Company after company is swallowing the hype, only to be forced into embarrassing walkbacks by anti-AI backlash

Earlier this month, a popular lifestyle magazine introduced a new “fashion and lifestyle editor” to its huge social media following. “Reem” , who on first glance looked like a twentysomething woman who understood both fashion and lifestyle, was proudly announced as an “AI enhanced team member”. That is, a fake person, generated by artificial intelligence. Reem would be making product recommendations to SheerLuxe’s followers – or, to put it another way, doing what SheerLuxe would otherwise pay a person to do. The reaction was entirely predictable: outrage , followed by a hastily issued apology. One suspects Reem may not become a staple of its editorial team.

This is just the latest in a long line of walkbacks of “exciting AI projects” that have been met with fury by the people they’re meant to excite. The Prince Charles Cinema in Soho, London, cancelled a screening of an AI-written film in June, because its regulars vehemently objected. Lego was pressured to take down a series of AI-generated images it published on its website. Doctor Who started experimenting with generative AI, but quickly stopped after a wave of complaints. A company swallows the AI hype, thinks jumping on board will paint it as innovative, and entirely fails to understand the growing anti-AI sentiment taking hold among many of its customers.

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Depuis l'annonce de son ralliement à Donald Trump, Elon Musk a promis de lui verser 45 millions de dollars par mois, publie des images à la gloire de son mouvement et appelle au boycott des médias. Il a aussi indiqué que les siège de SpaceX et Twitter, en Californie, déménageront au Texas. En cause : une loi sur les transgenres.

Spooked by Biden’s wealth tax, big tech venture capitalists are showing their progressive credentials were only ever skin deep

Hardly a week passes without another billionaire endorsing Donald Trump. With Joe Biden proposing a 25% tax on those with assets over $100m (£80m), this is no shock. The real twist? The pro-Trump multimillionaire club now includes a growing number of venture capitalists. Unlike hedge funders or private equity barons, venture capitalists have traditionally held progressive credentials. They’ve styled themselves as the heroes of innovation, and the Democrats have done more to polish their progressive image than anyone else. So why are they now cosying up to Trump?

Venture capitalists and Democrats long shared a mutual belief in techno-solutionism – the idea that markets, enhanced by digital technology, could achieve social goods where government policy had failed. Over the past two decades, we’ve been living in the ruins of this utopia. We were promised that social media could topple dictators, that crypto could tackle poverty, and that AI could cure cancer . But the progressive credentials of venture capitalists were only ever skin deep, and now that Biden has adopted a tougher stance on Silicon Valley, VCs are more than happy to support Trump’s Republicans.

Evgeny Morozov is the author of several books on technology and politics. His latest podcast, A Sense of Rebellion , is available now

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The University of Nairobi’s new chancellor says the continent has vast potential – but to realise the promise of AI and green jobs, rich countries must honour their commitments

Africa has all the potential to meet pressing climate challenges with innovative solutions, according to one of the world’s renowned environmentalists. With its vast natural capital and youthful population, “this is Africa’s century,” according to Prof Patrick Verkooijen, chief executive of the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA), and the new chancellor of the University of Nairobi.

But Verkooijen emphasises that support and investment from the global north is essential, highlighting that 65% of the world’s uncultivated land is in Africa , a continent with immense promise in its population, set to make up one in four people globally by 2050.

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Is all this bunker-building a sign the 1% know something we don’t and are preparing for end times?

What’s your plan for the apocalypse? I’ll tell you what mine is: death. I am not really built for battle – I need five cups of coffee just to function and I have terrible allergies. My body can’t even handle pollen, it’s not going to do well with nuclear war. Plus, even if I was hardier – who wants to live a few extra months in a completely destroyed world?

Billionaires. Billionaires do. As you have probably noticed bunkers have become the ultimate status symbol among the 1%. The bunker craze, accelerated by the pandemic, has been going on for a while now. However I’m starting to think that bunker-fever is getting out of hand. The rich are no longer content with run-of-the-mill $500,000 survival shelters, they’re taking things to the next level: a development which should probably worry us all.

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Juste à côté des sièges de Google et Apple, Samsung dispose de son propre laboratoire de recherche en Californie. Numerama a pu visiter ce centre dans lequel le Coréen étudie notamment l'intelligence artificielle, la réalité mixte et la 6G.

Inauguré avant le retour de Steve Jobs en 1993, le Company Store est un magasin Apple pas comme les autres. À l'intérieur, les fans de la marque ont longtemps pu trouver des t-shirts, des pulls, des casquettes, des stylos ou des carnets avec le logo de la marque. Il ferme définitivement ses portes ce 20 janvier 2024, après être devenu un Apple Store presque normal en 2015.

The chaos at OpenAI reveals contradictions in the way we think about the technology

At times it felt less like Succession than Fawlty Towers , not so much Shakespearean tragedy as Laurel and Hardy farce. OpenAI is the hottest tech company today thanks to the success of its most famous product, the chatbot ChatGPT . It was inevitable that the mayhem surrounding the sacking , and subsequent rehiring , of Sam Altman as its CEO would play out across global media last week, accompanied by astonishment and bemusement in equal measure.

For some, the farce spoke to the incompetence of the board; for others, to a clash of monstrous egos . In a deeper sense, the turmoil also reflected many of the contradictions at the heart of the tech industry. The contradiction between the self-serving myth of tech entrepreneurs as rebel “disruptors”, and their control of a multibillion-dollar monster of an industry through which they shape all our lives. The tension, too, between the view of AI as a mechanism for transforming human life and the fear that it may be an existential threat to humanity.

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Un média américain révèle que le milliardaire Peter Thiel informait le FBI pendant plusieurs années. Le co-fondateur de PayPal donnait des pistes d'ingérence étrangères dans la Silicon Valley. [Lire la suite]

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