companies

There are companies that want to install an age verifier

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Already in 2018 we were talking about vaping was becoming popular among teenagers and today, eight years later, things do not seem to have improved. In schools it has become a recurring problem with students carrying their vaper in their backpack as if it were just another accessory. Now there are companies looking for solutions so that minors cannot access their products. Age verification. The concept is very topical in the technological world. In the midst of the debate about whether prohibit access to social networks for those under 16 years of ageage verification systems are presented as a critical element to make this possible. What we did not expect is to find this concept linked to vapers or electronic cigarettes, but it is exactly what some manufacturers of this type of products are considering, as they say in Wired. Biometrics and blockchain. It is the proposal of IKE Techa company formed from the collaboration between the vaper manufacturer Ispire Technology and Chemular, a consulting firm specialized in the nicotine market. Their approach is to use a combination of biometrics, blockchain and a BLE chip integrated directly into the cartridge to guarantee the user’s age. The system works through an app in which the identity document is scanned and a selfie video is taken. This data is verified using an identification service such as Clear or ID.me and, if the verification is positive, the vaper is unlocked via Bluetooth. For it to remain active, the mobile phone with which the identification was made must remain close to the vaper. According to the company’s tests, the system showed 100% effectiveness. The reason. It is not that vape manufacturers have suddenly decided to insure their products, but it is a consequence of regulation. At the beginning of the month the FDA (the body that regulates foods and substances in the US) published a warning draft of the risk that flavored electronic cigarettes pose for young people. Although at the moment they are guides and their application is not mandatory, it makes it clear that this is where the regulation is moving, which is why there are already companies taking steps to protect themselves. Doubts. IKE Tech claims that it showed its technology to the FDA and they loved it, but there are many doubts about it. Speaking to Wired, Stanton Glantz, director of the Tobacco Control Research and Education Center, is not clear that this system will really work and believes that “every technical solution has a way of getting around it.” The truth is that once the vaper is activated, the system does not control if another person is using it, so an adult could activate it and then a minor use it. For Wang, a system that would work is to install geofences so that vapers are deactivated near schools or in prohibited places such as airplanes. Legal loophole. The fact that vapers have been so accessible to younger people is that there was a legal vacuum that did not equate them to tobacco in terms of regulation. He draft anti-smoking law of 2025 finally put them at the same level, which means that smoke-free spaces also include them and their consumption is prohibited for those under 18 years of age. The law is expected to come into force later this year. Flavors and colors. There is also another issue that has attracted the younger audience and that is marketing. Organizations like the WHO wave AECC have warned that vapers have been marketed in countless fruit or candy flavors, with colorful designs and a fresh and striking aesthetic, almost as if they were toys. In addition, strategies such as advertising at festivals or through influencers who held contests and raffles have been used. To this we must add the fact that there is no specific legislation, which means that we find disposable vapers in all types of stores within reach of anyone. According to data from the 2025 Secondary Education Drug Use Survey50% of young people between 14 and 18 years old claimed to have tried vaping and 27% admitted to having done so recently. The problem is still there. Even if the law comes into force and the age verification systems work perfectly, the question remains that They are very harmful to healthwhether they have nicotine or not. When vaping, the lungs are exposed to a wide variety of chemicals such as propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin or flavorings. The argument for vaping is that it is better than the combustion that occurs when smoking traditional cigarettes and there are studies that suggest that this is sothe question is whether replacing an evil with a lesser evil is the solution. In Xataka | The tobacco industry had found an escape route in vapes. And Spain is already considering putting an end to it Image | VapeClubMY in Unsplash

