While companies have rushed to adopt AI tools into their work processes, most of these projects haven’t made any impact as only 5% of AI pilots showed growth in revenue.

A new MIT study, titled ‘The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025,’ which surveyed 300 AI deployments and spoke to 350 employees, found that 95% of AI projects showed no returns on investment for the companies.

The failure was not because AI models did not work efficiently, but because they were harder to adapt with pre-existing workflows in a company.

According to a Fortune report, citing the study’s lead researcher, the 5% AI deployments that were successful were focused on solving a single problem and had worked on execution.

Companies are also dealing with a “learning gap” in their workforce although company executives blamed AI model’s performance.

The study also showed that more than half of GenAI budgets went to sales and marketing but the highest returns were seen in automating back-office processes like cutting external agency costs, and streamlining roles.

The report also noted that companies that purchasing AI tools from specialised vendors worked around 67% of the time while internal tools only succeeded one-third of the time.

Good afternoon. Benjamin Netanyahu has ignored pleas from Australian Jewish groups to calm his feud with Anthony Albanese, further criticising the prime minister and escalating an ugly spat between the two leaders.

In a new interview with Sky News, the Israeli prime minister, who is wanted by the international criminal court over allegations of war crimes in Gaza, again labelled Albanese “weak” over the government’s recognition of a Palestinian state.

“I’m sure he has a reputable record as a public servant, but I think his record is forever tarnished by the weakness that he showed in the face of these Hamas terrorist monsters,” Netanyahu said in a clip broadcast by Sky News.

Australia’s peak Jewish group, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, on Wednesday labelled Netanyahu’s attack on Albanese as “inflammatory and provocative”, and a “clumsy intervention” which had affected Australia’s Jewish community.

Meanwhile, world leaders have condemned Israel’s announcement it was calling up an extra 60,000 reservists ahead of an offensive to conquer Gaza City, one of the last places of refuge in northern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering.

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In video

JD Vance was booed and heckled with chants of “Free DC!” during a photo op with national guard troops in Washington DC on Wednesday afternoon. Handing out burgers to troops deployed last week by Donald Trump alongside the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, the US vice-president told soldiers “we brought some law and order back”, as a crowd of demonstrators protested outside.

What they said …

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“It was like, ‘OK, guys, you can do that in question time, the rest of us here don’t really get to do that’.” – Sally McManus

The ACTU secretary was in the room as the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, and the Coalition frontbencher Ted O’Brien clashed at the government’s economic reform roundtable. During a heated debate about Labor’s spending commitments in the federal budget, Chalmers told O’Brien “this is not question time”. McManus also claimed a “breakthrough” agreement with the Tech Council of Australia to work together on a model for payment for the use of creative content in training artificial intelligence.

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Can the government keep kids safe in childcare?

After revelations about alleged abuse at childcare centres, Kate Lyons talks to Reged Ahmad about whether the government can restore faith in the sector.

Listen to the episode here

Before bed read

Feeding native wildlife is a divisive topic. While some throw mince to kookaburras with wild abandon, others insist it’s best to let them fend for themselves. So when a sick possum showed up in Phoebe Loomes’ garden, her heart overtook her head. Is it ever OK to feed urban wildlife?

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The International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIITH), announced a change in leadership. Prof. P.J. Narayanan stepped down as Director after a 12-year tenure. Prof. Narayanan will hand over the charge to Prof. Sandeep Shukla, who will assume office as the institute’s new Director.

Prof. Sandeep Shukla, an expert in cyber-physical systems, formal verification, and cyber security, joins IIITH from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, where he served as Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and co-director of the National Interdisciplinary Centre for Cyber Security and Cyber Defence of Critical Infrastructure. He is a Fellow of IEEE and has received numerous awards for his contributions to research and education.

Speaking on the transition, Prof. Narayanan said, “Leading IIIT Hyderabad for over 12 years has been a great honour. During this period, the institute has experienced extraordinary growth, doubling our student admissions, graduations, and faculty numbers. Even more significant is the expansion of our research output, reflected in a substantial increase in publications, patents, and innovative solutions.

