Nvidia's probe into Jensen Huang's affair with an alleged Chinese spy is a humbling moment for one of Silicon Valley’s biggest celebrities. Bloomberg's Tom Mackenzie explains why it matters to the entire AI industry. (Source: Bloomberg)
Plus, Apple’s beach-friendly iPad Mini and Amazon’s upscale Alexa tablet, the data-center revolt continues, investors question Anthropic’s valuation and more.
Democrat Representative from California Sam Liccardo said that congress has 'issued a lot of press releases' on issues surrounding technology, but haven't managed to push meaningful legislation over the finish line. Liccardo, whose district includes parts of Silicon Valley, said it is critical lawmakers act on AI concerns and that it is time to move forward with 'sensible' regulation. (Source: Bloomberg)
This week on “Uncanny Valley,” we discuss the historic blue wave that swept the midterms and delivered a rebuke to the Trump administration, Big Tech, and data centers.
Leading the Future, backed by Silicon Valley’s biggest billionaires, had a war chest of $100 million and an aggressive stance against AI regulation. All of it didn’t add up to much on Tuesday night.
When Donald Trump began his second term as president, Silicon Valley gratefully embraced moral nihilism. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and more collectively donated millions to Trump's inauguration fund to ensure his favor in a new era of gangster tech regulation. Meta overhauled its content policy to allow calling gay people mentally ill and women property. Elon […]
No drug designed by artificial intelligence has won FDA clearance, and pharma leaders say biology is the obstacle.
How will AI giants like Anthropic and OpenAI pay the bills for vast computer warehouses when they are so far seeing few productivity gains? Bloomberg Opinion columnist Parmy Olson shares the weak justifications she’s been hearing from Silicon Valley execs. (Source: Bloomberg)
Energy Transfer LP formally committed to building a $1.6 billion pipeline that will move natural gas from eastern Louisiana across Mississippi, a move that comes as data centers and export terminals boost demand for the fuel.
In 2015, executives at the Silicon Valley hardware firm known then as JDSU spun off a division making optical components and commercial lasers, believing the unit would be better off chasing growth opportunities on its own.
TechCrunch Founder Summit happens on November 4 in Boston for a founder-focused agenda and impactful connections. Save up to $100 or get discounts with group passes.
Plus, Anthropic’s mind-boggling $40 trillion market opportunity, we tried Apple’s first touch-screen MacBook, Silicon Valley takes on the Pentagon’s explosives shortage and more.
The Colossus data centers and a power plant that SpaceXAI is also building in Southaven, Mississippi, have faced community backlash for years.
This week on Uncanny Valley, we also discuss Anthropic’s IPO filing and the volunteers gearing up to counter ICE at the midterms.
It was an ambitious notion – now Californians will vote on a one-time 5% billionaire tax, and state’s super rich have pulled out all the stops in opposition One year ago, the idea of a billionaire tax in California was still in its infancy. It wasn’t yet one of the most contentious ballot measure fights in state history – pitting Democrats against Democrats, drawing national attention from political heavyweights, and netting hundreds of millions of Silicon Valley dollars to fight it. Back then, it was a bold and desperate answer to Donald Trump’s healthcare cuts. Continue reading...
A.I. has uncovered a horde of software flaws, which engineers are racing to fix before they can be exploited and abused by hackers.
Several Mississippi homes have been purchased near datacenters and one resident said realtor outlined target to buy more than 400 People in a Mississippi neighborhood, many of whom dislike a nearby power plant central to Elon Musk ’s artificial intelligence ambitions, have received a stark offer – to sell their houses to his company and make way. Real estate agents have been going door to door in Southaven, Mississippi, on behalf of xAI, touting a deal to purchase houses as long as the owners agree to not join a lawsuit against the company over the power plant’s noise. (Musk’s AI company officially became SpaceXAI in July and has lately been rebranded as SpaceXSI but to neighbors of the datacenter in Mississippi, it remains xAI.) Continue reading...
The latest Silicon Valley billionaire club is a $333 million political ad machine that is heavily engaged in next week’s elections.
Both private and public schools in tech regions are limiting the use of tech in classrooms. But will low-income districts be able to follow suit? German Gil spends most of his waking hours looking at screens. Since moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2015, the software engineer has bounced between startups and giants including Netflix , Facebook and GitHub. But when it came to the education of his daughter, Victoria, he wanted her to have a different experience, one in which his “kid could be a kid”. Continue reading...
The Audacity is a fearless satire taking on Silicon Valley’s ‘egomaniac weirdos’. Its creator and stars talk ayahuasca ceremonies, mining kids for data – and punching CEOs Showrunner Jonathan Glatzer wanted the tagline of his latest TV creation to be: “We’re so fucked.” He laughs. “Sadly it got rejected by the network. Hey, maybe I can use it for season two!” The show in question is The Audacity, his darkly comic drama about AI tech titans. Instead, it went with the more PG tagline “Move fast and break people” – a twist on “Move fast and break things”, the Facebook motto coined by Mark Zuckerberg. The Audacity promises to do for tech bros what Succession did for legacy media. Considering Glatzer is a former writer on Succession, that is no empty threat. This acerbic and all-too-timely Silicon Valley satire follows CEO Duncan Park (played by Billy Magnussen), the obscenely wealthy founder of a data analytics company. He’s a self-proclaimed “inventor of the future” who also happens to be a morally bankrupt man-baby. “Duncan is worth about half a billion,” says Glatzer. “Naturally, that’s not enough. He desperately wants to be a billionaire and ascend to what we call ‘God Mountain’. But he’s no God.” Continue reading...
You Can See Everything, a documentary about the disgraced biotech company founder Elizabeth Holmes, has enjoyed a record-breaking opening in the US. It is a testament to how fascinated we remain by the convicted fraudster, but what is behind the enduring appeal? US technology editor Blake Montgomery tells Madeleine Finlay why Holmes continues to fascinate us, and reflects on whether the Theranos scandal has had a permanent impact on Silicon Valley Continue reading...