fewer and fewer companies offer it

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When the pandemic forced millions of Spaniards to work from home, many thought that nothing would be the same again. Companies had shown that it was possible and employees had found that they would rather do it than lose hours of your life in traffic jams or by public transport to their offices. And yet, six years laternumbers tell a story completely different. The 16th edition of the report State of the labor market in Spain 2025 that InfoJobs and Esade have just presented makes it clear: teleworking has not only not grown in new job offers, but it has been declining for four years in a row. And in 2025, remote work has hit a low that few anticipated. A setback that is no longer punctual. The study indicates that, in 2021, when hiring for remote work was at its peak, 21% of the vacancies published on InfoJobs included some form of remote work. In 2025, that figure dropped to 11%, which represents 280,810 positions with this modality. Four consecutive years of decline already make this data a structural trend, not a temporary correction in business culture. The sharpest drop in this type of day It occurred between 2023 and 2024, with a decrease of four percentage points in a single year. In 2025, three more points were lost, leaving the data below even the teleworking offers that were published in 2020, in the midst of the health crisis. Mónica Pérez, director of communication and studies at InfoJobs, assures that “many companies that launched into these models and saw the B sides related to productivity, team building or cohesion, backed off somewhat.” What the official data say. It should be noted that the data provided by the Infojobs study refers to new job offers, not to positions that already existed and have been maintained during these years. When observing both phenomena we find opposite trends. As companies cut teleworking options in their new vacancies, the data from the Active Population Survey (EPA) highlight that the real number of employees who telework in Spain has continued to grow. The last ones consolidated data of 2024 indicate that 14.6% of employed people teleworked regularly or occasionally, the highest figure high since the pandemic. Of course, Spain is still very far from the European average. According to EurostatIn the European Union, 22.6% of employees carry out some form of teleworking (100% remote or hybrid workday), compared to the 15.4% assigned to Spain. Countries such as the Netherlands or Sweden exceed 46% teleworking, which gives an idea of ​​the existing gap and to what extent the in-person work model continues to be dominant in the Spanish labor market. Sectors that make a difference. The gap between sectors is also enormous, although the nature of each job makes it logical. IT and telecommunications is the most favorable field for remote work, with 68% of its vacancies including the teleworking option. This is followed by the legal sector with 59% and the finance and banking sector with 51% of vacancies with teleworking. At the opposite extreme are the sectors where presence is simply inevitable: logistics and warehouse, health, tourism and restaurants or retail sales. The study hardly sees any differences in the number of vacancies with teleworking with respect to the size of the companies, which indicates that it is a factor that depends more on the sector to which it belongs than on the number of workers that form it. Madrid and Barcelona, ​​​​in another league. The geographical distribution teleworking is not homogeneous either. Madrid reaches 40% of all vacancies with some remote modality published in 2025. Catalonia follows, with 19% of vacancies with teleworking, followed by Andalusia with 11% and the Valencian Community with 7%. There is a quite logical reason behind these data: Madrid and Barcelona concentrate most of the corporate headquarters, consulting firms, offices and technology companies in the country, the sectors with the greatest compatibility with remote work. This pattern coincides with what the INE already recorded after the pandemic, when teleworking skyrocketed especially in Madrid and Catalonia compared to the rest of the communities. In Xataka | Working from anywhere was the dream of teleworking: not notifying those location changes can get you fired Image | Unsplash (Rodeo Project Management Software)

OpenAI has signed countless billion-dollar agreements with other companies. We are discovering that they are made of paper

