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Docker announced that Harbor, the open-source agent evaluation framework, now works with Docker Sandboxes. This change allows each evaluation task to run in its own microVM. So, instead of sharing a container, tasks are isolated for better performance

This article presents a disaster-recovery analytics workflow in which an AI agent generates constrained SQL or Python, DuckDB computes reproducible facts from Parquet, and the agent interprets the results. It explains the determinism split, replayable analysis, and four signals for deciding when an embedded engine is sufficient or a managed lakehouse is justified.

For years, Europe has stood apart from Silicon Valley through its willingness to regulate technology. Its sweeping AI Act, which began taking effect in phases in 2025, prohibits certain uses of the technology, imposes safeguards on high-risk systems, and requires the marking of AI-generated content.

But as the AI race accelerates, an unusual reversal appears to be underway. American tech executives are increasingly calling for stronger safeguards, while European officials, anxious about falling behind, are emphasizing innovation and competitiveness. In July, the EU adopted amendments easing some of the law’s requirements and delaying others.

Ireland has a particular stake in Europe’s approach to AI. The country hosts the European operations of major American technology companies and is pushing to accelerate AI adoption, support homegrown startups, and expand the infrastructure needed to power the technology.

Fast Company sat down with Peter Burke, Ireland’s minister for enterprise, tourism, and employment, to discuss how the country is navigating those challenges. The conversation, which took place shortly after an international AI summit in Dublin, has been edited for length and clarity.

For years, European officials argued that Silicon Valley needed stronger oversight. Now we’re hearing American tech executives calling for new safeguards, while European officials seem to be emphasizing competitiveness. Has Europe become more concerned about falling behind in the AI race than about the risks of the technology itself?

First of all, I think public trust is very important from a perspective of developing AI, particularly having a strong regulatory regime that underpins it. And the EU AI Act does that on a risk basis, which I think is really welcome.

We obviously have revised the trajectory of the EU AI Act, trying to ensure that it’s proportionate, it’s risk-based. And from a state perspective, Ireland has established its own AI office, really looking at a sectoral approach in developing AI.

When you are a small, agile country, you can do that in terms of having the responsibility for AI development and risk management in the core competency that they’re already responsible for. Like, if it’s medicines, it’s the Health Products Regulatory Authority. If it’s aviation, the Aviation Authority. And obviously the AI office then draws all those strands together.

Then we also look at having our regulatory sandbox contained in it, again to support innovation and develop AI throughout the economy, and also to look at our skills piece.

So I think you have to have effective, proportionate regulation. Because if you don’t, and public trust is lost, or if unintended consequences start to take hold of the economy, that wouldn’t be good for the ecosystem.

AI agents have been in the news quite a bit lately, especially instances where they’ve taken unauthorized actions. Does Europe need new regulations specifically addressing autonomous AI agents, or does the existing AI Act cover them sufficiently?

I think it does cover it from our perspective currently, but obviously the Act is evolving. It is living with the pace of AI development, which is very fast.

In terms of the risk and regulatory requirement of a new product coming forward, obviously the EU has to ensure that it meets the terms of the Act and that it is tested and approved. That’s a key bedrock I think that the Act was founded on.

We’re very keen to work with some of the very big companies to ensure that that is the case. You need an open forum to work with companies. You don’t want to see cases where unintended consequences have happened and have not been spoken [about]. We’re very keen to ensure that there is a strong regulatory base for it.

There’s a debate about whether Europe needs to develop its own frontier AI models, or whether that’s the best use of its resources. How do you think about that?

From our perspective, obviously the States are doing their regulation in terms of they’re very heavily focused on innovation and driving forward the pace of change, because we see it’s moving at a breakneck pace.

Europe is focused on a dual approach, trying to get the balance with proportionate regulation to protect citizens, to build public trust, and to ensure that the ecosystem is strong that AI has been developed in. And also really working with other partners to ensure that does take hold, and ensuring that we are benefiting from the application stage, so that it is driving revenue growth within organizations.

