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Many things remain uncertain about AIs future impact on our lives. One that isnt in doubt is that more and more of the worlds software will be written, at least in part, by software. Already, 25% of Googles code is generated by AI, CEO Sundar Pichai said last October. By 2028, projects research firm Gartner, 75% of enterprise developers will use AI tools in their work. This trend is reflected in programmers embrace of products such as GitHub Copilot and Cursor, which let them call on generative AI to fill in some of the specific code as they tackle a projectessentially a fancy form of autocomplete for software engineering. The next step beyond that is AI coding assistance thats more agenticcapable of handling at least certain tasks from start to finish without constant supervision. Thats what a San Francisco startup called Factory offers with its platform, which officially debuts today. Our mission, at a high level, is to bring autonomy to software engineering, says Factory CEO Matan Grinberg, who founded the company with CTO Eno Reyes. Its platform includes agentsFactory calls them Droidsthat automate tasks in the software development lifecycle, and in particular tasks that developers don’t want to dotesting, debugging, refactoring, migrations, all that ugly stuff, explains Grinberg. Factory aims to go beyond the code-autocomplete features offered by tools such as GitHub Copilot. Rather than replacing something like the GitHub Copilot, Factory aims to provide a new layer for software projects thats compatible with the processes and products a team already has in place. For those who use Copilot, it’s like, Okay, coolI brought this down from [Factory], says Grinberg. Now there’s some other things I want to do. I had a bit of an existential crisis Grinberg and Reyes were respectively 24 and 23 when they started Factory in 2023by all accounts, a whirlwind of an experience. It started when Grinberg, whod studied string theory at Princeton and was working on a PhD in physics at Berkeley, suddenly began questioning his trajectory in life. I realized that I had spent basically the last decade obsessed with physics, he says, and I was only doing it because it was hard, not because I actually loved it. Which is obviously a horrible reason to pursue a career path. So, I had a bit of an existential crisis. Grinberg found a new obsession in AI, a technology whose destiny had been permanently altered by the arrival of ChatGPT. He was particularly fascinated by program synthesis (later better known as code generation): the science of teaching software to write software. He became a regular at AI hackathons, including the one where he met Reyes, whod written his thesis on deep learning and worked on language models at Microsoft and Hugging Face. (The two had been at Princeton at the same time anddespite having overlapping circles of friends had somehow managed not to know each other.) At Hugging Face, I was working with Databricks, Bloomberg, Grammarlyeveryone wanted code gen, says Reyes. Hed already collaborated on an AI code generator for finance applications. Theres way more opportunity here, he remembers thinking. Factorys platform lets users select code and other data to incorporate into collections called Workflows. This is where a classic Silicon Valley element of serendipity kicked in. At almost the same moment Grinberg and Reyes connected, Grinberg had sent an unsolicited email to Shaun Maguire, a partner at venture capital titan Sequoia, seeking career advice. Its very rare that cold emails actually turn into something, says Maguire. But like Grinberg, Maguire had a background in high-energy physics theory. And when he learned that Grinberg had coauthored a paper with legendary physicist Juan Maldacena, the credential blew his socks off. In person, Maguire was even more impressed by Grinberg: I was shocked that not only does this guy like have the IQ to write a string theory paper with Juan Maldacena as an undergrad, but he also has charisma and sales ability and empathy. He immediately encouraged Grinberg to pivot from PhD student to startup foundera goal Grinberg now acknowledges hed already had in mind, though hed kept it to himself. A week later, Grinberg returned with the idea that became Factory. By then, the GitHub Copilot had shown that AI could produce lines of code usable in a production environment. But as the name Copilot indicates, it was doing so under the watchful eye of a human programmer. Grinberg was thinking ahead to AI that could perform some straightforward tasks more independentlyin other words, agentic AI, though nobody was bandying around the term at the time. His point was, Copilot is great, but soon we’re going to have junior developers in a box, remembers Maguire. And that’s what he wanted to work towards. Sequoia helped get Grinberg and Reyes on their way by leading Factorys $5 million seed round of funding. It followed up by leading a $15 million Series A round in 2024. Delegating away some tasks Grinberg emphasizes that Factory doesnt envision AI taking over coding in a sweeping fashion anytime soon. Instead, the exact nature of the human-computer collaboration will vary from area to area. Software developers of the future will be delegating away some tasks, he says. They will be pairing with AI on others. And they wil be more directly hands-on working on some things with suggestions from AI as they do it. In a demo, he showed me how the companys platform uses AI to let engineering teams create shareable, easily digestible collections of all the code and other data associated with a particular project. Known as Workflows, they dont just help humans keep tabs on whats where. Theyre also a starting point for the Droid agents, which can take on useful grunt work relating to the code encompassed by a Workflow. For example, many programmers use a system called Mermaid to create diagrams about works in progresssay, a chart documenting all the dependencies that various blocks of code might have on each other. Instead of personally writing the lines of JavaScript necessary to create a Mermaid diagram, a user might have a Droid do the job and then save the results as a code snippet for later use. Similarly, if a project has code that lacks commentsembedded explanations documenting what the software is doing and how it