Andrew Jassy tells white collar workers that such technology means fewer people will be needed for some jobs
>As we roll out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done
>we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce
Are we done for?
As right-wing governments seek to blame a rejection of parenthood, a survey reveals a lack of choice, not desire, stops people having the families they want
This article notes that "right-wing governments, including the US and Hungary, are increasingly blaming falling fertility rates on a rejection of parenthood", as if today's young adults just don't want children.
But the author suggests that actually people do want children, and one of the main reasons they're having fewer children is because they can't afford many children.
Thoughts?
If the UK got rid of its nukes then we'd just be defenceless against Russia, China, and even the US if the US decides they don't value their old allies (which seems to be the case these days).
Defending the UK given the current state of the world is sensible, but I wonder how they'll raise the cash for this
Maybe it could. Starmer and his government have become more critical of Israel recently.
I think the Netherlands and Germany both have proportional representation and their parliaments have a bigger mix of parties, representing the interests of different sections of society.
I don't favour PR because I think PR would be a better vehicle for my personal political views. I favour PR because I think a more democratic system is by itself a good thing. Under PR, every vote counts. But under FPTP, if you vote for a smaller party that has no chance of winning your constituency, your vote is essentially worthless.
Their letter warns of genocide in Gaza, and calls on the UK to take concrete actions to meet its international legal obligations.
There is also another article in The Guardian about an open letter by nearly 400 British and Irish writers, calling Israel's war on Gaza "genocide". This seems to be a separate letter from the one reported by the BBC above.
Another thing I read this morning was this BBC story about a woman in Gaza who suffered a miscarriage due to the tribulations of trying to survive during Israel's military action. She and her husband also had IVF embryos at a fertility clinic in Gaza, but those have been destroyed by Israeli bombing, so this couple believe they may never have a chance to have children now.
Thoughts?
Yeah PR probably won't happen for years at least. I hope we get it at some point though.
Labour is beyond repair. Time for a co-ordinated strategy to support progressive parties committed to electoral reform, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
George Monbiot suggests that Labour shouldn't be supported because they're now pushing right-wing policies, in his view.
So he thinks people should tactically support progressive parties who support electoral reform (Lib Dems, Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru), which may hopefully then lead to electoral reform, so that we end up with proportional representation. Then Brits will have more choices than effectively just two parties for future elections.
Thoughts?
With a leap in the evolution of large language models, some leading thinkers are questioning whether AI might become sentient
Do you think AI is, or could become, conscious?
I think AI might one day emulate consciousness to a high level of accuracy, but that wouldn't mean it would actually be conscious.
This article mentions a Google engineer who "argued that AI chatbots could feel things and potentially suffer". But surely in order to "feel things" you would need a nervous system right? When you feel pain from touching something very hot, it's your nerves that are sending those pain signals to your brain... right?
Can I ask what specifically you think was corrupt/wasteful? As for unaccountability, we were able to vote for new members of the European parliament.
Keir Starmer is not blameless when it comes to Brexit, but he is moving in the right direction. Even the Tories attacking him know that, says Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins
Do you agree that Brexit has been "a pointless waste of time, money and effort"?
I definitely want people to have control over their data. And I like open source platforms, which is why I'm using Lemmy. But I just think if we want a European social media platform that sees widespread adoption among normal people, then such a platform would probably have proprietary elements. Surely if it was completely open source then some company could come along, take the open source stuff, bolt on some proprietary novelties, and start grabbing market share.
Most people want to use a service which is big and popular and just works, and I don't think they care about code licensing...
It would be cool if Europe could make a really successful, open source social media platform which most Europeans want to use, but if it was open source then I expect some company (maybe a foreign one) would take the code, bolt on some proprietary features, and start stealing users.
Realistically though, proprietary tech services tend to be more successful. Whether it's Facebook, or Windows, or the most successful European tech service: Spotify.
I like open source, but realistically if we want a successful European social media platform, it would probably be largely proprietary.
Several strongly worded X posts, a bungled Albanian scheme and the ghost of Enoch Powell. Once again, he’s smashed it, says Guardian columnist Marina Hyde
It seems the left dislike Starmer because he's tacking to the right, and the right dislike Starmer because he's not Farage.
Thoughts?
‘Nobody has been harder … about Donald Trump than me,’ Maher says after fellow comedian compared his meal with US president to meeting Hitler
Bill Maher doesn't seem to be a fan of Larry David's satire of Maher's dinner with Trump.
I thought Larry's satire was very good. What do you think?