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OpenAI has announced that will abandon development of Soraits AI video generator, just six months after the launch of its standalone app. Disney, which had announced a $1 billion investment in OpenAI in exchange for licensing its characters for Sora, has confirmed that the deal will not go ahead. The money never changed handsand joins others in recent weeks that send a worrying message. One that calls into question the real strength of the most valued company in the AI ​​sector. Paper agreements. In recent months, OpenAi has been the protagonist of a frenetic string of announcements that have shaken the stock markets and sent prices skyrocketing. Analysts like Ed Zitron have documented in detail how these agreements are for now more smoke than anything else: all of them were “letters of intent”, conditional commitments that now seem increasingly difficult to come true. There are examples everywhere. The NVIDIA case: the one hundred billion that did not exist. In September 2025 NVIDIA announced a “strategic partnership” with OpenAI to invest “up to 100 billion dollars” and build 10 GW of data centers. Four months later, the company led by Jensen Huang considerably reduced that investment to 30 billion dollars. Jensen Huang recently stated that this will “probably” be the last round he will enter into OpenAI and clarified that the statement made it clear that this was a “letter of intent”, not a contract. Months later in NVIDIA’s quarterly results, the agreement is described as “an opportunity to invest in OpenAI.” Not a single dollar has been sent to him, and it is not certain that he will. The AMD case: 34% rise in the stock market. In October, another mega-deal. amd announced a “definitive” agreement with openAI to deploy 6 GW of data centers. The company indicated that would potentially generate “tens of billions in revenue,” and AMD shares rose 34% in one day. Four months later, in quarterly results from the company, zero mentions of OpenIA. IN November 2025, in AMD’s 10-Q filing, AMD’s outstanding obligations on contracts with a duration greater than one year were 279 million dollars. There were practically no mentions of OpenAI. Many promises, no reality. The Broadcom case: a confusing order. Broadcom too was going to deploy 10 GW of “AI accelerators designed by OpenAI” at the end of 2029, but at the moment there is still no evidence that chip sales have occurred and there are no clues in OpenAI’s latest quarterly results, which do not mention this agreement anywhere or its impact. Broadcom CEO he did tell investors that they expected to deploy 1 GW of computing in the form of XPUs in 2027, but did not give details of how they planned to reach 10 GW in 2029. And also revealed that “we do not expect much in 2026” from the contract with OpenAI, because the return will focus on 2027, 2028 and 2029. The Disney case: a very bad sign. The agreement with Disney announced in Decemberincluded the company taking a $1 billion stake and will license more than 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars for use on Sora. It was the type of agreement that validates a company before the general public, especially since Disney does not sign agreements with just anyone. However, the agreement was entirely built on stock warrants, not cash, they point out in Deadline. By abandoning Sora, Disney has withdrawn without consequences and without having transferred a dollar. Another paper agreement. The SKHynix case: where are we going to get so much memory from?. SK Hynix and Samsung intended to provide 900,000 RAM wafers per month for OpenAI’s Stargate project, but the result of these intentions has been null. That agreement would have consumed 40% of world production of DRAM in the midst of the crisis of this type of components. The mysterious Norwegian data center case. OpenAI promised in July 2025 that would boost construction of an AI data center belonging to the Stargate project but which would be in Norway. It was then expected that this center would have 100,000 NVIDIA chips by the end of 2026, and that it would expand “significantly” from that figure. There has been no news of this development since then. Nobody asks questions. Zitron complained in your reflection how financial analysts seemed not to ask the necessary questions when faced with these announcements. He explains that OpenAI had committed about $300 billion in different agreements to create new data centers, but its real income is around $4.5 billion a year and it is expected that it will have losses of about $14 billion in 2026. Despite everything, Zitron criticizes, the stream of advertisements continues to work because it generates increases in the stock market and positive headlines. The difference between contracts and letters of intent was buried in the fine print of the advertisements that almost no one reads. And the examples continue. In fact, the advertisements do not stop coming despite everything and everyone. OpenAI announced in February an investment of 110 billion dollars by SoftBank (30 billion), NVIDIA (30 billion) and Amazon (50 billion). SoftBank itself is “testing its lending limits” with that bet, which we will see if he can complete. Amazon’s 50 billion are divided in two phases: a first of 15,000 million that should be executed on March 31, and another of 35,000 million dollars whose deadlines depend on several events. Too many agreements that must demonstrate something critical: that they are not made of paper. In Xataka | Problems are multiplying for OpenAI in the race for AI. Your solution: go from 4,500 to 8,000 workers

China is giving apartments to its entrepreneurs because it is clear that the future is the Yo SL companies

