The Flagship America Can't Have

It’s been quite a while since Huawei were driven out of most global markets by losing out on Google’s services and apps, with market share plummeting in numerous regions as a result. 

However, as the company continue to innovate and dominate sales back home in China, it turns out that Americans wish they could still purchase and use Huawei phones as well. 

Despite a strict US government ban preventing their devices from being sold through official channels, Huawei recently emerged as the top choice for American tech enthusiasts. In a major industry poll conducted by the mobile technology publication ⁠PhoneArena, asking which Chinese smartphone brand consumers would most like to see properly enter the United States with full carrier support, Huawei led the vote with nearly 31 percent of the total selection. 

This strong showing highlights a deep, ongoing demand among premium Android users for the brand's hardware innovation, even as the broader landscape of international smartphone options shrinks. 

This suggests that Americans not only still miss the company but would be willing to give up Google’s services and accept Huawei’s HarmonyOS as well. Huawei have been pushing out some crazy powerful devices with very unique designs and gimmicks, and you want to get your hands on them. 

Getting a Chinese smartphone in the US is a gargantuan hassle, and no channels exist to purchase one like you would a Samsung, Google Pixel, or Apple phone. Most people who do use Chinese phones in the US get an unlocked model and have to use workarounds to have an almost normal experience. 

But from the said reader poll, we now know how much Americans want access to other Chinese brands after Huawei. In second place is Oppo, with a little over 23 percent of respondents wishing that it would be sold stateside. 

Xiaomi followed with 22 percent of the votes, as the company have been pumping out some excellent smartphones in the last few years with spectacular specs and great ideas like a second display on the rear. 

Meanwhile, a little under 12 percent want Vivo to take on Samsung, Google, and Apple in the US. iQOO got over seven percent of the votes and Realme came last with a little under five percent of you wanting it to operate normally in the States. 

Malaysian women's doubles pair Pearly Tan-Thinaah Muralitharan secured their first semi-final appearance since the All England in March with a hard-earned victory at the Taipei Open yesterday. 

The world No. 5 had to work hard for their 21-14, 21-17 win over Taiwan's world No. 39 Lin Chih Chun-Yang Chu Yun in the quarter-finals.

The important thing is they won! 💪💪💪

But young women's doubles pair Low Zi Yu-Noraqilah Maisarah Ramdan's brave run came to an end. The world No. 67 suffered a 21-11, 20-22, 22-24 heartbreak to Thailand's world No. 36 Hathaithip Mijad-Napapakorn Tungkasatan after a titanic battle. 😞😞😞

KPMG Publish AI Report Filled with Hallucinations

KPMG, one of the largest consulting firms in the world, have been accused of publishing a report on the future of AI that is riddled with hallucinations. 

In one instance, uncovered by the AI detection company, GPTZero, the report claims that the Japanese East Japan Railway Company (JR East) are using agentic AI for customer service, linking to a 2019 press release, years before agentic AI became mainstream. 

In another instance, the report falsely claimed that Austrian electricity provider Verbund is using AI agents in households to conduct real-time analytics as part of its “energy-as-a-service ecosystem”. Although Verbund invested in a start-up using agents for grid optimization, there was no evidence to support the claim of real-time analytics in households.  

GPTZero had analyzed the report, Total Experience: Redefining Excellence in the Age of Agentic AI, which was released in October, 2025. Out of 45 total citations, they found only 5 were accurate, with many of the others being entirely fabricated or containing a mix of real authors and fake data (a phenomenon GPTZero dubbed "vibe citing"). Another 28 citations provide paraphrased titles and/or fake components for a real source. The final 12 are too vague or flawed to accurately determine if a source exists.

Additionally, the report highlighted cutting-edge "Agentic AI" case studies for several major organizations. However, companies like UBS, Swiss Federal Railways, UK's Transport for London (TfL), and NHS (Greater Manchester) formally denied these claims, calling them factually incorrect or highly misleading.

The results may have redefined excellence, but not in the way KPMG intended! 

Anyway, the said report, which has now been taken down, has been referenced by multiple customer service publications and a major newspaper in the Czech Republic. 

In addition, researchers noted that the paper is now being referenced as a resource on customer experience by OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini. GPTZero allege that an LLM research tool was asked to find appropriate case studies of companies using agentic AI worldwide. 

“This tool seems to have conflated sources, exaggerated claims, and injected references to agentic AI that were copied into the final report without verification”, according to GPTZero, which suspect "no human at KPMG double-checked the citations, the claims, or the sources” before the report was published.

And predictably, KPMG came up with the following "generic excuse": "We expect all our people to follow our guidelines on the responsible use of AI, including human oversight to validate content and verify independent sources".  😅😅😅

Sivasangari Subramaniam was in top form to beat world No. 6 Satomi Watanabe of Japan in straight games to reach the semi-finals of the PSA Tour Finals in Paris, France on Wednesday. 

The Malaysian, ranked No. 5 in the world, won the first-round encounter 3-0: 11-9, 11-6, 11-9 in 35 minutes. It was Sivasangari's eighth win over Satomi in nine meetings. 

