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Donald Trump Isn’t the Only Chaos Agent

Donald Trump Isn’t the Only Chaos Agent

Mickey Vernon

Eight years ago, the November US election results profoundly shocked the small staff at Backchannel, the boutique tech publication I ...

A High-Profile Geneticist Is Launching a Fusion-Power Moonshot

A High-Profile Geneticist Is Launching a Fusion-Power Moonshot

Mickey Vernon

Eric Lander is a Big Science heavyweight. A geneticist, molecular biologist, and mathematician, he led the International Human Genome Project ...

You Can Now See the Code That Helped End Apartheid

You Can Now See the Code That Helped End Apartheid

Mickey Vernon

John Graham-Cumming doesn’t ping me often, but when he does I pay attention. His day job is the CTO of ...

Social Media Tells You Who You Are. What if It’s Totally Wrong?

Social Media Tells You Who You Are. What if It’s Totally Wrong?

Mickey Vernon

A few years ago I wrote about how, when planning my wedding, I’d signaled to the Pinterest app that I ...

No, Sam Altman, AI Won’t Solve All of Humanity’s Problems

No, Sam Altman, AI Won’t Solve All of Humanity’s Problems

Mickey Vernon

We already knew where OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, stands on artificial intelligence vis-à-vis the human saga: It will be transformative, ...

The Godmother of AI Wants Everyone to Be a World Builder

The Godmother of AI Wants Everyone to Be a World Builder

Mickey Vernon

According to market-fixated tech pundits and professional skeptics, the artificial intelligence bubble has popped, and winter’s back. Fei-Fei Li isn’t ...

Mark Zuckerberg Vows to Be Neutral–While Tossing Gifts to Trump and the GOP

Mark Zuckerberg Vows to Be Neutral–While Tossing Gifts to Trump and the GOP

Mickey Vernon

This week Mark Zuckerberg sent a letter to Jim Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee. For months, the ...

Crypto’s Shiny New Political Machine

Crypto’s Shiny New Political Machine

Mickey Vernon

Amongst the sea of American flags and ubiquitous blue signs at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week prowled ...

Elon Musk Is No Climate Hero

Elon Musk Is No Climate Hero

Mickey Vernon

WIRED has been writing about Elon Musk—he of the electric cars, space rockets, tunnel-boring machines, implantable brain interfaces, Mars mission, ...

Google’s Rise Was Inevitable. So Was Its Antitrust Ruling

Google’s Rise Was Inevitable. So Was Its Antitrust Ruling

Mickey Vernon

Larry Page and Sergey Brin never liked hanging with reporters. “Larry can be a very sensitive and good person, but ...

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