19 h. ago Will AI wipe us out or drastically improve society? Elon Musk and Bill Gates' favourite philosopher explains

Nick Bostrom, Silicon valley’s favourite philosopher, explains why AI taking jobs should be the least of our worries

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27 h. ago Big tech is a weapon of mass destruction to democracy. Here are three ways Australia can fight back | Maria Ressa

You have time that other countries have squandered. You can be leaders in building the information infrastructure humanity needsI became a journalist because information is power, and right now we are living through an information armaggedon. Facts are under assault. Truth is being murdered. The casualty? Trust making it impossible to govern. Only dictatorships thrive when there’s no trust.And here are the three sentences I’ve said over and over since 2016 when I first said it in Silicon Valley, backed by data and hard-fought experience. Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality. Continue reading...

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44 h. ago Nick Bostrom: 'People will look back on 2025 and shudder in horror'

Silicon valley’s favourite philosopher has dire warnings about the race artificial general intelligence. Is there still time for the tech bros to listen?

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68 h. ago Musk cries conspiracy in latest Silicon Valley scrap. Your tech and science digest

These are the most groundbreaking stories from the new frontier of science and technology right now

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4 d. ago How Elon Musk’s billionaire Doge lieutenant took over the US’s biggest MDMA company

Antonio Gracias is part of the growing movement among Silicon Valley’s right wing enamored with the therapeutic and commercial potential of drugs like MDMAMonths before Antonio Gracias took a leading role in the “department of government efficiency’s” dismantling of the federal government, he was at Burning Man.In the dusty Nevada desert, Gracias, a billionaire private equity investor and one of Elon Musk’s closest friends, attended Nova Heaven, a sunrise rave tribute to victims of the Hamas-led 7 October terrorist attack, and found himself dancing next to Rick Doblin – the US’s most prominent advocate for psychedelic drugs. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Silicon Valley is full of wealthy men who think they’re victims, says Nick Clegg

Former Lib Dem leader and Meta strategist writes in new book that power in tech capital is interlaced with ‘self pity’Silicon Valley is full of hubris and hugely wealthy and macho men who think they are victims, the former politician and Facebook executive Nick Clegg has said.The former leader of the Liberal Democrats makes the claim in a new book chronicling his three careers as an MEP in Brussels, an MP and deputy prime minister in Westminster and as a communications and public policy strategist in San Francisco. Continue reading...

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1 week ago ‘At Meta I found myself wrestling my deputy in an MMA gym’: Nick Clegg on the culture shock of Silicon Valley

In an exclusive extract from his new book, the former Meta number two recalls the mindset, the mantras and the man at the top• Read an interview with Nick Clegg hereI’m not a creature of Silicon Valley. I didn’t study computer science. I’ve never written a line of code. I haven’t spent my career immersed in the processes, debates and science of technological progress. I came to Meta, Facebook as it then was, in 2018 as an emigre from the world of British and European politics. I wasn’t really sure what to expect.As an Englishman, I never cease to be amazed by the sheer scale of America. It’s striking, when you first set foot in this part of Northern California, how remote it feels from the power centres of the east coast. It’s not just the nearly 3,000 miles that separate you from Washington DC and New York; the three-hour time difference means you feel out of sync. The day’s news agenda is in full flight on the east coast before the west is awake. The biggest European stories broke...

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1 week ago ‘If I felt Zuckerberg and Sandberg were monsters, I wouldn’t have worked at Meta’: Nick Clegg on tech bros, AI and Starmer’s half measures

When Britain’s former deputy PM took a job at Meta, nothing could have prepared him for the ‘cloying conformity’ of the tech world. So why does he still think social media is a force for good?• Read an exclusive extract from Nick Clegg’s new book hereThe rain is just starting to fall from a grey London sky as Sir Nick Clegg arrives, duckingthrough the traffic and carrying what looks like his laundry. C lean shirts for the photoshoot, he says, before apologetically wondering if he might possibly get a coffee. Within minutes he has further apologised for wanting to swap the leather club chair he is offered for a hard plastic one; and then, in horror, for any impression inadvertently given that my questions might send him to sleep.Impeccable English manners should never be mistaken for diffidence – at 58, Clegg remains the only British political figure who could convincingly be played by the equally posh but self-effacing Colin Firth, whose old London home Clegg recently bought – but t...

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2 w. ago Tech execs are paying top dollar to breed smarter babies, report claims

Silicon Valley tech execs are reportedly paying up to $50,000 for a new genetic-testing service that promises to screen embryos for IQ

Politics

2 w. ago 22 of Scotland’s smartest tech founders head to Silicon Valley and Singapore

“These international opportunities are not just about scaling businesses, but about building lasting relationships that showcase Scotland’s entrepreneurial talent on the world stage” – Kate Forbes

Politics

3 w. ago Catastrophe! Heroism! Paranoia! The dangerous romance of survivalist stories

Authors have been imagining societal collapse for decades – but could the reality be as dreadful as they think?The man who claimed to have coined the word “survivalist” called himself Kurt Saxon. The sinister godfather of survivalism was actually born Donald Eugene Sisco, a former journalist who spent the 1960s floating between far-right groups in California before deciding that none of them were serious enough. Sisco’s passion for making his own bombs, which he advocated using on student demonstrators, cost him the fingers of his left hand. He liked to say that he was the reincarnation of a soul whose previous lives included a Roman legionary, a Nazi stormtrooper and the revolutionary philosopher Thomas Paine.Survivalism, or prepping, is experiencing a boom, from Silicon Valley billionaires to users of the Reddit board r/collapse. Elon Musk’s entire career, for example, has been partly driven by apocalypse anxieties and his conviction that he alone can save the human race (details ...

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4 w. ago Can’t Look Away review – a harrowing, heartbreaking indictment of social media’s ruthlessness

Bloomberg journalist Olivia Carville follows a small legal outfit as it takes Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies to task for endangering young users“Tweens are herd animals” and have “an addicts’ narrative”, according to internal documents revealed by a Facebook whistleblower to congress, making clear the levels of cynicism and obfuscation the company operates with in its quest to hook young people to its platform. Bad though that is, it’s not the worst example in this lucidly laid out and often harrowing indictment of social media’s ruthlessness; that would be the proliferation of drug dealers on Snapchat, which the company seems to have to some extent turned a blind eye to in the scramble to expand its user base.Based on the investigative work of Bloomberg journalist Olivia Carville, this film covers the attempts of minnow legal outfit Social Media Victims Law Center to net the sharks of Silicon Valley. It represents a host of families who have suffered heartbreaking losses ...

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4 w. ago Ninety laptops, millions of dollars: US woman jailed over North Korea remote

Christine Chapman apologizes for role in identity fraud that amassed millions to allegedly aid nuclear weapons programIn March 2020, about the time the Covid pandemic started, Christina Chapman, a woman who lived in Arizona and Minnesota, received a message on LinkedIn asking her to “be the US face” of a company and help overseas IT workers gain remote employment.As working from home became the norm for many people, Chapman was able to find jobs for the foreign workers at hundreds of US companies, including some in the Fortune 500, such as Nike; “a premier Silicon Valley technology company”; and one of the “most recognizable media and entertainment companies in the world”. Continue reading...

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last month Wall St and Silicon Valley ride high as tariffs hit Main Street

Banks and Big Tech are booming but slowing US growth is hurting other companies across the board

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