Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Just a week ago — on January 20, 2025 — Chinese AI startup DeepSeek unleashed a new, open-source AI model called R1 that might have initially been mistaken for one of the ever-growing masses of nearly interchangeable rivals that have sprung up since OpenAI debuted ChatGPT (powered by its own GPT-3.5 model, initially) more than two years ago. But that quickly proved unfounded, as DeepSeek’s mobile app has in that short time rocketed up the charts of the Apple App Store in the U.S. to dethrone ChatGPT for the number one spot and caused a massive market correction as investors dumped stock in formerly hot computer chip makers such as Nvidia, whose graphics processing units (GPUs) have been in high demand for use in massive superclusters to train new AI models and serve them up to customers on an ongoing basis (a modality known as “inference.”) Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, echoing sentiments of other tech workers, wrote on the social network X last night: “Deepseek R1 is AI’s Sputnik moment,” comparing it to the pivotal October 1957 launch of the first artificial satellite in history, Sputnik 1, by the Soviet Union, which sparked the “space race” between that country and the U.S. to dominate space travel. Sputnik’s launch galvanized the U.S. to invest heavily in research and development of spacecraft and rocketry. While it’s not a perfect analogy — heavy investment was not needed to create DeepSeek-R1, quite the contrary (more on this below) — it does seem to signify a major turning point in the global AI marketplace, as for the first time, an AI product from China has become the most popular in the world. But before we jump on the DeepSeek hype train, let’s take a step back and examine the reality. As someone who has extensively used OpenAI’s ChatGPT — on both web and mobile platforms — and followed AI advancements closely, I believe that while DeepSeek-R1’s achievements are noteworthy, it’s not time to dismiss ChatGPT or U.S. AI investments just yet. And please note, I am not being paid by OpenAI to say this — I’ve never taken money from the company and don’t plan on it. What DeepSeek-R1 does well DeepSeek-R1 is part of a new generation of large “reasoning” models that do more than answer user queries: They reflect on their own analysis while they are producing a response, attempting to catch errors before serving them to the user. And DeepSeek-R1 matches or surpasses OpenAI’s own reasoning model, o1, released in September 2024 initially only for ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscription users, in several areas. For instance, on the MATH-500 benchmark, which assesses high-school-level mathematical problem-solving, DeepSeek-R1 achieved a 97.3% accuracy rate, slightly outperforming OpenAI o1’s 96.4%. In terms of coding capabilities, DeepSeek-R1 scored 49.2% on the SWE-bench Verified benchmark, edging out OpenAI o1’s 48.9%. Moreover, financially, DeepSeek-R1 offers substantial cost savings. The model was developed with an investment of under $6 million, a fraction of the expenditure — estimated to be multiple billions —reportedly associated with training models like OpenAI’s o1. DeepSeek was essentially forced to become more efficient with scarce and older GPUs thanks to a U.S. export restriction on the tech’s sales to China. Additionally, DeepSeek provides API access at $0.14 per million tokens, significantly undercutting OpenAI’s rate of $7.50 per million tokens. DeepSeek-R1’s massive efficiency gain, cost savings and equivalent performance to the top U.S. AI model have caused Silicon Valley and the wider business community to freak out over what appears to be a complete upending of the AI market, geopolitics, and known economics of AI model training. While DeepSeek’s gains are revolutionary, the pendulum is swinging too far toward it right now There’s no denying that DeepSeek-R1’s cost-effectiveness is a significant achievement. But let’s not forget that DeepSeek itself owes much of its success to U.S. AI innovations, going back to the initial 2017 transformer architecture developed by Google AI researchers (which started the whole LLM craze). DeepSeek-R1 was trained on synthetic data questions and answers and specifically, according to the paper released by its researchers, on the supervised fine-tuned “dataset of DeepSeek-V3,” the company’s previous (non-reasoning) model, which was found to have many indicators of being generated with OpenAI’s GPT-4o model itself! It seems pretty clear-cut to say that without GPT-4o to provide this data, and without OpenAI’s own release of the first commercial reasoning model o1 back in September 2024, which created the category, DeepSeek-R1 would almost certainly not exist. Furthermore, OpenAI’s success required vast amounts of GPU resources, paving the way for breakthroughs that DeepSeek has undoubtedly benefited from. The current investor panic about U.S. chip and AI companies feels premature and overblown. ChatGPT’s vision and image generation capabilities