Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. I was 21 when I first watched Spike Jonze's 2013 sci-fi romance Her in theaters in New York City--a then–fresh college graduate teeming with the potent and deluded optimism that came with being a very broke and online millennial hoping to change the world. Her sparked some of my first reflections about whether tech innovation is inherently good or bad for society, and helped validate my early moral quandaries and panic at the time. I was graduating at the first turn of a recovering recession (mainly due to big tech investments in digital and social media) and securing my first full-time role as an online reporter. Though I was eager and rosy, a quiet, worried voice also began growing inside of me. Me, my job, my realities, were entirely dependent on tech--mainly Facebook content dissemination and programmatic turnkey digital ads--and I was not sure these huge tech investments by our broligarchical founding fathers would lead us anywhere good.

There's good reason to fear that A.I. systems like ChatGPT and GPT4 will harm democracy. Public debate may be overwhelmed by industrial quantities of autogenerated argument. People might fall down political rabbit holes, taken in by superficially convincing bullshit, or obsessed by folies à deux relationships with machine personalities that don't really exist. These risks may be the fallout of a world where businesses deploy poorly tested A.I. systems in a battle for market share, each hoping to establish a monopoly. A.I. could advance the public good, not private profit, and bolster democracy instead of undermining it.

Smarter kitchen systems that leverage data, artificial intelligence and IoT can be a salve for the top challenges that restaurants face, while also achieving on top strategic goals for tech investments. Data from Hospitality Technology's 2019 Restaurant Technology Study indicates that 38% of restaurants were looking to increase investments in kitchen management software. Technology that allows staff to be more efficient and accurate, while freeing them from menial tasks, is a top strategic goal for tech investments and leveraging these solutions in the flow of operations from the kitchen is a vital step. Many kitchens are still using traditional technology and sticking receipts in a line, observes Revel Systems. This is not an effective strategy, with an increasing number of orders from multiple channels.

In the latest installment of the simmering trade war, the Trump administration reportedly plans to impose restrictions on Chinese investments in US technology companies and American technology exports to China. If implemented as rumored, any company with more than 25 percent Chinese ownership would be barred from investing in US companies that produce "industrially significant technology." Exports of US-made technology deemed important to national security, ranging from chips to robotics to cryptography, would face restrictions as well. Zachary Karabell is a WIRED Contributor. Karabell is the head of Global Strategies Envestnet and the president of River Twice Research.

WATERLOO – An exciting wave of tech industry investment is set to make Kitchener-Waterloo the Canadian hub of creating an uncontrollable line of code that goes on to wreak incalculable economic and human damage. "AI is the future, and it's important for Canada to be part of that future," said Prime Minister Trudeau. "Even if that future includes the complete destruction of all life on earth." While some experts worry that the increasing integration of tech into the realms of economics, policing, personal finance, transit, health, and parenting, exponentially increases the ability of rogue code to create human suffering, other experts are paid a lot to design it, and say that things will'probably be fine'. "On our current course, it's inevitable that some country will invent a piece of AI with the power to destroy the world in the next 20 years," said Trudeau.

WATERLOO – An exciting wave of tech industry investment is set to make Kitchener-Waterloo the Canadian hub of creating an uncontrollable line of code that goes on to wreak incalculable economic and human damage. "AI is the future, and it's important for Canada to be part of that future," said Prime Minister Trudeau. "Even if that future includes the complete destruction of all life on earth." While some experts worry that the increasing integration of tech into the realms of economics, policing, personal finance, transit, health, and parenting, exponentially increases the ability of rogue code to create human suffering, other experts are paid a lot to design it, and say that things will'probably be fine'. "On our current course, it's inevitable that some country will invent a piece of AI with the power to destroy the world in the next 20 years," said Trudeau.

As Washington fiddles, China is investing billions in U.S. startups with cutting-edge products that could have military applications at the same time it is dialing back investments in less critical American industries such as entertainment. A New York Times story this week says that among the startups are companies working on artificial intelligence for military robots, rocket engines, ship sensors and printers that could produce high-tech components such as computer screens for military jets. Many of the firms making such investments are owned by companies controlled by the Chinese government or connected to its leaders. A blog post last December on the website of CB Insights, which tracks startup investments, says that China poured $9.9 billion into new Silicon Valley firms in 2015 and made an additional $3.5 billion in tech investments in the first nine months of last year. The number and size of those tech investments in startups developing military applications were not broken out.

Military delegates arrive at the Great Hall of the People for a meeting ahead of Saturday's opening ceremony of the National People's Congress (NPC), in Beijing, China March 4, 2016. As Washington fiddles, China is investing billions in U.S. startups with cutting-edge products that could have military applications at the same time it is dialing back investments in less critical American industries such as entertainment. A New York Times story this week says that among the startups are companies working on artificial intelligence for military robots, rocket engines, ship sensors and printers that could produce high-tech components such as computer screens for military jets. Many of the firms making such investments are owned by companies controlled by the Chinese government or connected to its leaders. A blog post last December on the website of CB Insights, which tracks startup investments, says that China poured $9.9 billion into new Silicon Valley firms in 2015 and made an additional $3.5 billion in tech investments in the first nine months of last year.

As Washington fiddles, China is investing billions in U.S. startups with cutting-edge products that could have military applications at the same time it is dialing back investments in less critical American industries such as entertainment. A New York Times story this week says that among the startups are companies working on artificial intelligence for military robots, rocket engines, ship sensors and printers that could produce high-tech components such as computer screens for military jets. Many of the firms making such investments are owned by companies controlled by the Chinese government or connected to its leaders. A blog post last December on the website of CB Insights, which tracks startup investments, says that China poured $9.9 billion into new Silicon Valley firms in 2015 and made an additional $3.5 billion in tech investments in the first nine months of last year. The number and size of those tech investments in startups developing military applications were not broken out.