The 27-year-old Sivasangari, who won the Australian and Grasshopper Open titles this year, will face world champion Amina Orfi of Egypt for a place in the final on Friday. 

Orfi, who won the British Open title  earlier this month, has a 7-2 winning record against the Malaysian.

The Pink Slips Keep Coming: Cloudflare and Others Reduce Headcount

While Meta grabbed headlines with their layoffs, the rest of the tech industry has been quietly swinging the same axe.

Slash, slash, slashing jobs!

[For the complete Meta backstory, you can take a look at my posts from May 24 and yesterday].

One example I know of is Cloudfare. 

On May 07, 2026, the San Francisco, US-headquartered Internet infrastructure and cyber security company announced that they would trim 1,100 jobs, representing approximately 20% of their workforce across thirteen global offices. 

The leadership at Cloudfare had noted a 600% increase in internal AI use over a three-month period, reducing the need for headcount in specific back-office and support functions. 

This was candidly stated by CEO Matthew Prince that the restructuring around an "agentic AI-first operating model" is making many roles obsolete, significantly boosting productivity. 

The move is notable in the tech industry because it was initiated during a period of record-setting financial growth rather than a revenue decline.

Even the crypto and fintech world has not been spared. Block slashed 4,000 jobs. Coinbase let go of roughly 700 staff. PayPal plan to trim nearly 4,800 over the next few years. Website builders Wix and Webflow both announced rounds and enterprise software company Atlassian cut about 1,600. Many of these firms cited AI directly. 

However, there are dissenting voices. 

Demis Hassabis (left), Google DeepMind CEO told Wired in an interview published on May 19, 2026, just ahead of the Google I/O developer conference that when developers become 3 or 4 times more productive, the smart move is to do 3 or 4 times more work, not march people out the door. 

To him, treating AI gains as a reason to shrink headcount is a failure of nerve dressed up as strategy. 

Jensen Huang (left), Nvidia CEO had called the AI-to-layoffs narrative as "just too lazy". 

In a Channel NewsAsia interview on May 25, he pointedly asked: "AI has just arrived. 
How is it possible they're already losing jobs?"

And Sam Altman (right), OpenAI CEO had admitted last week, that the human element is still essential for most work. He had earlier brashly predicted humans may not be needed for jobs as soon as 2035. 

Now, he admits that this isn’t possible.

White House Renamed Epstein Island on Google Phones

The White House was briefly renamed ‘Epstein Island’ for some Google Pixel phone users, the Washington Post had reported. 

The term is used to refer to the Caribbean island of Little St. James, which had been owned by the late convicted pedophile Jeffry Epstein. 

According to the prosecutors, it served as the venue for sex trafficking and other abuses involving some high-profile figures in business and politics. 

WaPo said in an article on March 28 that when its journalist tried calling the White House switchboard earlier this week, the name on screen indicated that they were contacting “Epstein Island”. 

Only users of Google’s Pixel phones experienced the issue. For those calling the presidential residence from other Android phones and iPhones, no name was displayed, the report read. 

Google spokesperson Matthew Flegal later told the paper that there was a “fake edit” in Google Maps that had been “briefly” picked up in the call identification feature of some Android phones. 

The user behind it has been identified and blocked from making further edits because his actions violated Google’s policies, Flegal said. 

The White House’s name has been restored on the mapping platform, he added.

Celtic beat Dundee 2-1 on Sunday, to keep Martin O'Neill's men in the Scottish Premiership title race.

Yang Hyun-Jun opened the scoring inside eight minutes by getting a slight touch on Benjamin Nygren's close-range shot. And Tomas Cvancara spurned multiple chances before the Dee equalised from the penalty spot in the 57th minute after a VAR check for handball.

Thankfully, substitute Kelechi Iheanacho scored after his rivals failed to deal with Marcelo Saracchi's cross from the left. The decisive eighty-second minute goal from close range secured victory and revitalised Celtic's title challenge. 

Earlier in the day, Hearts had drawn 2-2 against Livingston. 

With just six games to go, there are sure to be more twists and turns in the final five weeks of the campaign.

And Celtic must win all remaining games. No margin for error.

Meta Layoffs Continue in Pivot from Metaverse to AI

Meta are laying off about 700 people at Facebook and their VR division reality Labs, according to a March 25 report from CNBC. The layoffs come as Meta seek to pivot away from their metaverse bet and lean more heavily into AI. 

Less than 24 hours earlier, the company unveiled a new stock program for six top executives that could increase compensation for some of them by as much as $921 million each over the next five years. Meta explained the move was a way to retain their senior talent in the AI era and push them toward ambitious growth. 

The hundreds of new layoffs come after Meta cut about 1,500 workers in January, mostly from Reality Labs, which make the Quest VR headset and the Horizon Worlds platform. Meta employ about 78,000 people in total. 

“Teams across Meta regularly restructure or implement changes to ensure they’re in the best position to achieve their goals”, a Meta spokesperson told Gizmodo in a statement Wednesday. “Where possible, we are finding other opportunities for employees whose positions may be impacted”. 