does ita Droid can add them. Among the software development tasks Factorys AI can assist with is one of the most basic of them all: debugging. Those are examples of tasks that many teams might happily offload to AI. But the whole point is that users can ask Droids to undertake assignments on the flysomething as spontaneous as Hey, can you generate me a customer usage dashboard? says Grinberg. Such a dashboard could draw on any relevant data the user added to the Workflow in question. And like everything Droids create, it would be reusable. Of course, theres nothing new about using dashboards to help wrangle complex projects. In the past, however, theyve been one-size-fits-all tools hard-coded by a platform provider. By using generative AI, Factory wants to pioneer a more fluid approach in which its customers can call on Droids to construct the functionality they want when they want it. Instead of being set in stone, says Reyes, a teams working environment can consist in part of LLM-generated, malleable pieces of content. That malleability includes the ability to choose the large language models that power Factorys AI: We support everything, basically, says Grinberg. Even freshly-minted, cutting-edge models are on the list, including xAIs Grok 3 (announced last week) and Anthropics Claude Sonnet 3.7 (announced on Monday). By riding atop all the major LLMs, Factory expects to get more powerful as they do, opening up scenarios where Droids grow competent at work thats presently beyond their skill set. Building for what’s going to be possible in a year or two is how we got here first, says Reyes. And we’re already building for what will be possible a year or two in the future. Which is not to say that Factory fully understands how its customers will use its platform. As with all things generative AI, nobody knows for sure what it can and cant do well until someone gives it a try. We just want a ton of people to see this new paradigm of interacting with software, says Grinberg. It’s just going to be so much fun to have all these people who have really strong opinions get their hands dirty.
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Whether its declaring that blindness prevents government employees from doing their jobs or suggesting that hiring workers with intellectual disabilities contributed to Federal Aviation Administration safety lapses, the Trump administration has repeatedly questioned whether people with disabilities belong in the workplace. This stance reflects widespread stigma and misconceptions about what people with disabilities can and do accomplish. Negative stereotypes and exclusionary practices persist despite the fact that people with disabilities are the largest minority group in the United States, representing nearly 30% of the population. Whether or not you identify as disabled, most people live or work in close proximity to others with a disability. For years I have researched how people with disabilities have been kept out of efforts to guarantee equal access for everybody, particularly in higher education. This exclusion is often due to unfounded beliefs about capacity, intellect, and merit, and the false premise that disability inclusion requires lowering standards. However, studies demonstrate that including people with disabilities is good for everyone, not just disabled people. Schools and workplaces are more collaborative and responsive when people with disabilities are included at all levels of the organization. In other words, disability inclusion isnt about charity; its about making organizations work better. Rolling back protections President Donald Trump issued executive orders the day he took office for a second time that aimed at ending government and private-sector efforts to make U.S. workplaces and schools more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. In addition to affecting LGBTQ+ communities and people of color, these measures could erode years of progress toward protecting the rights of people with disabilities to earn a living. Between 40 million and 80 million Americans identify as disabled. Even the higher end of this range underestimates the actual number of people with disabilities, because some individuals choose not to identify that way or even realize they qualify as such. That includes people with impairments from chemical and pesticide exposure, as well as many older people and those who are living with HIV and AIDS, to name some examples. Only 15% of people with disabilities are born with their impairment, so most individuals become disabled over their lifetime. Tracing historical precedents Blaming failures on people with disabilities and people of color echoes the harms embedded in eugenics, an attempt to scientifically prove genetic inferiority of disabled, LGBTQ+ Indigenous and Black people. Eugenics led to the institutionalization and forced sterilization of, and the coercive experimentation on, people with disabilities, immigrants and people of color across the U.S. Even the Supreme Court endorsed the concept in the early 20th century. These studies began to fade after World War II, but their legacy persists. Even today, forced sterilization continues to be lawful in U.S jurisdictions in 31 states and in Washington. Due to widespread activism and the advent of new legal protections, many states finally dismantled their eugenic policies in the late 1970s. But eugenics-era experiments provided foundations for contemporary medical research, standardized testing and segregated school placements. People with disabilities have far-reaching legal guarantees of civil rights and access today due to the Americans with Disabilities Act. The statute, which was enacted in 1990 and strengthened in 2008, provided protections in the workplace, educational settings, transportation and places of recreation and commerce, among others. It also guarded against negative perceptions of disability. For example, if an employer perceived someone as disabled and denied them consideration in the hiring process because of that, the candidate would be protected from discrimination under the ADAwhether or not they had a disability. While these advances are significant, many people with disabilities still do not have access to their basic civil rights. This is particularly true of Black people with disabilities, as they are disproportionately