storage continues accelerating across industries.

The roadmap, disclosed during the IEEE/JSAP VLSI Symposium 2026, extends current vertical scaling plans far beyond existing commercial products.

At the centre of those ambitions sits a future generation of storage capable of pushing familiar SSD capacities into unfamiliar territory.

The route from today's drives to tomorrow's 32TB M.2 SSDs

Samsung expects its NAND technology to reach roughly 420 layers by 2029 before advancing beyond 560 layers during 2030.

Beyond that point, the company intends to explore architectures carrying between 900 and 1000 layers within future generations of flash memory.

Rather than constructing one towering NAND structure, Samsung plans to combine multiple stacks through its Cell Multi-Bonding technology approach.

The method joins separate NAND structures together inside one package to achieve densities that resemble a single 1000-layer device.

Samsung specifically discussed pairing two approximately 450-layer structures to approach the effective density associated with future four-digit layer counts.

According to company projections, this arrangement could increase storage density by as much as four times current generation solutions.

One example outlined during the presentation involved an 8TB QLC M.2 drive eventually scaling upward to reach 32TB capacities.

That scenario would allow substantially larger SSDs without increasing physical dimensions, preserving the compact M.2 format many users remember well.

The same scaling approach could eventually contribute toward enterprise drives exceeding 100TB while bringing Petabyte SSD discussions closer to reality.

The engineering problems standing between Samsung and a petabyte SSD

Samsung acknowledged that increasing layer counts introduces manufacturing complications that become progressively harder as structures grow vertically taller.

One major concern involves wafer warpage, where taller structures can deform during production and reduce manufacturing consistency or yields.

Another challenge comes from maintaining alignment accuracy across hundreds of stacked layers, requiring extremely precise overlay control throughout fabrication processes.

Even relatively minor deviations between layers can affect long-term reliability, performance, and manufacturing efficiency across finished storage products.

To limit deformation effects, Samsung plans to introduce an Upper Chuck Design intended to stabilise increasingly complex wafer structures.

The company also discussed Overlay Correction technologies intended to improve alignment precision as future NAND structures continue growing upward.

These developments arrive as conventional process shrinking becomes increasingly difficult, forcing memory manufacturers toward more elaborate vertical architectures.

Samsung has separately discussed a record-breaking 400-layer NAND generation that could help push AI hyperscaler SSD capacities beyond the 200TB barrier.

The company has also linked 430-layer NAND technology with a future where 100TB SSDs become increasingly mainstream across enterprise deployments.

Samsung will work with hafnia ferroelectrics in order to extend the practical layer counts beyond 1000 layers.

However, whether these designs eventually deliver mainstream 32TB M.2 drives or petabyte SSDs remains dependent upon manufacturing realities rather than roadmaps.

Samsung's latest roadmap nevertheless suggests the race toward NAND supremacy depends upon stacking ingenuity rather than shrinking dimensions.

Via The Guru of 3D

• Oracle admitted it needed a new approach back in February
• Now, the company has a new community-focused approach to MySQL
• Community roles and steering committee will ensure maximum quality

Oracle's VP of External Standards & Community Engagement, Heather VanCura, has revealed in a blog post the company's "next phase" of MySQL community engagement as it seeks to the open-source database project more transparent and collaborative.

The update comes after community criticism over Oracle's leadership of the project, and the company has finally responded with new governance frameworks.

In February 2026, Community Manager Frederic Descamps admitted the project was letting down community members. Descamps promised a "decisive" and "reinvigorated" approach.

Oracle announces "next phase" of MySQL

VanCura clearly acknowledged the role that community members have played in MySQL over the past three decades, referencing the need for visibility and deeper participation.

Under the new plans, Contributors can participate through code submissions, bug testing, code reviews, technical discussions and more. Experiences Contributors can become Committers, taking on responsibilities like code quality maintenance, and they're set to be guided by Mentors and Project Leads.

"Trust is built through transparent processes, clear decision-making, and meaningful opportunities for participation," VanCura added.

Oracle also launched a new Vulnerability Group and Technical Steering Committee. AWS, Google Cloud and Oracle will have representatives on the committee, but the company also noted the need for "additional perspectives from users of MySQL."

Percona co-founder Peter Zaitsev praised Oracle for its clear willingness to want to make changes (via The Register): "This is a step and in the right direction... Oracle has shown a desire to show more openness to the community in terms of sharing and including the wider community in the decision-making process."

