Great Tech, Inc.™

Technology | The Guardian
Lisa Nandy urges YouTube and TikTok to promote better content for children

UK culture minister says government wants to ‘open a dialogue’, but will intervene if platforms do not comply

The UK culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, has written to video-sharing platforms, such as YouTube and TikTok, urging them to promote higher quality educational content to children.

Recent statistics suggest that although a decade ago children watched an average of two hours’ television a day, that has since dropped by more than 70%. Instead, children were migrating to YouTube, TikTok and other streaming platforms between the ages of four and eight, Nandy said.
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Technology | The Guardian
AI tools may soon manipulate people’s online decision-making, say researchers

Study predicts an ‘intention economy’ where companies bid for accurate predictions of human behaviour

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools could be used to manipulate online audiences into making decisions – ranging from what to buy to who to vote for – according to researchers at the University of Cambridge.

The paper highlights an emerging new marketplace for “digital signals of intent” – known as the “intention economy” – where AI assistants understand, forecast and manipulate human intentions and sell that information on to companies who can profit from it.
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Technology | The Guardian
‘I deleted news apps’: Guardian readers on how to stop doomscrolling

While we certainly don’t encourage people to turn away from the news, we also know it’s important to take breaks

Doomscrolling happens to the best of us. Algorithms across social platforms are finely tuned to feed you content and posts that keep you locked in. It can be hard to pull yourself away even when you’re consuming a barrage of news about the state of the world online.

While we certainly don’t encourage people to turn away from the news, we also know it’s important to take breaks. A recent MIT study found that social media can create a negative feedback loop: those who are already struggling with their mental health are more likely to consume negative content, which makes their mental health worse.
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Technology | The Guardian
Britain will never be great again until we stop flogging our top companies to the US | Will Hutton

Tech selloffs not only cost tax revenue and jobs, but are turning the UK into a vassal state

There is much to admire about the US. The great French social observer Alexis de Tocqueville, nearly 200 years ago, lauded its commitment to civic virtue, individual self-improvement and hard work – legacies of its puritan founders.

Those traits are still evident today, but alongside them a darker one has emerged. The US, the hegemon of the 20th century still committed to democracy, has changed. It has transmuted into an imperial power careless of democracy but ever readier to exact economic tribute from its vassal states.
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Technology | The Guardian
How will AI reshape the world? Well, it could be the spreadsheet of the 21st century | John Naughton

Large language models have changed how big corporations function, and the arrival of AI ‘agents’ – essentially automated Moneypennys – could prove irresistible

If 2024 was the year of large language models (LLMs), then 2025 looks like the year of AI “agents”. These are quasi-intelligent systems that harness LLMs to go beyond their usual tricks of generating plausible text or responding to prompts. The idea is that an agent can be given a high-level – possibly even vague – goal and break it down into a series of actionable steps. Once it “understands” the goal, it can devise a plan to achieve it, much as a human would.

OpenAI’s chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, recently explained it thus to the Financial Times: “It could be a researcher, a helpful assistant for everyday people, working moms like me. In 2025, we will see the first very successful agents deployed that help people in their day to day.” Or it’s like having a digital assistant “that doesn’t just respond to your instructions but is able to learn, adapt, and perhaps most importantly, take meaningful actions to solve problems on your behalf”. In other words, Miss Moneypenny on steroids.
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Technology | The Guardian
From climate denial to gothic movies to ‘treat culture’ … what to expect in 2025

The new US president will almost certainly bring unpredictability but several themes will dominate the year ahead. Observer writers offer their guide on what lies ahead in politics, film, fashion, sport and more

The only thing that can be predicted with absolute certainty about Donald Trump’s second term as US president is that it will be unpredictable. Trump does not really know what he wants to do on a range of issues. He talks a good game, which is how he got re-elected. But he often seems to decide policy on the basis of what the last person he spoke to told him. Is he serious about mobilising the military to carry out mass deportations of “illegal” migrants? Will he use the justice department to hunt down political enemies and media critics? Will he impose sweeping tariffs on foreign imports and trigger a global trade war? Or will he act with greater circumspection, using these threats as bargaining tools? Who knows? He doesn’t yet.
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Technology | The Guardian
‘All people could do was hope the nerds would fix it’: the global panic over the millennium bug, 25 years on