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Ma Ruipeng is 41 years old and has been working as a programmer for 20 years. Three months ago he left his job to start his own company. From his apartment in Beijing he works with three computers, AI tools like Claude Code, design platforms like Figma and, of course, his own installation of OpenClaw which he has called “Big House”. That’s what he hopes from his solo adventure: that his house becomes really big. He hasn’t made money yet, but he clearly prefers working with AI before AI works in place. The era of the Yo SL in China they start to push There are increasingly so-called “one-person companies” (OPC), one-person companies that act like startups founded and operated by a single person. These types of entrepreneurs make the most of AI tools—scheduling agents, video and image generators, task automation systems—to do the work that previously required having a team of employees. The falling cost of developing digital products, combined with the arrival of AI agents really functional like OpenClaw has made this type of business figures viable for the first time on a massive scale. The government is betting on entrepreneurs in the AI ​​era. In November the city of Suzhou advertisement that would build “30 OPC communities” with the goal that by 2028 the city would have at least 1,000 one-person AI companies. Other Chinese cities quickly followed. The Pudong district of Shanghai covers up to 300,000 yuan (37,500 euros) in computing costs, and Wuhan offers special loans for AI solopreneurs and even promises to absorb some of the losses if they go bankrupt. It is a well-known strategy: there is a central guideline that drives core competence to take advantage of this new industry that promises to revolutionize the market. Free floors and empty data centers. Chinese government incentives they don’t just translate into money. Several local governments are converting office buildings and underutilized data centers in a kind of incubators for this new SME format, for these “Yo SL”. The context is revealing, because with the AI ​​fever many municipalities built data centers without calculating real demand and had them half empty. Filling them with subsidized startups solves two problems at once. Silicon Valley is something else. On the other side of the Pacific, it is venture capital funds that finance Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and there We bet on startups with the most return potential. In China, it is the State that is fully involved in this effort: it offers subsidies for infrastructure, it is a priority customer of these products —what’s happening with robotics— and promotes competition between municipalities to attract talent. “It’s like a giant Silicon Valley,” explained Lin Zhang, a researcher at the University of New Hampshire: “when a new technology emerges, the entire bureaucratic system is mobilized to develop it.” There will be many who fail. The uncertainty, however, is notable. Venture capitalists say that most OPCs will not end up becoming viable businesses, although they admit that government subsidies are encouraging more and more people to start pitching ideas for their startups. Taking into account that frequent layoffs are beginning to occur in the market, this is an alternative for many former employees of technology companies, who can thus seek their own opportunity with the help of the Chinese government. It is a commitment to volume as an innovation strategy: many will fail, but the more they try, the more options for success there will be. Fear of unemployment is a powerful ally. Behind many of these stories there is a common motivation: the fear of being left out of the labor market. The prospect of being replaced by AI both in China and the rest of the world is starting to get really disturbing for a whole generation of skilled workers. These OPCs are for many of them a response to that threat: if you can’t beat the AI, use it. Before, those who ended up laid off looked, for example, at franchised businesses and they set up a bar or a photoepilation business. The future indicates that many will now set up their “Yo SL”, their startup from home in which there will be no need for an office or employees. AI will take care of (almost) everything. Image | Blackcreek Corporate In Xataka | To dominate chips, China must first obtain hyper-specialized technology in the hands of its historical rival: Japan.

The US is discussing whether to condemn technology companies for designing something as addictive as slot machines: doomscroll

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If you have Instagram or TikTok, you’ve probably been caught up in that constant river of videos, each one funnier and more interesting than the last. You like them, you share them, sometimes you comment and you continue seeing more. Without realizing it, an hour has passed. It is the phenomenon of doomscrolling and that is the reason why Meta, TikTok and Google have sat in the dock in the US. Now, the jury’s verdict is coming. The accusation. It all started with the complaint of Kaley, a 20-year-old girl, who accused Instagram, YouTube and TikTok of having designed their products to encourage addiction which ended up harming her mental and physical health as a child. He claims that one day he spent 16 hours on Instagram. Now, a jury decides whether his addiction was his fault or the design of these social networks; infinite scroll, autoplay and algorithms expressly designed to trap us for as long as possible. Why it is important. It is not the only complaint about the effects of social networks on mental health (they say on BBC that there are more than 2,000 similar lawsuits), but Kaley’s has become a reference case for being the first to reach court and also with a jury. The trial has been compared to the one that put the tobacco companies on the bench at the end of the 90s, it now remains to be seen if it has real consequences. The defense. During the trial, internal Meta documents were provided in which some employees joked that Instagram was a drug and they were dealers. However, the platforms defend themselves by arguing that each user is responsible for their own use. The director of Instagram, Adam Mosseri said at trial that social media is not “clinically addictive,” and compared it to being addicted to a television series. In addition, they defend that they have implemented safety features, such as screen time limitations and rest reminders. And now what. The platforms have been spared other accusations thanks to Article 230 of the Communications Decency Law, which exempts them from responsibility for what users publish on them. However, the lawsuit tries to get around this limitation by focusing on the design and not the content. If it succeeds, it will set a precedent and open a path for the thousands of lawsuits awaiting processing. Still, it may not be enough for real consequences to occur. In statements to, New York Times Glenn Cohen, a professor at Harvard Law School specializing in new technologies, says that even if the jury agrees with him, “it will not survive an appeal.” Chip change. In recent years, the discourse of rejection of social networks has been growing (although its use has not decreasedparadoxically) and its effects on our mental health, especially that of the youngest. Australia has banned the use of social networks for those under 16 years of age and there are other countries that have shown themselves inclined to follow in their footsteps, such as Denmark either, recently, Spain. In Xataka | Spending all day scrolling on Instagram or TikTok has a very specific effect on your brain: it dwarfs Image | Wikipedia