are still hugely important and valuable in workplace and personal settings — DeepSeek-R1 doesn’t have any yet While DeepSeek-R1 has impressed with its visible “chain of thought” reasoning — a kind of stream of consciousness wherein the model displays text as it analyzes the user’s prompt and seeks to answer it — and efficiency in text- and math-based workflows, it lacks several features that make ChatGPT a more robust and versatile tool today. No image generation or vision capabilities The official DeepSeek-R1 website and mobile app do let users upload photos and file attachments. But, they can only extract text from them using optical character recognition (OCR), one of the earliest computing technologies (dating back to 1959). This pales in comparison to ChatGPT’s vision capabilities. A user can upload images without any text whatsoever and have ChatGPT analyze the image, describe it, or provide further information based on what it sees and the user’s text prompts. ChatGPT allows users to upload photos and can analyze visual material and provide detailed insights or actionable advice. For example, when I needed guidance on repairing my bike or maintaining my air conditioning unit, ChatGPT’s ability to process images

B2B companies are delivering personalized experiences to buyers who are deciding whether to make a purchase. But what happens when those buyers sign a contract and finally become customers? You’d think that those companies would personalize postsale customer engagement in equal, if not greater, measure. After all, 61% of B2B revenue comes from existing customers through renewals and expansion. And certainly, customers expect personalized experiences. You’d think … but research from Forrester’s State Of Digital In B2B Marketing, 2023, survey showed that, while 92% of companies use personalization in marketing, only 54% use personalization in customer engagement. Our new report, Personalization Should Pervade The Entire Customer Lifecycle, Not Just The Buying Journey, explains why this is the case and, more importantly, what to do. Start With A Real Plan For Customer Retention And Expansion If you’re ready to improve personalization for your customer base, here’s where to start: Give expansion plans the attention they deserve. B2B companies should have an ideal revenue mix of new business, renewals or repurchases, and expansion through cross-sell and upsell. This mix will differ by strategy, maturity, market, and a host of other variables. If the demand strategy for new logos is crisp and clear while the expansion plan starts and ends with “We need to upsell more,” it’s time to get marketing, sales, customer success, and product aligned on real strategies to help customers attain value and drive customer retention and growth. This clarity helps build the case for more focus, including better personalization, for customers’ postsale experience. Face the need for data unification. Data from digital experience platforms, CRMs, marketing automation platforms, customer success platforms, support platforms, learning management systems, online communities, conversation automation solutions, and other sources must be unified and available. Personalization relies on the ability to gather insights and make them actionable, and those insights arise from a coherent dataset. Pare down technology silos. There’s a reason why vendors of purpose-built technology for customer success platforms and communities are integrating lifecycle management, customer success management, and community experiences while using terms such as “hub” and “cross-channel.” When technology is integrated and the drivers of various parts of the postsale journey work together, everyone reaps the benefits: better customer experience, customer retention, expansion, and the creation of advocates who want to tell others what they’ve accomplished. Technology silos make a cohesive approach more difficult. Personalization can take many forms, including delivering relevant, customized content; driving segmentation; and drawing on persona, role, and behavioral information, all to create great customer interactions. Contact us to take our personalization maturity assessment and pick your next steps in determining a strategy that’s right for your company and for your customers. source

Sarah Boyce has followed her boss from the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office to the steps of the governor’s mansion as his new general counsel, capping off more than four years of high-profile constitutional challenges that saw her arguing before the nation’s highest court as well as multistate enforcement actions against industry giants like Google and TikTok. source

