Latest news with #techbros
Times
9 hours ago
- Business
- Times
WeWork CEO: My firefighter dad taught me how to lead
J ohn Santora eyes my tie with a look not far from envy. Dressed in a sports jacket, chinos and brown loafers, the American's eyes then move jealously across my suit. 'Ah,' he says, gesturing uncomfortably at his casual garb: 'I still can't get used to having to wear this stuff.' Santora, you see, is the lifelong suit, tie and brogues man helicoptered in to run that most relaxed of temporary-office providers, WeWork. Many of the 68-year-old's customers, as we see in its flagship venue in London's Waterloo, are the kind of thirtysomething tech bros who think wearing jeans not deliberately ripped at the knee is 'dressing up for work'. Santora feels obliged to follow, but stands out like a dad at the school disco.
Yahoo
18-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mia Khalifa Shades OpenAI's $200 Million Pentagon Deal with One Brutal Tweet: 'Yes, I Do Think I'm Better Than You'
Mia Khalifa has entered the chat and is not the one powered by ChatGPT. The former adult film star turned cultural commentator and internet icon took a moment to eviscerate tech bros, defense contracts, and the entire Silicon Valley to Pentagon pipeline with a single, sharp-edged tweet in response to OpenAI's newest bag: a $200 million contract with the U.S. Department of Defense. 'the military just bought chatgpt btw. yes, I do think I'm better than you for having never used it,' Khalifa tweeted on Monday, instantly turning AI ethics discourse into performance art. And honestly? She's not wrong. Let's talk about what just happened and why Miss Mia said what she said. On Monday, the U.S. Department of Defense casually announced that it had entered into a $200 million agreement with OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, to build and prototype 'the most advanced Artificial Intelligence technologies' for military use. So basically, they're turning your favorite essay-writing bot into a weapon of war and bureaucracy. According to The Telegraph, the contract outlines a plan to develop AI systems for 'critical national security challenges,' both on the battlefield and in admin offices. You know, just casually automating imperialism and paperwork at the same time. The work will reportedly take place in and around Washington, D.C., which is fitting because where better to cook up dystopian tech than in the same city that legalized drone strikes and decided Flint's water wasn't an emergency? The projected end date for the contract is July 2026, so you've got two years to start stockpiling canned goods and learning how to speak in algorithmic prompts if you want to stay employed or alive. OpenAI isn't exactly struggling to pay the bills. Just last week, the company flexed that its annual revenue growth rate has soared to $10 billion, proving once again that when the world's on fire, the people who sell you matches are the ones cashing in. They dropped the bombshell that they're aiming to raise up to $40 billion in a new investment round led by none other than SoftBank. This would slap a $300 billion valuation on OpenAI's forehead faster than the Pentagon can say 'national security threat.' Also, just so we're all on the same page, ChatGPT reached 500 million weekly active users by the end of March. That's half a billion people feeding their thoughts, emotions, and Google Doc ideas into the machine. Somewhere, a defense contractor is salivating. The post Mia Khalifa Shades OpenAI's $200 Million Pentagon Deal with One Brutal Tweet: 'Yes, I Do Think I'm Better Than You' appeared first on Where Is The Buzz | Breaking News, Entertainment, Exclusive Interviews & More.
Washington Post
31-05-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
The next target for the creator of ‘Succession'? Tech bros, obvs.
What do you do after 'Succession'? Whom do you skewer once you've impaled the world's media titans and their deeply dysfunctional families on their own hubris over the course of four seasons? That's easy. You go after the tech bros. 'Mountainhead' is the latest from 'Succession' writer-director Jesse Armstrong — no surprise, it's available on HBO's streaming service, Max — and it's something more and rather less: a feature-length film that places four obscenely rich Silicon Valley overlords in a snowbound mansion as the world burns down around them and they plot to leverage the situation to their profits and power. It's a comedy, and a brutally dark one, that draws blood and appalled laughter for two-thirds of its running time before jumping the shark in the final stretch. Once again, a brilliant TV writer finds the compact format of a two-hour movie more challenging than expected.