We saw it very clearly in our AI summit last week, where you can see essentially where capacity has been developed for revenue growth, where employees can increase productivity, looking at other areas that are conducive to the trajectory of growth in some of those exciting new firms.

That’s what we’re focused on through the AI office as well.

You’ve mentioned the opportunities for productivity and growth. But what about jobs that could be displaced by AI? How is Ireland preparing for that?

We’re also looking at the risk matrix of potential jobs that do come under risk from AI—particularly in consultancy, some ICT, financial services—and how you get in front of the curve to provide transformational training for those at-risk cohorts to make those jobs more sticky and develop them so they can be upskilled to get some of the opportunity that AI does present.

It’s something we’ve announced a very significant training fund [for] last week, over 200 million euros, to speak to that cohort of human capital.

Can you tell me more about that retraining? Are workers being prepared for entirely new jobs, or is the goal to help them adapt and keep their existing jobs?

There’s a cross-fertilization, too, of different tasks. So we have skills partners throughout our state that really deploy a lot of training to key sectors that are at risk.

We established a new cabinet subcommittee, which directly has ministerial involvement from the government, looking at training, skills, and where there are potential risks of jobs becoming displaced.

Because we’re looking at a very [different] type of transition in our economy. It’s not a period of decline. It’s where you’ll see more traditional roles end and change very significantly, but also very significant opportunity in other key areas.

So we have our Expert Group on Future Skills Needs, which is essentially a high-level group that has been established over the last number of decades that looks at how skills transformation takes place in the economy, what we need to watch out for, and how we have, particularly in our tertiary education setting, how we develop courses to meet the needs of the economy as it evolves from year to year.

We’re doing that very significantly now with AI at its core, and seeing how do we ensure that those jobs that are at risk get that key training, so they can benefit from the opportunity that presents itself for their particular companies for productivity and for renewed revenue growth.

What advantages does Europe have in AI that American companies might struggle to replicate?

I think we have a significant advantage from an Irish perspective. I think the IMF called this out recently in one of its reports, that we have a very established tech sector, a very strong skills base.

We have one in five people who work in the Irish economy [who] were not born in Ireland, so it demonstrates a very internationalized workforce. But 17% of our engineers have AI capability, which is very strong. We’re leading the charge in terms of STEM graduates, ICT graduates per capita in Europe, which is well over double. And that again underscores the huge human capital advantage that we have.

So I think that puts us in a very good place when you have that matched with an established tech sector. I think that really drives us to benefit a lot from the opportunity for AI.

And I think we really showed that in our summit last week, when you saw what some exciting Irish companies are doing from the perspective of the application stage, how they’re growing revenue and monetizing that new technology.

Our SMEs are catching up, albeit you’d like to see it at a faster pace. But the interesting point is that almost 60%-plus of the workforce is using generative AI, so we’re very much ahead of the curve in many respects.

Our large companies are obviously up there, but our SMEs have a journey to go, and we’re working very closely with them to develop that model as well.

Data centers already account for roughly a quarter of Ireland’s metered electricity consumption. As AI infrastructure expands, how do you decide when additional investment is worth the pressure it places on the country’s energy system?

The key thing is trying to develop our grid. We have about 19 billion euros in our new capital plan to build out our grid to bring more renewables onstream. Its predecessor was around 8 billion euros, so that just shows you the huge ambition that we have.

But we’re using it to be very strategic to try and drive our renewables. So we changed policy recently, where anyone looking for a connection for a large energy user or hyperscaler has to ensure that 80% of their power demand comes from renewable sources. And that’s providing a strategic opportunity to drive our offshore renewables, of which we have five projects on the east coast of Ireland.

We’re trying to mitigate that with a new policy to present a strategic opportunity for the Irish economy, where you have the digital transition facilitating the green transition, working hand in glove.

And then we have our energy parks. We’re developing a concept where you’ll have a large renewable generation capacity on the same site as a hyperscaler or a very significant large energy user.

We’re bringing forward private-wire legislation, hopefully later on this year or early next year, which will show the agility to provide connection. I think that really cements us as you’re using one area, which is having large energy users, drive another, which we’re trying to get less dependent on—obviously fossil fuels and international shocks that you can see through the geopolitical landscape now, which is very turbulent.

