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Scotsman
an hour ago
- Politics
- Scotsman
How a UK national ID card would 'stop the boats'
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The long days of summer bring another high tide of small boats across the English Channel, despite renewed efforts by the Labour government to stem the numbers. Some 17,000 have already made the crossing this year with the Prime Minister admitting the situation is 'deteriorating'. For the first time, immigration has been ranked amongst the top five concerns for Scots even though numbers coming here have traditionally been much lower. According to the polls, no politician can afford to ignore this issue. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad With a falling birth rate, Scotland has specific migration needs but they can only be met through a system that is regulated, transparent and understood. Migrants abandon a people-smugglers' boat after it was punctured with a knife by French police to stop them attempting to cross the English Channel from a beach at Gravelines, near Dunkirk (Picture: Sameer Al-Doumy) | AFP via Getty Images Social media surveillance Everyone who comes to this country, legally or illegally, does so for their own personal reasons. It might be the search for a better life and the opportunities available in a safe and secure country. It might be the pull of our language. It might be a welfare system more generous than elsewhere but there is another vital factor as well. The UK is one of the few countries in the world without a system of national identity cards. In some places, they are voluntary, in others mandatory, but the argument against them is out of date. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Civil liberties organisations used to fear the level of surveillance and control this would allow over individual citizens. That day is gone. Now Mark Zuckerberg knows what you think via social media, while Jeff Bezos has the lowdown on what you buy. Marks and Spencer probably knows your inside leg measurement. We're also one of the world's most surveilled countries with more than five million cameras on buses, in shops and offices, and even in our own doorbells. So what difference would identity cards make? Right now some estimates suggest the shadow migrant economy built around casual employment in places like car washes, nail bars, barber shops and fast-food outlets could amount 10 per cent of our GDP. Without a system for verifying identity, shutting it down is a mammoth task requiring the background of every individual to be checked. Biometric identity cards would change that overnight. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Uniform system across EU The lack of a system of identity verification is another unwitting consequence of Brexit. All 27 EU countries how have a uniform system with Portugal and Bulgaria the latest to sign up. The presence of a carte d'identite in France seems to be a key factor in pushing individuals to the Channel and the route to the UK where it's much easier to disappear from the scrutiny of the state. We've been here before. More than 20 years ago, an experimental system of ID cards was introduced but then dropped because of opposition from civil liberty campaigners. However that was long before the migration numbers we see today with the knock-on effects they have. According to former Home Secretary David Blunkett, the small boats scandal would never have happened if the government had persevered with that scheme because the requirement to have an ID card to work, claim benefits or receive healthcare would have been a big disincentive to people coming here in the first place.
Economic Times
3 hours ago
- Business
- Economic Times
Meta seeks $29 billion from private capital firms for AI data centres: Financial Times
Meta Platforms is seeking to raise $29 billion from private capital firms to build artificial intelligence data centres in the U.S., the Financial Times reported on Friday. The Facebook-parent has advanced discussions with private credit investors including Apollo Global Management, KKR , Brookfield , Carlyle and PIMCO, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. Meta is looking to raise $3 billion in equity and $26 billion in debt, the report said, adding that the company is debating how to structure the debt raising and may also seek to raise more capital. Such a fundraising comes at a time when Meta has doubled down its commitment to artificial intelligence, including a $14.8 billion investment in startup Scale AI. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had said in January the company would spend as much as $65 billion this year to expand its AI infrastructure, seeking to strengthen its position against competitors OpenAI and Google in the race to lead the AI technology landscape. Meta and Carlyle declined to comment, while Apollo Global, KKR, Brookfield and PIMCO did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. Meta was working with its advisers at Morgan Stanley to arrange the financing, and it was considering ways that could make the debt more easily tradeable once it was issued, the FT report said. Major tech companies are investing heavily to secure the vast computing power needed to run AI models, fueling demand for specialized data centres that link thousands of chips into high-performance clusters. Microsoft has planned a capital expenditure of $80 billion in fiscal 2025, with most of it aimed at expanding data centres to ease capacity bottlenecks for AI services. Bloomberg News reported in February that Apollo Global Management is in talks to lead a roughly $35 billion financing package for Meta to help develop data centres in the United States.