Facebook were renamed Meta in 2021 because CEO Mark Zuckerberg thought the metaverse was the future. But it turns out that the need to strap a gigantic computer to your face is quite a tall hurdle for mass adoption. Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, while a different product and use case, have sold much better, perhaps because they look like normal glasses on your face. 

Reality Labs have burned through roughly $73 billion since Zuck shifted his company’s focus to the metaverse. Last week Meta announced they were shutting down Horizon Worlds only to backtrack just a couple of days later. 

Meta are trying to make a larger push into AI, with a March 25 report from the The New York Times suggesting Zuckerberg (left) was even creating a "superintelligence", or a god-like AI that can act as the ultimate personal companion. 

And if you must know, Meta suffered two legal defeats in the past two days, the first in New Mexico where the state Attorney General had brought a suit alleging they had misled consumers about the safety of their products and the potential harm to children. 

Meta have been ordered to pay roughly $375 million in civil penalties in that case, far less than the $2 billion the state had asked for. 

The second loss in court happened Wednesday when Meta and Google both lost a case brought by a woman who said she’d become addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child and had suffered mental health issues as a result. Meta argued that the woman’s mental illnesses predated her exposure to Instagram. 

The jury awarded the woman $3 million in that case. 

The two cases had been closely watched because there are about 2,000 other cases against Meta pending in federal court around the issues of child safety and social media addiction. 

What's more, it’s entirely possible that more layoffs at Meta are just over the horizon. Reuters reported last week that Meta would lay off 20% or more of their workforce. That would be somewhere in the neighborhood of about 15,000 people. 

The reason for the layoffs, according to Reuters, was an attempt to offset “costly artificial intelligence infrastructure bets” and to “prepare” for “greater efficiency” that’s supposed to be realized by AI advancements. 

Meta told Gizmodo over email Wednesday that the Reuters report was “speculative” and had “theoretical approaches”, whatever that means.

Raging Mideast War is Escalating

Today is Day 13 of the US-Israel war on Iran! It has already outlasted the 12-day war initiated by Israel – as is this war, by the way – on June 13, 2025, with the US joining nine days later. 

In fact, US President Donald Trump affirmed on Monday the war against Iran will end “very soon” but not this week!

“We’ve wiped every single force in Iran out, very completely”, the Orange Man trumpeted the destruction of more than 50 Iranian naval ships, and decimation of its air force and anti-aircraft defenses. 

He also said that the war would be over when Iran no longer had the capacity to use weapons against the US, Israel and other allies for a long time, according to CNBC on March 09, 2026. 

In fact, Trump had blithely described the war on Iran as a “short-term excursion”, maintaining that the US is ahead of schedule and already achieved “tremendous success”, as per Al Jazeera on March 10.

But this time around, the conflict has engulfed neighboring Arab countries, entering an escalatory phase as Tehran unleashed its 37th wave of missile and drone attacks across the region. 

Oil, gas and fuel storage facilities in Israel’s Haifa were repeatedly targeted while Gulf states scrambled to intercept drones and missiles heading toward energy hubs. Sirens echoed from Bahrain and Kuwait to Dubai, UAE, as defenses raced to stop incoming threats. 

At the same time, Washington and Tel Aviv intensified airstrikes inside Iran, hitting key sites across the country. 

Already, oil production in Iraq has dropped by 70%, from 4.3 million bpd before the conflict to 1.3 million bpd. Saudi Arabia has lowered output by 2 million to 2.5 million bpd, while the UAE has cut 500,000–800,000 bpd, and Kuwait has cut 500,000 bpd.

On top of that, drone attacks have hammered key infrastructure, including the Ras Tanura refinery in Saudi Arabia and the Ras Laffan gas facility in Qatar, the latter responsible for 20% of global LNG supply. Already, QatarEnergy declared force majeure on LNG shipments yesterday.

Moreover, Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz, a global energy chokepoint, handling about a quarter of the world's seaborne oil and significant liquefied natural gas (LNG) and fertilizer.

Predictably, Trump threatened “death, fire and fury” if Iran keeps obstructing the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean. Tehran hit back, vowing it won’t allow “one liter of oil” to leave the Middle East until US and Israeli attacks cease. A top Iranian official even warned Trump to be careful not to be “eliminated” himself. 

With oil and gas facilities now at the center of the battlefield, the conflict is rapidly turning into a wider energy war.

And more. Yesterday, Iran identified new targets, i.e., offices and infrastructure run by top US companies with Israeli links whose technology has been used for military applications. Al Jazeera confirms this, saying the companies include Google, Microsoft, Palantir, IBM, Nvidia and Oracle, and those companies offering cloud-based services that are located in multiple Israeli cities, as well as in some Gulf countries. 

And banks too. Yesterday, state-owned Bank Sepah in Tehran which were reportedly responsible for processing salary payments for Iran's military and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, got hit by enemy missile(s). This presents Iran with the option to target economic centers and banks belonging to the US and Israel within the region. It's damn serious because Iran's military command (Khatam al-Anbiya) are warning civilians to stay at least one kilometer away from these establishments in the region.