The majority of cosmetology and massage therapy certificate programs fail under a new accountability framework, a Validated Insights analysis found.

For years, Europe has stood apart from Silicon Valley through its willingness to regulate technology. Its sweeping AI Act, which began taking effect in phases in 2025, prohibits certain uses of the technology, imposes safeguards on high-risk systems, and requires the marking of AI-generated content.

But as the AI race accelerates, an unusual reversal appears to be underway. American tech executives are increasingly calling for stronger safeguards, while European officials, anxious about falling behind, are emphasizing innovation and competitiveness. In July, the EU adopted amendments easing some of the law’s requirements and delaying others.

Ireland has a particular stake in Europe’s approach to AI. The country hosts the European operations of major American technology companies and is pushing to accelerate AI adoption, support homegrown startups, and expand the infrastructure needed to power the technology.

Fast Company sat down with Peter Burke, Ireland’s minister for enterprise, tourism, and employment, to discuss how the country is navigating those challenges. The conversation, which took place shortly after an international AI summit in Dublin, has been edited for length and clarity.

For years, European officials argued that Silicon Valley needed stronger oversight. Now we’re hearing American tech executives calling for new safeguards, while European officials seem to be emphasizing competitiveness. Has Europe become more concerned about falling behind in the AI race than about the risks of the technology itself?

First of all, I think public trust is very important from a perspective of developing AI, particularly having a strong regulatory regime that underpins it. And the EU AI Act does that on a risk basis, which I think is really welcome.

We obviously have revised the trajectory of the EU AI Act, trying to ensure that it’s proportionate, it’s risk-based. And from a state perspective, Ireland has established its own AI office, really looking at a sectoral approach in developing AI.

When you are a small, agile country, you can do that in terms of having the responsibility for AI development and risk management in the core competency that they’re already responsible for. Like, if it’s medicines, it’s the Health Products Regulatory Authority. If it’s aviation, the Aviation Authority. And obviously the AI office then draws all those strands together.

Then we also look at having our regulatory sandbox contained in it, again to support innovation and develop AI throughout the economy, and also to look at our skills piece.

So I think you have to have effective, proportionate regulation. Because if you don’t, and public trust is lost, or if unintended consequences start to take hold of the economy, that wouldn’t be good for the ecosystem.

AI agents have been in the news quite a bit lately, especially instances where they’ve taken unauthorized actions. Does Europe need new regulations specifically addressing autonomous AI agents, or does the existing AI Act cover them sufficiently?

I think it does cover it from our perspective currently, but obviously the Act is evolving. It is living with the pace of AI development, which is very fast.

In terms of the risk and regulatory requirement of a new product coming forward, obviously the EU has to ensure that it meets the terms of the Act and that it is tested and approved. That’s a key bedrock I think that the Act was founded on.

We’re very keen to work with some of the very big companies to ensure that that is the case. You need an open forum to work with companies. You don’t want to see cases where unintended consequences have happened and have not been spoken [about]. We’re very keen to ensure that there is a strong regulatory base for it.

There’s a debate about whether Europe needs to develop its own frontier AI models, or whether that’s the best use of its resources. How do you think about that?

From our perspective, obviously the States are doing their regulation in terms of they’re very heavily focused on innovation and driving forward the pace of change, because we see it’s moving at a breakneck pace.

Europe is focused on a dual approach, trying to get the balance with proportionate regulation to protect citizens, to build public trust, and to ensure that the ecosystem is strong that AI has been developed in. And also really working with other partners to ensure that does take hold, and ensuring that we are benefiting from the application stage, so that it is driving revenue growth within organizations.

We saw it very clearly in our AI summit last week, where you can see essentially where capacity has been developed for revenue growth, where employees can increase productivity, looking at other areas that are conducive to the trajectory of growth in some of those exciting new firms.

That’s what we’re focused on through the AI office as well.

You’ve mentioned the opportunities for productivity and growth. But what about jobs that could be displaced by AI? How is Ireland preparing for that?

