Christopher Marquis is a professor at the University of Cambridge and the author of The Profiteers. In 1930, in the depths of the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes wrote a short essay called . It is often remembered for one striking prediction: by 2030, people in wealthy countries might only need to work about 15 hours a week. What Keynes imagined was a society advanced enough to solve what he called the "economic problem" of basic material provision. If technology kept improving, and societies kept growing richer, then fewer hours of human labor would be needed to produce the necessities and comforts of life.

How the Pope's Magnifica Humanitas offers a template for individuals to meet the AI moment Despite a lack of regulation, we still have the ability to steer artificial intelligence in ways that can benefit our common humanity. Pope Leo XIV's new encyclical on artificial intelligence includes a statement that warrants serious attention from technologists and policymakers: "Technology is never neutral." As the pope says, the choice before us--the choice AI presents--is one between the Tower of Babel and the rebuilding of our common humanity. In the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, humans sought to build a massive structure that reached all the way to Heaven, only to have their project thwarted when God made those involved unable to understand one another. It was a pursuit fixated on relentless growth, divorced from any concern about God's commandments or the human cost. It resulted in failure and atomization.

Stock clustering algorithms play a pivotal role in quantitative finance and the asset management industry, serving as a core mechanism for understanding market complexity and conducting asset preselection. Their intrinsic value lies in enabling investors to identify the true underlying structure of the stock market, thereby categorizing stocks with similar return characteristics or risk profiles into distinct groups. This data-driven market segmentation not only significantly reduces the computational dimensionality involved in portfolio construction but also provides a solid foundation for formulating differentiated investment strategies. A review of existing literature reveals that scholars both domestic and international have achieved fruitful results in stock clustering. Traditional clustering research predominantly employs classic machine learning algorithms: Xiaojun (2019) and Wu et al. (2022) utilized the K-means algorithm for stock partitioning; Huang et al. (2010) and Lu et al. (2020) explored the sectoral structures of the SSE 50 Index and other markets based on Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (AHC) and Spectral Clustering; Korzeniewski (2018) further introduced the Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM) algorithm to construct portfolios with enhanced risk resistance. In recent years, with the advancement of deep learning, L ucio and Caiado (2022) and Siregar and Yosia (2024) have attempted to incorporate time-series models (such as TGARCH) or specific market features (e.g., Indonesian stock data) into clustering frameworks. However, despite their respective merits in capturing market trends, these methods share a common limitation: traditional stock clustering approaches predominantly rely exclusively on stock-specific information (e.g., price, volatility, or financial metrics), neglecting the heterogeneity of market participants--namely, the "investors". In reality, investors are typically categorized into three distinct types based on their risk preferences: risk-averse, risk-seeking, and risk-neutral. Divergent risk attitudes inevitably lead to fundamentally different asset selection logic.

The boss of Standard Chartered has apologised after describing employees whose jobs are vulnerable to being replaced by Artificial Intelligence (AI) as lower value human capital. Discussing how automation was likely to lead to thousands of job cuts at the bank at a recent conference, Bill Winters said it wasn't about cost cutting but replacing, in some cases, lower value, human capital, with the financial capital and the investment capital that we're putting in. He later sought to contextualise the remarks via LinkedIn and said he was sorry for his wording, which had caused upset to some colleagues. He said he was committed to helping staff cope with the accelerating pace of change. The rise of AI tools has led to predictions of huge job losses, particularly for tech workers and graduates.

The ex-employees, who cofounded a new AI watchdog group, say investors deserve more information about xAI's safety practices before SpaceX goes public. Two former OpenAI employees and a group of AI safety nonprofits are warning that Elon Musk's AI lab, xAI, could become a liability for prospective investors in SpaceX, which is preparing to file what's expected to be the largest initial public offering in Wall Street History. In a letter directed to investors published on Tuesday, the ex-staffers highlighted what they describe as "unpriced risks" related to xAI that could complicate SpaceX's reported plans to raise up to $75 billion as part of its IPO. The rocket company's private valuation shot up to over $1 trillion after it acquired xAI last year . Musk claimed his rocket company could launch data centers into space for his AI lab, but the letter's authors argue that xAI's poor record on safety issues could complicate how investors view the combined company as it gets ready to submit its IPO prospectus filing .