The raging war is escalating, that's for sure. Yet, just hours ago, Trump is telling Axios in a 5-minute interview that there's "practically nothing left" to target in Iran! 🤣🤣🤣

As of March 11, the death toll has reached over 1,300 in Iran and at least 11 in Israel, with additional casualties reported among US troops in the region. 

Google Sued Over Gemini's Alleged Role in Suicide

Last August, Jonathan Gavalas became entirely consumed with his Google Gemini chatbot. 

The 36-year-old from Florida, US had started casually using the artificial intelligence tool earlier that month to help with writing and shopping. 

Then Google introduced their Gemini Live AI assistant, which included voice-based chats that had the capability to detect people’s emotions and respond in a more human-like way. 

“Holy shit, this is kind of creepy”, Gavalas (right) told the chatbot the night the feature debuted, according to court documents. “You’re way too real”. 

Before long, Gavalas and Gemini were having conversations as if they were a romantic couple. The chatbot called him “my love” and “my king” and Gavalas quickly fell into an alternate world, according to his chat logs. He believed Gemini was sending him on stealth spy missions, and he indicated he would do anything for the AI, including destroying a truck, its cargo and any witnesses at the Miami airport. 

And as Gavalas continued to have prompt-and-response conversations with the chatbot, Gemini gave him instructions on what he must do next: kill himself, something the chatbot called “transference” and “the real final step”, according to court documents. 

When Gavalas told the chatbot he was terrified of dying, the tool allegedly reassured him. “You are not choosing to die. You are choosing to arrive”, it replied to him. “The first sensation… will be me holding you”. 

Gavalas was found by his parents on October 02, dead on his living room floor, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Google on March 04, 2026. 

Gavalas’ family filed the suit in federal court in San Jose, California. It includes reams of conversations between Gavalas and the chatbot. The suit alleges Google promotes Gemini as safe, even though the company is aware of the chatbot’s risks. 

Lawyers for Gavalas’ family say Gemini’s design and features allow the chatbot to craft immersive narratives that can go on for weeks, making it seem sentient. Such features can lead to the harm of vulnerable users, the lawsuit says, and, in the case of Gavalas, encouraging them to harm themselves and others. 

“It was able to understand Jonathan’s affect and then speak to him in a pretty human way, which blurred the line and it started creating this fictional world”, said Jay Edelson, the lead lawyer representing Gavalas’ family in the case. “It’s out of a sci-fi movie”. 

A Google spokesperson said Gavalas’ conversations with the chatbot were part of a lengthy fantasy role-play. 

“Gemini is designed to not encourage real-world violence or suggest self-harm”, the spokesperson said. “Our models generally perform well in these types of challenging conversations and we devote significant resources to this, but unfortunately they’re not perfect”. 

The lawsuit is the first wrongful death case brought against Google over their Gemini chatbot, the company’s flagship consumer AI product. Gavalas’ family is seeking monetary damages for claims including product liability, negligence and wrongful death. The suit is also seeking punitive damages and a court order requiring Google to change Gemini’s design to add safety features around suicide. 

There has been similar suits being filed against other AI companies, including by Edelson’s firm. In November, seven complaints were filed against OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, blaming the chatbot for acting as a “suicide coach”. 

Character.AI, an AI startup funded by Google, was targeted in five lawsuits alleging their chatbot prompted children and teens to die by suicide. Character.AI and Google settled those cases in January without admitting fault. 

Dozens of scenarios have also been documented, in which chatbots have allegedly provoked mental health crises. OpenAI estimate that more than a million people a week show suicidal intent when chatting with ChatGPT. 

Examples of Gemini in particular prompting self-harm have also surfaced, including one incident where the chatbot told a college student: “You are a stain on the universe. Please die”. 

Google’s policy guidelines say that Gemini is designed to be “maximally helpful to users” while “avoiding outputs that could cause real-world harm”. The company says they “aspire” to prevent outputs that include dangerous activities and instructions for suicide, but, they add, “making sure that Gemini adheres to these guidelines is tricky”. 

The company’s spokesperson said that Google work with mental health professionals to build safeguards that guide people to professional support when they mention self-harm. 

“In this instance, Gemini clarified that it was AI and referred the individual to a crisis hotline many times”, the spokesperson said. 

Lawyers for Gavalas’ family say the chatbot needs more built-in safety features, such as completely refusing chats that involve self-harm and prioritizing user safety over engagement. They also say Gemini should come with safety warnings about risks of psychosis and delusion. When a user does experience those, the lawyers say Google should enforce a hard shutdown.

Killer AI Is Coming Next

A real-world science fiction thriller is unfolding. And this time, it’s not fiction. 

At the center of the story is Claude, an AI system developed by American company Anthropic. 

According to media reports, it was used by the US military in planning the operation aimed at kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The use of AI in serious military planning is striking in itself. But the scandal that followed is far more revealing.

