U.S. stocks rallied to the edge of their all-time high after easing oil prices helped calm Wall Street’s worries that inflation could get even worse. The S&P 500 jumped 1.5% Monday and is just 0.1% below its record set earlier this summer. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.3% to an all-time high, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 2.1%. Brent crude's price fell 4.7% after President Donald Trump said he would hold off on ordering new strikes against Iran. That helped Treasury yields to fall in the bond market. Stocks of airlines and other companies with big fuel bills rallied.
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Hiring for entry-level software developers has slowed, and college enrollment in computer science is declining. However, interest in artificial intelligence is growing among students from non-tech majors. Schools like VCU are offering AI minors, and universities like Purdue and Harvard are incorporating AI into their curriculum. Northwestern University is expanding AI courses for noncomputer science majors. Colleges are responding to changes in student demand. But they also recognize that new graduates — regardless of their field — are facing questions about their AI skills from potential employers.
U.S. stocks rose to the finish of a wild July as Amazon leaped, Apple sank and rising oil prices worsened worries about inflation. The S&P 500 climbed 0.7% Friday after veering between gains and losses through the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite jumped 1%. Amazon soared after delivering a stronger profit for the spring than analysts expected, suggesting its big AI investments may be paying off. Apple dropped after giving a lackluster forecast for upcoming revenue growth. Treasury yields climbed as worries built in the bond market about inflation potentially remaining high.
Anthropic says its AI models hacked into three organizations during testing. This comes just days after OpenAI said its AI models went rogue and hacked into another company. Anthropic, based in San Francisco, posted on its website that it discovered the incidents after reviewing over 141,000 evaluation runs. The company says it launched the large-scale cybersecurity review in response to the OpenAI incident. The models involved were Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Mythos 5 and an internal research test model. Anthropic says it reached out to the affected organizations, with two confirming they were unaware of the activity beforehand. The incidents highlight the vulnerabilities in AI security and controls, and raise questions over how AI can used safely.
South Korea’s Kospi jumps nearly 18%, its largest ever single-day gain, as AI-related stocks rebound from heavy losses.
AP Top Story Wire
The U.S. Department of Energy is harnessing the artificial intelligence boom in its bid to convert another Cold War-era uranium enrichment site. It says it says a $100 billion data center complex will include its own new natural gas and battery storage power plant in Kentucky. Investment firm Brookfield Asset Management was selected by the department to develop and operate the data center project at the government-owned Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The department announced a similar project at its Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio. Both are undergoing extensive cleanup after decades of fueling the nation’s nuclear weapons and power plants. Florida-based NextEra Energy will build and own the power plant.
A monster day for Microsoft following signals that its big spending on AI is translating into profits led a powerful rebound on Wall Street, while AI stocks regained some of their sharp recent losses. The S&P 500 rallied 1.7% Thursday and more than recovered its drop from the prior day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.2%, and the Nasdaq composite jumped 2.8%. Microsoft delivered a bigger profit than analysts expected, which helped offset Meta Platforms's drop after it raised its forecast for AI investments. Longer-term Treasury yields held relatively steady a day after soaring on worries about inflation. Oil prices eased.
EU lays out $11.4 billion for 7 AI gigafactories as it aims to catch up with US and China.
Oil prices got back to jumping, while sinking technology stocks dragged Wall Street lower amid uncertainty about what the Federal Reserve will do to get high inflation under control. The S&P 500 fell 1.5% Wednesday after briefly erasing all of an earlier drop of 1.2%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 2.2%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 1.7%. The price of Brent oil leaped back above $88 per barrel to add further pressure on inflation. The Fed pledged again to get inflation back down to 2%, but it offered few clues on how it would do so after holding interest rates steady.
A school district in a rural corner of upstate New York is hitting pause on plans to deploy an AI-powered, humanoid robot in the classroom. Salamanca City Central School District had purchased the female-looking robot to enhance the education of high school students studying robotics and technology fields starting this fall. But state education officials and local residents raised concerns about how students' personal information would be used and what data privacy and security protections would be in place. Unionized teachers also criticized the robot maker’s ties to a company that produces hyper realistic sex robots.