Every app on my phone has decided I need AI, and none of them bothered to ask

Every app wants to become an AI app, even when users keep dismissing the invitation. Somehow, software that promises to understand us still can’t remember when we’ve said no.

Palantir’s CEO predicts AI will make him 20x richer while middle-class workers get modest raises
Palantir’s CEO predicts AI will make him 20x richer while middle-class workers get modest raises

Palantir CEO Alex Karp estimated that AI could make him “20x wealthier,“ implying a fortune approaching $300 billion, up from roughly $15 billion today. Middle-class workers, he said, might simply see their salaries double over the next decade. Karp ca…

The risk of weather data sabotage is rising

Every morning, airline dispatchers, grid operators, and farmers around the world make decisions based on the same thing: a weather forecast. While these forecasts are something that most people glance at for two seconds, weather predictions influence major strategic decisions in many industries, with real money, livelihoods, and even actual lives at stake. Farmers use…

The other Dyson empire, measured in acres
The other Dyson empire, measured in acres

Inside a glasshouse the size of roughly 20 football pitches, on the flat black soil of Lincolnshire, strawberry plants ride a Ferris wheel. The wheels stand about 5.5 metres tall, and each one weighs close to half a tonne. They turn slowly, all day, ca…

Solo-maxxing: How tech taught Gen Z to monetise being alone
Solo-maxxing: How tech taught Gen Z to monetise being alone

We can no longer pretend that the bridge between generations is invisible, because it stands before us, growing wider every day, harder to cross and harder even to name. Nor can we deny that technology has had its hand in this rupture, since it has not…

The AI bubble didn’t pop. It sent the bill
The AI bubble didn’t pop. It sent the bill

Until last week, about 200 organisations could use a preview of Anthropic’s most capable model, Mythos. They got in through a programme called Glasswing, after the system flagged thousands of software vulnerabilities. Then, on the evening of 12 June, t…

Who decides who gets to use a piece of software?
Who decides who gets to use a piece of software?

The letter arrived at 5:21pm Eastern Time on a Friday, which is the hour at which official Washington usually stops returning calls and the news cycle goes slack for the weekend. It came from the Commerce Department, ran to a few paragraphs, and did so…

Your robot can’t be smart, fast, and free. Evolution solved that already.
Your robot can’t be smart, fast, and free. Evolution solved that already.

Here is a constraint that almost no one building physical AI says out loud, even though every one of them is quietly fighting it. A robot’s intelligence wants three things at once. It wants to be smart, meaning it can reason at the level of a frontier …

This Detroit Hyundai dealer wants $400 to charge your car
This Detroit Hyundai dealer wants $400 to charge your car

Drivers opening an EV charging app for the first time today will be presented with thousands of so-called “public” chargers at local car dealers. Once they arrive, however, the store’s customers, store hours, security gates, and Wild West pricing can t…

The hidden labor of modern tech support is turning us all into unpaid employees

Modern tech support keeps selling self-service as convenience, but every chatbot loop and repeated explanation adds up to unpaid labor.