Once in a while, Silicon Valley is still Silicon Valley. It happened on August 8, 2024, at the opening ceremony for a nuclear fusion energy startup. The events of that day were so astonishing I wish I could blurt them out to you in an instant, like a hologram, but you will need to be patient, as the linear nature of language allows me to unveil only one piece at a time. I had been sensing a malaise for a year or two, a feeling that tech had lost its flavor. The big AI leap was part of it.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. On Thursday evening, President-elect Donald Trump announced on his Truth Social platform that he would be appointing David O. Sacks--the "PayPal Mafia" alum, longtime venture capitalist, All-In Podcast co-host, Elon Musk pal, and rock-ribbed Silicon Valley conservative--as the "White House A.I. & Crypto Czar." In his statement, Trump wrote that "Sacks will focus on making America the clear global leader" in artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, which he deemed to be "two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness." In addition, Sacks will "safeguard Free Speech online," "steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship," and "lead the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology." For his first-ever Truth Social post, the incoming czar responded to Trump with gratitude and claimed that he "looks forward to advancing American competitiveness in these critical technologies."

It feels like every time I read the news, someone has Google in their crosshairs. The US Department of Justice is considering breaking up the company, potentially splitting its search engine from Android, Chrome, and Google Play services. My mother didn't raise a snitch, but if I were Google, my defense would be…. "But look at Apple and Amazon!" I would point across the room and everything.

Reddit continues to grow in popularity as a search engine alternative, with millions of Redditors contributing answers, perspectives, and summaries on the hottest topics. Now, the social platform is making it easier to find the insights you need with help from artificial intelligence (AI). Also: OpenAI's Sora AI video generator is here - how to try it Starting today, we're rolling out a limited test in the U.S. of Reddit Answers--an AI-powered way to get the information, recommendations, and hot takes you only go to Reddit for. Users can then visit the full conversation from where the answers were generated using the inline footnotes or the area beneath the answer. Reddit shares that this experience is part of a longer-term vision to improve the Search experience on the platform, making it "faster, smarter, and more relevant."

Since acquiring X, Elon Musk has been juicing up the platform with artificial intelligence (AI) using its Grok assistant offering. Over the past week, the platform gained a new AI image generator and expanded access to its AI chatbot. The Grok AI chatbot on X has been limited to Premium users. However, as first spotted by The Verge, starting on Friday, free users began noticing that they had also been given access to the Grok 2 chatbot, with the ability to send up to 10 Grok messages every two hours. Also: OpenAI's Sora AI video generator is here - how to try it At the time of writing this article, from my free X account, I could access the chatbot, which has a similar UI to ChatGPT. When I asked, "What is the biggest news of the day?",

For many of the people served by the humanitarian sector, 2024 has been the worst of times. The most recent UN estimates of those forced to flee violence and disaster is a record of 120 million, a figure that has doubled in the past decade. The broader figure of those in humanitarian need, 300 million people, has been swelled by increasingly violent conflict and growing impacts of the climate crisis. Progress in meeting the UN's Sustainable Development Goals has also been either stagnating or declining in more than half of the fragile countries. A child born in those countries has a tenfold greater chance of being in poverty than one born in a stable state.

A Ukrainian video game is shattering records since its release on November 20, despite many delays and its being a target of a Russian disinformation operation. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is the latest edition of a game series that started in 2007 with S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chornobyl, developed by GSC Game World, a Ukrainian video games studio. The game surpassed one million downloads and 117,000 concurrent players within 48 hours of its release, making it the most successful Ukrainian-developed title to date. Yet, that landmark achievement in the country's gaming industry was bittersweet. Former GSC Game World developer Volodymyr Yezhov, who worked on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 and was known by the nickname "Fresh", was killed in combat near Bakhmut in December 2022, while serving in the Ukrainian military.

Sharp has announced an agreement with mobile phone carrier KDDI to build an artificial intelligence center on the site of the electronics maker's halted liquid crystal display panel plant in the city of Sakai, Osaka Prefecture. According to the Monday announcement, KDDI will start construction of the data center within fiscal 2024, which ends next March, after acquiring the land, buildings and electrical facilities for the plant. KDDI aims to fully launch its operations in fiscal 2025. Sharp said in June that it had started talks on building an AI data center with KDDI and Tokyo-based system integrator Datasection. They initially planned to procure equipment including AI servers from California-based Super Micro Computer.

Tesla lobbied the UK government to strengthen rules on carbon emissions from cars and lorries, according to documents that also show the electric carmaker continued to push for increased taxes on fossil fuel cars. The US carmaker, which is run by Elon Musk, pushed for the British government to strengthen its zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate for cars and introduce equivalent rules for heavy goods vehicles (HGVs), in a letter to Lilian Greenwood, the Labour roads minister. Musk has launched a public feud with Labour, but his company has been more complimentary. A Tesla vice-president wrote in July that "we applaud the Labour party's strong position to decarbonisation of the energy system by 2030, growth and net zero". The letter was obtained under freedom of information laws by the Fast Charge newsletter and shared with the Guardian.

Taipei, Taiwan – China has launched an antitrust investigation into chip giant Nvidia in what appears to be Beijing's latest act of retaliation against Washington's sanctions on Chinese tech companies. Chinese state media said on Monday that the California-based chipmaker was being investigated by the State Administration for Market Regulation for potentially violating China's antimonopoly laws. Regulators will also review the company's 6.9bn acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, an Israeli-American supplier specialising in computer networking products, state media reports said, without providing further details. Chinese regulators approved the deal in 2020 with several restrictive conditions, including a provision that Nvidia would not discriminate against Chinese suppliers. Nvidia, which designs advanced chips used to power artificial intelligence (AI), is one of the world's most valuable companies, with a market capitalisation of more than 3.4 trillion.