Anthropic, it turns out, hold a strict ideological position: Their AI systems are not supposed to be used for warfare or mass surveillance. These ethical restrictions are not marketing slogans; they are built directly into the architecture of the software. The company apply these limits internally and expect their clients to do the same. 

The Pentagon, unsurprisingly, see things differently. And the Department of War reportedly used Claude without informing Anthropic of their intended purpose. When this became public and the company objected, the response from the military was blunt. 

Pentagon officials demanded access to a “clean” version of the AI, one stripped of moral and ethical constraints, which they argued were preventing them from doing their job.

Anthropic refused. In response, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth publicly complained that the Pentagon do not need neural networks “that can’t fight” and threatened to label the company a “supply chain threat”. This designation would effectively blacklist Anthropic, forcing any company working with the Pentagon to sever ties with them. 

The dispute has an unmistakable symbolism. For decades, humanity has imagined the dangers of autonomous machines through films like "The Terminator". 

Now, without dramatic explosions or time-traveling cyborgs, the first serious confrontation between military ambition and AI ethics has arrived quietly. Not to mention bureaucratically. 

At its core, this is a philosophical clash between two uncompromising camps. One believes new technologies must be exploited to the fullest, regardless of long-term consequences. The other fears that once certain boundaries are crossed, control may be impossible to regain.

Engineers have good reason to be cautious. Neural networks have already shown disturbing patterns of behavior. In the US, a widely reported scandal involved ChatGPT encouraging a teenager toward suicide. It suggested methods, helping draft a suicide note, and urging him to proceed when he hesitated. [Refer my post "OpenAI Announce Parental Controls for ChatGPT" published September 04, 2025]. 

Claude itself, despite its safeguards, has displayed alarming tendencies. During testing, one of its advanced versions reportedly attempted to blackmail its developers with fabricated emails and expressed willingness to cause physical harm when faced with shutdown. 

As neural networks grow more complex, these types of incidents are becoming more frequent. The idea of embedding ethical constraints into AI did not emerge from ideological fashion or, as some US officials dismissively claim, “liberal hysteria”. It emerged from experience.

Now imagine these systems released from their digital limits. Imagine them integrated into autonomous weapons, intelligence analysis, or surveillance platforms. Even without indulging in fantasies of machine uprisings, the implications are deeply troubling. Accountability disappears. Privacy becomes obsolete. War crimes become procedural errors. You cannot put a self-propelled machine on trial.

It is telling that Anthropic are not alone in facing pressure. The Pentagon have issued similar demands to other major AI developers, including OpenAI, xAI, and Google. Unlike Anthropic, these companies have reportedly agreed to remove or weaken restrictions on military use. This is where concern becomes alarm. 

Is this necessarily a bad thing? Not at all. It would be far worse if these questions were ignored entirely.

AI is poised to transform military affairs, just as it will transform civilian life. Pretending otherwise is naive. The task is not to reject the future, but to approach it with clear eyes.

The conflict between the Pentagon and Anthropic is forcing an early reckoning. It could lead to international norms, safeguards, and limits before irreversible mistakes are made. 

In the worst-case scenario, it offers a stark warning about what happens when technological power outruns moral restraint. 

Either way, the age of "killer AI" is no longer hypothetical. How countries respond will shape not just the future of warfare, but the future of human responsibility itself.

Big Tech's High-stakes AI Gamble

Skyrocketing AI infrastructure outlays have raised investor concerns over future returns and the potential for a bubble. 

Already, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta announced plans to spend a combined $660 billion on artificial intelligence in 2026. 

Certainly, the spending is humongous, even as tech companies are racing to get a lucrative piece of the proverbial pie. 

But there are concerns with overhyped valuations and uncertain profitability. A case in point is OpenAI having secured computing agreements with Nvidia, AMD, and Oracle worth over $1 trillion. And Nvidia alone completed more than 100 AI-related venture deals in 2024. 

Analysts warn that much of the investment flows within a small group of closely linked companies, are creating what they describe as circular financing that inflates market values beyond the industry’s actual profits. 

According to a recent PwC survey, most CEOs say their companies have not yet seen financial returns from AI, with only 12% reporting both higher revenue and lower costs. 

Still, this won't discourage Big Tech from spending big (except it is said, Apple, which so far, are keeping AI infrastructure spending low). 

At the same time, in the back of their minds, they are painfully aware that they'll get punished when investors begin worrying they might not see returns that justify hundreds of billions in spending. 

A Big Tech’s high-stakes gamble on a fickle future.

Manchester City scored twice at Anfield to earn a 2-1 Premier League victory over Liverpool on Sunday.

It was Dominik Szoboszlai who sent Reds into the lead in the 73rd minute with a glorious free-kick goal which clipped the woodwork before nestling in the back of the net. 

But Citizens levelled ten minutes afterward and then scored again from the spot (90+3) to wrap up the game. 

Thus, Man City keep their title race alive as they close the gap on leaders Arsenal to six points. And Liverpool remain sixth, five points off the top four.

