Tech
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College students are booing commencement speakers celebrating AI, but the wave of hate hasn’t stopped them from using it to cheat on their exams
For today’s college students, attitudes toward AI can seem paradoxical. On one hand, they’ve made their ire toward the technology clear: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was met with hisses during his commencement remarks at the University of Arizona’s graduation ceremony on Sunday when he invoked the inevitability of a future with artificial intelligence. “The…
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Americans’ AI hate wave might just be gathering steam: Data centers could hike power costs in some states over 50% by 2030
For years, the American power grid was a bastion of predictable stability. Throughout the 2010s, U.S. electricity demand remained flat as efficiency gains and declines in energy-intensive sectors such as manufacturing helped obscure the dawning digital age. But the power grid as it once was might be no match for the technological demands of the…
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Pope Leo launches an AI commission days before he releases a papal letter alongside Anthropic cofounder Christopher Olah
It’s all-knowing, omnipresent, and somewhere between one to two billion people in the world subscribe to it. It’s not Catholicism—it’s AI—and its usage among the world’s population is increasingly becoming a concern for some, especially as reports of how sycophantic it can be is leading to real-world harms. Among those concerned with its use is…
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Not the Allbirds effect: Japan’s top bidet maker Toto has been quietly making chip supplies for decades, and the stock market finally noticed
Whenever someone visits Japan, they mention the sights, the food, the impeccable transportation. Oftentimes, they mention futuristic toilets: the ubiquity of bidets, their sound effects, and the turbo-powered jets that keep you clean. Now Japan’s largest bidet maker, Toto, is doubling down on AI chips. The announcement followed Allbirds’ pivot to become a chipmaker. But…
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6.7 million people thought they were ripping apart an AI-generated Monet painting. But it was real
The internet was certain: the painting lacked “coherent composition,” the colors were an “incoherent muddle of inconsistently saturated greens.” Commenters piled on with extraordinary confidence, picking apart what they believed was an obvious AI-generated knockoff of Claude Monet. One person even wrote an over 700-word breakdown of the supposed fake’s shortcomings. There was just one…
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Communities are blocking billions in data centers. Big Tech has wagered $1 trillion otherwise
The town of Saline, Michigan, didn’t want a $16 billion data center in its backyard. Residents voted against it. Weeks later, as Fortune‘s Sharon Goldman reported, construction began anyway. That dynamic — community opposition steamrolled by corporate momentum — is playing out across America at accelerating speed. At least 48 data center projects representing $156…
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Billionaire Ken Griffin used to dismiss AI as ‘garbage.’ Here’s why he changed his mind—and why he’s ‘depressed’
Just months after calling artificial intelligence “garbage,” Citadel CEO Ken Griffin is now warning that the technology will fundamentally reshape society—and says he went home “depressed” after seeing what it could actually do. Griffin, the hedge fund billionaire who manages one of the world’s most powerful trading firms, had long been one of the most prominent skeptics…
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A record number of 18-year-olds are set to graduate into an economy designed against them
At commencement ceremonies across the country this May, a telling phenomenon is obvious. A speaker steps to the podium. They say the words “artificial intelligence.” And the audience erupts in boos. It happened at the University of Central Florida, when real estate executive Gloria Caulfield told arts and humanities graduates that “the rise of artificial…
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The AI boom is pulling Europe’s hottest startups to the U.S.—whether they planned to move or not
Carl Fritjofsson, who has run Stockholm, Sweden-based Creandum’s San Francisco office since 2016, says the timeline for European founders to cross the pond is compressing at a pace he’s never seen. “There is more demand in the U.S. today than there is in Europe,” he told Fortune. “Especially if you’re selling towards enterprises with some…
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AI poised to tilt job market leverage toward older workers
When it comes to job cuts, older workers are often disproportionately affected. But a new survey of chief executive officers suggests this won’t be a given as companies adopt artificial intelligence. More than 40% of CEOs plan to cut junior roles over the next one to two years and shift the composition of their workforce…