When Intuit began encouraging employees to use generative AI, CTO Alex Balazs said there were “pockets” of resistance in a place he hadn’t expected: the top ranks of the engineering department.

“Some of our best engineers fought it because they were lifelong coders, and they’re like, ‘I can write better code than this agent can,’” Balazs said. “It’s not a question of if you can write better code, it’s a question of, can it write code faster? And is the faster code that it wrote good enough to solve the problem? The answer is yes.”

Balazs said he had to “continue to interact with them and get them over the hump.” The key, he said, has been setting clear and transparent expectations around AI use, establishing his own credibility as someone who uses these tools, and hearing concerns through “listening posts.”

IT and tech teams are expected to be the vanguard of AI tool rollouts, adopting new tech quickly while bringing the rest of the organization on board. But with some IT jobs at risk of automation themselves, how do leaders make sure that’s a charge these teams are willing to lead?

The key to getting everyone onboard.—PK

A first-in-the-nation data center law in Maine, vetoed by Gov. Janet Mills on April 24, wasn’t saved by the state legislature, marking the end—for now—of a major regulatory push to institute a moratorium on large data center projects.

Mills vetoed the legislation, which would have applied to projects 20 megawatts and over, due to her concerns over a lack of carve-out for a planned $550 million project in the town of Jay. During the bill’s journey through the legislature, lawmakers introduced an amendment allowing for an exception to existing and planned projects like the one in Jay, but it was soundly defeated in the State House.

Lawmakers on April 29, also known as “Veto Day,” when the legislature can override such decisions by the governor, did not achieve the two-thirds majority needed to overturn it.

Are states becoming more anti-data center?—EH

Mark your calendars now: 2029 will prove a great year for AI, according to Meredith Whalen, chief product, research, and delivery officer at market intelligence company IDC.

During her April 8 IDC Directions keynote, Whalen told the audience that the global IT industry is currently undergoing its largest growth cycle since 1996, with a current valuation of $4.2 trillion thanks to the rise of AI and agents.

“This isn’t just another cycle,” Whalen said. “This is a super cycle that we’re in and it is going to reshape the whole IT industry.”

Three years out. Whalen says 2029 will be the year that AI kicks into an even higher gear. That year, overall data center buildouts, for example, may have tripled from 2024 volumes, with an estimated $1.6 trillion spent on buildouts.

Buckle up.—BM

The film Sneakers (1992) follows a crew of experts who are paid by companies to test their physical security and cyber defenses. Here’s why the ’90s techno thriller is still relevant today.