Month: March 2024

When £17m isn’t enough: FTSE firms plead to pay bosses millions more

Confronted by the huge salaries on offer in the US, London boardrooms are lobbying to be allowed to make their own bosses even wealthier There was a sharp intake of breath last month when the pharmaceuticals group AstraZeneca cemented chief executive Pascal Soriot’s position as the best-paid FTSE 100 boss with a £17m pay package, …

When £17m isn’t enough: FTSE firms plead to pay bosses millions more Read More »

Warning over use in UK of unregulated AI chatbots to create social care plans

University of Oxford study shows benefits and risks of technology to healthcare, but ethical issues remain Britain’s hard-pressed carers need all the help they can get. But that should not include using unregulated AI bots, according to researchers who say the AI revolution in social care needs a hard ethical edge. A pilot study by …

Warning over use in UK of unregulated AI chatbots to create social care plans Read More »

Elon Musk v OpenAI: tech giants are inciting existential fears to evade scrutiny | Kenan Malik

Moguls extol the fruits of artificial intelligence, but seek to hide its science from public view In 1914, on the eve of the First World War, HG Wells published a novel about the possibilities of an even greater conflagration. The World Set Free imagines, 30 years before the Manhattan Project, the creation of atomic weapons …

Elon Musk v OpenAI: tech giants are inciting existential fears to evade scrutiny | Kenan Malik Read More »

‘I welcome our digital minions’: the Silicon Valley insider warning about algorithms – while embracing them

Marek Kowalkiewicz has made a career of harnessing new technology. But on the question of if algorithms have agency, he realised he was wrong ​​Houses hide behind patches of subtropical rainforest in Brisbane’s western outskirts, horses graze paddocks and road signs warn of deer and kangaroos. Nestled between a bend in the river and the …

‘I welcome our digital minions’: the Silicon Valley insider warning about algorithms – while embracing them Read More »

‘I was having a much better time as a girl in that parallel life’: how an app sparked a late-life gender transition

In an extract from her memoir, Lucy Sante reveals how she lived with the feeling of being the wrong gender into her 60s, when a smartphone app gave her the inspiration to take action ‘This secret that crippled me for 50 years has been lifted’: read a Q&A with Lucy Sante here Between 28 February …

‘I was having a much better time as a girl in that parallel life’: how an app sparked a late-life gender transition Read More »

The feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman – explained

When OpenAI launched, Sam Altman touted his close relationship with Tesla’s CEO. A decade later, they’re at each other’s throats The day after OpenAI launched in December 2015, its co-founder Sam Altman sat down with Vanity Fair to discuss what the magazine described as “a non-profit company to save the world from a dystopian future”. …

The feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman – explained Read More »

‘She’s going to prevail’: FTC head Lina Khan is fighting for an anti-monopoly America

Some say Biden’s high-profile warrior – who’s gone after Kroger, Amazon, and Nvidia – has redefined the US antitrust landscape Across 96 pages of the Yale Law Journal in 2017, Lina Khan set out why she believed the US’s policing of big business was failing. The paper – which targeted Amazon – shook the Silicon …

‘She’s going to prevail’: FTC head Lina Khan is fighting for an anti-monopoly America Read More »

‘It was a real carnival of the senses’: Shamil Tanna’s best phone picture

The London-based photographer on capturing the buzz of a festival celebrating Menorca’s purebred horses ‘There’s a slight voyeuristic quality to using a phone to take pictures,” Shamil Tanna says. The London-based photographer was in Menorca last summer for Fiestas de Sant Lluìs, a series of events “revolving around the island’s purebred horses and traditional Menorcan …

‘It was a real carnival of the senses’: Shamil Tanna’s best phone picture Read More »

The Lie Detectives: Trump, US politics and the disinformation damage done

Sasha Issenberg considers attempts to distort electoral reality on both sides of the great American divide Most of Joe Biden’s past supporters see him as too old. An 81-year-old president with an unsteady step is a turn-off. But Donald Trump, Biden’s malignant, 77-year-old predecessor, vows to be a dictator for “a day”, calls for suspending …

The Lie Detectives: Trump, US politics and the disinformation damage done Read More »