Spanish tech star TravelPerk has raised a whopping $200mn and sealed the acquisition of expenses platform Yokoy. The investment values TravelPerk at $2.7bn — almost double last year’s $1.4bn valuation. The business travel giant said the funds would fuel further product development and expansion into the US. European VC firm Atomico led the Series E investment. Alongside the cash injection, TravelPerk announced the purchase of Yokoy, a Swiss startup that’s become a market leader in expense management. TravelPerk will now integrate Yokoy into one automated platform for travel and expenses. “Customers don’t have to compromise anymore,” said JC Taunay-Bucalo, TravelPerk’s president and COO. “Now, they can have the best travel management product built on the world’s largest inventory, and the expense management product that works best for their business, combined for the best-integrated experience there is.” Webinar: Nurturing Scaleup Success Join us on 18 February for a discussion on the vital role of ecosystems in nurturing startups and scaleups and fostering a dynamic entrepreneurial landscape. The announcements come amid renewed hopes for the travel industry. Global tourism rebounded to pre-COVID-19 levels in 2024, while business travel was tracking to surpass the peak it hit before the pandemic. Funding is now flowing back into travel tech startups. Last year, they enjoyed a record-breaking year of investments.   The news also brings together two members of TNW’s extended family. TravelPerk is an alumni of TNW’s TECH5 — a competition for European scaleups. The contest returns to TNW Conference on June 19 and 20. Applications are open until February 28. Yokoy, meanwhile, is a member of TNW’s community of fast-growing tech companies. In 2022, the startup opened a new European base in TNW City, Amsterdam. Announcing the move, Yokoy pointed to the attractions of the local fintech scene. “Our move into the market is not about just setting up a satellite sales office in a new location — we see Amsterdam as a crucial hub for growing our European operations,” Lars Mangelsdorf, the company’s co-founder and chief customer officer, said at the time. “The Dutch market is advanced when it comes to fintech adoption, and it felt like a natural next move to bring our spend management solution to businesses in the region.” source

By Christine DeRosa ( January 24, 2025, 3:46 PM EST) — A veteran international arbitration pro has jumped from Boies Schiller Flexner LLP to Baker Botts LLP in Texas…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

Across the 36 countries surveyed, people’s views on the importance of religion to national identity vary widely. Large shares in middle-income countries say being a member of the historically predominant religion in their country is very important to truly sharing the national identity – for example, to being truly Filipino or truly Nigerian. In high-income countries, though, many instead say religion is not at all important to national identity. We asked people in 36 countries whether it’s important to be a member of a particular religion in order to “truly” share the national identity. In each country, we selected the country’s historically predominant religion(s). For example, in the United States, where Christianity has long been the majority religion, we asked about the importance of being a Christian to being truly American. And in Thailand, where the vast majority of the population is Buddhist, we asked about the importance of being a Buddhist to being truly Thai. In Japan, Nigeria and South Korea, we asked all respondents separately about two religions. In Japan, we asked about both Buddhism and Shinto. A significant portion of the population there identifies as Buddhist, yet Shinto has long been tied to national identity, and a quarter of Japanese adults say they feel a personal connection to the Shinto way of life. In Nigeria, large shares of the population identify as either Christian or Muslim, so we asked about both religions separately. In South Korea, because sizable shares identify as either Christian or Buddhist, we asked about both religions. Here is a list of the religions asked in each country: Religion Country Christianity United States, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, UK, Australia, Philippines, South Korea, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru Islam Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Turkey, Tunisia Buddhism Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand Hinduism India Judaism Israel Shinto Japan The importance of religion to a sense of national belonging varies within countries as well. People who identify with the historically predominant religion in their country are more likely than those who don’t to say that being a member of that religion is very important to national identity. People who pray daily are more likely than those who pray less frequently to say that belonging to the predominant religion is very important to sharing the national identity. Older adults are more likely than younger people to view religion as a central part of national identity. People on the ideological right tend to be more likely than those on the left to say being a follower of their country’s historically predominant religion is very important to being truly part of the nation. How important is religion to national belonging? The importance