Dave Lee
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Column: Chipmaker Stocks Will Weather Any AI Slowdown

One fear over the past few days is that an artificial-intelligence slowdown, whatever that looks like, might harm the stocks of chipmakers. If AI development takes a breather, the insatiable appetite that has propelled component makers to unprecedented heights would dissipate. Will AI companies still need all those data centers?

The answer is yes. And then some.

Chipmaker Stocks Will Weather Any AI Slowdownbloomberg.comOne fear over the past few days is that an artificial-intelligence slowdown, whatever that looks like, might harm the stocks of chipmakers. If AI development takes a breather, the insatiable appetite that has propelled component makers to unprecedented heights would dissipate. Will AI companies still need all those data centers?

Column: A US-China Pact on AI Is Possible, But Not by Posturing

Any hope that the coming summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping would be productive in taking steps to mitigate the harms of artificial intelligence seems to have been dashed, thanks to a commander in chief unwilling to acknowledge the pivotal moment that faces us as AI companies call for a slowdown in development.

A US-China Pact on AI Is Possible, But Not by Posturingbloomberg.comAny hope that the coming summit between President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping would be productive in taking steps to mitigate the harms of artificial intelligence seems to have been dashed, thanks to a commander in chief unwilling to acknowledge the pivotal moment that faces us as AI companies call for a slowdown in development.

Column: A $2,000 iPhone Gives Apple’s New CEO His Steve Jobs Moment

When John Ternus succeeded Tim Cook as chief executive officer of Apple Inc. at the start of this month, he needed no introduction to the company’s more than 160,000 employees. The same can’t really be said of the public, most of whom will be meeting, and sizing up, Apple’s new top boss for the first time on Wednesday. He’ll begin by making the case for buying an iPhone that costs at least $2,000.

A $2,000 iPhone Gives Apple’s New CEO His Steve Jobs Momentbloomberg.comWhen John Ternus succeeded Tim Cook as chief executive officer of Apple Inc. at the start of this month, he needed no introduction to the company’s more than 160,000 employees. The same can’t really be said of the public, most of whom will be meeting, and sizing up, Apple’s new top boss for the first time on Wednesday. He’ll begin by making the case for buying an iPhone that costs at least $2,000.

Column: Nvidia’s $13 Billion Hugging Face Deal Is a Bargain Hedge

If you were Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang and you were laying out a few sector-shifting artificial-intelligence trends that could take shape over the coming months and years, you might include the following:

- Open-weight AI models, maybe from China, will continue to develop into a viable and cheaper alternative to closed and frontier models, thus becoming more popular for the majority of day-to-day tasks for typical businesses.

- Frontier AI companies will continue to make strides in diversifying the chips they use for inference, reducing their reliance on Nvidia.

- Prudent businesses will trend toward “sovereign” hosting and model building, rather than turning to the handful of powerful hyperscalers and frontier labs as they might do now.

For all these scenarios, Nvidia’s $13 billion Hugging Face acquisition, confirmed Thursday, represents a near-perfect hedge to how Nvidia’s business mostly operates today.

Nvidia’s $13 Billion Hugging Face Deal Is a Bargain Hedgebloomberg.comIf you were Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang and you were laying out a few sector-shifting artificial-intelligence trends that could take shape over the coming months and years, you might include the following:

Elsewhere: Review: Jon Ronson's The Castle

Jon Ronson is happy to be known as the written word’s answer to the awkward TV documentarian Louis Theroux. In The Castle, Ronson’s first book in 11 years, he briefly references their intertwined careers. The friendly rivals have evidently realized the extreme-people-watching beat has more than enough material to go round.

That both men have turned their attention to the “masculinity crisis” shows how consuming the topic has become. Theroux’s hit Netflix documentary Inside The Manosphere used his trademark naive patter to let subjects dig their own holes, the realization dawning on them in real time. Ronson’s subjects seem to realize only belatedly that they’ve said too much. That’s certainly true of Christopher Mark, the aggressive, paranoid, castle-owning subject of Ronson’s book.

Review: Jon Ronson's The Castlebloomberg.comPoking the manosphere

Column: The ‘SaaSpocalypse’ Has a Remarkable Number of Survivors

For the time being, we should perhaps consider the rebounded stocks as “survivors” rather than winners because there is still plenty of execution to happen before we can confidently say the AI storm has been weathered.