The long read: Working for Hope Not Hate, I infiltrated an extremist organisation, befriended its members and got to work investigating their political connections
This is a long article (excerpts from a book apparently) but it's interesting.
Basically the author, a man with Jewish heritage, makes a fake persona and joins far-right groups. He's assisted by the group Hope Not Hate.
What do you think of the far-right? One of the interesting points that is made in the article a few times is that some far-right adherents, met by the author, seem to want friendship more than anything else. At least that's the author's view.
True, it's a long time until the next UK general election. Maybe Reform's vote will suffer before then. Alternatively the local elections and by-elections could be a boost for them, I dunno.
Anyway, maybe we should have proportional representation in the UK. Even if Reform had 25% of the vote and therefore 25% of the seats in parliament, that would mean that 75% of parliamentarians wouldn't be Reform members.
Our current system allows a party with minority support (potentially Reform in the future) to win a majority of parliamentary seats. In 2019, the Conservatives won 44% of the vote, which gave them 56% of seats. Last year, Labour won 34% of the vote, which gave them 63% of seats.
He spends quite big sums on healthcare I think? I'm not saying he's a perfect guy. Maybe the world would be better if taxes were such that nobody could be a billionaire. I just think I prefer Bill Gates to other billionaires, especially the prominent South African one.
My guess is that Labour have done some polling, showing them what red wall voters want, and Labour want to appeal to those voters - voters who are tempted by Reform's message.
But on this climate change issue, the article is saying that voters don't even want anti-green policies. And I haven't seen signs that Labour are tempted to copy Reform's anti-green stance.
At least Bill gives away a lot of his money, and his stance on politics seems relatively sensible and measured. Whereas the South African billionaire gets a kick out of being stupid and damaging to the US (and beyond the US if you look at his comments on foreign politics).
In my case I buy my own food because I just have different tastes I guess. But yes I get the point about judgement. I definitely plan to move out as soon as it's feasible to do so.
Christ I need my own place
Same in my case. Living back with parents, after having lived independently, is annoying.
Labour must deliver the green transition voters want, leaving Reform and the Tories on the side of economic decline and dictators, says Guardian columnist Rafael Behr
This opinion article argues that Labour should support green policies for moral reasons, but the author also argues that Farage's anti-green message is not what the public want. Apparently "68% of Farage’s constituents in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, declared themselves 'somewhat' or 'very' worried" about climate change.
The article links to this Bluesky thread from a pollster which is interesting:
!A screenshot of a Bluesky thread which is linked above
Edit: you can right click the above image and open it in a new tab to see it full size.
It's similar in the UK currently. The UK's equivalent of AfD is Reform UK who are apparently the leading party in the polls (source):
Reform UK in front on 25%, Labour on 23% and the Conservatives on 20%, with the Lib Dems on 16% and Greens on 10%
I know people want to hate on Bill for being rich, and I can understand that, but I still prefer him to a certain South African billionaire.
Maybe some people will say that's like comparing a giant douche to a turd sandwich though.
I think democracy does a pretty good job of surviving when you have free and fair elections, and proportional representation probably makes politics even more democratic. In European countries that have maintained free and fair elections, they generally haven't plunged into populism. Macron defeated Le Pen twice, for example. AfD have obviously grown their base in Germany, but they haven't entered government. Hungary is arguably ruled by a populist, but some people would say their politics aren't really free and fair anymore. If their politics remained free and fair then populism might have less power.
Maybe we need a new special relationship...
A ban on bringing meat and cheese home from Europe is said to be designed to protect British livestock, but is another reminder of the bureaucratic botheration hamstringing the economy since Brexit, says Adam Boulton.
I found this interesting. It's mainly about how Brexit has introduced extra red tape when dealing with Europe. The article says how the EU is the UK's largest trading partner, with the value of trade being over double that of the next largest trading partner: the USA.
Here are some quotes:
>The days of freedom of movement for people, goods, and services between the UK and its neighbours are long gone.
>The British economy has lost out and British citizens and businesses suffer from greater bureaucratic botheration.
>Nor has immigration into the UK gone down since leaving the EU. The numbers have actually gone up, with people from Commonwealth countries, including India, Pakistan and Nigeria, more than compensating for EU citizens who used to come and go.
They do those things to some degree, but those things remain banned for under 18s, which I suppose reduces harm, even if it doesn't fully eliminate harm.
Britain’s decision to leave the European Union in 2016 was sold to voters as a magic bullet that would revitalize the country’s economy. Its impact is still reverberating.