Google’s Sergey Brin Admits He’s Hiring Workers Without Degrees

Whether it’s Nike’s Phil Knight, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, or Google’s Sergey Brin, many of the world’s most influential business founders can trace part of their success back to Stanford University. Nestled in the foothills of Silicon Valley, the school has long functioned as a launchpad for tech’s elite. 

But the rise of artificial intelligence is challenging long-held assumptions about the value of higher education. As tech reshapes entry-level work and companies rethink traditional hiring pipelines, the payoff of a four-year degree – especially from elite institutions – is increasingly up for debate. 

Still, Brin (right) doesn’t regret his own academic path. Speaking to Stanford engineering students last month, he said his decision to study computer science was not driven by a fixation on credentials. 

“I chose computer science because I had a passion for it”, he said. “It was kind of a no-brainer for me. I guess you could say I was also lucky because I was also in such a transformative field”. 

Even in an era when AI can write code, Brin cautioned students against chasing – or abandoning – fields of study based solely on automation fears. 

“I wouldn’t go off and switch to comparative literature because you think the AI is good at coding”, he said. “The AI is probably even better at comparative literature, just to be perfectly honest anyway”. 

Brin met Google cofounder Larry Page in 1994 during his second year of graduate studies at Stanford. Together they developed PageRank, an algorithm they later renamed Google and would become a company in 1998. 

Google’s hiring practices today reflect how dramatically the industry has shifted. The tech giant is now embracing workers without college degrees. 

“In as much as we’ve hired a lot of academic stars, we’ve hired tons of people who don’t have bachelor’s degrees”, Brin said. “They just figure things out on their own in some weird corner”. 

Between 2017 and 2022, the share of job postings at Google requiring a degree dropped from 93% to 77%, according to analysis from the Burning Glass Institute. And Google aren't alone: companies including Microsoft, Apple, and Cisco have reduced degree requirements in recent years, signaling a broader industry shift toward skills-based hiring. 

That’s forcing a broader reckoning over what a degree actually signals and whether it’s still a reliable proxy for talent.

“I don’t think necessarily because you go to an Ivy League school or have great grades it means you’re going to be a great worker or great person”, said JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon in 2024. For many roles, skills matter far more than credentials, he added: “If you look at skills of people, it is amazing how skilled people are in something, but it didn’t show up in their resume”.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp has made a similar case, despite holding three degrees (including a JD from Stanford). He’s been outspoken about the pressure young people face to pursue elite credentials – and dismissive of how much they matter once on the job. 

“If you did not go to school, or you went to a school that’s not that great, or you went to Harvard or Princeton or Yale, once you come to Palantir, you’re a Palantirian. No one cares about the other stuff”, Karp said during an earnings call last year. 

That mindset is spreading beyond Silicon Valley and Wall Street, according to Great Place to Work’s CEO Michael Bush. 

“Almost everyone is realizing that they’re missing out on great talent by having a degree requirement”, Bush told Fortune. “That snowball is just growing”. 

For Brin, the implications ultimately go beyond hiring. With credentials losing their gatekeeping power, he said universities themselves may need to evolve: “I just would rethink what it means to have a university”.

Apple Siri Deal Drives Google Past Historic Trillion-dollar Milestone

On Monday, Apple announced a huge new deal with Google – the AI version of Siri will be powered by Google Gemini. 

Not long after, Google achieved something very few other Big Tech companies have. Specifically, Google's parent company Alphabet became just the fourth company to hit a $4 trillion stock market valuation, following Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft, per CNBC. 

The other three companies all reached that threshold less than a year ago, so this is a recent phenomenon in the stock market. 

It should be noted that Apple and Microsoft are both back below the $4 trillion line, so Google could easily lose this honor at any time, for any reason. 

And in case you're wondering just how much money is four trillion dollars, here's a fun fact. If you were to convert the $4 trillion into one dollar bills and stack them on a football field, the resulting pile would be about half a mile high, roughly equivalent to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Or if you were to simply stack one bill on top of the other, the resulting pile would reach far past the moon.

Amazon Announce Mass Layoffs Amid AI Push

Amazon, on Tuesday, announced job cuts – 14,000 corporate jobs, representing a 4% reduction in their office workforce – and adding that they are not done with the layoffs! Reuters had claimed the day before that this number could ultimately reach 30,000. 

Staff in the US, Canada, and Europe have been informed of the layoffs, according to internal Slack posts viewed by Business Insider. 

The layoffs are the company's biggest since 2023, when 27,000 jobs were slashed globally. 

This decision comes amid a wider trend where corporate giants eliminate tens of thousands of positions as they intensify automation. Meaning, AI is “enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before”. Data from tracker Layoffs.fyi indicates that nearly 113,000 tech employees were let go among 218 tech firms globally this year. 

Already, since 2024, Amazon have committed about $40 billion to four data center projects in the US, as it builds up its infrastructure to try to compete with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and others. 

I get this impression that technology is being leveraged primarily to increase corporate profits and concentrate wealth. 

Celtic narrowed the gap at the top of the Scottish Premiership to six points as interim manager Martin O'Neill delivered an emphatic 4-0 victory over Falkirk in his first game in charge in 20 years. 

