Blake Lawit, who heads global affairs and legal matters for LinkedIn, the professional networking platform owned by Microsoft, confirmed during an interview at this week’s Semafor World Economy summit that the company’s data reveals a hiring decrease of approximately 20% since 2022.

Nevertheless, he dismissed the notion that AI was responsible for this trend.

“At LinkedIn… we possess an economic graph comprising over a billion members. We have data on companies, jobs, skills. It offers an incredible real-time insight into the labor market. We’ve investigated — as everyone is eager to understand: Is AI currently affecting jobs? Our findings indicate that, honestly, we haven’t observed any impact,” he stated during the discussion.

Instead, the executive indicated that the drop in hiring is more directly correlated with increasing interest rates.

“We have yet to witness the type of effects one might anticipate in sectors typically associated with AI… such as customer service, administrative roles, or marketing — these are the areas where, if AI were having an impact, it would show up,” Lawit elaborated.

“Indeed, hiring has decreased, but it’s not down significantly more,” he remarked.

Lawit also highlighted that LinkedIn’s data does not show that the drop in hiring for college-aged individuals entering the job market is “down more,” especially in comparison to those who are in the middle of or further along in their careers.

Nonetheless, he did not dismiss the possibility of future changes.

“That doesn’t imply it won’t occur down the line, but for now, it hasn’t.”

On this subject, Lawit issued a cautionary note. He pointed out that in recent years, the skills required for the average job have evolved by 25%. With the growth of AI, LinkedIn predicts this number will reach 70% by 2030.

“So, even if you’re not switching jobs, your current job is evolving,” he stated.

The Energy Information Agency (EIA) informed two U.S. Senators of its intention to mandate data centers to reveal information regarding their energy consumption, as reported by Wired.

This move follows a request made a month prior by Senators Josh Hawley and Elizabeth Warren, who urged the EIA to collect data on data centers. The initiative aims to prompt the agency to monitor an industry that is increasingly taxing energy resources.

According to Wired, the nationwide assessment will be compulsory. The agency has yet to announce when it will roll out the new survey instrument.

In March, the EIA revealed plans for a pilot survey involving 196 companies across Texas, Washington state, and the Washington, D.C.-Northern Virginia metropolitan area, and in April, it indicated the launch of an additional survey in three other states. EIA head Tristan Abbey anticipates the completion of the two pilot surveys by September, after which development of the obligatory survey for data centers across the country will commence.

Since its inception in 2021, Gizmo, an AI-driven learning platform that converts students’ notes into engaging study resources, has garnered over 13 million users worldwide across more than 120 nations. This marks a substantial increase from the 300,000 users reported when TechCrunch last featured it in 2023. 

As user engagement rises, so does interest from investors. The company announced on Tuesday that it has successfully obtained $22 million in Series A financing.

The investment will be allocated towards enhancing Gizmo’s engineering and AI teams, along with expanding its footprint in the U.S. college sector. The firm, which had merely seven staff members before the funding round, intends to increase its workforce to approximately 30, as stated by CEO Petros Christodoulou to TechCrunch.

The company’s progress aligns with a time of changing student behaviors. Academic results in the U.S. have reached an all-time low, as indicated by the 2025 National Assessment of Educational Progress. Prior studies have identified excessive screen time and shorter attention spans as contributing issues.

Moreover, as many youthful learners gravitate towards platforms like TikTok and YouTube, the primary challenge for edtech startups is maintaining user engagement. Gizmo is wagering that incorporating game elements into learning could be the answer. 

Targeting teenagers and young adults, Gizmo believes its allure comes from the integration of game mechanics to boost user interaction. Elements like leaderboards, streaks, limited daily attempts for incorrect answers, and the option to challenge peers are designed to promote repeat visits. 

Other micro-learning platforms have also risen in prominence recently, such as Anki, Quizlet, and Nibble, along with newer competitors like Yuno and Knowt, which have all sought to channel screen-time habits into constructive learning. Nonetheless, for a young educational app like Gizmo to attract such significant interest in just a few years is remarkable. For perspective, Yuno claims 1 million app downloads, while Knowt boasts over 7 million users. 

The Series A funding round was spearheaded by Shine Capital, with involvement from Ada Ventures, Seek Investments, GSV, and NFX, which had previously led Gizmo’s $3.5 million seed funding round.

Dozens of plug-ins for the widely used open source web blogging software WordPress are now offline after a backdoor was discovered in them, used to push malicious code to any website that relied on the plug-ins. The backdoor was discovered after a new corporate owner bought these plug-ins.

Anchor Hosting founder Austin Ginder sounded the alarm in a blog post last week describing a supply chain attack on a WordPress plug-in maker called Essential Plugin. Ginder said someone last year bought Essential Plugin and the backdoor was soon added to the plug-ins’ source code. The backdoor sat dormant until earlier this month when it activated and began distributing malicious code to any website with the plug-ins installed.

Essential Plugin says on its website that it has over 400,000 plug-in installs and more than 15,000 customers. WordPress’ plug-in install page says the affected plug-ins are in over 20,000 active WordPress installations.

Plug-ins allow owners of WordPress-based websites to extend the site’s functionality, but in doing so grant the plug-ins access to their installations, which can open these websites to malicious extensions and potential compromise. But Ginder warned that WordPress users are not notified of any plug-ins’ change in ownership, exposing users to potential takeover attacks by their new owners.

According to Ginder, this is the second hijack of a WordPress plug-in discovered in as many weeks. Security researchers have long warned of the risks of malicious actors buying software and changing its code in order to compromise a large number of computers around the world.

While the plug-ins have been removed from WordPress’ directory and now list their closure as “permanent,” Ginder warned that WordPress owners should check if they still have one of the malicious plug-ins installed and remove it. Ginder has a list of the affected plug-ins in the blog post.

Representatives for Essential Plug-in did not respond to a request for comment.