The Business of Tech

Meet the government’s new tech boss

Reyhani wants New Zealand to retain more value when taxpayer-backed technologies succeed, whether through financial returns, research facilities, skilled people or new businesses. On artificial intelligence, he sees opportunities in applying existing models to New Zealand datasets, including agriculture and health, rather than competing head-on with the world's biggest model developers.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Benn Jordan thinks the surveillance problem is much bigger than Flock

We never voted for an insecure network of cameras on every street corner, and we're certainly not being asked if we're comfortable with access to this network being given to police officers with a penchant for abusing it.

The Business of Tech

Is the AI Race Out of Control?

The companies building the most powerful models cannot be left to write their own safety rules, change those rules when they become inconvenient, and decide for themselves when a system is safe enough to release.

The Business of Tech

AI’s next test: turning pilots into productivity

Dario Amadei, for instance, who penned that memo a couple of weeks back calling for a slowdown in the pace of development of frontier AI models, suggested we're only utilizing 5% to 10% of the capabilities of the existing models. So we wouldn't really miss out on much if the industry collectively decides to dial back the breakneck pace of change.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

The left and right agree on one thing: no data centers

You're seeing that on the right and the left. So for example, at the Abundance Conference last year, it was center-right to center-left-ish. And everybody was pro-nuclear, pro-AI. And we were hearing that, 'These things are here to stay. We have to figure out how to do it smartly.' At the same time, the populist left and the populist right are both skeptical of tech development, to put it lightly.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

The left and right agree on one thing: no data centers

It's not a left-right thing. It's a populous technocrat divide. You're seeing that on the right and the left. So for example, at the Abundance Conference last year, it was center-right to center-left-ish. And everybody was pro-nuclear, pro-AI. And we were hearing that, 'These things are here to stay. We have to figure out how to do it smartly.' At the same time, the populist left and the populist right are both skeptical of tech development, to put it lightly.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

The left and right agree on one thing: no data centers

It's not a left-right thing. It's a populous technocrat divide. You're seeing that on the right and the left. So for example, at the Abundance Conference last year, it was center-right to center-left-ish. And everybody was pro-nuclear, pro-AI. At the same time, the populist left and the populist right are both skeptical of tech development, to put it lightly.

Diet TBPN

U.S. Bans New Chinese Humanoids, Zuck’s Op-Ed, eBay's $56M Lawsuit | Diet TBPN

What's interesting here is that we're seeing a ban on a Chinese technology that is so nascent that you don't have a coalition of companies that are saying whoa whoa whoa I've deployed my business is built on top of unitry. I know there's geopolitical considerations, but I can't make the cars that I make without them. I can't run my business without them.

The a16z Show

Steven Sinofsky: AI Doesn't Need New Rules Yet

governments are rushing to regulate AI before they fully understand the technology, risking innovation in the process

The Business of Tech

Unworkable: the teen social media ban

attempts to police access through clumsy age verification systems and facial recognition will just upskill teenagers in VPNs, masking technologies and hacking techniques, producing a more sophisticated generation of young cyber intruders

China Decode

China Tests Ballistic Missile, Europe's AC Addiction, & China's AI Coding Challenger | China Decode

My concern is that because the Chinese models are open source, it will not be Chinese models used in China and US models used in the US. It'll be Chinese models used in China and everywhere else in the world and US models used in the US.

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Rewind: How AI is fueling an existential crisis in education

we're no closer to figuring out how to thread the needle about generative AI in education than we were in September