The US has decided to shoot itself in the foot and destroy one of the best AI companies in the country

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Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, published a few hours ago a statement in which he announced something unusual: the Department of Defense (DoD) has confirmed that “we have been designated as a risk to the national security supply chain” of the United States. This agency thus fulfills the threat it posed a few days ago and automatically turns Anthropic, one of the best AI companies in the country (if not the best) into a pariah company. What implications does that have? Many and all of them huge. I veto Anthropic. This designation prohibits Anthropic from doing business or developing projects for the US military. That is already serious, but it is not just the Pentagon, for example, that will not do it: any company that works with the Pentagon is also prohibited from using Anthropic’s AI services for any government project. We are facing a decision whose collateral effects could be terrible for Anthropic. The loss of revenue could be massive, and if other federal agencies follow the Pentagon’s lead, Anthropic could have a hard time defending its viability against its competitors. That designation is not immediate, and there will be a transition period six months for DoD to migrate to other vendors (like OpenAI). It had never been done with a national company. The ban on Anthropic is absolutely extraordinary, and that designation as a “supply chain risk” was a measure historically reserved for foreign adversaries like Huawei. By applying this label to an American company, the DoD severs its commercial ties and marks the company with a stigma, a kind of “scarlet letter” that could scare away global investors and partners. ethical shock. The core of the conflict is not technical, but moral. Anthropic was born as a spin-off from OpenAI with the aim of avoid existential risks in the development of AI models, and the company has always positioned itself as a great defender of alignment with human values. Its CEO, Dario Amodei, insisted that its AI could not be used for mass surveillance or for the development of lethal autonomous weaponsbut that has collided head-on with the US government and military establishments, which wanted practically total access without restrictions, except those imposed by the US Constitution and laws. to the courts. Amodei has explained in its statement that it will fight the decision in court. His argument, he explains, is that statute 10 USC 3252 It is a tool of protection, not punishment. The defense will need to focus on showing that the Department of Defense did not use the least restrictive means to ensure security. If they succeed, they could invalidate the designation, although the reputational damage has already been done. The dilemma of sovereignty. Can a private company be above the Government? The Pentagon argues that no supplier can slip through the chain of command, and one thing is certain here: for an AI to have usage clauses that limit military operations is to cede national sovereignty to a private algorithm and the terms of service of a board of directors and a CEO who have not been democratically elected. The threat of extreme interventionism. This unusual measure could end up setting a precedent. If the government punishes companies that ask uncomfortable questions or place limits on the use of their technology, AI innovation could change its philosophy. Companies that want to survive would have to do so without questioning the orders out of pure fear of bankruptcy and bankruptcy. Transition period. There is, however, a period of six months granted for the transition and that seems to make it clear that the Pentagon still depends on Anthropic technology for current operations, as demonstrated by the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro or the current intelligence analysis of the conflict in Iran. It remains to be seen how events will evolve, but the outlook for Anthropic is certainly worrying. And for the rest of the companies too, if indeed justice rules in favor of the Department of Defense. Image | Anthropic | Xataka with Freepik In Xataka | Anthropic has become the Apple of our era and OpenAI our Microsoft: a story of love and hate

