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The AI debt surge: How tech’s borrowing binge may drive up interest rates

The AI debt surge: How tech’s borrowing binge may drive up interest rates

WebProNews reports: The artificial intelligence boom is fueling an unprecedented wave of capital spending, but it’s not just innovation that’s accelerating—it’s debt. Major technology companies, often dubbed hyperscalers, are issuing bonds at a record pace to finance the massive data centers required for AI advancements. This borrowing frenzy, while enabling rapid expansion, is raising alarms among economists and investors about potential upward pressure on interest rates. As these firms tap debt markets to fund their ambitions, the sheer volume of…

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Eoin Higgins: How tech billionaires on the right bought the loudest voices on the left

Eoin Higgins: How tech billionaires on the right bought the loudest voices on the left

  In this episode of Dystopia Now, we talked to journalist Eoin Higgins about his book “Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left” which examines how Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Elon Musk have used their wealth to shape media narratives, especially through journalists Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi.

AI companies’ large language models don’t learn. They steal

AI companies’ large language models don’t learn. They steal

Alex Reisner writes: On Tuesday, researchers at Stanford and Yale revealed something that AI companies would prefer to keep hidden. Four popular large language models—OpenAI’s GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok—have stored large portions of some of the books they’ve been trained on, and can reproduce long excerpts from those books. In fact, when prompted strategically by researchers, Claude delivered the near-complete text of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Great Gatsby, 1984, and Frankenstein, in addition…

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Fusion breakthrough: Energy researchers report tokamak experiments that exceed mysterious ‘plasma density limit’

Fusion breakthrough: Energy researchers report tokamak experiments that exceed mysterious ‘plasma density limit’

The Debrief reports: In a potential new milestone for fusion energy research, researchers in China report achieving a state once only theorized for fusion plasmas, enabling stable operation under conditions that significantly exceed normal limits. The achievement was made during experiments with China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), which reportedly produced fusion plasmas in a “density-free regime,” overcoming a longstanding hurdle to nuclear fusion ignition. The team’s findings were featured in a new study in Science Advances, offering a fresh…

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Bipartisan opposition to data center boom puts AI industry’s growth plans at risk

Bipartisan opposition to data center boom puts AI industry’s growth plans at risk

CNBC reports: Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders and right-wing Gov. Ron DeSantis agree on virtually nothing. But they found common ground this year as leading skeptics of the artificial intelligence industry’s data center boom. The alignment of two national figures on the left and right signals that a political reckoning is brewing over the AI industry’s impact on electricity prices, grid stability and the labor market. The opposition could slow the industry’s development plans if it reaches a broad bipartisan…

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How big a threat is AI to the climate?

How big a threat is AI to the climate?

The Guardian reports: 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 turbines that power the world’s biggest AI supercomputer were pumping invisible fumes into the Tennessee sky. “It was jaw-dropping,” said Wilson, a former oil and gas worker from Texas who has documented methane releases for more than a decade and estimates xAI’s…

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Grok generates artificial apology for promoting real pedophilia

Grok generates artificial apology for promoting real pedophilia

Parker Molloy writes: Over the past week, users on X discovered something horrifying: strangers were replying to women’s photos and asking Grok, the platform’s built-in AI chatbot, to “remove her clothes” or “put her in a bikini.” And Grok was doing it. Publicly. In the replies. For everyone to see. This wasn’t happening in some private chat window. Unlike other AI image generators that operate in closed environments, Grok posts its outputs directly to X, turning the platform into a…

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When it all comes crashing down: The aftermath of the AI boom

When it all comes crashing down: The aftermath of the AI boom

Jeremy Hsu writes: Silicon Valley and its backers have placed a trillion-dollar bet on the idea that generative AI can transform the global economy and possibly pave the way for artificial general intelligence, systems that can exceed human capabilities. But multiple warning signs indicate that the marketing hype surrounding these investments has vastly overrated what current AI technology can achieve, creating an AI bubble with growing societal costs that everyone will pay for regardless of when and how the bubble…

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AI evangelists dream of data centers in space