Business Insider
3 hours ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Meta Platforms (META) Considers Using Rival AI Models Instead of Llama
Tech giant Meta Platforms (META) is reportedly thinking about pulling back from its own Llama language models in favor of models from rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic, according to The New York Times. This would be a big shift in strategy, since Meta's Llama models are open-source, meaning others can use and modify them, while OpenAI and Anthropic use 'closed' models that aren't open to the public. So far, no final decision has been made. Confident Investing Starts Here: Easily unpack a company's performance with TipRanks' new KPI Data for smart investment decisions Receive undervalued, market resilient stocks right to your inbox with TipRanks' Smart Value Newsletter This possible change comes after the rocky launch of Meta's Llama 4 models in April. Indeed, Meta introduced the models during its LlamaCon event, but they didn't perform as well as competing AI models, and many developers left the event unimpressed. Since then, Meta has been spending heavily to catch up. Earlier this month, it announced a $14.3 billion investment to buy nearly half of Scale AI. As part of that deal, Scale's CEO Alexandr Wang will join Meta to lead its 'superintelligence' team, which is focused on creating artificial general intelligence. Meta is also making bold moves to attract top AI talent. Reports say that the company is offering massive signing bonuses—up to $100 million—to hire researchers from OpenAI. On top of that, Meta is in talks to buy PlayAI, which is a startup that creates realistic AI voices. The company had even looked into acquiring other AI firms like Perplexity AI, Runway AI, and FuriosaAI before choosing to invest in Scale. Altogether, these efforts show how serious Meta is about becoming a leader in the AI space under CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Is Meta a Buy, Sell, or Hold? Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Strong Buy consensus rating on META stock based on 42 Buys, three Holds, and one Sell assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. Furthermore, the average META price target of $716.48 per share implies that shares are near fair value.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Meta Mulls Swapping Out Llama
Meta's (NASDAQ:META) top brass, including Mark Zuckerberg, are quietly debating whether to dial back its open-source Llama models and lean on closed systems from OpenAI or Anthropic instead. Over the past week, insiders told The New York Times that Meta execs have discussed de-investing in Llama after the April reveal underwhelmed some developers and benchmarks lagged behind rival releases. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 6 Warning Sign with META. Even so, a Meta spokeswoman insists there'll be multiple additional Llama releases this year. Behind the scenes, Meta is splashing out on AI talent and techincluding a $14.3 billion deal for half of Scale AI and seven-figure sign-on offers for OpenAI researchers like Trapit Bansal. Switching from open-source to closed models could speed up Meta's time-to-market and tap best-in-class performance, but it also risks alienating the community that built Llama's early momentum. This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Analyst reboots Facebook parent stock price target on AI investments
Analyst reboots Facebook parent stock price target on AI investments originally appeared on TheStreet. Afraid about losing your job to artificial intelligence? You're not alone. More than half of the people responding to a Pew Research Center survey said they were worried about the future impact of AI use in the workplace, and 32% think it will lead to fewer job opportunities for them in the long run. 💵💰Don't miss the move: Subscribe to TheStreet's free daily newsletter 💰 Only 6% of workers queried in the survey of 5,273 employed U.S. adults said workplace AI use will lead to more job opportunities for them in the long run. About a third said it will lead to fewer opportunities for them, and 31% say it will not make much difference. It's not surprising that people are concerned about their careers. A McKinsey report projects that by 2030, 30% of current U.S. jobs could be automated, with 60% significantly altered by AI tools. Mark Zuckerberg has a different point of view. "I tend to think that for at least the foreseeable future, this is going to lead towards more demand for people doing work not less now,' the chairman and CEO of Facebook parent Meta Platforms () said in recent interview. "The common belief is that all the jobs are going to go away and actually that has not really been how the history of technology has worked," he added. "You can create things that take away 90% of the work and that leads you to want more people, not less." Meta has certainly been busying expanding its AI capabilities. More Tech Stocks: Amazon tries to make AI great again (or maybe for the first time) Veteran portfolio manager raises eyebrows with latest Meta Platforms move Google plans major AI shift after Meta's surprising $14 billion move The social media giant is reportedly in talks to acquire voice AI platform PlayAI, according to Bloomberg, which could help Meta bring more voice features to its AI assistant and its smartglasses. PlayAI creates AI-powered voice features with the goal of being as 'responsive as a conversation between two people,' according to a company blog post Meta's artificial intelligence assistant has one billion monthly active users across the company's family of apps, Zuckerberg said at the company's May 28 annual shareholder meeting. He noted that the 'focus for this year is deepening the experience and making Meta AI the leading personal AI with an emphasis on personalization, voice conversations and entertainment,' In April, the company said it was launching a stand-alone artificial intelligence app and going head-to-head with ChatGPT maker OpenAI. And during Meta's first quarter earnings call, Zuckerberg said that "the major theme right now of course is how AI is transforming everything we do." "The first opportunity is improved advertising," he told analysts. "Our goal is to make it so that any business can basically tell us what objective they're trying to achieve -- like selling something or getting a new customer -- and how much they're willing to pay for each result, and then we just do the rest." Zuckerberg said businesses used to have to generate their own ad creative and define what audiences they wanted to reach, but "AI has already made us better at targeting and finding the audiences that will be interested in their product than many businesses are themselves, and that keeps improving." "And now AI is generating better creative options for many businesses as well. I think that this is really redefining what advertising is into an AI agent that delivers measurable business results at scale," he said."And if we deliver on this vision, then over the coming years I think that the increased productivity from AI will make advertising a meaningfully larger share of global GDP than it is today," The total number of ad impressions served across Meta's services increased 5% and the average price per ad increased 10%. Susan Li, Meta's Chief Financial Officer, said during the call that Meta has invested for many years and continues to invest in driving ad performance improvements, adding that "year-over-year conversion growth remains strong." "For us, we really believe, first and foremost, that advertising is a relative performance game," Li said. "That's especially important for us because the vast majority of our business is direct response advertising." Piper Sandler cited Meta's advertising efforts in a June 27 research note. The firm boosted its price target on the company to $808 from $650 and kept an overweight rating on the shares, according to The Fly. Meta's investments in AI are transforming its advertising technology, driving higher ad performance, conversion rates, and return on ad spend, Piper said. New tools like AI models GEM, Andromeda, and Lattice, which are responsible for selecting and recommending ads displayed on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, can drive revenue growth in the mid-teens for multiple years, the firm said. Piper Sandler, which says Meta is a new Top Large Cap Pick, adds that higher ad pricing is being driven by better conversion, and not lower reboots Facebook parent stock price target on AI investments first appeared on TheStreet on Jun 27, 2025 This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Jun 27, 2025, where it first appeared. 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