If China shares AI, the US can't afford to lock it out

When the Chinese firm DeepSeek launched its latest AI model, shocking policymakers and bruising the stock market, it exposed a paradox: freely available software that parrots the Chinese Communist Party was made freely modifiable.   DeepSeek’s open-source models rival those from closed-source U.S. labs, and power a chatbot that is currently the most downloaded app globally. But they promote the One China policy, flatter Xi Jinping, and avoid talk of Uyghur genocide. The chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, arguing the new model is “controlled” by Beijing and “openly erases the [party’s] history of atrocities,” called for stronger export controls.   His colleagues quickly obliged.   Within 48 hours, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) had introduced a bill to prohibit the import and export of any AI “technology” to or from China, with penalties of 20 years’ imprisonment. The bill would ban research projects — activities “directed toward fuller scientific knowledge” — with Chinese colleges or universities. And the broad definition of AI technology would capture not just chips but also data, research, software and the distinctive settings or “parameters” that determine a model’s performance. These proposals are the most aggressive AI reforms contemplated by any policymaker, of either party, anywhere in the U.S. President Trump has blasted the Biden administration for imposing “onerous and unnecessary government control” over AI. Yet a ban on the import and export of intangible technology like models — digital files that can be shared on the Internet — would eclipse…If China shares AI, the US can't afford to lock it out

Three Key Crypto Predictions for 2025

Dateline: Woking, 2nd April 2025.Andreessen Horowitz (which former partner Benedict Evans once called “a media company that monetizes through VC”) have released their predictions for “crypto” in 2025 and while most of them are what you would expect to see in such a list (eg, tokenisation of what they call “unconventional” assets and more companies accepting stablecoins), there were some that stood out for me because they provide a useful cross-check on my own thinking in this field. I’ve picked out what I think are the three key areas where I think we will see creativity in the coming year.Subscribe nowTwo HitsFirst, Carra Wu’s prediction that “An AI Needs a Wallet of One’s Own to Act Agentically”. As she points out, we are seeing a transition from chatbors to intelligent agents but as of now that cannot properly participate in markets in a “verifiably autonomous” (ie: not human-controlled) way. While in early experiments agents are using stablecoins to transact there is the potential for AI agents to control their own wallet and managae their own digital assets, which opens up some pretty interesting use cases. I think this view is central to the evolution of fintech, because I share the Open Wallet Foundation (OWF) view of the digital wallet of the future as “a container where you can store and access digital assets, credentials, and other useful items, such as tickets and keys” that will be working in tandem with “another software component, most often called an agent, [which] can…Three Key Crypto Predictions for 2025

Mark Zuckerberg doubles down on Metas submission to Trump

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally addressed his employees’ concerns around recent changes within the company.Zuckerberg on Thursday discussed a range of issues during a meeting, most noticeably the dismantling of Meta’s fact-checking policies and diversity programs. Zuckerberg made it clear that the company was abandoning both in order to curry favor with the Trump administration.“I want to be clear, after the last several years, we now have an opportunity to have a productive partnership with the United States government,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, according to a leaked interview provided to the New York Times. “We’re going to take that.”Zuckerberg also further confirmed the end of its DEI initiatives were due to the Trump’s administration’s views. SEE ALSO: Mark Zuckerberg wants more ‘masculine energy’ in corporate America “We’re in the middle of a pretty rapidly changing policy and regulatory landscape that views any policy that might advantage any one group of people over another as something that is unlawful,” Zuckerberg said. “Because of that, we and every other institution out there are going to need to adjust.”A number of large companies, from Apple to Costco, are sticking with their diversity programs regardless of Trump’s push against them.404 Media, another outlet that obtained audio from the meeting, shared how Zuckerberg later lamented how there are certain topics he couldn’t address due to media leaks.“Everything I say leaks,” Zuckerberg said. “And it sucks, right?” (Meta reportedly sent an internal memo to employees after the meeting to let them know that anyone talking to the…Mark Zuckerberg doubles down on Metas submission to Trump

