Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, recently wrote an essay warning that uncontrolled, autonomous AI could lead to a new ‘silicon species’ that could begin to rival humanity for resources. On BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme Suleyman argued that … Continued
The World Economic Forum kicked off 2026 by speculating about the potential for data centres in space. SpaceX highlights how the build-out of orbital data centres justifies the need for millions of satellites as part of a massive new initiative … Continued
Back during the blog on National Champions, I described how the UK government’s industrial strategy had identified eight priorities (the so-called IS-8) but that there was “no real impetus (or resources!) for taking substantive action”. Clearly, I spoke too soon! … Continued
Earlier this week, Meta announced it would block Instagram and Facebook for users under 16 in Australia in advance of the 10 December deadline set by the federal legislation designed to reduce children’s exposure to social media. Although this will … Continued
As discussed in class, national champions have been receiving renewed attention from virtually all corners in the context of global competition, especially in the tech sector. In just the past few months, China has tried to encourage mergers in its … Continued
There have long been debates as to whether Wikipedia is a trustworthy source, whether there were Western, male, English-speaking, and/or liberal biases in its 65 million pages, or how Wikipedia resolves conflicts (or does not!). There is even a site that lets you see which topics … Continued
Taking a break from the week’s relentless tech news (including Nvidia becoming the publicly traded company to be valued at $5tn, a global Microsoft outage, and OpenAI’s shift to becoming a fully for-profit firm), I thought it wise to step … Continued
Earlier this week, Janan Ganesh wrote in the FT that contrary to the dominant current ‘discourse’, in fact, “public life, not private innovation, has supplied the drama of our times”. In his view, even the tech elite recognise that ultimately … Continued
Since this week’s Nobel Memorial Prize in the Economic Sciences was awarded “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth” it seemed the obvious choice as the subject for this week’s blog. The prize was split equally for contributions to endogenous growth … Continued
Until very recently, the hype (and genuine expectations) over generative AI had reached almost fever pitch. NVIDIA, probably the clearest bellwether indicator of AI bullishness, has seen its stock price rise 16-fold over the past three years (Oct 2022-25) and … Continued