Tootfinder

How Trump's opposition to state-level AI regulation has driven a wedge in GOP, killing Florida's proposed AI Bill of Rights, which was backed by Gov. DeSantis (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/technol

How Trump Drove a Wedge Between Florida Republicans Over A.I.
A Florida bill that would have regulated artificial intelligence, backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, failed to gain traction after President Trump made it clear he did not want states to rein in the technology.

Plastic—when a miracle technology becomes a burden #environment

Plastic—when a miracle technology becomes a burden
Plastic is everywhere in modern society. While it has paved the way for enormous progress, the pollution it leaves behind is now creating major challenges.

Am I cheering on a big AI company?
“Anthropic insists that two areas remain off limits: the mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weaponry.”
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/15/claude-…

Exclusive: Pentagon threatens to cut off Anthropic in AI safeguards dispute
Anthropic has not agreed to the Pentagon's terms and defense officials are getting fed up after months of difficult negotiations.

One of the more intriguing strands of Big Tech litigation: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/14/meta-and-google-trial-are-infinite-scroll-and-autoplay-creating-addicts

Trump regime wants social media sites to expose anti-ICE accounts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-social-media.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

Homeland Security Demands Social Media Sites Reveal Names Behind Anti-ICE Posts
The department has sent Google, Meta and other companies hundreds of subpoenas for information on accounts that track or comment on Immigration and Customs Enforcement, officials and tech workers said.

GovAI and Brookings: many of the people most at risk if AI transforms work are also the best placed to find new jobs, as researchers disagree over AI's impact (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2026/jobs-mo…

A look at the US tech industry's effort to influence Californian politics: fighting the 5% billionaire tax, super PACs, and seeking a new tech-friendly governor (Dara Kerr/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/15/californ…

Google releases TranslateGemma, a suite of Gemma 3-based open translation models available in 4B, 12B, and 27B parameter sizes with support for 55 languages (The Keyword)
https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/developers-tools/translategemma/

TranslateGemma: A new suite of open translation models
TranslateGemma is a new family of open translation models built on Gemma 3.

Scientists say that AI has become a powerful and rapidly improving research tool, and that whether it is generating ideas on its own is, for now, a moot point (Cade Metz/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/technol

Can A.I. Generate New Ideas?
Systems like OpenAI’s GPT-5 are accelerating research in math, biology and chemistry. But there is a debate over whether it can do that work on its own.

Equal1, which was spun out from University College Dublin, raised $60M to deploy its new quantum server for data centers, bringing its total funding to $85M (Ciara O'Brien/The Irish Times)
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2026/0

Equal1 raises $60m in funding to deploy quantum computing technology
UCD spinout has developed a quantum server for data centres