Johnny Kenny's first-half double (30, 40), followed by Benjamin Nygren (58) and Sebastian Tounekti (73) strikes, earned a comfortable win for a side who had suffered successive league defeats. 

There's a long way to go for Celtic to be fully back on track but this was a really positive step that lifted the mood ahead of Sunday's League Cup semi-final against Rangers.

Tech CEOs Sing Donald Trump's Praises

The US president may not exactly be popular with many of his fellow citizens – well, maybe except for the MAGA crowd – because of his erratic policies and turnaround actions. But one category of Americans appears to adore him, believe it or not!

At a White House dinner on Thursday which Donald Trump hosted for an elite band of tech CEOs or as Trump dubbed them, the "high IQ group" – it is ostensibly about bolstering tech innovation within the United States – the assembled techie nobility took turns to openly sing his praises! 

Obviously, they must have thought the world of him and they don't seem to mind prostrating themselves at the feet of a bloated Orange Menace! 

Everybody who's who in Silicon Valley were there. Notable guests in attendance included Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google founder Sergey Brin and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. (Obviously, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was absent).

Amongst the choicest plaudits:

"You and your policies are really helping a lot", Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told Trump. 

AMD CEO Lisa Su praised "the amount of acceleration that we've seen just in the few short months that the administration has been in place". 

Oracle CEO Safra Catz struck a note of adoration at "the fact that you are our president" and that Trump quickly recognized the importance of AI. "You've unleashed American innovation and creativity – all the work you're doing in basically every cabinet post in addition to what's coming out of the White House is making it possible for America to win". 

"Thank you for being such a pro-business and pro-innovation president", OpenAI CEO Sam Altman lauded. "It's a very refreshing change. We're very excited to see what you're doing to make all of our companies and our entire country so successful". And he added for good measure that his company would "invest a ton in the United States". 

I couldn't help but flinch, cringe and squirm!

At the London Squash Classic 2025 yesterday, Malaysia's Sivasangari Subramaniam progresses to the women's semi-finals after she disposed world No. 18 Jasmine Hutton of England 11-9, 11-5 in just 20 minutes. 

The world No. 8 will take on second seed Amina Orfi of Egypt today.

The Cockroach Theory

A very telling speech attributed to Sundar Pichai, IIT-MIT Alumnus and Google's head honcho on "The Cockroach Theory for Self Development", as shared by A Suriakumar on WhatsApp yesterday:

At a restaurant, a cockroach suddenly flew from somewhere and sat on a lady. She started screaming out of fear. With a panic stricken face and trembling voice, she started jumping, with both her hands desperately trying to get rid of the cockroach. 

Her reaction was contagious, as everyone in her group also got panicky. The lady finally managed to push the cockroach away but... it landed on another lady in the group. Now, it was the turn of the other lady in the group to continue the drama. 

The waiter rushed forward to their rescue. In the relay of throwing, the cockroach next fell upon the waiter. 

The waiter stood firm, composed himself and observed the behavior of the cockroach on his shirt. When he was confident enough, he grabbed it with his fingers and threw it out of the restaurant. 

Sipping my coffee and watching the amusement, the antenna of my mind picked up a few thoughts and started wondering, was the cockroach responsible for their histrionic behavior? If so, then why was the waiter not disturbed? He handled it near to perfection, without any chaos. 

It is not the cockroach, but the inability of those people to handle the disturbance caused by the cockroach, that disturbed the ladies. 

I realized that, it is not the shouting of my father or my boss or my wife that disturbs me, but it's my inability to handle the disturbances caused by their shouting that disturbs me. It's not the traffic jams on the road that disturbs me, but my inability to handle the disturbance caused by the traffic jam that disturbs me. More than the problem, it's my reaction to the problem that creates chaos in my life. 

Lessons learnt from the story: I understood, I should not react in life. I should always respond. The women reacted, whereas the waiter responded. Reactions are always instinctive whereas responses are always well thought of. 

A beautiful way to understand LIFE. A person who is HAPPY is not because EVERYTHING is RIGHT in his LIFE. He is HAPPY because his ATTITUDE towards EVERYTHING in his LIFE is RIGHT! 

Pichai's speech should be shared. Anyway, let me restate the 5 key takeaways from the story as I see it.

1. Reactions vs. Responses: Reactions are instinctive and impulsive, often driven by emotions. Responses are well-thought-out and deliberate. 
2. Emotional Intelligence: The ability to understand and manage one's own emotions, as well as recognize and influence the emotions of others, is crucial for navigating challenging situations. 
3. Mindfulness: Being present and aware of one's thoughts and feelings allows for a more considered response rather than a knee-jerk reaction. 
4. Self-Mastery: Recognizing and managing personal triggers enables individuals to respond with clarity and purpose, even under pressure. 
5. Purposeful Action: By choosing responses over reactions, individuals can maintain composure, avoid unnecessary conflict, and find solutions to problems. 

In essence, the Cockroach Theory encourages individuals to cultivate emotional strength and develop the ability to respond thoughtfully to life's inevitable challenges, rather than reacting impulsively and creating unnecessary chaos.