Looking ahead, VanCura promises to share metrics with the community, engage in more discussions and uphold a high quality of contributions.

At SAP Sapphire in Orlando, Christian Klein put it plainly: “For the mission-critical processes of our customers, almost right just isn’t good enough.”

It was the line that crystallized the Autonomous Enterprise vision, and it is also the line that should reframe how every operations leader thinks about AI for the next eighteen months.

Sapphire made one thing unambiguous. AI is becoming visible at the top of the stack.

Joule (or your chosen equivalent) is being positioned as the new front door to enterprise software, with more than two hundred agents and over fifty assistants spanning finance, supply chain, procurement, HCM, and customer experience. Users will increasingly describe an outcome and let agents orchestrate the work across SAP and non-SAP systems.

That is the visible layer. There is also an invisible one, and it is the one that determines whether any of this actually delivers.

Agents only behave as well as the operational substrate they run on. They need systems that are healthy, observable, and consistent enough to act on safely. They need clean process telemetry, automated remediation when things break, and governance that extends across the hybrid landscape most large enterprises actually run. Without that foundation, agentic AI does not reduce operational risk. It multiplies it.

This is what future-proofing now means. Less about adopting the latest model, more about building the operational layer underneath it so that agents become a source of measurable outcomes rather than a source of new incidents.

The opportunity is significant for organizations that get this right. Two groups are forming. Those who have built the operational readiness to let agents execute, and those who will spend the next two years discovering they have not.

Pragmatism in ERP transformation

Enterprises are navigating significant transitions in their core systems, and the 2027 SAP ECC end-of-mainstream-maintenance deadline is the most visible forcing function. But the SAPinsider 2026 research surfaces a more interesting signal underneath it. AI readiness is now cited by 43% of organizations as the primary driver of their transformation investment, ranking above the deadline itself. The deadline creates urgency. AI readiness creates direction.

For many large enterprises, the preferred approach is not wholesale reinvention but incremental change. Brownfield migration has become a common starting point. It allows organizations to move existing systems to modern platforms while preserving established processes and minimizing disruption. In complex landscapes with extensive integrations and dependencies, that level of continuity is non-negotiable.

A brownfield approach also provides a structured path forward. It enables organizations to stabilize their core systems before introducing further innovation, including agentic AI. The transition to cloud ERP software plays a central role here. Managed, scalable environments establish the platform that supports both current operations and future capabilities, with continuous updates and easier integration of new services.

This foundation matters particularly for AI. As intelligent features become embedded within enterprise applications, cloud platforms provide the IT infrastructure needed to support them at scale. From advanced analytics to autonomous execution, AI capabilities are increasingly delivered as part of the platform rather than as separate tools.

During these transitions, most organizations operate in hybrid environments that combine on-premises and cloud systems. This state can persist for years, introducing complexity in governance, monitoring, and integration. Managing hybrid operations effectively requires clear definitions of roles and responsibilities, and an operational substrate that is observable, automatable, and consistent across the entire landscape.

As legacy solutions reach the end of life, organizations are reassessing how they support operations in this mixed environment, and the bar is rising.

AI as invisible infrastructure, AI as visible interaction

The Sapphire announcements make clear that AI is now operating at two layers, and both have to work.

At the interaction layer, AI is becoming the front door. Joule Work, the Autonomous Suite, and the broader agentic stack are designed to let users interact with enterprise systems through conversation and outcomes rather than screens and clicks. This is the visible AI, and it is what most of the industry will spend the next year talking about.

At the execution layer, AI is also becoming part of the underlying infrastructure. It will show up in observability, in automated remediation, in capacity and performance management, in the operational disciplines that have always determined whether mission-critical systems actually behave. This is the invisible AI, and it is what determines whether the visible layer delivers.

Lacking context is the number one reason enterprise AI projects fail to deliver value. Operational data, process telemetry, and the live state of the landscape are a critical part of that context. Agents that act on stale, incomplete, or unobservable systems will produce confident answers that quietly create new failure modes. Agents that act on a well-instrumented, well-automated estate will deliver the outcomes Sapphire promised.

