Welcome to the July 2, 2025 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

Please note: In observance of the U.S. federal holiday Independence Day, TechNews will not be published on Friday, July 4. Publication will resume Monday, July 7.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• How Do You Teach Computer Science in the AI Era?
• Senate Strikes AI Provision from GOP Bill
• Amazon on the Cusp of Using More Robots Than Humans in Warehouses
• More Than 25% of U.K. Businesses Hit by Cyberattack in Last Year
• The AI Frenzy Is Escalating, Again
• Qantas Data Breach Exposes up to 6 Million Customer Profiles
• BCI Robotic Hand Control Reaches Finger-Level Milestone
• Google to Buy Fusion Power from MIT Spinoff
• Denmark’s Plan to Thwart Deepfakes
• Laptops, Bank Accounts Linked to North Korean Fake IT Workers Scheme Seized
• AI Screening Job Candidates Before Humans See Them
• Supreme Court Upholds Program Providing Internet Access to Rural Americans
• Purdue, Adobe Researchers Use AI to Cut Cloud Service Failures

How Do You Teach Computer Science in the AI Era?

Generative AI has "really shaken computer science education," according to Carnegie Mellon University's Thomas Cortina, prompting faculty at universities nationwide to rethink their computer science programs. This comes amid a tightening of the tech job market, particularly as more companies replace entry-level coders with AI. The Computing Research Association's (CRA) Mary Lou Maher (pictured) expects the focus of computer science education to shift from coding to computational thinking and AI literacy.
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Senate Strikes AI Provision from GOP Bill

The U.S. Senate voted 99-1 to eliminate a provision that would have deterred state-level regulation of AI from President Donald Trump's bill of spending cuts and tax breaks. Originally proposed as a 10-year ban on states doing anything to regulate AI, lawmakers later tied it to federal funding so that only states that backed off on AI regulations would be able to get subsidies for broadband Internet or AI infrastructure. The bill moves back to the House for reconciliation after being approved by the Senate on Tuesday.
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Amazon on the Cusp of Using More Robots Than Humans in Warehouses

Amazon said it has more than 1 million robots working in its warehouses, nearly on par with the number of human workers employed by the company. Amazon uses robots and automated systems to pick items off shelves, move goods around, and sort products. While some employees have been replaced by robots, Amazon Robotics' Yesh Dattatreya says the situation is creating new, higher-paying jobs as workers are trained as robot technicians.
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More Than 25% of U.K. Businesses Hit by Cyberattack in Last Year

A survey by the U.K.’s Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors found an increase in the share of U.K. businesses experiencing a cyberattack in the last year from 16% in 2024 to around 27%. Nearly three-quarters (73%) of respondents to the survey expect a cybersecurity incident to impact their operations in the next one to two years. Risk areas identified by the survey include building management systems, CCTV networks, Internet of Things devices, access control systems, and other operational technologies.
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The AI Frenzy Is Escalating, Again

AI spending is on the rise among big tech companies and venture capitalists, with Page One Ventures' Chris V. Nicholson noting, "Everyone is deeply afraid of being left behind." Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google plan to spend a combined $320 billion this year mainly on the construction of new datacenters. PitchBook reported $65 billion in U.S. investment in AI companies in the first quarter of 2025.
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Qantas Data Breach Exposes up to 6 Million Customer Profiles

Qantas is contacting customers after a cyberattack targeted its third-party customer service platform. The Australian airline on June 30 detected "unusual activity" on a platform used by its contact center to store the personal data of 6 million people. The attack came days after the FBI warned that the airline sector was a target of cybercriminal group Scattered Spider. U.S.-based Hawaiian Airlines and Canada's WestJet have both been impacted by similar cyberattacks in the past two weeks.
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BCI Robotic Hand Control Reaches Finger-Level Milestone

Carnegie Mellon University researchers developed a noninvasive electroencephalography (EEG)-based brain-computer interface (BCI) that can decode individual finger movement intentions in real time and achieve corresponding motions in the fingers of a robotic hand. Study participants demonstrated two- and three-finger control tasks, accomplished with the help of a deep learning decoding strategy and a network fine-tuning mechanism that allows for continuous decoding of noninvasive EEG signals.
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Google to Buy Fusion Power from MIT Spinoff

Google said it will buy fusion power through its first direct corporate power purchase agreement with Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) spinoff. Under the deal, Google will purchase 200 megawatts of power from the ARC project, which CFS is developing in Virginia, for an undisclosed amount. Google's Michael Terrell said, "There are some serious physics and engineering challenges that we still have to work through to make it commercially viable and scalable."
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Denmark’s Plan to Thwart Deepfakes

The Danish government wants to grant its citizens property rights over their likenesses and voices in a bid to battle deepfakes. Proposed legislation would give Danish citizens whose features were used to create a deepfake the right to ask platforms hosting that content to take it down. Said Danish Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt, “I think we should not accept a situation where human beings can be run through, if you would have it, a digital copy machine and misused for all sorts of purposes.”
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Laptops, Bank Accounts Linked to North Korean Fake IT Workers Scheme Seized

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) seized hundreds of financial accounts, fraudulent websites, and laptops connected to a scheme in which North Korean operatives infiltrated tech companies by posing as remote workers and sent money back to North Korea to support its weapons program. These agents also reportedly stole virtual currency and intellectual property from the companies they infiltrated. DOJ said about 100 U.S. companies unknowingly hired workers involved in the scheme.
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AI Screening Job Candidates Before Humans See Them

More companies are using AI-powered virtual recruiters to screen employment candidates through phone or video interviews. These virtual agents can ask candidates questions that range from basic to complex and can end an interview if a candidate does not meet the company's minimum requirements. Some virtual recruiters allow candidates to ask questions that they may not be able to answer; they also may score candidates based on employer-set criteria, though companies stress that human recruiters make the hiring decisions.
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Supreme Court Upholds Program Providing Internet Access to Rural Americans

On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-3 vote upheld the Universal Service Fund, which provides subsidized telephone and Internet services to low-income Americans and rural health care providers, schools, and libraries. The $8-billion fund managed by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had been challenged by nonprofit Consumers' Research, which argued that it operates as a tax and taxes can be levied only by Congress. Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority that Congressional delegation of the fund to the FCC did not violate the U.S. Constitution.
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Purdue, Adobe Researchers Use AI to Cut Cloud Service Failures

Purdue University and Adobe researchers leveraged AI to develop a method for quicker detection and diagnosis of failures in complex cloud-based systems. They developed an algorithm that uses causal inference to trace issues in cloud-based systems to their roots. The algorithm can handle instances in which the causal graph's structure is not fully known, as well as cases with single or multiple root causes.
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