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Spain Moves To Reduce Legal Working Week To 37.5 Hours

by THEFUTURE.TEAM
February 6, 2025

Spanish ministers have agreed to cut the legal working week to 37.5 hours, maintaining current salaries, despite opposition from employers’ associations. The decree, led by Labour Minister Yolanda Díaz, aims to improve productivity and well-being.

The proposal still requires parliamentary approval, where the Socialist-led government faces challenges due to a lack of majority. Díaz’s party, Sumar, made the reduction a condition for supporting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s leadership.

The CEOs’ association CEOE has voiced concerns, claiming the reduction would raise costs and reduce competitiveness. Díaz and the government had been in talks with unions and employers, but discussions broke down in November. CEOE insists the change should be negotiated at the company level, not imposed by law.

Resistance also comes from Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo, who suggested delaying the change to allow businesses to adapt. While Spain’s strong economic performance and low unemployment provide a favorable context, the central bank has warned of potential inflationary impacts and reduced job creation.

The AI Agent Revolution: Can the Industry Handle the Compute Surge?

by THEFUTURE.TEAM
March 28, 2025

As AI agents evolve from simple chatbots into complex, autonomous assistants, the tech industry faces a new challenge: Is there enough computing power to support them? With AI agents poised to become integral in various industries, computational demands are rising rapidly.

A recent Barclays report forecasts that the AI industry can support between 1.5 billion and 22 billion AI agents, potentially revolutionizing white-collar work. However, the increase in AI’s capabilities comes at a cost. AI agents, unlike chatbots, generate significantly more tokens—up to 25 times more per query—requiring far greater computing power.

Tokens, the fundamental units of generative AI, represent fragmented parts of language to simplify processing. This increase in token generation is linked to reasoning models, like OpenAI’s o1 and DeepSeek’s R1, which break tasks into smaller, manageable chunks. As AI agents process more complex tasks, the tokens multiply, driving up the demand for AI chips and computational capacity.

Barclays analysts caution that while the current infrastructure can handle a significant volume of agents, the rise of these “super agents” might outpace available resources, requiring additional chips and servers to meet demand. OpenAI’s ChatGPT Pro, for example, generates around 9.4 million tokens annually per subscriber, highlighting just how computationally expensive these reasoning models can be.

In essence, the tech industry is at a critical juncture. While AI agents show immense potential, their expansion could strain the limits of current computing infrastructure. The question is, can the industry keep up with the demand?

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