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‘Just an unbelievable amount of pollution’: how big a threat is AI to the climate?
Defenders say AI can do good to fight the climate crisis. But spiralling energy and water costs leave experts worried During a golden sunset in Memphis in May, Sharon Wilson pointed a thermal imaging camera at Elon Musk’s flagship datacentre to reveal a planetary threat her eyes could not. Free from pollution controls, the gas-fired…
Uber rewrites contracts with drivers to avoid paying UK’s new ‘taxi tax’
Hailing app will now act as agent rather than supplier outside London, avoiding VAT requirement Uber has swerved paying millions of pounds to the UK exchequer under Rachel Reeves’s new “taxi tax” after the ride-hailing app rewrote contracts with its drivers. The move came as rules announced in November’s budget took effect, which adjusted how…
Elon Musk’s Grok AI generates images of ‘minors in minimal clothing’
Lapses in safeguards led to wave of sexualized images this week as xAI says it is working to improve systems Elon Musk’s chatbot Grok posted on Friday that lapses in safeguards had led it to generate “images depicting minors in minimal clothing” on social media platform X. The chatbot, a product of Musk’s company xAI,…
Elon Musk’s 2025 recap: how the world’s richest person became its most chaotic
How the tech CEO and ‘Dogefather’ made a mess of the year – from an apparent Nazi salute during his White House tenure to Tesla sales slumps and Starship explosions The year of 2025 was dizzying for Elon Musk. The tech titan began the year holding court with Donald Trump in Washington DC. As the…
The office block where AI ‘doomers’ gather to predict the apocalypse
Safety researchers feel excessive financial rewards and an irresponsible work culture have led some to ignore a catastrophic risk to human life On the other side of San Francisco bay from Silicon Valley, where the world’s biggest technology companies tear towards superhuman artificial intelligence, looms a tower from which fearful warnings emerge. Right in the…
Cryptocurrency slump erases 2025 financial gains and Trump-inspired optimism
Last few months of the year have seen $1tn in value wiped from the market, despite all-time-high price of bitcoin As 2025 comes to a close, Donald Trump’s favorable approach to cryptocurrency has not proven to be enough to sustain the industry’s gains, once the source of market-wide optimism and enthusiasm. The last few months…
‘This will be a stressful job’: Sam Altman offers $555k salary to fill most daunting role in AI
New head of preparedness at OpenAI will face unnerving in-tray amid fears from some experts that AI could ‘turn on us’ The maker of ChatGPT has advertised a $555,000-a-year vacancy with a daunting job description that would cause Superman to take a sharp intake of breath. In what may be close to the impossible job,…
‘Move fast, break stuff’: how tech bros became Hollywood’s go-to baddie in 2025
From Stanley Tucci’s imperious tech titan to Lex Luthor’s distractingly hot CEO and Elon Musk-esque blowhards, films this year took us inside the billionaire mindset Between the slash-and-burn US government reboot led by a dank meme fan and the relentless pushing of AI by venture capital-backed blowhards, 2025 has felt like peak obnoxious tech bro.…