A quarter century after ‘don't be evil’ a judge has found that Google is abusing its monopoly in search. But no-one knows what happens next, and whether this ruling will change anything. Will Apple build a search engine? Will ChatGPT change search? Does it matter?
Read MoreGenerative AI means things that were always possible at a small scale now become practical to automate at a massive scale. Sometimes a change in scale is a change in principle.
Read MoreCan you write laws, or lay down ethical principles, for a technology that will be used in entirely different ways, for different purposes, in different industries? What does that mean if it’s changing entirely every 18 months?
Read MoreTech regulation gets a lot of headlines, and seems like a big deal, but most people in tech don’t seem to care much. It’s boring, and years away, but more fundamentally, it really doesn’t affect what people are working on.
Read MoreThe EU has finally made Apple redesign the App Store, 15 years after we started arguing about it, and no-one is happy with the result. In the next few years there’ll be a lot of shouting and some giant fines, but in the end, nothing much will change.
Read MoreIf you put all the world’s knowledge into an AI model and use it to make something new, who owns that and who gets paid? This is a completely new problem that we’ve been arguing about for 500 years.
Read MoreThe tech industry always has a reason why any new laws or regulations are bad - indeed, so does any industry. They always say that! The trouble is, sometimes it’s true, and some laws are (or would be) disasters. So which is it? Well, there are three ways that people say ‘NO!’
Read MoreThe US is fundamentally rethinking its approach to regulating competition, and M&A, and tech, and big tech buying startups. The FTC’s attempt to block Meta from buying Within is a test case for all of this. So, how many interesting problems can we count?
Read MoreData is the new oil, we are told. Every country needs a data strategy, and all of us should own our data, and be paid for it. But really, there is no such thing as data, it’s not yours, and it’s not worth anything.
Read MoreSometimes the centre of gravity in tech is very clear, but as we enter 2022 there are lots of areas where trillion dollar questions are wide open. These are the questions I wonder about today, from crypto to cars to fast fashion - there are others.
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