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AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage | Cory Doctorow
AI is asbestos in the walls of our tech society, stuffed there by monopolists run amok. A serious fight against it must strike at its roots I am a science-fiction writer, which means that my job is to make up futuristic parables about our current techno-social arrangements to interrogate not just what a gadget does,…
Trump imposes 25% tariff on Nvidia AI chips and others, citing national security
The order follows a nine-month investigation and includes broad exemptions for datacenters and consumers Donald Trump on Wednesday imposed a 25% tariff on certain AI chips, such as the Nvidia H200 AI processor and a similar semiconductor from AMD called the MI325X, under a new national security order released by the White House. The proclamation…
Musk’s X to block Grok AI tool from creating sexualised images of real people
UK government claims vindication after Keir Starmer criticised earlier decision to keep functionality as ‘horrific’ The UK government has claimed “vindication” after Elon Musk’s X announced it had stopped its AI-powered Grok feature from editing pictures of real people to show them in revealing clothes such as bikinis, including for premium subscribers. After a fortnight…
David Lammy: JD Vance agrees that sexualised AI images on X are ‘unacceptable’
Exclusive: US vice-president ‘sympathetic’ to concerns over Grok-generated pornography, says deputy PM JD Vance, the US vice-president, has agreed that it is “entirely unacceptable” for platforms such as X to allow the proliferation of AI-generated sexualised images of women and children, David Lammy has told the Guardian. The deputy prime minister said Vance, usually known…
Robots that can do laundry and more, plus unrolling laptops: the standout tech from CES 2026
Robot vacuums that can climb stairs and device for BlackBerry lovers also on display at annual Las Vegas tech show This year will be filled with robots that can fold your laundry, pick up objects and climb stairs, fridges that you can command to open by voice, laptops with screens that can follow you around…
Tech titans divided over whether to pay billionaire tax or flee California
State residents worth more than $1bn could face one-off, 5% tax to help fund education, food assistance and healthcare A battle is brewing in California over a plan to tax billionaires – with tech titans divided over whether they should pay up, or flee the state. Under a tax proposal that could be put to…
AI images of Maduro capture reap millions of views on social media
Lack of verified information and rapidly advanced AI tools make it difficult to separate fact from fiction on US attack Minutes after Donald Trump announced a “large-scale strike” against Venezuela early on Saturday morning, false and misleading AI-generated images began flooding social media. There were fake photos of Nicolás Maduro being escorted off a plane…
What happened after Tesla opened a diner in Los Angeles?
The novelty of eating at a diner owned by the richest person in the world seems to have worn off in just a few months Less than six months since it opened, Elon Musk’s Tesla Diner has the feel of a ghost town. Gone is the Optimus robot serving popcorn, gone are the carnivore-diet-inspired “Epic…
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,…