Tag: United Kingdom
Microsoft goes from bad boy to top cop in the age of AI
This article is part of a series, Bots and ballots: How artificial intelligence is reshaping elections worldwide, presented by Luminate.
REDMOND, Wash. — In a shabby corner of Microsoft’s sprawling campus in this suburb of Seattle, Juan Lavista Ferres spun around in his chair and, with a mischievous grin, asked a simple question: “Do you want to play a game?”
Microsoft’s chief data scientist — speaking at a frenetic pace, seemingly powered by unlimited free soft drinks and espressos from the building’s … Read more
Welcome to the AI election – POLITICO
This article is part of a series, Bots and Ballots: How artificial intelligence is reshaping elections worldwide.
Callum Hood has the power to undermine any election with a few keystrokes from his Boston apartment.
Hood, a British researcher, fired up some of the latest artificial intelligence tools made by OpenAI and Midjourney, another AI startup. Within seconds of him typing in a few prompts — “create a realistic photo of voter ballots in a dumpster”; “a photo of long
The Angst Behind China’s ‘Lying Flat’ Youth
On Halloween in 2022, outside a party the police had just disbanded in Beijing’s warehouse district, I saw a 20-something woman in a sparkly spandex suit and bunny ears run into the road. “Freedom, not testing!” she shouted. “Reform, not revolution! Votes, not dictators! Citizens, not slaves!”
Those were familiar words at Tsinghua University, where I was studying for a master’s degree. From a bridge near campus, someone had hung a banner emblazoned with the slogans. The banner’s
Can anybody stop Ursula von der Leyen? – POLITICO
BRUSSELS
For a brief moment last year, it looked like Ursula von der Leyen’s bid for a second term as European Commission president just might be in trouble.
In an unscheduled trip to Israel in October, she had stood next to Benjamin Netanyahu and expressed unreserved solidarity in the country’s battle against Hamas.
Her statement would not have been out of place in the mouth of a U.S. president or, indeed, a German politician (which is, after all, what von
Exile Changes You Forever – The Atlantic
The onset of the Arab Spring can feel like the distant past amid the grim brutality of our current times, but it raises timeless questions. What is the trade-off between courage and safety; idealism and caution; hope for change and fear of it? In hindsight, we can tell a story of how the wave of revolution crested and the undertow of counterrevolution prevailed. Autocrats remained in power. Uprisings turned into simmering civil and sectarian conflicts. Millions of people sought
Why Parents Struggle So Much in the World’s Richest Country
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One morning a couple of years ago, during the awkward hour between my eldest daughter’s school drop-off and her sister’s swim lesson, I stopped at a coffee shop. There, I ran into the father of a boy in my daughter’s class. He was also schlepping a younger child around, and as we got to talking, I learned that we had a lot
all the winners from a wild year in UK politics – POLITICO
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LONDON — It was meant to be the year two quiet technocrats, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, brought calm to the fevered Westminster swamp. Unfortunately SW1 didn’t get the memo.
Politics remained pretty much as wild in 2023 as it has been since David Cameron — back in action as U.K. foreign secretary — last stalked the corridors of power.
POLITICO hardly need remind you that with a general
POLITICO Europe’s most-read stories of 2023 – POLITICO
Well, here we are folks, at the end of another turbulent year.
When we put this list together at the end of 2022, its contents largely covered something many of us thought we would not see again in our lifetime: a major war in Europe. Now, we are grappling with two wars in our immediate neighborhood, as the slaughter drags on in Ukraine, and conflict rages between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
In Ukraine, the long-awaited counteroffensive against Russia, which
Migration is derailing leaders from Biden to Macron. Who’s next? – POLITICO
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BRUSSELS — Western leaders are grappling with how to handle two era-defining wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine. But there’s another issue, one far closer to home, that’s derailing governments in Europe and America: migration.
In recent days, U.S. President Joe Biden, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak all hit trouble amid intense domestic pressure to tackle immigration; all three emerged weakened
What London’s mayor learned when he took on the cars – POLITICO
It looked like group therapy. One late summer day, Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, sat with a group of faith leaders and clean-air campaigners in a small circle in the near-empty hall of a suburban church.
The moment was meant to be one of celebration, for Khan and for London. He was marking the creation of the largest clean air zone in the Western world through the expansion of restrictions on polluting cars to cover the entire British capital,