NVIDIA is going to spend $4 billion on photonics companies. He is preparing for what is coming

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NVIDIA does not provide stitches without thread. At the end of August 2025, the company led by Jensen Huang announced that in 2026 their platforms artificial intelligence next generation (AI) will use photonic interconnections to achieve higher transfer speeds between GPU clusters. This announcement came during the conference specializing in semiconductor engineering and high-performance computing ‘Hot Chips’, which was held in Palo Alto (California), and was just the prelude to what was to come. And this same week NVIDIA has revealed that is going to invest 2,000 million dollars in Lumentum, and the same amount in Coherent. These two companies have something very important in common: they are specialized in developing photonic technologies. Shortly after NVIDIA confirmed its interest in them, the shares of these two companies rose 5 and 9% respectively. And the company led by Jensen Huang has committed to purchasing products from Lumentum and Coherent for several billion dollars, and also to use their advanced laser solutions and optical networking technologies. Photonics is the support that cutting-edge semiconductors need Most IC designers and manufacturers are working on the development of silicon photonics. Douglas Yu, a TSMC executive with responsibility for systems integration, explained in September 2023 very clearly what disruptive capacity this technology has: “If we manage to implement a good integration system for silicon photonics, we will unleash a new paradigm. We will probably place ourselves at the beginning of a new era.” Silicon photonics is a discipline that in the field in question seeks to develop the technology of this chemical element to optimize the transformation of electrical signals into light pulses. The most obvious field of application of this innovation is implementing high performance links which, on paper, can be used both to resolve communications between several chips and to optimize the transfer of information between several machines. In AI clusters, thousands of GPUs must work in unison, so it is essential to connect them using high-performance links The advanced packaging technologies used by leading semiconductor manufacturers, such as TSMC, Intel or Samsung, can greatly benefit from a very high-performance inter-chip communication mechanism. And large data centers where it is necessary to connect a large number of machines, too. However, there is one discipline in particular that has an overwhelming future projection and that would benefit greatly from building on the advantages offered by silicon photonics: AI. This is precisely NVIDIA’s bet. In AI clusters, thousands of GPUs must work in unison, so it is essential to connect them using high-performance links. It is possible to solve this challenge using traditional copper cables or optical modules, but both of these solutions introduce into the infrastructure very important inefficiencies. The most problematic are energy loss and bottlenecks. Data transfer can consume up to 30 watts per port, which increases energy dissipation as heat and increases the likelihood of failure. Additionally, latency limits the scalability of clusters as the number of GPUs in data centers increases. To resolve these inefficiencies, NVIDIA will integrate the optical components required for photonic interconnections into the same switching chip package. This technology is known as CPO (Co-Packaged Optics) and manages to reduce power consumption to only 9 watts per port. Additionally, it minimizes signal loss and improves data integrity. Looks really good. NVIDIA has confirmed that it will integrate CPO technology into its Quantum-X InfiniBand and Spectrum-X Ethernet interconnect platforms during 2026. However, there is something important that is worth not overlooking: CPO is not going to be an extra. When it arrives, it will be established as a structural requirement of the next generation of AI data centers in a clear attempt to increase the competitiveness of NVIDIA’s AI hardware platforms. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | Reuters In Xataka | Intel and TSMC lead the photonic chip revolution. Their problem is that China has just gotten fully involved in this war

Sam Altman says he’s terrified of a world where AI companies believe themselves to be more powerful than the government. It’s just what you’re building

