Voting & Elections
The Download: dead startups fueling AI and interspecies communication
Plus: Hackers have disrupted the US Federal Election Commission's website. When Keelan Miskell began winding down his crypto startup, he didn't think its data was worth much. But he's since turned the company's digital archives into tens of thousands of dollars, selling its codebase and workspace data. He's part of a growing market in which companies that help shut down startups sell their data to AI labs. Demand has grown as training labs hit the limits of public and synthetic datasets, with buyers seeking real-world records to help train AI agents. But the sales raise legal and ethical questions.
Tax on banks, energy bill help and minimum wage rise - what could be in the Budget?
Tax on banks, energy bill help and minimum wage rise - what could be in the Budget? Chancellor John Healey will set out Labour's tax and spending plans when he delivers his first Budget at around 12:30 on Wednesday. The speech, which usually lasts about an hour, will be broadcast live on BBC iPlayer and on the BBC News website. He and Prime Minister Andy Burnham are hoping to give households breathing space amid the ongoing high cost of living. But Healey has also refused to rule out some tax increases to potentially pay for support he could distribute elsewhere.
Anthropic's political problem will get worse before it gets better
Anthropicfiled paperwork to go public on Monday, and while its list of business risk factors spans the fanciful (sentient AI) and the mundane (losing its executives), one stands above the rest as a likely source of headaches in the near future: the "evolving and uncertain regulatory and political environment." With an expected IPO around mid-November, and new representatives from the midterms elections to be sworn in in January, the company has a scant few months before it's almost guaranteed to incur even more political headaches. While the current Republican-controlled Congress has not put its political will behind constraining AI companies -- either the technology they produce or the resources they consume -- Americans of both parties are largely agreed in their opposition to data centers and concern about AI displacing jobs. With the executive branch already willing to create difficulty for Anthropic, the predicted "blue wave" of the midterms may result in the company landing on the wrong side of the legislative branch too. Anti-data center sentiment has absolutely been a factor in the midterms.
Massive Groups of Volunteers Are Ready to Face Down ICE at the Polls
From heat maps to Signal chats to war rooms, volunteers across the US are ready to act if federal immigration agents show up on Election Day. The Franklin County board of elections building at 1700 Morse Street in central Columbus, Ohio, is an early voting site for next week's midterms . It is also located in the middle of the large Somali American community that was targeted by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency's Operation Buckeye last December. The campaign was designed, the agency said, to find "the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens." The result was a paltry number of arrests, months of sustained harassment, and a lingering feeling that ICE agents could return at any minute, especially around election time.
AI-driven disinformation running rampant on social media before US midterms, experts warn
Social media feeds are awash with an unprecedented flood of AI -driven disinformation ahead of November's US midterm elections, according to experts, who warn many posts are probably "slipping through the cracks". As tens of millions of Americans prepare to cast their vote, social media companies have scaled back their efforts to protect voters from lies meant to manipulate elections. While the backlash against Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica scandal prompted social media giants to bolster their trust and safety operations, a counter-backlash from the right over fears of speech restrictions - which intensified after Elon Musk's takeover of X, formerly Twitter, and the election of Donald Trump in 2024 - has led to significant layoffs from relevant teams. Artificial intelligence has made it easier than ever to launch a disinformation campaign. And platforms are increasingly relying on AI, rather than human intervention, to respond.