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"White-collar workers, armed with college degrees and specialized training, once felt relatively safe from automation. But recent advances in A.I. and machine learning have created algorithms capable of outperforming doctors, lawyers and bankers at certain parts of their jobs. And as bots learn to do higher-value tasks, they are climbing the corporate ladder."

"And lest you think we are dealing in long-term abstractions- this devastation has tangible, externalized cost; a recent study out of the University of New Mexico estimated that in 2018 every $1 of Bitcoin value was responsible for $0.49 in health and climate damages in the US, costs that are borne by those who will, for the most part, never see any return from cryptocurrency mining whatsoever."

"Bitcoin is stored on software known as a digital wallet that is secured through encryption. A password is used as a decryption key to open the wallet and access the bitcoin. When a password is lost the user cannot open the wallet. The fraudster had been sentenced to more than two years in jail for covertly installing software on other computers to harness their power to "mine" or produce bitcoin. When he went behind bars, his bitcoin stash would have been worth a fraction of the current value. The price of bitcoin has surged over the past year, hitting a record high of US$42,000 in January. It was trading at US$37,577 on Friday, according to cryptocurrency and blockchain website Coindesk."

"Citizen, which was launched in 2017, is a glorified police scanner that promises to help users "stay safe and informed". It invites input from witnesses - mostly involving shaky phone footage of police milling around while a stretcher is carted by in the background - and, bafflingly, includes a comments section, in which users speculate fatuously on the crime in question and quibble over the accuracy of the map function. It is grimly fascinating, mildly addictive and, relative to its stated aims, totally without value."

""This is all identifiable in the smart meter data - it has literally your entire the pattern of life and behaviour through just monitoring where you live and what you do in your home." Vector and AWS say the data is anonymised and cannot be linked back to customers. Privacy advocates dispute that, because the way some customers use power in certain locations will easily identify them. For the companies, it's a tightrope: the more anonymous the data is made, the less value it has overall."

"As a society, we should care not just about how much innovation takes place, but also about the types of new technologies that are developed. We ought to ensure we are investing in technologies that are safe, environmentally sound, empower rather than simply replace human labor, and are consistent with democratic values and human rights."

"As a society, we should care not just about how much innovation takes place, but also about the types of new technologies that are developed. We ought to ensure we are investing in technologies that are safe, environmentally sound, empower rather than simply replace human labor, and are consistent with democratic values and human rights."

"A surveillance startup in Silicon Valley is being accused of sexism and discrimination after a sales director used the company's facial recognition system to harass female workers. Verkada, which was valued in January at $1.6 billion, equips its office with its own security cameras. "

"My prediction failed. For a decade and a half, Facebook resisted the fate of all the social networks that preceded it. In hindsight, it's easy to see why: it cheated. The company used investor cash to buy and neutralize competitors ("Kids are leaving Facebook for Insta? Fine, we'll buy Insta. We know you value choice!"). It allegedly spied on users through the deceptive use of apps such as Onavo and exploited the intelligence to defeat rivals. More than anything, it ratcheted up "switching costs.""

Just because you find your data boring yourself, this does not have to be true for everyone else. Data is worth a lot in the right hands and nothing in the wrong ones. Money is worth the same to everyone, data varies in value depending on whether the person who has it is able to merge, match, cluster, compare it.

"He's right to be annoyed - these tracks are a violation of an artist's creativity and personhood - and the fakes are noticeably more sophisticated than those from a few years ago, when Jay-Z was made to rap Shakespeare (this is the kind of humour beloved of AI dorks). The tech will continue to improve to the point where the differences become indistinguishable. Perhaps lazy artists will soon use AI to generate their latest album, not so much phoning it in as texting it. AI composes its music by regurgitating things it's been trained to listen to in vast song databases, and that's not so different than the way human-composed pop music is recombined from prior influences. Producers, engineers, lyricists and all the other people who work behind a star could be usurped or at least have their value driven down by cheap AI tools."

"How that effects systems of governance has yet to be fully explored, but there are cautions. "Algorithms are only as good as the data on which they are based, and the problem with current AI is that it was trained on data that was incomplete or unrepresentative and the risk of bias or unfairness is quite substantial," says West. The fairness and equity of algorithms are only as good as the data-programming that underlie them. "For the last few decades we've allowed the tech companies to decide, so we need better guardrails and to make sure the algorithms respect human values," West says. "We need more oversight.""

Is it possible there are modes of attention that a younger generation is developing that might be difficult for those of us who are older to value, but which bring new types of benefit? What of the rapid, quick-fire, written exchanges of instant messaging? The art of the pithy, witty expression condensed into 140 or 280 characters? What of the dexterity and reflex-training physical and mental movement of the video game, or the socially dispersed forms of collective attention that are possible in online environments?

"This is a broader pattern we're seeing across other fields where LLMs are being deployed. Whether it's coding, writing, design, law, or medicine, the most effective AI users are people who already have deep domain expertise. Expertise isn't obsolete; it's more important than ever-because the value isn't just in producing outputs quickly. It's in being able to vet, steer, and improve those outputs. The future of computer science education isn't about teaching less. It's about teaching differently. We still need students who can understand how software works at a fundamental level. But we also need to train them to collaborate with AI-to become fluent in prompting, reviewing, debugging, and refining AI-generated outputs. Mastering this hybrid skillset will be critical not just for engineers, but for anyone hoping to thrive in a world where knowledge work is increasingly AI-augmented. Practically speaking, AI could dramatically lower the barrier to entry for students. When I was in high school, it would take months (if not years) of training in CS before you could create a game or app that was genuinely cool to people that aren't inherently curious and nerdy."

"Instead, we need to preserve and protect these personal interactions. We need to bolster the working conditions of connective labour practitioners so they are able to see others well. We need to impose a "connection criterion" to help us decide which AI to encourage - the kind that creates new antibiotics, for instance, or decodes sperm whale language - and which to put the brakes on, that is, the kind that intervenes in human relationships. Each of us needs to decide how much we value the human connections in our lives and the lives of our neighbours."

"Why has Bitcoin become so popular? One possible explanation is that exploding interest in Bitcoin over the past several days is being driven by economic uncertainty in Europe. Fearful of an earlier proposed European Union plan to partially fund a Cypriot bailout by imposing new taxes on Cypriots' bank deposits, goes the theory, some Cypriots (and Spaniards, for similar reasons) flocked to Bitcoin to attempt an escape from the clutches of potential taxes."

"The Home Office plans to use artificial intelligence to reduce the asylum backlog, and is launching a three-day hackathon in the search for quicker ways to process the 138,052 undecided asylum cases. The government is convening academics, tech experts, civil servants and business people to form 15 multidisciplinary teams tasked with brainstorming solutions to the backlog. Teams will be invited to compete to find the most innovative solutions, and will present their ideas to a panel of judges. The winners are expected to meet the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, in Downing Street for a prize-giving ceremony."

"This all presents big questions for which we don't yet have answers. "At what point should kids know better?" asked David Dockterman, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. "When should a person's 'permanent digital record' start recording, if ever? To what extent should social media be a space for trial-and-error exploration around identity and social behavior?" "These are fantastically difficult moral dilemmas for teenagers who act impulsively, using tools that are not fully under their control, leading to consequences that perhaps none of us can anticipate," said Sonia Livingstone, professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. "This is the first time we've had a society in which almost by default, everything is recorded and shared and aggregated in ways that create a lifelong profile. Children should have the right to make mistakes.""

"Team Trump shares video of Ron DeSantis deepfaked into the "Michael Scott wearing a women's suit" scene from The Office"