We’re also looking at the risk matrix of potential jobs that do come under risk from AI—particularly in consultancy, some ICT, financial services—and how you get in front of the curve to provide transformational training for those at-risk cohorts to make those jobs more sticky and develop them so they can be upskilled to get some of the opportunity that AI does present.

It’s something we’ve announced a very significant training fund [for] last week, over 200 million euros, to speak to that cohort of human capital.

Can you tell me more about that retraining? Are workers being prepared for entirely new jobs, or is the goal to help them adapt and keep their existing jobs?

There’s a cross-fertilization, too, of different tasks. So we have skills partners throughout our state that really deploy a lot of training to key sectors that are at risk.

We established a new cabinet subcommittee, which directly has ministerial involvement from the government, looking at training, skills, and where there are potential risks of jobs becoming displaced.

Because we’re looking at a very [different] type of transition in our economy. It’s not a period of decline. It’s where you’ll see more traditional roles end and change very significantly, but also very significant opportunity in other key areas.

So we have our Expert Group on Future Skills Needs, which is essentially a high-level group that has been established over the last number of decades that looks at how skills transformation takes place in the economy, what we need to watch out for, and how we have, particularly in our tertiary education setting, how we develop courses to meet the needs of the economy as it evolves from year to year.

We’re doing that very significantly now with AI at its core, and seeing how do we ensure that those jobs that are at risk get that key training, so they can benefit from the opportunity that presents itself for their particular companies for productivity and for renewed revenue growth.

What advantages does Europe have in AI that American companies might struggle to replicate?

I think we have a significant advantage from an Irish perspective. I think the IMF called this out recently in one of its reports, that we have a very established tech sector, a very strong skills base.

We have one in five people who work in the Irish economy [who] were not born in Ireland, so it demonstrates a very internationalized workforce. But 17% of our engineers have AI capability, which is very strong. We’re leading the charge in terms of STEM graduates, ICT graduates per capita in Europe, which is well over double. And that again underscores the huge human capital advantage that we have.

So I think that puts us in a very good place when you have that matched with an established tech sector. I think that really drives us to benefit a lot from the opportunity for AI.

And I think we really showed that in our summit last week, when you saw what some exciting Irish companies are doing from the perspective of the application stage, how they’re growing revenue and monetizing that new technology.

Our SMEs are catching up, albeit you’d like to see it at a faster pace. But the interesting point is that almost 60%-plus of the workforce is using generative AI, so we’re very much ahead of the curve in many respects.

Our large companies are obviously up there, but our SMEs have a journey to go, and we’re working very closely with them to develop that model as well.

Data centers already account for roughly a quarter of Ireland’s metered electricity consumption. As AI infrastructure expands, how do you decide when additional investment is worth the pressure it places on the country’s energy system?

The key thing is trying to develop our grid. We have about 19 billion euros in our new capital plan to build out our grid to bring more renewables onstream. Its predecessor was around 8 billion euros, so that just shows you the huge ambition that we have.

But we’re using it to be very strategic to try and drive our renewables. So we changed policy recently, where anyone looking for a connection for a large energy user or hyperscaler has to ensure that 80% of their power demand comes from renewable sources. And that’s providing a strategic opportunity to drive our offshore renewables, of which we have five projects on the east coast of Ireland.

We’re trying to mitigate that with a new policy to present a strategic opportunity for the Irish economy, where you have the digital transition facilitating the green transition, working hand in glove.

And then we have our energy parks. We’re developing a concept where you’ll have a large renewable generation capacity on the same site as a hyperscaler or a very significant large energy user.

We’re bringing forward private-wire legislation, hopefully later on this year or early next year, which will show the agility to provide connection. I think that really cements us as you’re using one area, which is having large energy users, drive another, which we’re trying to get less dependent on—obviously fossil fuels and international shocks that you can see through the geopolitical landscape now, which is very turbulent.