I found this article interesting. Here are some quotes:
>Brexit’s backers sold the project as a magic bullet that would solve the problems caused by a globalizing economy — not unlike Mr. Trump’s claims that tariffs would be a boon to the public purse and a remedy for the inequities of global trade. In neither case, experts said, does such a panacea exist.
>“The truth is, Brexit did not correct any of the problems caused by deindustrialization,” said Tony Travers, a professor of politics at the London School of Economics. “If anything, Brexit made them worse.”
>Mr. Trump’s MAGA coalition has some of the same ideological fault lines as the Brexiteers, pitting economic nationalists like Stephen K. Bannon against globalists like Elon Musk. That has led analysts to wonder if post-Trump politics in the United States will look a lot like post-Brexit politics in Britain.
>“Brexit caused profound damage to the Conservative Party,” Professor Travers said. “It has been rendered unelectable because it is riven by factions. Will the Republican Party be similarly factionalized after Trump?”
Former PM says she wants to protect free speech after being ‘cut off at the knees’ by ‘the elite’ while at No 10
Interesting.
Ireland holds the algorithm off-switch. Ursula von der Leyen must force Dublin to use it says civil liberties campaigner Johnny Ryan
This opinion piece argues that Europe should "shut down recommender algorithms" of the big US social media platforms - Facebook, X, Instagram, etc. - because the author believes that these algorithms are undermining European democracy.
The most obvious example of such an algorithm is on X, where Musk can manipulate the algorithm to boost European far-right parties, like AfD. But the author argues that other social media CEOs, like Zuck, are beholden to Trump's anti-liberal agenda - for example, Trump "openly threatened to throw Mark Zuckerberg in jail for the rest of his life". Therefore: "It is reasonable to assume that tech oligarchs will do what [Trump] tells them", which may include the Trump administration pressuring US social media companies to recommend more right-wing content.
So the author says: "The EU must immediately switch off the tech companies’ algorithms on its soil, at least until they are proven safe for democracy". Do you agree with that?
The PM will not antagonise the unpredictable president, but it is clear to No 10 that Trump is the problem and the solution lies elsewhere, says journalist and Keir Starmer biographer Tom Baldwin
This article says that the UK might be willing to sign up for a youth mobility scheme with the EU (for 18-30 year-olds) because it could boost economic growth: "by some estimates, it could do more for growth than planning reform and housebuilding combined".
However, the article also says that the UK government thinks it would be a mistake to get too close to the EU, because this could serve the narrative of right-wing populists:
>Downing Street believes that part of the appeal of both Trump and our homegrown [British] strain of rightwing populism lies in how institutions like the EU became too detached from the people they were meant to serve. In short, [the UK government is] determined not to be seen defending the status quo.
Thoughts?
They both support the underdog, but can they find common ground on Britain’s past?
I thought this was interesting, seeing the views of a young adult who supports Reform. The article is about him having a date with a Green-voting young woman.
What are your thoughts about the growth of Reform, especially among young adults?
Having said that though, it looks like Reform's voting base still skews older. If you look at YouGov's most recent data here (as of the time of me writing this) you can see the following:
- 15% of 18-24 year-olds support Reform
- 20% of 25-49 year-olds support Reform
- 26% of 50-64 year-olds support Reform
- 29% of 65+ year-olds support Reform
It’s sick of playing this numbers game.
>In a statement from China’s Ministry of Finance, which we’ve translated using Google, the country says that any further tariffs from the US side would “no longer make economic sense,” and that the US “will become a joke in the history of the world economy.”
>China says that at the new tariff rate of 125 percent there is no longer any “market acceptance for US goods exported to China,” so there’s no sense in raising tariffs further. “If the US continues to play the tariff numbers game, China will ignore it,” the statement says.
>China isn’t ruling out other forms of retaliation, however, ending the statement with a warning: “If the US insists on continuing to substantially infringe on China’s interests, China will resolutely counterattack and fight to the end.” Yesterday the country announced it was reducing the number of Hollywood films it would permit to release, and over the last week it has also restricted import and export rights for a number of US companies.
To understand British politics, one must understand Dead Man
Archived version can be seen here: https://archive.is/xtbKI
I thought this was a funny article. It's arguing that Britain's leading politicians pay too much attention to the opinions of voters who are now dead. Here's a quote:
>Death had whittled away the Leave majority by 2019, according to one analysis. Among the ranks of the living, Brexit is seen as a clownish endeavour, even among those who supported it. Demography combined with the pointless, damaging reality of leaving the EU to kill Brexit Britain. Yet it lives on in the minds of the country’s politicians, where it is forever 2016.