Episode 20
AI in its villain era
⏩ The AI quickie
China’s government is all-in on AI
Turns out the cloud has a carbon footprint
SoftBank is quietly buying all the things
Microsoft’s CEO took the holiday to philosophize about AI
🍿 This week’s top AI stories
Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s 2026 New Year address highlighted AI and semiconductors as national achievements, spotlighting global competition in the new year
New reporting highlights how AI’s massive appetite for energy is fueling pollution and water use, reminding us that innovation has a serious cost
The Japanese giant Softbank announced a roughly $4 billion purchase of DigitalBridge, signalling that the AI wars are as much about infrastructure and power grids as they are about big language models
Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella used a new blog post to push for a shift from shiny demos to meaningful, responsible applications, reminding everyone that the future of AI is still being decided
🌟 Power moves by Her
Lisa Su is one of the most powerful people in AI. She’s the CEO os AMD as it quietly becomes a serious force in the AI infrastructure race. While headlines chase chatbots, she’s shaping the chips and compute that actually decide who gets to build, scale, and profit from AI in the first place.
🧠 AI word of the Week:
AI Slop: Low-effort, mass-produced content generated by AI that floods the internet with generic articles, recycled takes, and confidently wrong answers
🫣 The Cringe Files:
AI-generated clips helped spread a hoax that sent crowds to Brooklyn Bridge Park for fireworks… that did not exist. Happy New Year, we live in a simulation.
A new report reveals many children use AI chatbots not for homework but for companionship and role-play, including violent or sexual role-play, raising alarms about emotional development and safety.