Last Thursday, Elon Musk made a Tesla Roadster flip and hover, thanks to cold-gas thrusters built by SpaceX. Five days later, on SpaceX’s third-quarter earnings call, he announced that the boards of Tesla and SpaceX are forming special committees to study the possibility of merging the two companies. If you think the timing is a coincidence, I have a Mars condo to sell you.

When I wrote about the Roadster last week, it felt obvious to me that the show was a marketing operation designed to convince shareholders to approve a merger between Musk’s companies. Its job was to make the synergies between his two companies look real. At unveiling, Musk called the Roadster “the culmination of incredible work by Tesla and SpaceX engineers working closely together.”

But that’s not synergy. That’s a stunt-y collaboration for a fantasy car that benefits neither Tesla nor SpaceX.

Ferdinand Dudenhöffer—director of the Center Automotive Research institute in Bochum, Germany, and author of the forthcoming book The New Auto Superpower—can’t imagine SpaceX’s cold-gas thrusters ever going into production cars. “It’s a bit like the flying cars that showed up in the comics of the 1950s,” he tells me via email. Back then, they were supposed to hit the market around 2000. “They remained utopias.” 

To Dudenhöffer, the flying Roadster is a tech story meant to lift Tesla’s weak share price, and the synergy is “a modern marketing fairy tale.” 

If the deal happens, the company will see itself diluted in a sci-fi melange of rockets, cellphones, and AI servers. Tesla’s stock was up about 3% in early Wednesday trading, while SpaceX got a 9% bump.

First off, any merger would require shareholder approval at both companies. That’s an easier sell at SpaceX, where Musk controls about 82% of the votes through super-voting shares. Musk owns about 20% at Tesla, and would need to win over a large share of investors to ensure they achieve a majority.

On SpaceX’s earnings call on Tuesday, Musk described that as “quite a high hurdle.” Tesla’s huge base of small retail investors doesn’t care much about voting. Voter turnout is so low that Tesla asked and won SEC approval last month for an “auto-vote” program.

On the call, Musk tried to hard-sell the idea that there’s “a lot of merit to combining the companies, as we are pretty much in the superintelligence singularity.” 

I question that logic. How is Tesla going to help there? The car company has spent a decade mostly failing at the one AI product it keeps promising. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve written that Musk has failed to deliver on his Cybercab promises, which is still geofenced. Its shortcomings are even more clear when you compare it to the competition.

Google’s Waymo runs robotaxis in 15 American cities and gives about 500,000 paid rides a week. Baidu’s Apollo Go had passed 22 million rides across 27 cities by April. BYD sells cars in China that park themselves with nobody inside, what it calls Level 4 autonomy, and it pays for any damage they cause. It has since extended that guarantee to its city driving assistant. 

Plus, SpaceX already has AI chops through SpaceXSI.

Musk also mentioned his Terafab AI chip plant as an example of synergy, but the two companies are already building that factory together. And Tesla already sells Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s ground facilities, like server farms. Two companies run by the same man don’t need a merger to work together. They need a purchase order.

Optimus, however, may have been a synergy worth a merger: a humanoid robot from Tesla flown by SpaceX, doing the dangerous work on Mars before any human arrives. Musk sold that vision in March 2025, when he wrote that “Starship departs for Mars at the end of next year, carrying Optimus.”

Neither showed up, and Optimus remains an unproven mechanical body with no real-world use. In January, Musk admitted the robot was “not in usage in our factories in a material way.” Tesla now builds them in Fremont, but they still can’t generalize beyond the tasks they were trained on, and their hands remain a bottleneck.

So what, exactly, does a rocket company bring to a car company, or vice versa?

An analyst told The New York Times that “it’s an intriguing concept,” adding that “Tesla robots linked by Starlink to xAI data centers for control and AI model training purposes would give SpaceX an end-to-end advantage that nobody else could replicate quickly.” But that assumes that Optimus works in real life (the robots are still far from becoming a reality), and that Tesla’s AI models have any advantages over what SpaceX already is capable of. (We reached out to SpaceX for comment and will update this piece if the company responds.)