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Sam Altman sat down over the weekend before his audience at X to answer questions about the agreement that OpenAI has just signed with the United States War Department. What came out of that session was a beautiful involuntary x-ray of the biggest contradiction in the sector at the moment. Why is it important. The CEO of OpenAI said he is terrified of “a world where AI companies act as if they have more power than the government.” The phrase sounds good, it is marketinian and seeks to elevate OpenAI’s position as a powerful but very responsible and honest group. The problem is the context in which he pronounces it: hours before OpenAI signed that agreement, The US government labeled Anthropic, its direct rival, a “supply chain risk” for refusing to sign under those same conditions. Altman went to put out the fire just as someone accused him of setting it. Between the lines. Altman’s speech rests on a premise that must be monitored: that a democratically elected government must always prevail over unelected private companies. It is a philosophically reasonable position, but he applies it selectively. Altman acknowledged that the deal “was rushed and the picture is not good,” and that OpenAI moved quickly to “de-escalate” tension between the Pentagon and industry. In other words, your company made a unilateral strategic decision about how the entire AI industry should relate to the military establishment. That doesn’t exactly sound like institutional deference. The contrast. Anthropic opted for something different: requiring explicit safeguards against the use of its AI for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons. But the government penalized her. OpenAI accepted a more ambiguous formula (“for all legal uses”) and won the contract. Various OpenAI employees signed a letter supporting Anthropic’s position. Claude became the most downloaded free application in the App Store that weekend from Apple, precisely surpassing ChatGPT. The market also has opinions. Yes, but. It’s fair to admit that Altman’s position has some internal logic: If AI is going to be integrated into military systems anyway, it may be preferable that it do so under negotiated conditions rather than under coercion. And he’s right about one thing: The labeling of Anthropic as a supply chain risk, a tool intended for hostile foreign suppliers, applied to an American AI security company is, in his own words, “an extremely frightening precedent.” The big question. Who really decides how AI is used in military contexts? The companies that build it, the governments that hire it, or the engineers who design it and who are increasingly organized to influence those decisions? Altman says he believes in the democratic process. But OpenAI negotiated privately, signed privately, and made only a fraction of the contract public. Democratic transparency starts there. In Xataka | Anthropic has become the Apple of our era and OpenAI our Microsoft: a story of love and hate Featured image | Xataka

We have been talking about “day 996” in Chinese companies for years. The reality is more complex: “day 323”

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In China there are more than 1.4 billion people and nearly a quarter of its active population works in the public sector, a work universe so enormous that any generalization usually falls short. Thus, between global topics and everyday realities, the distance may be greater than it seems. The myth exported from 996. It we have counted on more than one occasion, but just because something is repeated many times does not mean that it is the norm. We have been hearing for so long that China applies infamous day 996 (working from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm, six days a week), that the concept itself has ended up becoming a symbol of a supposed superhuman work ethic, although in its origin it was a criticism to an abusive model within the technology sector and never a general rule. On paper, Chinese law sets weeks five days and 40 hoursalthough its application is irregular and the official unions lack real power, and although there are sectors such as migrant work or the platform economy where the hours are hard and the scarce rights. In any case, they said in a Foreign Policy report that 996 has prospered in the West because fits the fear It calls for China to “work harder” and surpass its rivals, but that narrative simplifies to the point of dehumanizing those 1.4 billion people. Furthermore, it hides a much more diverse reality. The inheritance of work as ideology. The truth is that Chinese work culture was not born with the technologies of Shenzhen, but with a tradition marked by Maoism and heritage. of Soviet Stakhanovismone where productive sacrifice was glorified and consolidated the social weight of the danwei or work unit. In that sense, he remembered the analyst James Palmer that was not until 1995 when the two-day weekend was formalized, and for decades employment was not only a source of income, but also the core of identity, housing and social network. that past explains the coexistence of intense practices with other deeply bureaucratic ones, where political obedience and compliance with quotas weigh as much as real efficiency. The silent reality of 323. As we said at the beginning, beyond from the myth of 996a significant part of Chinese employment (around 23% of the active population) is concentrated in the public sector, where an informal pattern predominates summarize as 323: three hours of work in the morning, a break of two or even three hours to eat and napand another three hours in the afternoon. That long interruption is, in fact, almost sacred and has withstood reform attemptswith offices that dim lights or enable spaces to rest, in a routine that surprises those who expect constant hyperproductivity. The pace can be lax in quiet times and frenetic at the end of the year to meet administrative objectives, often accompanied by creative accounting adjustments. Bureaucracy, patronage and ghost jobs. They recalled in FP that 323 coexists with less visible practices such as fictitious jobs granted by patronage, from positions where hardly any work is done to positions “without presence” that serve to reward loyalty or avoid formal requirements. In that environment, flexibility and frustration coexist: an office may close during a long break, but also show leniency in the face of formal delays. And when the political leadership hardens the toneas happened with the anti-corruption campaign started in 2013 or with extraordinary demands such as imposed on teachers to register vaccinations in 2022, the intensity increases and many of the amenities temporarily disappear. Mandatory socialization and discipline. Furthermore, it must be taken into account that official work life includes banquets, toast and collective meetings that reinforce hierarchies and informal networks, rituals that can become a burden rather than a privilege and that were briefly contents by disciplinary campaigns before eventually returning. That sway between everyday laxity and political pressure explains why 323 makes sense within the system: it does not respond to an ethic of leisure, but to an administration that alternates phases of low demand with bursts of mobilization. Put clearly: in front of the story simplistic 996reality is more contradictory and less hyperbolic, a fragmented work culture where the working day depends as much on the sector and the political climate as on individual will. Image | International Labor Organization ILO In Xataka | China promised them very happy with day 996. Until they realized that it was a shot in the foot In Xataka | China became famous for its eternal work hours. The solution has been to throw the employees out on time.