of religion to national identity varies widely across the 36 countries surveyed. As many as 86% in Tunisia say being a Muslim is very important to Tunisian identity, while as few as 3% of Swedes say the same about being a Christian in Sweden. Views vary somewhat when comparing high- and middle-income countries. Sizable majorities in many middle-income countries – including around three-quarters or more in Indonesia, the Philippines and Tunisia – consider being part of their country’s historically predominant religion very important for truly sharing the national identity. And in every middle-income country surveyed, roughly a quarter or more say this. In high-income countries, much smaller shares emphasize religion as an aspect of national identity. Israel stands out as the only high-income country where at least a third say following the predominant religion – Judaism, in this case – is a very important element of national identity. In other high-income countries, fewer than a quarter strongly agree. And in many high-income countries, roughly half or more say that being a member of the historically predominant religion is not at all important to being a true member of the nation. Of the countries where we asked about the importance of Christianity to national identity, the Philippines stands out: Nearly three-quarters say being a Christian is very important for being truly Filipino. Around two-thirds of Kenyans say the same for being truly Kenyan. In contrast, sizable majorities in Spain (71%) and Sweden (69%) say that being a Christian is not at all important for national belonging. Views are also mixed across countries where we asked about the importance Buddhism. In Thailand (61%) and Sri Lanka (56%), majorities say being a Buddhist is very important for being truly Thai and Sri Lankan. But in South Korea, only 4% take a similar position, and roughly half say that being a Buddhist is not at all important to being truly South Korean. (In South Korea, we also asked about Christianity; 14% of adults say that being a Christian is very important to being truly South Korean.) And in countries where we asked about the importance of Islam, roughly half or more say being a Muslim is a very important piece of national identity. Among Indonesian adults, eight-in-ten say being a Muslim is very important to being truly Indonesian. In India, where we asked about the importance Hinduism, 64% say being a Hindu is very important to being truly Indian. Countries with multiple historically predominant religions In Japan, Nigeria and South Korea, we asked about more than one historically predominant religion: Buddhism and Shinto in Japan, Christianity and Islam in Nigeria, and Christianity and Buddhism in South Korea. In all three countries, there are relatively small differences in the shares who say being a member of either religion is very important to national identity. In Japan and South Korea, the shares emphasizing the importance of religion are relatively small, regardless of the religion in question. For example, in Japan, 6% say that being a Buddhist is very important to being truly Japanese, while 5% say the same of being a Shinto. In Nigeria, though, substantial shares say that being a Christian (49%) is very important to being truly Nigerian and 48% say being a Muslim is very important

Operating systems and applications can always be reinstalled, but your data is unique, making it the most important thing on your computer or network. “Organizations must now maintain robust privacy measures, including clear privacy policies, opt-out processes, and compliance with consumer protection laws, to mitigate financial and reputational risks,” said IEEE Senior Member Kayne McGladrey in an email to TechRepublic. Here are 10 ways you can protect that data from loss and unauthorized access. 1. Protect everything with passwords Password protection is the first line of defense against unauthorized access to your data; it also helps boost multilayer security for your systems by allowing you to combine password protection with other security measures. Some businesses are required to use password protection as part of compliance regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation. To password protect your business data, implement a strict password policy to ensure employees create complex passwords. Additionally, you should have them update their passwords regularly. 2. Back up regularly Backing up your data early and regularly is an important component of a data loss prevention strategy. Data loss can happen due to cyberattacks, natural disasters, human error, and other events. If you back up your data, you can restore it after losing data. While manual backup does work, you should also consider data backup solutions that automatically back up data based on a schedule you can configure. More sophisticated backup solutions allow you to choose the data to back up. 3. Keep business software up to date Keep your business software up to date to ensure it has the latest security patches, bug fixes, and other updates to protect against new and existing cybersecurity threats. Most cyberattacks exploit newly found security vulnerabilities, so be vigilant in keeping your business software updated to the latest version. SEE: Threat actors jailbreak generative AI to use it to craft phishing emails, ignoring safeguards. 