This Gen Z-er quit social media and hasnt looked back since

When I called Gabriela Nguyen, the 23-year-old founder of APPstinent, she picked up on her Cat S22 flip phone.Technically, because it runs the stripped-down operating system Android Go, you could consider it a rugged smartphone. But because of its style, size, and configuration, Nguyen can’t easily or enjoyably spend the day using social media apps, if she ever downloaded any.That’s because after years of trying to curtail her use, Nguyen abandoned social media. She’s not even on LinkedIn, which is arguably impressive for a student enrolled in Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.Now that she’s liberated herself from social media and a sophisticated smartphone, she’s determined to help others do the same through APPstinent, a Harvard student organization that she founded. It offers free coaching for clients to help them create a personalized “Digital Lifestyle Plan.” SEE ALSO: Why teens are telling strangers their secrets online Nguyen is particularly invested in helping fellow members of Gen Z to reclaim their lives. She believes they’ve moved from a phone-based childhood, which prevented them from learning “soft skills” like making eye contact and approaching strangers, to an “infantilizing” phone-based adulthood.They’re supposed to be grownups but still use the same technologies and don’t know how to leave behind the “petty social games” they learned online as teens. She insists that it’s up to them, with support from older generations, to take back what they’ve lost as a result.”It is not our fault our childhoods were like this, but it is our responsibility for our…This Gen Z-er quit social media and hasnt looked back since

DeepSeek upends AI’s great energy race — how can the US compete? 

The AI industry is facing a moment of reckoning. While U.S. tech giants pour billions into massive data centers and ever-larger models, a small Chinese startup named DeepSeek may have quietly demonstrated that the “bigger is better” philosophy is fundamentally flawed.  Just days before DeepSeek went viral, President Trump stood alongside tech titans Sam Altman, Masayoshi Son and Larry Ellison to unveil Stargate — a $500 billion plan to maintain U.S. dominance in AI infrastructure. The timing couldn’t be more ironic.  The success of DeepSeek raises an uncomfortable question: What if we’re building tomorrow’s Rust Belt?  DeepSeek’s latest model achieves what seemed impossible: comparable capabilities to leading models while using significantly fewer resources. Their API costs $0.55 per million input tokens, compared to OpenAI’s $15 — a reduction in computing costs greater than 90 percent. That’s not just an efficiency gain — it’s a fundamental challenge to how we think about AI development. This efficiency gap becomes even more striking when we consider the open source strategies at play. As Meta’s chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, notes, it’s not that China’s AI is “surpassing the U.S.,” but rather that “open source models are surpassing proprietary ones.”  This opens up an exciting possibility: what if massive compute spending isn’t the price of progress after all? DeepSeek’s approach suggests that when you combine transparency with efficiency, you create something powerful — a pathway to more sustainable and accessible AI development.  The parallel to American industrial history is stark: U.S. steel companies once continued…DeepSeek upends AI’s great energy race — how can the US compete? 

Four actions to reduce social media risks for your child

You’ve heard the outrage, you’ve read the reports, and you’ve seen the headlines: social media may be harming your child. What now? You gave your child a phone years ago and nothing short of the jaws of life could extract that thing from your kid’s grip now. You’d like to keep your child safe, but it’s a tug of war between you and an industry that has thousands of brilliant minds, and has invested billions of dollars, just to keep your child online as long as possible. You feel hopeless, guilty, exhausted, and maybe even angry. I get it. I have done research on technology and adolescent mental health for 25 years, delivered hundreds of presentations of our findings to parents, schools, state legislative offices, and even to the Senate and at the White House. In fact, I am writing this piece on a flight back from Switzerland, where I presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos among dozens of companies unveiling even more sophisticated versions of AI-driven platforms that are designed to occupy our children’s attention for even more hours per day. I am well aware of the potential benefits and harms of social media. But I am also a parent of two teenagers. I talk about this research all day, and then I spend each evening engaged in that same tug of war. It is almost impossible to raise a child today when tech titans have as much influence as parents in guiding our kids’ behavior.But they…Four actions to reduce social media risks for your child

Apple Pay Was Useful, Apple ID Will Be Indispensable

Dateline: London, 29th January 2025.Since ApplePay went live a decade ago, we have seen big changes in the way we pay, although contactless cards would have been huge without or without Apple. The next decade will see even bigger changes, because it is not about cards any more it is about the wallets. And the Apple Wallet will change everything, not because stores payments but because it stores identities.Subscribe nowMobile Payments Were InevitableWhen I first downloaded ApplePay and went off to try it out in London, paying by phone was already old hat. I had been paying using my phone for quite a while, because my phone had a contactless sticker containing an EMV chip with an RFID antenna attached to it. I loved that sticker: it had a Barclaycard token in it and I used it all the time and went around annoying everyone by telling them that stickers would be the future of payments because the banks and the telcos would never get their act together to make NFC payments work properly, despite the fact that it was obvious from earliest days that allowing consumers to pay with their phones would be absolutely huge.I’m not saying that with perfect hindsight, by the way. I was utterly convinced that mobile payments would be the future from the first time I saw someone use an SMS to buy a can of Coke from a vending machine in the very earliest days of mobile commerce and long before I watched how…Apple Pay Was Useful, Apple ID Will Be Indispensable