The ‘SaaSpocalypse’ Has a Remarkable Number of Survivorsbloomberg.comYou may remember February’s run on software-as-a-service stocks in which billions of dollars in value were wiped off companies that investors worried would be obliterated by artificial intelligence in the not-too-distant future, their specialist features replaced by bespoke in-house tools built on demand by AI instead.

Column: Meta, Under Duress, Finally Does the Right Thing for Teens

My deep skepticism over Meta’s proposed settlement began to lift — though not completely — as I made my way through the details of the alterations it has promised to make to its apps like Facebook and Instagram: daily time limits; no notifications during school hours; autoplay disabling; non-algorithmic feeds; a midnight to 6 a.m. lockout, to pick a few. Even better are age-gating measures to block underage users and further protect teens. Other promises include an end to toxic “beautifying” filters that should have never seen the light of day, and efforts to limit the dopamine effect of “likes” by hiding them. One thought I had reading these changes was simply: Can I enable them for my account, too?

Meta, Under Duress, Finally Does the Right Thing for Teensbloomberg.comFinally, what some said could never be done has happened: Meta Platforms Inc. has been forced to make real changes to protect the millions of young people who use its products. Make no mistake, while the amount that the company agreed to pay to settle a lawsuit brought by several states — up to $18 billion — is large, it is dwarfed in significance by the long-tail positive effects this so-called Big Tobacco moment will have on the well-being of teens. Meta’s simultaneous call that other social m

Column: Apple Must Heed the Lessons of Meta’s ‘Pervert’ Glasses

The introduction of a wearable device with a camera is a landmark and pivotal moment. Done right, Apple’s product could give the company a leg up on its rivals by becoming the first breakthrough device that regular people might use to actually interact with AI in the physical world. Or it might blow up in executives’ faces. The devil is in the details — and perhaps how users define a “camera” and what it can do.

Apple Must Heed the Lessons of Meta’s ‘Pervert’ Glassesbloomberg.comIn what looks like a curiously sloppy oversight, Apple Inc. has inadvertently confirmed Bloomberg’s reporting on the company’s first big swing at an AI-enhanced wearable device. Hidden in a coming Mac software update, a 13-second video shows a man wearing AirPods pick up a book and hold it in front of him. “With Visual Intelligence,” the voice-over says, “your world becomes savable. See something you like? Just ask me to save it for later.”

Column: Don’t Buy Zuckerberg’s ‘Good Guy of AI’ Act

This attempt to position Meta as a champion of decentralized technology is comical. Zuckerberg must assume that everyone has forgotten that at one point Meta’s strategy in the developing world was to essentially centralize the internet through its thankfully ill-fated Internet.org project. Closed systems and control are in Meta’s DNA. Put it this way: the only reason Meta isn’t talking up an all-powerful closed AI model for businesses, governments institutions is that it has so far failed to build a competitive one.

Don’t Buy Zuckerberg’s ‘Good Guy of AI’ Actbloomberg.comAfter seeing a video of Mark Zuckerberg sparring with a UFC champion on a barge in the middle of Lake Tahoe, you might be inclined to dismiss his man-of-the-people essay published on Monday morning. In it, he tries to position his company — which is paying out hundreds of millions of dollars in damages for harming children — as the AI company that will fight for you, me and everything society cares about (such as earning a living).

Column: The Fall of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Is an Omen for the AI Age

For more than two decades, Amazon.com Inc.’s Mechanical Turk offered a similar illusion to its namesake. The 18th century chess-playing “machine” was actually a contraption controlled by a human hidden in a box. Amazon’s groundbreaking digital work platform did this at scale. Its Mechanical Turk was an army of hidden, anonymous workers carrying out a dizzying array of small mundane tasks for money.

More recently, though, the concept has been turned on its head. Where the goal used to hide the human in the machine, now it’s the humans hiding the machine’s existence. A growing number of Turkers, as these gig workers are known, have been passing off AI responses as their own. Given the low pay for tasks, this is understandable — relatable, maybe, to our own work and lives. It has also now helped render these workers obsolete.

The Fall of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Is an Omen for the AI Agebloomberg.comFor more than two decades, Amazon.com Inc.’s Mechanical Turk offered a similar illusion to its namesake. The 18th century chess-playing “machine” was actually a contraption controlled by a human hidden in a box. Amazon’s groundbreaking digital work platform did this at scale. Its Mechanical Turk was an army of hidden, anonymous workers carrying out a dizzying array of small mundane tasks for money.

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