4. Use a VPN Virtual private networks are great for keeping your business data safe. A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel for your data, hiding it from hackers and other malicious actors; it also helps minimize your online footprint. A VPN is a must for employees connecting to business networks or accessing sensitive files from their homes or while traveling. While you can use a free VPN service, ideally, you should invest invest in a paid VPN subscription from a reputable provider. Paid VPN versions offer more reliable connections, dedicated servers, and other premium features. Must-read security coverage 5. Install antivirus software Modern antivirus software helps protect data from ransomware, spyware, Trojan horses, browser hijackers, and other cyber threats. While an antivirus software license for a business comes at a cost, it’s a relatively small price to pay to keep your data safe. If you’re using Windows 10 or higher, you already have antivirus software installed. Mac computers have a relatively closed ecosystem and built-in malware protection, but you can also purchase extra antivirus defenses separately. In the era of generative AI, antivirus protection is even more critical. Threat actors could use AI models in attacks, or compromised data could poison the model if it is used for training. “Once it’s malicious content, the AI agent that you’re trying to train is going to learn using malicious content as well,” said Ravi Srinivasan, chief executive officer of data protection company Votiro, in an email to TechRepublic. 6. Use multifactor authentication A reliable way to protect your data is to use multi-factor authentication on devices connected to the business network. With MFA, users enter a password and a one-time passcode sent to another device to gain access. This way, the user needs at least two devices, or “factors,” to log into the system. MFA acts as an additional layer of security for your data and is becoming a vital part of cybersecurity protocols for businesses. Without using MFA, your data remains vulnerable to unauthorized access due to lost devices or stolen credentials. “Even if an organization goes passwordless,” said Srinivasan, “you’re still going to have, external users, external third-party contractors, and service providers that might still be accessing your services using passwords as a default.” Therefore, he said, tech leaders should think of MFA as part of the solution to an access problem. Whatever way your organization uses to secure its accounts, having access and identity control of some kind in place is essential. SEE: Here’s everything IT leaders need to know about multifactor authentication. 7. Make use of a public key infrastructure A public key infrastructure is a system for managing public/private key pairs and digital certificates. Because keys and certificates are issued by a trusted third party (i.e. a certification authority, either an internal one installed on a certificate server on your network or a public one), certificate-based security is stronger. You can protect the data you want to share with someone else by encrypting it with the public key of its intended recipient, which is available to anyone. The only person who can decrypt it is the holder of the private key that corresponds to that public key. 8. Hide data with steganography You can use a steganography program to hide data inside other data. For example, you could hide a text message within a .JPG graphics file or an .MP3 music file, or even inside another text file; however, the latter is difficult because text files don’t contain much redundant data which can be replaced with the hidden message. Steganography doesn’t encrypt the message, so it’s often used with encryption software. The data is encrypted first and then hidden inside another file with the steganography software. Some steganographic techniques require the exchange of a secret key. Others use public and private key cryptography. A popular example of steganography software is StegoMagic, a freeware download that will encrypt messages and hide them in .TXT, .WAV, or .BMP files. Hiding data may be particularly important if “The organization us[es] real personal data (from customers, patients, employees, and anyone else) for testing and/or training AI

By Jared Foretek ( January 28, 2025, 7:03 PM EST) — Prison telephone companies are asking the First Circuit to either move their challenge to new Federal Communications Commission prison payphone rate caps to the conservative Fifth Circuit or toss the limits themselves, saying the caps violate a congressional provision that the companies be “fairly compensated” for service in detention facilities…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