Prof Shukla added, “One of my priorities will be to build a world-class cybersecurity research center extending the existing strengths already developed here. Other areas I would like to develop are cybercrime investigation research methodologies and tools, Development of Web3 and Blockchain-based systems, use of GenAI and agentic AI in cybersecurity, 5G and 6G communication and resilient telecom infrastructure, new age learning and teaching research with emerging technologies, technology policy research, and more.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stepped up his government’s bitter diplomatic dispute with Australia, claiming that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s legacy has been irrevocably blackened by his “weakness” towards Hamas.

In an interview with Sky News Australia scheduled to air on Thursday night, Netanyahu said Albanese’s record would “forever be tarnished” by his decision to recognise a Palestinian state.

“When the worst terrorist organisation on earth, these savages who murdered women, raped them, beheaded men, burnt babies alive in front of their parents, took hundreds of hostages, when these people congratulate the Prime Minister of Australia, you know something is wrong,” Netanyahu said in the interview, portions of which were posted online by Sky News before the broadcast.

Netanyahu’s accusation appeared to refer to a disputed statement that appeared last week in the Sydney Morning Herald, in which Hamas cofounder Sheikh Hassan Yousef was quoted praising Albanese for his “political courage”.

Following the report, Hamas publicly denied that any statement had been issued by Yousef. The Palestinian armed group, which governs Gaza, said Yousef had been in Israeli custody for nearly two years without means of communicating with the outside world.

Netanyahu’s broadside against Albanese follows an extraordinary missive earlier this week in which he claimed the Australian leader would be remembered by history as a “weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews”.

On Wednesday, Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke hit back at the Israeli leader, saying strength was “not measured by how many people you can blow up or how many children you can leave hungry”, though Albanese attempted to play down the spat by saying he did not take it personally.

Relations between Australia and Israel, traditionally close allies, have sunk to their lowest ebb in decades following Canberra’s decision to recognise Palestine.

On Monday, Australia said it had cancelled a visa for Simcha Rothman, a far-right member of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, amid concerns that a speaking tour he had scheduled in the country aimed to “spread division”.

Hours after that decision, Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Gideon Saar said he had revoked the visas of Australian diplomats to the Palestinian Authority.

Expressing dismay at the tensions, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry said on Wednesday that it had written to both prime ministers to urge them to address their differences “in the usual way through diplomacy rather than public posturing”.

“The sum total of human wisdom would not have been diminished in the slightest if none of these public comments had been made,” the peak body for Jewish Australians said in its letter to Albanese.

“The Australian Jewish community will not be left to deal with the fallout of a spat between two leaders who are playing to their respective domestic audiences.”

Israel has come under mounting international pressure, including from some of its closest allies, over the scale of human suffering being inflicted by its war in Gaza.

More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since it launched its war on Gaza following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.

Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took 251 people captive during its incursion into southern Israel, according to Israeli authorities.

Over 250 trucks carrying humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip yesterday through the Kerem Shalom and Zikim crossings, Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities (COGAT) says.

According to COGAT, the Defense Ministry body that coordinates humanitarian matters in the Gaza Strip, nearly 390 trucks’ worth of aid were also collected by the United Nations and other international organizations from the Gaza sides of the crossings yesterday to be distributed.

“The contents of hundreds of trucks are still awaiting collection on the Gazan side of the crossings,” COGAT says.

Another 154 pallets of aid — about four trucks’ worth — were airdropped by the United Arab Emirates, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Singapore, and Indonesia in Gaza yesterday, according to the IDF. Each pallet has several hundred kilograms of food.

Similar amounts of aid deliveries have been reported daily for approximately the past week.

The UN has said 600 trucks of aid need to be distributed each day in order to properly feed the Strip’s roughly two million people amid the war.

COGAT also says that “tankers of UN fuel entered for the operation of essential humanitarian systems” yesterday, and that it coordinated the exit of 155 sick Palestinians — mostly children — and their caregivers through Kerem Shalom Crossing to the Ramon Airport in southern Israel for treatment in the UAE.