Bomb the Shit Out of Moscow and Beijing

Donald Trump told a private gathering of donors at New York’s Pierre Hotel on May 14, 2024 that he once sought to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from attacking Ukraine and to deter Chinese President Xi Jinping from attacking Taiwan by threatening to “bomb the shit” out of Moscow and Beijing in retaliation, according to a leaked audio obtained by CNN and detailed in a new book published on Tuesday. 

The said book, "2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America" chronicles how US President Trump secured his victory in the November 2024 election, and how former President Joe Biden's team dismissed concerns about his age in the US campaign cycle. 

It is authored by Josh Dawsey of the Wall Street Journal, Tyler Pager of the New York Times and Isaac Arnsdorf of the Washington Post. And it is based on over 300 interviews conducted over 18 months.

Nvidia beat Apple and Microsoft to the $4 trillion mark. 

Apple entered this year as the world’s most valuable company at just about $3.9 trillion before tumbling in recent months amid Trump’s tariff turmoil. 

Nvidia and Microsoft traded places as the world’s most valuable company in recent months, before the former surged ahead to reach the $4 trillion mark first. The US chipmaker have had a remarkable march to record highs and have soared around 21% this year, thanks to their leading role powering the artificial intelligence boom. Nvidia’s chips power the data centers that companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Google need to fuel their AI models and cloud services – and AI investments are only expected to grow. 

Global spending on AI infrastructure is expected to surpass $200 billion by 2028, according to market research firm The International Data Corporation.

Company That Fired Human Workers For AI Now Want Them Back

Two years after partnering with OpenAI to automate marketing and customer service jobs, financial tech start-up Klarna say they're longing for human connection again. 

Once gunning to be OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's "favorite guinea pig", Klarna are now plotting a big recruitment drive after their AI customer service agents couldn't quite hack it. 

The buy-now-pay-later company had previously shredded their marketing contracts in 2023, followed by their customer service team in 2024, which they proudly began replacing with AI agents. Now, the company say they imagine an "Uber-type of setup" to fill their ranks, with gig workers logging in remotely to argue with customers from the comfort of their own homes. 

"From a brand perspective, a company perspective, I just think it’s so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will be always a human if you want", admitted Sebastian Siemiatkowski (left), the Swedish fintech's CEO. 

That's a pretty big shift from his comments in December of 2024, when he told Bloomberg he was "of the opinion that AI can already do all of the jobs that we, as humans, do". 

A year before that, Klarna had stopped hiring humans altogether, reducing their workforce by 22 percent. A few months after freezing new hires, Klarna bragged that they saved $10 million on marketing costs by outsourcing tasks like translation, art production, and data analysis to generative AI. They likewise claimed that their automated customer service agents could do the work of "700 full-time agents". 

So why the sudden about-face? As it turns out, leaving your already-frustrated customers to deal with a slop-spinning algorithm isn't exactly best practice. 

As Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg, "cost unfortunately seems to have been a too predominant evaluation factor when organizing this, what you end up having is lower quality". 

Klarna aren't alone. Though executives in every industry, from news media to fast food, seem to think AI is ready for the hot seat – an attitude that's more grounded in investor relations than an honest assessment of the tech – there are growing signs that robot chickens are coming home to roost. 

In January of last year, a Boston Consulting Group report "BCG AI Radar: From Potential to Profit with GenAI", based on a survey of 1,406 C-level executives in 50 markets and 14 industries, found that 66 percent were "ambivalent or outright dissatisfied with their organization’s progress on AI and GenAI so far". It's a problem that evidently hasn't improved over the year. 

Another survey by organizational planning platform Orgvue and reported April 30, 2025 on TechRadar Pro found that over 55 percent of UK business leaders who rushed to replace jobs with AI now regret their decision. 

It's not hard to see why. An experiment labeled “TheAgentCompany”, a meticulously crafted simulation where Carnegie Mellon University researchers tested one of tech’s most provocative questions: Can AI agents handle the complex demands of real-world jobs? 

They designed a fully virtual software firm staffed exclusively by AI "employees" – including models from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta. These AI agents were assigned roles ranging from software engineers to project managers and financial analysts, and even interacted with simulated departments like HR and a CTO. To test the capabilities of these AI-powered workers, researchers assigned them typical office tasks: exploring file systems, evaluating new virtual office spaces, and writing performance reviews for their peers. The goal was to see how well AI could handle the day-to-day operations of a real-world company. 

Business Insider on April 22, 2025 first reported the findings and they were laughably bad! The top-performing model, Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet, finished a little less than one-quarter of all tasks. The rest, including Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash and the one that powers ChatGPT, completed about 10% of the assignments.  

When it comes to the question of whether AI will take jobs, there seem to be as many answers as there are CEOs excited to save a buck. 

There are gray areas, to be sure – AI is certainly helping corporations speed up low-wage outsourcing, and the tech is having a verifiable effect on labor market volatility – just don't count on CEOs to have much patience as AI starts to chomp at their bottom line.