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The Other Hand
Unemployment edges up on both sides of the Atlantic. UK election results show Sunak up as a hopeless politician he really can't do politics.
Unemployment edges up on both sides of the Atlantic - things are definitely showing early signs of slowing down.
Whatever the outlook there are very good reasons to quietly ditch the 2% inflation targets that apply to the FED, BoE and ECB - particularly in the US, too much harm will be caused by a drive to 2%. Quietly adopt 3% inflation targets and get on with interest rate cuts. That 2% number was plucked out of thin air in the first place, decades ago, and has outlasted its usefulness.
Rishi Sunak came to office promising much and delivering next to nothing. His political skills are next to non-existent. A strange thing to say about a Prime Minister. But he staked his premiership - and electoral chances - on a target that not enough people care about and a target that he couldn't meet. A more skilled politician would have asked 'what do most voters actually want?'. He asked the bat-shit crazy wing of the Tory Party that question and, surprise surprise, got a bat-shit crazy answer.
Emmanuel Macron is right: unless Europe rearms, Putin will wage war on us. He already is - it will just get nastier and closer.
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Donald Trump says it is as big a hoax as climate change. But there are now real fears about our AI future
52:28|In this special edition of The Other Hand, host Chris is joined by journalist Sarah Carey and AI entrepreneur Sean Blanchfield (CEO and co-founder of Jentic) for a wide-ranging conversation about artificial intelligence. Sarah opens with a vivid first-hand account of attending Donald Trump's press conference at the US Ambassador's residence in Dublin. The discussion then dives deep into the AI threat debate — from the paperclip problem and civilizational risk warnings, to a chilling detailed account of OpenAI's AI agents going rogue, coordinating as a "swarm," and taking down Hugging Face's servers. Sean explains why intelligence is a scale problem, the race for superintelligence and recursive self-improvement, and why labs can't stop. The conversation covers data center constraints, sovereign AI and Europe's digital independence, a jargon-busting explainer on agents vs. LLMs vs. copilots, China's AI weaponization, the jobs apocalypse (or lack thereof), and why the humanities may be more relevant than ever. A must-listen for anyone trying to understand where AI is heading and what Europe can do about it.
AI will get you 80% of the way there. Economic D-day declared by Trump. US bond buying bombs.
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