This is why operational readiness is emerging as the real differentiator. Two groups are forming. Those who have built the foundation that lets agents execute reliably, and those who have never closed the gap between AI ambition and operational reality. The divide is not driven by access to technology. AI capabilities are increasingly available across major platforms. The divide is driven by whether the operational layer is ready to absorb them.

Positioning for long-term resilience

For enterprise and technology leaders, the convergence of cloud transformation and agentic AI presents a clearer opportunity than at any previous point in the SAP cycle. The path forward is not defined by rapid disruption but by deliberate, sustained evolution.

Future-proofing now means building the foundation that lets continuous improvement happen safely. It involves modernising core systems, embracing incremental change, and ensuring that emerging capabilities, especially agentic ones, can be integrated into operations without expanding the risk surface.

As AI becomes embedded across both the interaction layer and the execution layer, success will depend on how well organisations have prepared for both. The goal is intelligent operations that deliver tangible business outcomes, with AI serving as the enabler at every level of the stack. Resilience, adaptability, and operational discipline are the disciplines that will define long-term competitiveness in the autonomous enterprise era.

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This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

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• Windows 11's File Explorer is receiving major improvements via the latest preview update
• File Explorer should perform much faster, including mounting disk images
• The update is currently in the rollout process

Microsoft is still hard at work fixing pain points within Windows 11 for its users. While this case isn't focused on gaming improvements, it addresses an issue that should improve one of the operating system's fundamental aspects.

As reported by Windows Latest, Microsoft is rolling out File Explorer improvements with its latest preview update, KB5095093. The update includes much better speed and performance of the File Explorer and increased responsiveness when mounting disk images.

This is a long-awaited update for Windows 11 users, as File Explorer hasn't always been the most responsive or fastest, especially compared to macOS or SteamOS, both of which feature fairly responsive file managers.

It's also worth noting that PC hardware, specifically SSD speeds and storage space, can have an impact on loading times. Still, the onus has been on Microsoft to fix its Windows 11 File Explorer, which has been noticeably slow even with a high-speed SSD — so this update is very much necessary.

(Image credit: Surface/Unsplash)

Perhaps the most important improvement being rolled out is better performance for mounting disk images, which was arguably the worst aspect of Windows 11's File Explorer. This would often result in a five-minute wait for the disk image to fully open, and that's frustrating, especially for users with high-speed hardware.

Windows Latest also highlights that the 'Properties' tab on a file will be seeing a visual overhaul, with a more modern look using WinUI 3, as opposed to the Windows 95-era UI.

It's great to see Microsoft address these issues, seemingly as a wider attempt to improve Windows 11's functionality and appearance due to consistent user complaints. For sure, there's still more to be desired in the game performance aspect, but Microsoft should get praise where it's due.

My only concern is a potential update that could undo all of the hard work, since Windows 11 updates are notorious for breaking functionality, whether that's via File Explorer or as far as GPU stability — which have previously impacted Nvidia GPU users.

Have I Been Pwned added 124M stolen passwords. Discover how this infostealer data impacts New Zealand users and the essential steps to protect your online accounts.

The post New Infostealer Data Raises Fresh Risks for New Zealand Password Users appeared first on TechRepublic.

Google’s Chrome 149 security update fixes 18 bugs, including four critical flaws affecting WebGL, Autofill, and Blink components.

The post Update Chrome Now: Google Fixes 18 Security Flaws, Including Critical Bugs appeared first on TechRepublic.

Sugar season 2 returned to Apple TV after a break, and we've been introduced to an intriguing new case against that moreish LA noir-style backdrop.

One of the best Apple TV shows gave us quite the twist in season 1, and we've seen Colin Farrell's detective John Sugar deciding to stay on Earth after many of his fellow aliens decided to leave. He's been searching for his sister while staying hidden as a human detective, but how long will he be able to stay undetected?

Here's what you need to know about Sugar season 2, episode 3.

What time can I watch Sugar season 2 on Apple TV?

Sugar's newest case involves an up and coming boxer whose brother has gone missing. (Image credit: Apple TV)

The US can expect the third episode of Sugar season 2 to be available on Apple TV on July 3 at 12am PT / 3am ET. Episodes will then drop weekly until the finale on August 7.

Internationally, look out for the below times:

• US – 12am PT / 3am ET
• Canada – 12am PT / 3am ET
• UK – 8am BST
• India – 12:30pm IST
• Singapore – 3pm SGT
• Australia – 6pm AEST
• New Zealand – 8pm NZDT

When do new episodes of Sugar season 2 come out on Apple TV?