So, you want my data? What’s in it for me? 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has put data-hungry businesses on notice: Give consumers a fair shake or pay the price   What is your customers’ data worth to them? It’s the key question behind Paxton’s new lawsuit against Allstate and its subsidiary Arity. The suit claims that Arity monitored driver behavior by tracking users’ phones, then sold that data on to insurers, who used it to jack up motorists’ insurance costs or deny them coverage. Allstate, naturally, contests the claims. The underlying issue, though, is that drivers had no idea their data was being mobilized against them, and appear to have received little of value in exchange.   Allstate isn’t alone in avidly collecting data, of course. In the AI era, businesses of all kinds are gathering all the data they can, and using it to build the AI models they’re counting on to deliver competitive advantage. The problem is that leaders focus so much on the value data has for their business that they overlook the fact that it also has value to their customers. All too often, that leads them to see data collection as a one-sided, extractive process, rather than an equitable exchange that benefits both customers and businesses.   To put it another way: data collection doesn’t just generate value for the company that gathers it. It also imposes a cost on the data subject. (In the case of Allstate, it was a literal cost in the form of higher insurance premiums.) Unless consumers feels they’re…So, you want my data? What’s in it for me? 

Can apps stop you doomscrolling? Yes, but not how you think.

“Hi, are you doomscrolling? Our bodies were not designed to be anxious and stressed for this long.” Back in the very anxious year of 2021, a friendly little bot on Twitter — the Doomscrolling Reminder Bot — came along to offer mindfulness reminders like this. Created just after doomscrolling became the 2020 word of the year, the Doomscrolling Reminder Bot soon became a kind of anxiety index. It gained its largest bump in followers during Elon Musk’s chaotic takeover of Twitter. The Bot quit posting new content in 2023, as a lot of the service’s less chaotic creators were heading for the exits; even so, its follower count has never dipped below 100,000 Twitter users.These days, however, you don’t need a bot to tell you you’re doomscrolling. If you’re on social media at all, you’re doomscrolling. With nightmare fuel coming thick and fast, with trolls in charge of the news cycle, even an aggregator like Google News or Apple News offers potential for doomscrolling. Heck, any feed featuring multiple photos of the world’s richest man doing a, uh, “Roman salute” practically screams doomscroll! And in 2025, even a cursory check in on Facebook — where Mark Zuckerberg has long been trying to lower the algorithmic importance of news stories — can turn into an hour of sad rubbernecking as your family appears to tear itself apart. You might think you have more productive ways to spend your time — at least, if you have any hope of being part of…Can apps stop you doomscrolling? Yes, but not how you think.

Immigration red cards: The internet rallies to protect undocumented community

In the wake of Trump’s sweeping promises to “reform” the country’s immigration processes, crackdown on “illegal immigrants,” and repeal birthright citizenship (among several other terrifying promises to deport people en masse), the internet is arming their undocumented community members with the power of constitutional knowledge. After signing multiple executive orders and shutting down the CBP One app, Trump is set to sign his first immigration bill, mandating the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with crimes, but migrant advocates and their allies are focusing on people in immediate need first. And their primary order of business is to get as much information, predominantly through widely-used immigration “red cards,” into the hands of undocumented people as possible — all while waiting out how Trump’s anti-green card decisions play out in court.  SEE ALSO: Social Security Administration axes pages referring to changing gender or sexual identity Red cards (tarjetas rojas) are assertively eye-catching Know Your Rights resources popularized and disseminated by Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), a national nonprofit immigration resource hub. The simple paper cards act as a defense against illegal entry and search by government entities, helping “people assert their rights and defend themselves in many situations, such as when ICE agents go to a home,” the ILRC explains. Individuals are encouraged to refrain from speaking or opening the door to immigration agents if they are approached, instead offering the multilingual red cards as a response asserting their legal rights and requests.Red cards include an assertion of one’s right to remain silent and…Immigration red cards: The internet rallies to protect undocumented community