Technology

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47891893

Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, has shed light on billionaire Peter Thiel’s reason for suddenly planting roots in his country.

In a Financial Times op-ed, Milei announced plans to make Argentina the world’s top destination for tech billionaires seeking to escape regulation, legal liability, and taxes. Milei’s op-ed trumpeted new legislation that would do three things:

1. “Keep AI unregulated,” providing a haven for companies wishing to develop the technology without guardrails or government rules.

2. Create a new business category for what Milei called the “non-human corporation.” These would be companies supposedly “operated by AI agents or robots” that could “exercise independent judgment in unpredictable environments.” These non-human companies would receive major protections in the form of limited liability for whatever decisions they might allegedly make on their own, without human intervention.

3. Allow tech companies to duck taxes. Milei’s legislation would impose low corporate tax rates and also allow shareholders to “select the corporate governance law of their choosing.”

Milei made it clear that he intends his legislation as an “invitation” to attract tech moguls to his country, highlighting his nation’s “world-class energy and mining resources” and “geopolitical stability.” The president heralded his plans for Argentina as the dawn of a new Dutch East India Company, the joint-stock corporation founded in 1602 that was granted sweeping, quasi-governmental monopoly powers to carry out trade activities in Asia.

“The logic of 1602 still applies today,” wrote Milei. “Companies run by new technologies such as AI agents require the same legal framework that has underpinned capitalism for over four centuries, one suitable for development and experimentation.”

In essence, Milei plans to turn Argentina into a top destination for the Network State cult. His plan to create a new framework by which tech moguls (and their machines) can escape regulation, laws and taxes is an almost-perfect expression of the Network State idea promoted by Thiel protégé Balaji Srinivasan, who calls for Silicon Valley to secede from the United States. The only thing missing from Milei’s proposal is an option for tech billionaires to create their own private nations on Argentine soil.

On June 3, 2026, the European Commission released the EU Tech Sovereignty Package. Taken together, its constituent measures represent an effort to reduce reliance on US and other non-EU technology and digital services and to ensure the development of a domestic, low-carbon lifecycle for cutting-edge digital technology. Currently, the EU is heavily reliant on non-EU digital products, services, infrastructure and intellectual property. Among other things, the package aims to further onshore semiconductor manufacturing in the EU, incentivize the development of a domestic European AI industry, provide incentives, including on the demand side, for chips and other technology, and reduce reliance on foreign countries for critical infrastructure and technologies. The package is composed of two legislative proposals (the Chips Act 2.0 and the Cloud and AI Development Act) and two initiatives (the EU Open Source Strategy and Strategic Roadmap for Digitalisation and AI in Energy).

The injured teenage survivor of a January 2025 shooting at a Nashville, Tennessee high school recently sued the manufacturer of an “AI gun detection” system that failed to detect the handgun that left two dead, including the shooter.

According to the lawsuit, which was filed in Davidson County court last month, the security company Omnilert either knew or should have known that there were “significant operational limitations in its gun detection system that could result in detection failures during actual emergencies, including limitations based on camera placement, proximity of the weapon to camera sensors, camera angle, lighting, and weapon visibility.”

Omnilert cofounder Ara Bagdasarian declined Ars’ invitation to answer questions about the lawsuit. System Integrations, the other defendant in the case, which resold the Omnilert system, also did not respond to Ars’ request for comment.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/65695061

Gotham is characterised as a ‘decision-making platform for AI-enabled operations’ designed to centralise heterogenous datasets ranging from intelligence reports to sensor detections into a homogenous operating picture.

A Business Insider analysis of US data center permits reveals a staggering escalation in data center power use. Data centers across the US are growing in number and in size. If all data centers permitted through 2025 come online, they will use between 224.3 terawatt-hours and 358.8 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, an increase of 50% over the previous year across the range