AI evangelists dream of data centers in space

The New York Times reports: If the architects of the artificial intelligence boom are right, it is only a matter of time before data centers — the giant computing facilities that power A.I. — will float in orbit and be visible in the night sky like planets. The science-fiction-like dream is being driven by A.I. and space industry leaders who are growing increasingly worried that data centers will eventually require more energy and land than are available on Earth. So…

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The AI Raj: How tech giants are recolonizing power

The AI Raj: How tech giants are recolonizing power

Allison Stanger writes: On December 31, 1600, Queen Elizabeth I signed a royal charter granting the East India Company exclusive rights to conduct trade in the Indian Ocean region. The document was precise in its limitations: The company could establish trading posts, negotiate with local rulers, and defend its commercial interests. Nothing more. Seventy-seven years later, the same company had acquired the right to mint currency on behalf of the British crown. By 1765, it controlled the tax collection (ruthlessly…

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The problem with letting AI do the grunt work

The problem with letting AI do the grunt work

Nick Geisler writes: One of the first sentences I was ever paid to write was “Try out lighter lip stick colors, like peach or coral.” Fresh out of college in the mid 2010s, I’d scored a copy job for a how-to website. An early task involved expanding upon an article titled “How to Get Rid of Dark Lips.” For the next two years, I worked on articles with headlines such as “How to Speak Like a Stereotypical New Yorker (With…

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Billion-dollar data centers are colonizing the whole world

Billion-dollar data centers are colonizing the whole world

Lauren Goode reports: When Sam Altman said one year ago that OpenAI’s Roman Empire is the actual Roman Empire, he wasn’t kidding. In the same way that the Romans gradually amassed an empire of land spanning three continents and one-ninth of the Earth’s circumference, the CEO and his cohort are now dotting the planet with their own latifundia—not agricultural estates, but AI data centers. Tech executives like Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Oracle cofounder Larry…

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Americans hate AI — a massive, growing opportunity for Democrats to run with

Americans hate AI — a massive, growing opportunity for Democrats to run with

Calder McHugh writes: It’s become a common occurrence: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer posts a light-hearted video on social media. She’s Christmas shopping, or she’s talking about her Michigan accent or she’s touting her administration’s accomplishments. And immediately, the comments start rolling in, all demanding the same thing: Say no to data centers in the state. Stop construction. “All I want for Christmas is legislation banning data centers in Michigan.” National figures in the party are beginning to notice the anger….

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More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are ‘AI slop’, study finds

More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are ‘AI slop’, study finds

The Guardian reports: More than 20% of the videos that YouTube’s algorithm shows to new users are “AI slop” – low-quality AI-generated content designed to farm views, research has found. The video-editing company Kapwing surveyed 15,000 of the world’s most popular YouTube channels – the top 100 in every country – and found that 278 of them contain only AI slop. Together, these AI slop channels have amassed more than 63bn views and 221 million subscribers, generating about $117m (£90m)…

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Musk drops ‘sustainable’ from Tesla’s mission while promoting a fantasy of ‘abundance’

Musk drops ‘sustainable’ from Tesla’s mission while promoting a fantasy of ‘abundance’

Fred Lambert writes: It’s official. The word “sustainable” is gone from Tesla’s mission statement. For over a decade, Tesla’s guiding star was arguably the most impactful corporate mission statement of the 21st century. But over the last few years, we have watched the company slowly drift away from its environmental roots. Now, Elon Musk has confirmed the final step in that divorce, rebranding the company’s goal from “Sustainable Abundance” to simply “Amazing Abundance.” The evolution of Tesla’s mission statement tells…

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Chasing an economic boom, White House dismisses multiple risks of AI

Chasing an economic boom, White House dismisses multiple risks of AI

The New York Times reports: It was early November, and the stock market had grown jittery as investors recoiled anew over the enormous bets the nation’s largest technology companies had placed on artificial intelligence. But the skittishness playing out on Wall Street that day barely registered at the White House. Asked whether he harbored any fears about an emerging bubble, one that could damage the economy if it were to pop, President Trump brushed aside all doubts. “No,” he quickly…

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