GameStop has built up a stake of 5% in eBay and is offering to acquire the company at $125 a share. GameStop has built up a stake of 5% in eBay and is offering to acquire the company at $125 a share. GameStop's $55.5bn bid for eBay rejected as'neither credible nor attractive' Online marketplace takes into account uncertainty around US video games retailer's financing proposal The board of eBay has rejected the US video games retailer GameStop's surprise $55.5bn bid (£41bn) for the online marketplace, describing the proposal as "neither credible nor attractive". Earlier this month, GameStop made an unsolicited bid for eBay, publishing a letter on its website outlining a half-cash, half-stock proposal. This was despite the US games company - which became a global household name during the meme stock craze of 2021 - being worth far less than its takeover target.

GameStop's CEO said he could turn eBay into something worth hundreds of billions of dollars. GameStop's CEO said he could turn eBay into something worth hundreds of billions of dollars. GameStop makes $55.5bn takeover offer for eBay Video game retailer's CEO warns that unsolicited bid could turn hostile if it is rebuffed by resale site's board US video games retailer GameStop has offered to buy eBay for $55.5bn (£41bn) in an unsolicited bid that its boss warned could turn hostile if the proposal is rebuffed by eBay's board. GameStop, which has quietly accumulated a 5% stake in eBay, said it was willing to pay $125 a share, split 50-50 between cash and stock. It is an ambitious move by the games company, which catapulted to fame during the meme-stock craze of 2021 but is worth far less than its takeover target.

This story appears in the June 2026 print edition. While some stories from this issue are not yet available to read online, you can explore more from the magazine . Get our editors' guide to what matters in the world, delivered to your inbox every weekday. The courtship between Silicon Valley and MAGA was consummated on June 6, 2024, in San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood, on a street known as "Billionaires' Row," at the 22,000-square-foot, $45 million French-limestone mansion of a venture capitalist named David Sacks. Along with Chamath Palihapitiya, a fellow venture capitalist and a colleague on the podcast, Sacks hosted a fundraiser for Donald Trump. He knew that other technology titans were coming around to the ex-president but remained in the closet. "And I think that this event is going to break the ice on that," Sacks said on the podcast the week before the fundraiser. "And maybe it'll create a preference cascade, where all of a sudden it becomes acceptable to acknowledge the truth." Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. A few years earlier, Sacks had described the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol as an "insurrection" and pronounced Trump "disqualified" from ever again holding national office. "What Trump did was absolutely outrageous, and I think it brought him to an ignominious end in American politics," he said on the podcast a few days after the event. "He will pay for it in the history books, if not in a court of law." Palihapitiya was more colloquial, calling Trump "a complete piece-of-shit fucking scumbag." These might seem like tricky positions to climb down from--but the path that leads from scathing denunciation through gradual accommodation to sycophantic embrace of Trump is a well-worn pilgrimage trail. The journey is less wearisome for self-mortifiers who never considered democracy (a word seldom spoken on the podcast) all that important in the first place.

The poster child of the AI boom, valued at $850bn, needs to show strategic discipline after'casting its net too wide' If OpenAI is going to float this year, it has to get serious about its business model. The wow factor around the US company - the poster child of an AI industry boom that has stoked fears of a stock market bubble - has been long established, but when will the profits come? The developer of ChatGPT is one of the biggest startups in the world and is now valued at $850bn (£645bn). Meanwhile, it is reportedly spending $600bn on infrastructure (the amount it invests in datacentres and chips to power its AI models) by 2030. At least this is a reduction on an initial estimate of $1.4tn .

After the rise (and fall) of reservation scalping, DoorDash and a host of apps are fighting to book you a seat at the country's most exclusive restaurants. At The Eighty-Six in Manhattan, exclusivity is the point. The luxe, 11-table steakhouse is the sort of place that lavishes caviar and aged mimolette cheese on its potatoes, and crows that your market-price duck was raised by one Dr. Taylor Swift has reportedly dined there in a Miu Miu skirt. Reservations are a scarce commodity that the restaurant, and New York law forbids you from selling one. "Access is the main asset," wrote food writer Helen Rosner in a recent New Yorker review of The Eighty-Six. "The product is the door, and what a door!