Technology

A former Microsoft project manager reveals how the tech giant is using AI to help Big Oil drill—and how he and his partner are now pushing for change.

A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

Next year is going to be big. Well, I personally don't think it'll be big, but if you ask the AI industry, here's the things that will happen by the end of 2026: * According to the Financial Times, OpenAI's Stargate data center in Abilene, Texas will be "fully operational," and

Sam Altman and Arianna Huffington told me that they believe generative AI can help millions of suffering people. I’m not so sure.

By Luis Lozano-Paredes

What might we gather in looking and thinking more carefully? As we proceed with vital concerns for our planet, global and immediate communities, and the arts in all their forms, a critical engagement with AI may disclose ideas and practices for other causes that matter to us.

LAS VEGAS — There is something unstable at the most basic level about any space with too much capitalism happening in it. The air is all wrong, there’s simultaneously too much in it and not enough of it. Everyone I spoke to about the Consumer Electronics Show before I went to it earlier this month […]

FBI investigation under way as residents across US north-east report mysterious aircraft sightings for weeks

Half a century ago, Lewis Mumford developed a concept that explains why we trade autonomy for convenience

The allure of AI companions is hard to resist. Here’s how innovation in regulation can help protect people.

Malkovich. Malkovich. Malkovich?

Flirty, sexy, seductive, supportive. Your AI companion can be whatever you want her to be. And now a growing number of men are turning to bots to ease their loneliness or satisfy their kinks. The choices are endless. The emotions are real.

ChatGPT, Claude and other language models have dominated the mainstream discussions and use. However the future of AI lies in models outside of language.

Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.

A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage — and it’s only going to get worse.

None of what I write in this newsletter is about sowing doubt or "hating," but a sober evaluation of where we are today and where we may end up on the current path. I believe that the artificial intelligence boom — which would be better described as a generative AI boom

Buried in the 8000 words I wrote last week was a worrying story — that Microsoft considered drastic measures to free up  capacity in its US-based servers for GPUs to power the AI boom. In an email shared with me by a source from earlier this year, Microsoft's senior leadership team

I look forward to your feedback.

Reviewing Chaim Gingold’s “Building SimCity,” Celine Nguyen finds similarities between tech billionaires’ attempts to build a utopian city in Solano, California, and being a godlike player in “SimCity.”

Understand AI for what it is, not what it might become.

Scaling will run out. The question is when.

Workers, including children, labor in harsh and dangerous conditions to meet the world’s soaring demand for cobalt, a mineral essential to powering electric vehicles, laptops, and smartphones, according to an investigation by The Washington Post.

Sam Altman and Arianna Huffington told me that they believe generative AI can help millions of suffering people. I’m not so sure.

SOTA research, chips, sanctions, and loopholes

Nvidia's pre-Computex keynote address was certainly something, and none of it felt good.

The real threat with super intelligence is falling prey to the hype