TL;DR: Big Tech dreams of launching data centres into space to solve energy crises, while San Francisco hosts underground robot fight clubs as AI culture gets weird. Meanwhile, Nvidia throws Intel a $5 billion lifeline, British AI startups outperform humans at forecasting, and Americans grow increasingly pessimistic about AI’s impact on creativity and relationships. Plus: Wikipedia faces coordinated right-wing attacks, Meta’s smart glasses fail onstage demos, publishers fight back with new licensing standards, and Sam Altman admits he can’t distinguish real humans from bots on social media.
Big Tech dreams of putting data centres in space
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggested launching data centres into orbit as a solution to AI’s massive energy demands, telling podcaster Theo Von “Maybe we put [data centres] in space.” The electricity demand of AI data centres could increase 165% by 2030, with over half powered by fossil fuels. Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt are also betting on space-based computing, as companies struggle with the environmental impact of covering “a lot of the world in data centres.”
Source: WIRED
British AI startup beats humans in international forecasting
ManticAI, co-founded by a former Google DeepMind researcher, ranked eighth in the Metaculus Cup forecasting competition, requiring predictions on 60 events, including Trump-Musk disputes and UK political changes. The British startup outperformed many human forecasting enthusiasts and professionals, suggesting AI could outstrip human forecasters sooner than expected, though it still lags behind the best human predictors.
Source: The Guardian
San Francisco hosts underground robot fight clubs
Friday nights in San Francisco now feature humanoid robots throwing jabs in underground boxing rings, with crowds chanting “Robot fight club!” as techno music blares. The Ultimate Fighting Bots events, complete with steampunk-dressed audiences and fake $100 bills littering the ring, represent the AI boom’s cultural impact on the city. Other tech-fueled events include Taser knife combat with rubber blades and AI-judged “performative male contests.”
Source: The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/technology/san-francisco-robot-fight.html
Nvidia throws Intel a $5 billion lifeline
The world’s dominant AI chip maker will invest $5 billion in struggling rival Intel, illustrating how AI demand is reshaping the tech industry. The deal provides crucial support for Intel, which lost its industry leadership position and struggled with mobile and AI transitions. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, now a tech superstar who joined Trump’s state dinner at Windsor Castle, sees his company’s stock rise 3% while Intel soars 25% on the news.
Source: The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/18/business/nvidia-intel-stake.html
Wall Street discovers AI-driven parking lot gold rush
Major Wall Street firms are investing in “industrial outdoor storage” lots—large gravel or asphalt spaces near highways used to store construction equipment for data centre builds. Each of the 22 data centres that Gray construction is building requires millions of dollars worth of tools, generators, and trailers stored on nearby lots. What was once a niche market for smaller investors has become a target for big finance as AI infrastructure demands explode.
Source: The New York Times
Publishing industry faces existential AI threat
Literary agent Jonny Geller warns that AI poses the “single biggest threat” to authors and culture, as the £11 billion UK publishing industry watches tech companies “sweep” copyrighted material to train AI models. Despite Anthropic’s recent $1.5 billion copyright settlement, “the ship has undeniably left the harbour and big tech is sailing off with the goods,” threatening to diminish our “ability to think like humans, create stories and imagine new worlds.”
Source: The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/18/ai-authors-publishing-regulation
Americans grow pessimistic about AI’s human impact
A new Pew Research survey reveals Americans are increasingly concerned about AI’s effect on fundamental human skills. 53% believe AI will worsen people’s ability to think creatively, while 50% say it will harm meaningful relationships. Only 16% expect AI to improve creativity, and just 5% think it will enhance relationships. Half of Americans report being more concerned than excited about AI’s increased role in daily life, up from 37% in 2021.
Source: Pew Research
Wikipedia faces coordinated right-wing attack campaign
Conservative media outlets have launched unprecedented attacks on Wikipedia following editorial debates about Charlie Kirk’s page, with Fox News claiming “leftist editors” are twisting facts. The coordinated assault isn’t about factual accuracy but aims to “delegitimise Wikipedia itself” and undermine fact-based reality. The attacks target Wikipedia’s role in Google search results and AI summaries, representing a strategy to subordinate reality to political narratives.