On the call, Musk answered an analyst’s question about a potential merger, saying that each company has established committees with its independent directors. Both committees are apparently studying the possibility of the merger, formed by different independent board members. He claims he can’t participate in the meetings because he partially owns both companies: “Because I’m a conflicted party, I can’t actually be in the discussions of the special committees,” Musk pointed out. “It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking, and I can’t be in the conversation.” However, Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards, so he could end up on both sides of the negotiation.

I asked Brian Quinn, a Boston College law professor who studies mergers and acquisitions, what synergies Tesla’s special committee would have to prove to justify the deal. “None,” he tells me. The committee itself is optional. “Special committees are not required by the corporate law,” he adds. “If Musk wanted to do the deal without a special committee, he certainly could.”

Quinn says special committees mostly work as legal armor: If shareholders sue, the board can argue the deal was negotiated as if between strangers, and judges are reluctant to undo it. In Texas, boards get even more deference, he adds, so lawsuits won’t be a problem here.

It’s worth noting that Tesla’s deliveries fell 2.1% in the third quarter, and the carmaker lost the global EV crown to BYD last year. Teslas still sell, Dudenhöffer points out. The Model Y and Model 3 offer “a very good price-value ratio” and do well in China and Europe. “But of course, they don’t earn the money Tesla’s high-market capitalization needs to make shareholders ‘happy,’” he says. Folding Tesla into SpaceX would bury those numbers inside a much shinier rockets-and-AI story.

Then there’s Musk’s paycheck. “I think the only interesting term here will be the Tesla valuation,” Quinn tells me. Last year, shareholders approved a record $1 trillion stock award framed as a reward for meeting milestones like delivering 1 million robots and a million robotaxis carrying paying riders. A merger could make those milestones irrelevant.

“If SpaceX acquires Tesla, the operational milestones will be disregarded, and the purchase price will be treated as Tesla’s market capitalization,” Ann Lipton, a law professor at the University of Colorado, tells me. That means the tranches in Musk’s reward package tied to performance—like shipping Optimus and Cybercabs—are no longer valid in case of a purchase. “In practice, that means any purchase price above $2 trillion will cause Elon Musk to receive many millions more Tesla shares, which would convert into the merger payout, presumably SpaceX stock,” Lipton says.

Tech analyst and Tesla bull Dan Ives says the deal is “a no-brainer” that “comes down to the price for shareholders,” according to Reuters. Other Tesla bulls are thrilled too, as a merger will sweep the problems with Tesla’s valuation—which they have talked up for years—under the rug. Tesla fans may think the same.

If the deal goes through and a minority of SpaceX or Tesla shareholders think the price is rigged, it will not end well for them, Lipton and Quinn both tell me. “The short of it is that litigation will not be an issue in this deal,” Quinn says. And Texas law is so deferential to boards, he explains, that Tesla’s may not even need one to keep the courts out.

We’ve seen how this movie ends, anyway. In 2016, Musk dazzled Tesla shareholders with slick solar roof tiles to sell them on buying SolarCity, the struggling solar company founded by his cousins. Tesla has now walked away from the solar roof business. Tesla shareholders sued Musk in Delaware in 2016, saying he pushed Tesla to overpay for SolarCity, but the deal went through anyway. Musk went to trial and won in 2022, and Delaware’s Supreme Court upheld the ruling in 2023.

A similar story could happen again. 

This time it will be SpaceX shareholders who have to deal with it because they can’t actually go against Musk’s 82% of the vote. The Tesla shareholders might go along with this ruse in the hopes that SpaceX’s Starlink cash machine carries their company through its seemingly endless crisis. It doesn’t matter if SpaceX’s sci-fi pipe dream collapses in a decade under the weight of all its concentrated vapor. It’s all about hitting that big red vapor booster button and jumping over a Mars crater full of problems to get as much money as they can. 

The way Musk moves may make you think of pyramid schemes, with one company buying the losses of the other ad infinitum while a few select people get rich. But if that’s the game, don’t call it “synergies.” Don’t call it a “strategic merger.” 

Call it what it is: a bailout, with a bonus for the man dealing himself on both sides of the table.