After completing The Forrester Wave™: Knowledge Management Solutions, Q4 2024, I wanted to understand where the market was with the adoption of generative AI in knowledge management (KM) workflows. Vendors use genAI to streamline and accelerate different parts of the agile KM process. While there have been some doubts from reference customers about the early results, many vendors are pouring money into genAI to tackle the repetitive tasks that often bog down KM practices. That said, IT leaders have a bit of work ahead of them to address challenges related to knowledge quality and difficulties in navigating the necessary cultural shifts if they want to capitalize on AI’s full potential in agile KM. The State Of Your Captured Knowledge Matters The success of genAI in KM is contingent on the quality of the captured knowledge. ​High-quality, structured organizational knowledge is essential for accurate and reliable AI outputs. IT leaders must emphasize the need for a supportive culture, well-defined roles and responsibilities, and consistent KM practices to capture the necessary information to help improve decision-making, drive innovation, and enhance workforce agility. Known problems with knowledge include: Quality — inaccurate or deliberately false information Findability — scattered across different platforms, databases, or departments Relevance — no longer up to date ​​​Retention — loss of key staff and poor KM practices Sharing — silos and permissions deny access Six Ways That GenAI Increases Agility In Knowledge Workflows GenAI can significantly enhance agile KM practices by automating and improving various aspects of knowledge workflows.​ In my recently published report, Move Beyond Agile Knowledge Management With Generative AI, I separated the most common use cases for genAI into three categories: what is generally available today, what is still in pilot, and what is in development. These are the top six generally available use cases for genAI in agile KM workflows: Knowledge gaps and sentiment analysis Enterprise retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) search Improving knowledge with generated summaries and suggested improvements Applying a style guide and some data scrubbing Cocreation of knowledge with subject-matter expert (SME) via a generated first draft Understanding the context of questions from end users with conversational AI​   While new features may soon be available in your KM platform, reference customers should head into this new way of working with a bit of caution. Be ready to support the financial decisions with a solid ROI that illustrates improved productivity, and work closely with your vendor or service provider to get the system ready to support a production environment. Some vendors will help you clean up your knowledge stores before you implement a new solution to help generate a higher level of accuracy. A Change Of Perspective Is Required ​IT leaders need to address the cultural and managerial changes that are needed. To capitalize on genAI advancements, changes are required in our traditional working methods — meaning that our knowledge workers must embrace these changes as a new way of doing business: From static to dynamic. AI is revolutionizing knowledge capacity building by automating and enhancing knowledge practices. IT leaders must integrate knowledge creation, improvement, and sharing into core business processes. Capturing and updating knowledge needs to be everyone’s responsibility. From a single source of truth to a moment of truth. Instead of building a single source of truth, IT leaders should focus on making decisions at a moment of truth, accessing comprehensive information from multiple sources in real time. From capture to cocreation. IT leaders should shift from capturing knowledge from SMEs to cocreating knowledge with technology. ​AI acts as a cognitive partner, speeding up analysis and generating new insights. From finding to discovery. IT leaders should shift from finding information to discovering new ideas and innovations, enabling a creative state where AI suggests novel solutions and optimizes processes. From closed silos to open to everyone. IT leaders should mentor staff to move from closed knowledge-sharing silos to open knowledge accessible to everyone, improving valuable knowledge-sharing across teams. From the search for answers to the power of the next question. IT leaders must realize that knowledge is not just about searching for answers; knowledge empowers employees to ask the next question, develop critical thinking skills, and uncover more profound insights.   By embracing these shifts, organizations can leverage genAI to create a more dynamic, innovative, and collaborative KM ecosystem, ultimately enhancing decision-making, productivity, and business performance. Let’s Connect Have questions? That’s fantastic. Let’s connect and continue the conversation! Please reach out to me through social media or request a guidance session. Follow my blogs and research at Forrester.com. source