There are people using AI to plan murders. The question is what AI companies are doing about it

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On February 10, an 18-year-old girl shot and killed her mother and brother. Then he went to the institute and murdered seven more people, finally committing suicide. The disturbing thing is that the author had talked about it with ChatGPT and OpenAI had the opportunity to notify the police, but chose not to. What has happened? They count in the Wall Street Journal that, in June of last year, OpenAI’s automated system detected several messages that a user had sent to ChatGPT describing scenarios of armed violence. For some employees they were very worrying because they could end in real violence, so there was an internal debate about whether to notify the Canadian authorities. They finally closed his account, but they didn’t notify anyone. Now Canadian authorities have summoned them to ask for explanations. There is more. He Tumbler Ridge shooting It is not the only case in which AI has been used to plan a crime. At the beginning of 2025, a man parked a Cybertruck full of explosives in front of a hotel in Las Vegas with the intention of detonating it (although in the end the only victim was himself). Days before, the author I had asked ChatGPT how to do it. In this case, the chatbot did not detect any concerning messages, but we know this because OpenAI searched through its messages after the fact. In Seoul, a woman was jailed for the alleged murder of two people due to benzodiazepine poisoning. The investigation revealed that the accused had gone to ChatGPT to find out what the dangerous dose was and what happened if it was mixed with alcohol. The messages in this case are not that alarming and could arise out of genuine doubt, but it is another example of ChatGPT being used in the commission of a crime. Why is it important. Artificial intelligences have become a kind of confessional to which we tell all kinds of secrets, even the darkest. There are those who consider that AI is a friendhis psychologist or even his lover. In this sense, it is not strange for someone to tell ChatGPT that they are going to kill their family or want to detonate a car full of explosives. What is worrying, and where we should focus, is what companies are doing about it. At the moment, it seems not enough. Are they obligated? Confessing to your psychologist or psychiatrist that you want to hurt someone is one of the reasons why you not only can, but should break your relationship. professional secret and alert the authorities. However, no matter how much we use chatbots as psychologists, at the moment there is no law that forces AI companies to report these types of interactions, but it is an internal decision. The obligation, therefore, is not legal, but ethical. How to make a homemade bomb. Cases like that of the Tumbler Ridge shooter are not something that has begun to happen with the arrival of AI chatbots. Instructions for creating homemade bombs have been around for decades. bringing the authorities to their heads, Even before the use of the Internet became popular, manuals of this type were circulating. The same thing happens with the suicide cases; You don’t need to ask ChatGPT, we can Google it or write in a forum. In statements to New York Timesa former OpenAI employee highlights an important nuance: with a chatbot you don’t usually do a simple search, but rather you can have a longer conversation where the intentions are clearer. In this sense, it may be easier to detect cases like the Tumbler Ridge shooter, but there may also be many false positives due to users who are writing fictional stories or using AI as role-playing. Complicated. In Xataka | Investing in data centers for AI is insane, and it’s going to get worse. much worse Cover image | Pexels, Unsplash

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