Nvidia’s Strategy to Make Sure the AI Boom Doesn’t Go Bust

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
You're either all in on this model, or maybe you're building with another. You're either speed, or is it security?
Or you're AWS AI. Don't pick a side, pick them all. AWS AI is how.

**Isabelle Bousquette** (0:19)
Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Tuesday, August 25th. I'm Isabelle Bousquette, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute. Companies are increasingly using AI monitoring tools to track employee productivity. We're diving into how they work and strategies for outspending them.
Then, Wall Street will be watching as Nvidia reports earnings this Wednesday. While the chip giant has smashed estimates for the last 14 quarters straight, it's now having to step up its strategy to patch some weak points in the market.
But first, ever feel like your boss has a way of monitoring your every keystroke? In the age of AI, it's an increasingly valid concern. Tools for tracking employee productivity have only gotten more sophisticated since their debut in the work-from-home era. And thanks to an AI-enabled boost, your traditional mouse jiggler might not cut it anymore. So how do you know if you're being monitored? And is there anything you can do to game the system? WSJ's Callum Borchers joins us to share his tips on outsmarting the trackers.
Callum, can you give us a common example of how employees' time is being tracked?

**Callum Borchers** (1:35)
One thing that I think is actually a welcome measure, or can be, for employees is a calendar integration. Let's say your company uses Slack or Outlook, and you've got the little green dot that shows when you're active, and then it goes to yellow or red if you're away and you're logged off. Well, the objection from a lot of employees was, well, if I make an old-fashioned phone call or I go to an in-person meeting, I might look like I'm away. In fact, I'm working. I'm very much active. One of my takeaways was be meticulous about maintaining your calendar because some of these apps now will integrate your away or present status with your calendar. If you have that phone call or meeting blocked, the software is smart enough to know, hey, you're not just slacking off, you actually have something else going on at that time. But if you don't have it on your calendar, it might look like you're just taking a long break.

**Isabelle Bousquette** (2:20)
So if you are taking a coffee break, would you advise putting coffee break on your calendar?

**Callum Borchers** (2:25)
That's a bit overkill. And one of the things I was really trying to drill down on this story was like, so what is the expectation here? Because we can get in our own heads and think, well, can I ever just chit chat in the break room? Can I go to the bathroom? You don't want to become paranoid. And so I asked the chief executive of one of these companies called Insightful that makes some of the software that businesses are using. I said, all right, what are your clients actually looking for? And I was struck when he said, actually, most of my customers are looking for between 60% and 80% activity level during the day, which was lower than I might have expected. But it's because they understand that people take some time away from their desks. So you don't have to put every single coffee break or bathroom break on your calendar. And you don't even have to necessarily sweat watching the occasional YouTube at your desk. Most reasonable employers understand that even their best, most productive workers do need to take some mental breaks during the day. What they're really trying to guard against is the people who are walking away for hours at a time and not staying on task at all.

**Isabelle Bousquette** (3:23)
You wrote about mouse jigglers or these mechanical systems that make it look like a user's mouse is constantly in motion. Are these a solution to some of the monitoring systems?

**Callum Borchers** (3:35)
They could be, but be careful. The mouse jiggler is sort of the poster device for these kinds of shenanigans. The classic version is a software app that you download and it makes your mouse appear to continue moving. Or maybe you get a small device that you could plug into a USB port, say where the mouse would typically go, and it does the same thing. I've learned that more and more companies, cybersecurity tools will block those things from running in the first place, and if they don't block it, they claim anyway that they can detect it. What some people have done is revert to an old-fashioned mechanical solution. I spoke with a company called Tech8 USA that makes just what it sounds like a physical mouse jiggler. It's a dock that you place your mouse on top of at your desk, and it just moves a little bit to keep the thing moving. They say it was primarily originally designed for video gamers who were worried about losing their progress in a game that wouldn't save, and then in more recent years, they found that a lot of their buyers were actually remote or hybrid workers.