Tech
Revealed: Britain's contracts with Palantir hit £1bn
Newly surfaced disclosures reveal the government has spent or agreed to spend at least £992m with Peter Thiel’s controversial AI company – as pressure mounts on Andy Burnham to block them. Max Colbert reports
News
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Sleepless in Slough: the residents who fear for their failing health in Europe’s data centre capital
With an estimated 40 facilities packed tightly together in the town, local people say their quality of life is being ruined by strange and unsettling noise pollution. Brenna Spain reports
News
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Cory Doctorow: AI’s big beasts aren’t really scared of their products. They’re scared of their competition
The US giants would love to stop battling each other and be protected from China – and they might have hit on just the narrative to make that possible, writes our tech columnist
Tech
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Natasha Walter: The end-times oligarchs are weary of Earth. But we should stand and fight for our home
In answer to the question ‘what can I do?’ in the face of Trump, the tech bros and their apocalyptic visions – we can come together in the love and support of our communities
Tech
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Meta helped destroy my generation’s sense of self. An $18bn settlement is not punishment enough
For those, like me, who have lost loved ones to online harms, the spectacle of a historic lawsuit against a social media company has been bittersweet, writes Adele Walton
Tech
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ICE’s tech enablers are already embedded in the British state
Palantir, Anduril, Cellebrite and others supply America’s deportation machine. They also hold UK contracts with the Home Office, MoD and police – offering surveillance capabilities that a Reform government would inherit. Max Colbert reports
Tech
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Ellen E Jones: AI can already create films. What it can’t create is art
A machine-made movie has premiered at Tribeca and virtual actor Tilly Norwood is about to star in a feature. But if there’s no soul, no emotion, or no attempt at human connection ... who cares? By Ellen E Jones
Culture
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Cory Doctorow: The people who tell you ‘AI is changing everything’ are lying
It has become impossible to tell managers mesmerised by artificial intelligence that the tools are not, in fact, helpful. So employees just play along with the fiction to keep their jobs, writes our tech columnist
Tech
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‘We go where the silence is’: Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! on Trump, violence and the power of bearing witness
The pioneering independent reporter, now the subject of a documentary, talks to Carole Cadwalladr about surviving a massacre and the current threats to the media
Tech
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Adele Walton: The Online Safety Act is supposed to make Britain’s internet a safe space – yet it can’t touch the site linked to my sister’s death
Ofcom says it has used all its powers and can do no more against a pro-suicide forum. For bereaved families like mine, only a public inquiry can explain why
News
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Peter Thiel, precogs and ‘non-human corporations’ – welcome to the wild world of AI Argentina
President Milei’s plans to turn my country into an anarcho-capitalist tech paradise makes him just the latest character in the nation’s long history of chancers and dictators, writes Uki Goñi
Tech
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‘If these social media apps were an air fryer, they would have been recalled’: digital campaigner Beeban Kidron on Big Tech
The acclaimed film-maker and peer has made it her business to represent the rights of children and creators against Silicon Valley’s ‘giant compulsion machine’. She talks to Lucia Osborne-Crowley
Q&A
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Scan your eyeballs, think of the children: how Britain sells surveillance as safety
Keir Starmer's under-16 social media ban can only work if everyone proves who they are. It is the natural conclusion of the Online Safety Act – and of a Brexit that was always about control, says digital rights advocate Heather Burns
Tech
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At last, the fool’s bargain that the media struck with AI may be over
In a thunderous speech last week, the boss of the New York Times sounded a rallying call to news organisations to rise up against the theft of their work by Big Tech – and not before time, writes Branko Brkic
Tech
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‘Her silence was more powerful than words’: how I interviewed a Facebook whistleblower who wasn’t allowed to speak
The Nerve’s Carole Cadwalladr was all set to talk to Sarah Wynn-Williams, author of the explosive memoir Careless People, at the Hay festival when Meta’s lawyers intervened ... and turned the event into ‘absurdist theatre’
News
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‘What’s happening is horrifying’: the rebel film-maker challenging AI’s march into Hollywood
While pro-Silicon Valley documentaries got major distribution deals, Valerie Veatch had to struggle to get her film, about Big Tech’s dark past and future, into the world. She talked to Charlotte O’Sullivan about what some attendees called ‘the scariest movie playing at Sundance’
Tech
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Cory Doctorow: Hell is other people – so billionaires are using AI to replace them
The tech elite are pouring billions into dispensing with inconvenient humans. Now governments want the same trick to wish away the migrants their economies desperately need, writes the author and Nerve columnist
Tech
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‘They are weapons of war’: Gisèle Pelicot on the tech platforms that facilitate rape
The woman whose courage at trial transformed the debate around abuse talks to Lucia Osborne-Crowley about survival, reclaiming confidence – and shutting down the tools of sexual exploitation
News
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‘They can shape the outcomes they claim to forecast’ – could Polymarket influence an election?
A platform backed by Peter Thiel and advised by Donald Trump Jr. is taking anonymous crypto bets on UK elections, missile strikes and the death of world leaders. In Britain no regulator will touch it, writes Ian Tucker in this in-depth guide to so-called "prediction markets"
Tech
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New fears over spread of Palantir’s influence after ‘Big Brother’ Met police project extended
The programme, designed to expose officer misconduct, was due to expire last month. The Nerve has established that it was extended to today, May 15, with no indication what happens next. Officers fear they will be under long-term surveillance, while it’s also emerged the project could be rolled out to more staff. Report by Max Colbert and Lucia Osborne-Crowley
Palantir
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‘It’s like they were sharing tips on building a barbecue’: how the ‘rape academy’ teaching men to become Dominique Pelicot was exposed
CNN’s Niamh Kennedy was one of a team that made headlines when they uncovered a porn site specialising in abusing drugged women. She talked to Lucia Osborne-Crowley about the impact of her work – and the toll it can take
News
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