Hello and welcome to TechScape. Nick Robins-Early and Dara Kerr right here, filling in in your regular host Blake Montgomery who’s out on trip. We’ll be speaking in regards to the struggle over a proposed billionaire tax in California, the UK’s social media ban and SpaceX making a giant purchase within the AI arms race.
Huge week for the California ‘billionaire tax’
The California wealth tax showdown involves a head this week. After gathering greater than double the mandatory variety of signatures to qualify for the November poll, there’s nonetheless uncertainty that the proposal for a one-time tax on billionaires will make it to voters this fall.
This comes even after back-room dealing final week that led the proposal’s proponents to drop the tax from 5% of the wealth of any California resident value greater than $1bn right down to a levy of two%.
Tech billionaires have been spending large and lobbying state lawmakers to dam the measure. Silicon Valley moguls, together with former Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt, have donated tens of tens of millions of {dollars} to Tremendous Pacs aimed toward defeating the proposal. Crypto titan Chris Larsen launched an assault advert in Could referred to as “Reckless”, which warns the tax “will backfire and damage you”.
Different tech billionaires, like Google co-founder Larry Web page, Meta co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump’s AI and crypto czar, David Sacks, have already fled California or are making strikes to go away. And extra have funded efforts to kill the tax, together with Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, Ring founder James Siminoff, DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison.
Gavin Newsom, the state’s tech-friendly governor, has vowed to quash the proposal. He has mentioned such state-level wealth taxes “drive a race to the underside” and can chase billionaires out of California and strip the state of income. The measure is backed by the Service Workers Worldwide Union-United Healthcare Staff West (SEIU-UHW) as a way of funding California’s strained healthcare, meals help and teaching programs.
Newsom has reportedly been whipping collectively a coalition to assist him negotiate a take care of the union to withdraw the proposal earlier than California’s secretary of state certifies it by a 25 June deadline. He’s but to reply to SEIU-UHW’s proposal to again a one-off 2% tax.
David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State College who research the California poll measure course of, advised the Guardian it was doubtless the union would proceed talks.
“From the get-go, SEIU-UHW has designed this measure as a ‘gun-behind-the-door’ to barter a greater deal,” McCuan mentioned. Slightly than “go nuclear in a poll measure battle that may value tons of of tens of millions of {dollars}, the aim has been to threaten to go to warfare”.
Extra on the billionaire’s tax
The UK’s contentious social media ban
The UK introduced its plans final week to ban kids below 16-years-old from utilizing what the federal government deems as “high-risk” social media apps – a listing that features TikTok, Instagram, X, YouTube, Snapchat and others – whereas putting extra restrictions on using different tech platforms corresponding to romantic chatbots.
Whereas the coverage is ready to face judicial evaluate, it is among the most intensive bans of its variety by any democratic authorities and a part of a rising motion to limit kids’s entry to social media. Australia enacted the same ban final 12 months, with Canada introducing a social media invoice to parliament earlier this month and European international locations contemplating their very own laws.
The UK’s ban has set off an intense debate between baby security activists, privateness teams and the tech business over whether or not the coverage will profit or hurt kids. It has created unusual bedfellows inside these teams, with privateness activists aligning themselves with the large tech corporations they’ve traditionally criticized. Critics allege that the ban may result in amassing knowledge on kids that could possibly be used for presidency surveillance and the restriction of their privateness rights.
UK authorities ministers have additionally engaged in a lobbying effort to push back backlash from the pro-tech Trump administration, with British officers saying they spent weeks reassuring the White Home that the coverage was not an assault on the US tech business.
Younger Britons that may truly be impacted by the ban expressed skepticism to the Guardian that it might be efficient, whilst they agreed that the addictive nature of social media posed an issue for his or her era:
“Many youngsters use social media for artistic retailers, training, and assist networks, not simply leisure. The ban raises questions on the place the road is drawn between defending younger individuals and limiting their freedoms,” mentioned 16-year-old Leo, from Cumbria.
SpaceX’s large AI buy
Days after SpaceX went public within the greatest IPO of all time, the rocket, synthetic intelligence and satellite tv for pc web firm introduced that it had agreed to purchase the AI startup Cursor for $60bn. The acquisition may assist SpaceX and its subsidiary xAI develop into a extra severe contender within the AI race, the place it has lagged behind rivals corresponding to Anthropic and OpenAI.
Cursor focuses on AI that helps write code, which has confirmed to be an extremely profitable utility for the know-how. Anthropic, which makes Claude, quickly rose to the entrance of the pack within the AI race after releasing its widely-used coding instruments late final 12 months.
Previous to buying Cursor, xAI’s makes an attempt at coding merchandise struggled in contrast with opponents. The corporate’s AI mannequin, Grok, additionally failed to realize the identical degree of mainstream adoption and use inside enterprise companies as Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT. xAI has in the meantime confronted quite a few scandals and lawsuits associated to Grok, together with the chatbot producing sexualized nonconsensual photos of girls and kids.
Though Elon Musk has struggled to maintain tempo with different frontier AI labs, SpaceX’s acquisition of Cursor opens up the chance that he may primarily purchase his approach into the competitors. SpaceX’s huge market valuation – it eclipsed Amazon at one level final week to develop into the world’s fifth most useful firm – has given Musk much more energy to construct out the corporate’s AI capabilities.
Whether or not SpaceX can efficiently incorporate AI services into its enterprise stays a key query for the corporate, particularly because it makes a giant guess on constructing knowledge facilities in house.
Learn extra: SpaceX overtakes Amazon to develop into world’s fifth most useful firm