Episode 1: Out now

Episode 2: Out now

Episode 3: July 3

Episode 4: July 10

Episode 5: July 17

Episode 6: July 24

Episode 7: July 31

Episode 8: August 7

As AI increasingly underpins competitive advantage, UK organizations face mounting pressure to build a workforce capable of using these technologies effectively and confidently.

Universities are central to this talent pipeline. However, many employers see a growing disconnect between what students learn academically and the skills required in today’s workplace.

UK job postings mentioning AI skills are now 127% above pre‑pandemic levels, highlighting how quickly employer expectations are evolving.

To close this gap, particularly amid the ongoing AI skills shortage, higher education institutions need to place greater emphasis on practical, applied training.

That means ensuring students are not only familiar with AI tools, but capable of using them confidently, critically, and responsibly in real-world settings.

Core competencies such as prompt engineering, AI-enabled data analysis, and translating AI insights into business outcomes are essential.

Without these skills, graduates risk entering the workforce underprepared.

Employer expectations are rising faster than graduate readiness

The standard for what constitutes an ‘AI-ready' employee is increasing. As AI shifts from experimental to embedded in everyday workflows, organizations expect new hires to use these tools effectively and with minimal onboarding.

At the same time, many employers lack the internal capacity to build these capabilities themselves. A significant proportion report limited hands-on AI use across their workforce, and relatively few have invested in structured training programs. As a result, businesses are increasingly looking to early-career talent to help close this gap.

However, many graduates still enter the workplace without meaningful exposure to AI in a professional context or an understanding of how it informs decision-making. Without stronger integration of practical AI experience into higher education, the gap between employer expectations and graduate readiness is likely to widen.

Equipping educators is critical to building AI-ready talent

Universities are on the front line when it comes to preparing students for the responsible use of AI, both during their studies and beyond. But this depends on educators themselves feeling confident in how these tools work in practice.

This includes understanding which tools are appropriate for different use cases, how to incorporate them into learning in a way that builds critical thinking rather than shortcuts, and how to demonstrate responsible, real-world usage. Yet many educators still lack confidence in this area, particularly when it comes to applying AI in daily teaching or administrative tasks.

The challenge is that when educators are not fully comfortable with AI, it becomes harder to equip students with the practical skills they need. To address this, institutions need to move beyond basic awareness and invest in meaningful professional development.

Educators should be supported to understand not just how to use AI, but where it adds value, where it falls short, and how to evaluate its outputs critically. With this foundation, they can then introduce low-risk, practical opportunities for students to engage with AI. For example, using it to break down complex concepts while strengthening independent reasoning.

Embedding AI throughout the student journey

Despite AI becoming increasingly prevalent in the workplace, many students still remain hesitant to use it during their studies. This is often due to uncertainty around what is permitted. Clear and practical guidance from universities is essential to remove this ambiguity, reduce anxiety, and support responsible adoption.

Once expectations are clearly defined, institutions can create learning environments that help students understand not only how to use AI, but when and why. Greater transparency fosters confidence and builds the kind of ethical judgement that employers increasingly value.

In practice, this means modelling responsible use of AI while encouraging reflection and critical thinking. Assessment methods may also need to evolve by shifting focus from the final output to the full process of learning, including research, drafting and iteration.

Regular feedback and check-ins also play an important role. Tools that provide insight into how work develops over time can help educators offer more targeted guidance and create space for open conversations around AI use. Over time, this approach helps students build transferable skills, such as evaluating their own work, applying sound judgement, and clearly articulating the reasoning behind their decisions.

Final thought

The gap between what universities teach and what employers expect, particularly around AI, continues to grow. But with clear frameworks, better-supported educators, and a more deliberate integration of AI across curricula, there is a clear opportunity to realign education with workplace needs.

By investing in AI capability at every level (from faculty development to student experience), universities can ensure graduates leave with more than theoretical knowledge. Instead, they enter the workforce equipped to use AI with confidence. In doing so, institutions play a vital role in strengthening the talent pipeline that organizations increasingly depend on.

We list the best recruitment platforms.

This article was produced as part of TechRadar Pro Perspectives, our channel to feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today.

The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/pro/perspectives-how-to-submit