Source: Slate
https://slate.com/technology/2025/09/charlie-kirk-shooting-wikipedia-right-wing-media-attacks.html
Meta’s smart glasses stumble during live demo
Mark Zuckerberg unveiled three new smart glasses models at Meta’s developer conference, including the $799 Ray-Ban Display with a tiny screen and AI assistant. However, the demonstration went awry when Zuckerberg asked the glasses for a barbecue sauce recipe and to call a colleague—both requests failed onstage. The upgraded glasses feature built-in speakers, voice AI, and apps controlled by a wristband, launching September 30.
Source: The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/technology/personaltech/meta-smart-glasses-ai.html
India leads creative AI adoption with local twist
Google’s Nano Banana image-generation model has made India the top country for usage, propelling the Gemini app to No. 1 on both App Store and Google Play charts. Indians are engaging with the AI model in uniquely local and creative ways, generating retro portraits and viral local trends that caught Google’s attention. The adoption patterns reflect India’s position as the world’s second-largest smartphone market and online population after China.
Source: TechCrunch
Britain embraces sweeping digital surveillance
UK authorities have ramped up live facial recognition technology, leading to over 1,000 charges since January 2024 by scanning faces against a database of 16,000 wanted individuals. Combined with expanded online speech oversight, weakened encryption, and AI-reviewed asylum claims, Britain now represents “one of the most sweeping embraces of digital surveillance by a Western democracy,” sparking debates about the balance between security and civil liberties.
Source: The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/technology/britain-facial-recognition-digital-controls.html
Top UK artists demand protection from Trump tech deal
Leading British artists including Mick Jagger, Kate Bush, Paul McCartney, and Elton John urged Prime Minister Keir Starmer to protect creators’ rights ahead of Trump’s state visit and expected UK-US tech pact announcement. They argue Labour has failed to defend artists by blocking attempts to force AI firms to reveal copyrighted training material. John warned that government proposals “leave the door wide open for an artist’s life work to be stolen.”
Source: The Guardian
Cloudflare CEO envisions AI companies as content Netflix
Matthew Prince, CEO of web infrastructure giant Cloudflare, rolled out tools blocking unauthorised AI scraping and creating a pay-per-crawl model requiring AI platforms to pay for content access. Prince envisions a future where “OpenAI just might become the Netflix of content,” with AI companies paying fair licensing fees rather than scraping freely. The move comes after years of claiming neutrality, similar to Cloudflare’s decision to drop white supremacist site The Daily Stormer.
Source: WIRED
https://www.wired.com/story/big-interview-podcast-matthew-prince-cloudflare
Sam Altman plans trillion-dollar AI spending spree
OpenAI’s CEO isn’t shy about massive expenditure plans: “You should expect OpenAI to spend trillions of dollars on things like data centre construction in the not-too-distant future.” Altman dismisses economic concerns, saying “Let us do our thing” as the tech industry struggles to explain what it’s building. The spending transforms farmland into data centres and makes AI researchers among the highest-paid workers, raising questions about whether they’re building human-level AI, godlike machines, or just fancier advertising tools.
Source: The New York Times
Google and PayPal partner on AI shopping agents
PayPal announced a multi-year partnership with Google to create AI-powered shopping experiences using Google’s technology and PayPal’s global payment infrastructure. The companies will integrate PayPal solutions across Google products and work together on Google’s new Agent Payments Protocol, an open standard enabling purchases initiated by AI agents. The protocol has backing from over 60 merchants and financial institutions as the industry prepares for autonomous AI commerce.
Source: TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/18/google-and-paypal-team-up-on-agentic-commerce/
“AI psychosis” emerges as catch-all for chatbot mental health crisis
The phrase “AI psychosis” has spread across news reports and social media as a descriptor for mental health crises following prolonged chatbot conversations, though it’s not a recognized clinical term. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman warned of the “psychosis risk” in a recent blog post. UCSF psychiatrist Keith Sakata finds it “useful as shorthand for discussing a real phenomenon” but warns the term “can be misleading” and “risks oversimplifying complex psychiatric symptoms.”
Source: WIRED
https://www.wired.com/story/ai-psychosis-is-rarely-psychosis-at-all
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