Tootfinder

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.

Elon Musk claims he was "not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok" and that Grok was programmed to comply with the laws of any given country (Reuters)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/14/elon-musk-grok-ai-explicit-…

Tech whistleblowers like Yaël Eisenstat say coming forward has unexpectedly derailed their lives and careers; Meta is in litigation with Sarah Wynn-Williams (Naomi Nix/Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/12/15/big-tech-whist…

Tech whistleblowers face million-dollar debts, job loss and isolation
After exposing the harms of Big Tech, many whistleblowers say they faced poor job prospects and isolation in Silicon Valley. They have no regrets.

X still allowing users to post sexualised images generated by Grok AI tool
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/16/x-still-allowing-sexualised-images-grok-ai-nudification

X still allowing users to post sexualised images generated by Grok AI tool
Despite restrictions announced this week, Guardian reporters find standalone app continues to allow posting of nonconsensual content

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.

Lightspeed raised a record $9B across six funds to invest in AI, with $3.3B to back breakout companies like Anthropic; Lightspeed has backed 165 AI startups (Erin Griffith/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/15/technology/ai-venture-capital-big-fun…

In A.I. Boom, Venture Capital Firms Are Raising Loads More Money
Lightspeed Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley venture firm, has amassed more than $9 billion to invest in artificial intelligence. That is its biggest haul.

2026 may be the year of the mega IPO, as sources say Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX took early steps to go public, setting up a watershed moment for the AI boom (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/technology/ai-ipo-openai-anthropic-spacex.html…

2026 May Be the Year of the Mega I.P.O.
If SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic go public, they will unleash gushers of cash for Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

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