Planes were going to drop out of the sky, nuclear reactors would explode. But then … nothing. What really happened with Y2K? People still disagree …

Just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, 25 years ago, Queen Elizabeth II stepped off a private barge to arrive at London’s Millennium Dome for its grand opening ceremony. Dressed in a pumpkin-orange coat, she entered the venue with Prince Philip, taking her place alongside Tony and Cherie Blair and 12,000 guests to celebrate the dawn of a new millennium. At the stroke of midnight, Big Ben began to chime and 40 tonnes of fireworks were launched from 16 barges lined along the river. The crowd joined hands, preparing to sing Auld Lang Syne. For a few long moments, the Queen was neglected – she flapped her arms out like a toddler wanting to be lifted up, before Blair and Philip noticed her, took a hand each, and the singing began. A new century was born.

One politician who wasn’t in attendance at the glitzy celebration was Paddy Tipping, a Labour MP who spent the night in the Cabinet Office. Tipping was minister for the millennium bug. After 25 years, it might be hard to recall just how big a deal the bug – now more commonly called Y2K – felt then. But for the last few years of the 90s, the idea that computers would fail catastrophically as the clock ticked over into the year 2000 was near the top of the political agenda in the UK and the US. Here was a hi-tech threat people feared might topple social order, underlining humanity’s new dependence on technological systems most of us did not understand. Though there are no precise figures, it’s estimated that the cost of the global effort to prevent Y2K exceeded £300bn (£633bn today, accounting for inflation).
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Technology | The Guardian
OpenAI lays out plan to shift to for-profit corporate structure

AI company, which makes ChatGPT, says in blogpost ‘we once again need to raise more capital than we’d imagined’

OpenAI has laid out a plan to revamp its corporate structure next year, saying it would create a public benefit corporation to manage its growing business and ease the restrictions imposed by its current non-profit parent.

Rumors have swirled that OpenAI was in the process of shifting to a largely for-profit company, but this is the first time it has detailed the proposal publicly.
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Technology | The Guardian
‘Godfather of AI’ shortens odds of the technology wiping out humanity over next 30 years

Geoffrey Hinton says there is 10% to 20% chance AI will lead to human extinction in three decades, as change moves fast

* ‘We need dramatic changes’: is societal collapse inevitable?

The British-Canadian computer scientist often touted as a “godfather” of artificial intelligence has shortened the odds of AI wiping out humanity over the next three decades, warning the pace of change in the technology is “much faster” than expected.

Prof Geoffrey Hinton, who this year was awarded the Nobel prize in physics for his work in AI, said there was a “10% to 20%” chance that AI would lead to human extinction within the next three decades.
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Technology | The Guardian
How I beat overwhelm: I deleted my email app – and my sleep suddenly improved

Checking my emails at every possible opportunity had become distracting and draining. So I set myself new boundaries

As a freelance writer, the structure of my work day can often vary wildly. Sometimes, it feels as if I have too much to do – other days, too little.

Yet no matter the shape of my 9 to 5, one thing remains constant: emails. I receive about 100 a day, ranging from the inane (Tesco Clubcard updates) to the infuriating (the PR who keeps sending me the fluctuating numbers of Taylor Swift’s Instagram following) and the important (editors, often wondering when the piece they have asked me to write might materialise).
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Technology | The Guardian
The 8 best electric blankets and heated throws – tried and tested to keep you toasty for less this winter

If you’re looking to heat the human not the home – or just love snuggling under something cosy on your sofa – these are our best buys

Aside from hugging a fluffy hot-water bottle, sipping the Christmas whisky and ramping up the thermostat, an electric blanket or heated throw is the best way to keep out the winter chill. More than half of a typical household’s fuel bills goes on heating and hot water, so finding alternative ways to keep warm – and heating the person, rather than the whole home – is always a good idea.

Many of the best electric blankets and heated throws boast running costs of about 1p to 3p an hour, so it’s hard to ignore their potential energy- and money-saving benefits.