pushed out of school, disciplined more harshly, targeted for incarceration, and marginalized in disability representation and research. Gaining workplace accommodations Critics of inclusion efforts sometimes wrongly argue that employing people with disabilities is too costly due to the accommodations they may require. But the Job Accommodation Network in the Department of Labors Office of Disability Employment Policy found in 2023 that nearly 60% of these accommodations cost nothing. Whats more, many tax incentives are available to cover these costs. Disability civil rights law does not mandate hiring people who are not qualified or lowering standards to include the disabled. The law requires that candidates meet the essential functions of the job in order to be hired. According to a 2024 Labor Department report, the employment rate for working-age people with disabilities was 38% compared with 75% for nondisabled people. Though there are countless reasons for this disparity, many people with disabilities can and want to work, but employers dont give them the opportunity. Providing benefits for everyone Many accommodations designed for people with disabilities also benefit others. Captioning on videos and movies was originally meant to benefit the deaf community, but it also helps multilingual speakers and people who simply are trying to follow the dialogue. Similarly, visual or written instructions assist people with depression, Down syndrome or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, but they can also make tasks more accessible for everyone, along with breaking assignments into smaller components. Sensory break rooms benefit people with autism and post-traumatic stress disorder, while also providing a reprieve in a noisy work environment and minimizing distractions. Remote work options can make it easier for people with chronic illnesses to be employed, and they similarly benefit others who may have caregiving responsibilitieshelping attract and retain talented employees. Text-to-speech software provides people with cerebral palsy and nonspeaking individuals with options for communication, similar to options that many people already use on their phones. A large body of research demonstrates the broad benefits of making jobs and schools more accessible to people with disabilities, which is ultimately an advantage for everyone. Studies on diversity in educational and workplace settings also demonstrate positive outcomes. In a study of 10 public universities, researchers found that students who reported positive, informal interactions with diverse peers had higher scores on measures of more complex thinking, a concern for the public good and an interest in poverty issues, and were more likely to vote and develop strong leadership skills. In a national survey of human resources managers conducted in 2019, 92% of the respondents who were aware that one or more of their employees had a disability said those individuals performed the same or better than their peers who did not. Research published by the Harvard Business Review found many advantages to hiring people with disabilities. For one thing, people with disabilities can have unique insights that contribute to the workplace culture. The presence of employees with disabilities can make the environment of entire companies and organizations more collaborative. Earning a reputation for inclusiveness and social responsibility can improve customer relations and can give businesses an edge when they seek funding and recruit talented new employees. Ultimately, I believe its important to create conditions where anyone can thrive, including people with disabilities. Doing so benefits everyone. Lauren Shallish is associate professor of disability studies in education at Rutgers University – Newark This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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A new album called “Is This What We Want?” features a stellar list of more than 1,000 musiciansand the sound of silence.With contributions from artists including Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Cat Stevens, and Damon Albarn, the album was released Tuesday to protest proposed British changes to artificial intelligence laws that artists fear will erode their creative control.The U.K. government is consulting on whether to let tech firms use copyrighted material to help train AI models unless the creators explicitly opt out.Critics of the idea fear that will make it harder for artists to retain control of their work and will undermine Britain’s creative industries. Elton John and Paul McCartney are among those who have spoken out against the plan.The protest album features recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, to show what they fear will be the fate of creative venues if the plan goes through. The titles of the 12 tracks spell out: “The British government must not legalize music theft to benefit AI companies.”Profits will be donated to the musicians’ charity Help Musicians.“The government’s proposal would hand the life’s work of the country’s musicians to AI companies, for free, letting those companies exploit musicians’ work to outcompete them,” said composer and AI developer Ed Newton-Rex, who organized the album.“It is a plan that would not only be disastrous for musicians, but that is totally unnecessary,” Newton-Rex said. “The U.K. can be leaders in AI without throwing our world-leading creative industries under the bus.”Britain’s center-left Labour Party government says it wants to make the U.K. a world leader in AI. In December, it announced a consultation into how copyright law can “enable creators and right holders to exercise control over, and seek remuneration for, the use of their works for AI training” while also ensuring “AI developers have easy access to a broad range of high-quality creative content.” The consultation closes on Tuesday.Publishers, artists’ organizations and media companies, including the Associated Press, have banded together as the Creative Rights in AI Coalition to oppose weakening copyright protections.Several U.K. newspapers ran wraparounds over their front pages on Tuesday, criticizing the government consultation and saying: “Let’s protect the creative industriesit’s only fair.” Jill Lawless, Associated Press
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