Telegraph
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Mountainhead, review: Jesse Armstrong's takedown of tech bros is even more cynical than Succession
A Succession spin-off film? Well, not quite, but Jesse Armstrong 's feature-length satire of the extremely rich and increasingly powerful, Mountainhead (Sky Atlantic), doesn't stray too far from the Roy family formula, and features the behind-the-scenes involvement of a whole host of his Succession team, including composer Nicholas Britell. However, instead of tarring and feathering Murdoch-esque media empires, Armstrong (who writes and directs) has set his sights on the new money – the billionaire tech bros and their grandiose plans to 'disrupt' the world. It is, somehow, even more cynical than Succession. This exquisitely performed dark comedy is a claustrophobic chamber piece that takes place in a Utah mega-lodge up in the snow-capped mountains, where four old pals – 'Mount Techmore' – meet for a poker weekend while the rest of the world seemingly falls apart. It is, in essence, a high-falutin' episode of Inside No 9. The reason for the global unrest is the world's richest man, Venis (Cory Michael Smith), a tweaked-out sociopath whose latest updates to his social media platform Traam have unleashed havoc, thanks to an explosion of fake news and generative AI. The markets are in free-fall, sectarian violence is erupting everywhere, politicians are being assassinated. The world order is ending. While on the outside, Venis is thrilled by it all, he desperately needs the help of his frenemy Jeff (Ramy Youssef), whose sophisticated AI-filtering system could restore Traam's credibility and the world's sanity. Joining them for a weekend of tension and glorious one-liners are Steve Carell 's 'dark-money Gandalf' Randall, the elder statesman of tech bros, and host Hugo (Jason Schwartzman), a financial pygmy (he's worth a paltry half billion) who desperately needs the others to invest in his meditation app. He's called his tasteless pile 'Mountainhead' and, yes, that name is tackled early on by Jeff: 'What, like Fountainhead? Who was your interior designer – Ayn Bland?' Needless to say, Armstrong's script is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the zingers, and you could spend an enjoyable evening in the pub debating your favourite gags, but it would all amount to nothing without Mountainhead's unsparing psychological insight. Venis is a terrific monster, a ripped frat boy who thinks he can solve the Israel-Palestine conflict with 'bananas' online content and is obsessed with turning the world population 'transhuman'. The quartet bandy their callousness and casualness towards human suffering with grotesque machismo, and sprinkle their jargon-heavy, ultra-online conversations with half-arsed references to Hegel, Plato and Kant. When they get wind of the worldwide upheaval, the bros – apart from the minutely less terrible Jeff – smell an opportunity, triggering some serious God-complex one-upmanship. This leads to a nail-biting denouement that manages to be extremely funny yet without the sophistication of what came before it. As with Succession, Mountainhead is a caustic, defiant and righteously furious diatribe against the maniacal egos of those with all of the money and all of the power, but no vanishingly little moral fibre – and all wrapped up by the best jokes in the business.
Bloomberg
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Bloomberg
HBO's Mountainhead Will Make You Laugh as the World Burns
Over Succession 's four seasons, series creator Jesse Armstrong made a name for himself as television's go-to chronicler of the uber-rich. The HBO show depicted the inner workings of a powerful, Murdoch-esque media clan and the way its members lived, traveled, celebrated and humiliated one another. It was a tantalizing look at what it might be like to have wealth so profound that it sets you apart from everyone and gives you the power to influence politics worldwide. Now, after two years off the air, Armstrong returns to HBO on May 31 with a new movie, Mountainhead, which almost feels like it could be a Succession spinoff. (He says he even contemplated having ATN, Succession 's Fox-like news channel, playing in the background.) The cool color palette is the same; so are the zingers. Nicholas Britell is back to compose the score. Instead of media scions, however, Armstrong has turned his attention to the newest generation of powerful elites—tech bros—and raised the absurdity of the scenario.