Best overall electric blanket:
Fogarty Wonderfully Warm
King, £80 at Dunelm

Best budget electric blanket:
Slumberdown Sleepy Nights
King, £33.60 at Amazon

Best quilted electric blanket:
Dreamland Pure Comfort bamboo underblanket
King, £139.99 at Amazon

Best overall heated throw:
Beurer heated snuggle blanket
Extra-large, £84.99 at Beurer

Best budget heated throw:
OHS electric heated fleece over blanket
£34 at Online Home Shop
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Technology | The Guardian
How Just Dance saved my Christmas | Dominik Diamond

With grown-up children scattered around the world, an inconvenient snowstorm and a vegan dinner gaffe, Christmas 2024 was looking bleak – so thank goodness for the ultimate party game

The older my kids get, the harder it is to keep them part of Christmas and the old traditions. Our youngest daughter is off travelling, which involves text message photos from Bangkok nightclubs with comments like, “Check out the size of THIS spliff, dude!” Middle son flies off to his girlfriend’s on Boxing Day. Oldest has added a festive shift of dog-sitting to her duties in the animal hospital and so she is around for just a few hours on Christmas Day. We’d also had a bit of a row on the 23rd and were not really speaking.

It was going to be tough to make Christmas ’24 a memorable one. But I had a plan. And that plan was Just Dance 2025.
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Technology | The Guardian
The video games you may have missed in 2024

A returning classic, a Love Island send-up and an answer to the age-old question: can you fry eggs atop Mount Everest? The year’s best games that might have passed you by

• More on the best culture of 2024

PS4/5, Xbox, PC, Nintendo Switch
Taiwanese studio Red Candle Games broke through in 2019 with the first-person horror game, Devotion. Its follow-up, Nine Sols, is less grungy but no less distinct, a robust 2D action-platformer with an exquisite “taopunk” aesthetic. This vivid sci-fi world feels as if it is constructed as much from bamboo and jade as steel and microchips. Lewis Gordon
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Technology | The Guardian
Older music has been getting a second life on TikTok, data shows

Despite newer artists having viral moments, app users also enjoyed old school acts including Bronski Beat and Sade

This was the year that gen Z had their “Brat summer”, or so we were led to believe.

Inspired by the hit album by pop sensation Charli xcx, the trend was seen to embody all the messiness of modern youth: trashy, chaotic and bright green.
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Technology | The Guardian
I spent a week working, exercising and relaxing in virtual reality. I’m shocked to say it finally works | Ed Newton-Rex

Bar some glitches, I think a tipping point has been reached – except when it comes to virtual gigs

I’m writing this from a room that’s slowly orbiting the Earth. Behind the floating screen in front of me, through a giant opening where a wall should be, the planet slowly spins, so close that it takes up most of my field of vision. It’s morning in Australia to my right; India and the first hints of Europe are dotted with lights up and to my left. The soft drone of the air circulation system hums quietly behind me.

I spent a week doing everything that I could – working, exercising, composing – on my virtual reality headset. This was the year virtual reality threatened to go mainstream, with prices becoming more attainable and Apple entering the market, and so I wanted to see how far VR has come since I first tried it in the mid-2010s, when the main experiences on offer were nausea-inducing rollercoaster simulators. I used a recent model from Meta, called the Quest 3, and the conclusion was clear: this thing now works. It feels a little unfinished, but we’ve reached the point where VR could at last become genuinely useful.
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Technology | The Guardian
How 2024 made Elon Musk the world’s most powerful unelected man

A timeline of events in the year of Elon Musk shows how omnipresent he has become, how his X feed has become as unavoidable as Donald Trump’s was

Hello, and welcome to Techscape. I’ve been pondering screen-time and isolation after I suffered through a recent bout of Covid. Even a few days of seclusion coupled with lengthy, uninterrupted spates of staring at screens were enough to return me to the state of mind in which I spent most of 2020. I hope all of you reading have a wonderful winter and new year, filled with the opposite of that experience: family, friends, and cheery, in-person parties.

Today in Techscape: We look back at the biggest tech story of 2024, Elon Musk, and at the Amazon workers strike in the US.
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