“Trump Speed.” This has been the metaphor chosen by the US Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, to describe the pace at which the North American president wants to transform the Venezuelan oil industry. Wright was in Caracas, where Chevron and Eni committed to investing several billion in the coming years. Even so, it is not clear that the oil companies will reach the figures that Trump projects, given the enormous political and legal risk that Venezuela continues to entail. In the short term, these operations will represent an important injection for the country. The United States, meanwhile, gains access to heavy crude oil and reduces the influence of Russia and China.
The ugly part is the politics. Washington is legitimizing a government that has not been democratically elected, while practicing a kind of colonialism that calls into question Venezuelan sovereignty and increases its dependence on the United States. Perhaps oil will bring more wealth. What it does not necessarily bring is democracy. Nor do prosperity and technological development alone lead to it. Trump's counterparts in Russia and China are good proof of this.
Huang bets on open AI that fuels Nvidia's business
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, is a strong defender of open source AI: in his opinion, this technology should not be dominated by a few companies. That is one of the reasons why they have paid 11.2 billion euros for Hugging Face, the great platform where developers, universities and companies share millions of AI models. But it's not just ideology. Huang doesn't really care if his chips are bought by OpenAI, a university, or a private developer. They all need computational capacity to train their models. The more there are, the bigger your market will be.
The paradox of forcing presence in technology companies
In recent years, several technology companies have sometimes applied the idea that in the blacksmith's house, a stick knife, forcing their workers to go to the office and give up teleworking. This is the case of video game developers, who are in the midst of reducing staff after years of good times, and who are imposing in-person presence. The unions believe it is a way to force voluntary departures to avoid layoffs, and it makes sense. Although physical contact is important at work (so is work-life balance), employees in this type of company are usually used to distance and virtual contact. It doesn't seem like productivity will improve much by putting them together.
The phrase of the day
I protest, there are no collections from companies, there are voluntary donations. It is absolutely different. The Kremlin has not demanded anything. I met with business representatives, who, absolutely surprising to me, offered to contribute in a concrete way
Vladimir Putin is president of Russia
The value of asking artificial intelligence the right question
Dr. House, from the series of the same name, used to say that “everyone lies,” to point out that behind illnesses there are sometimes habits or experiences that are not even told to the doctor. With artificial intelligence, although it is advisable to be cautious with the things you tell it – you never know where they may end up – in theory you can do without that social mask. But often it is the user himself who deceives himself and does not provide adequate information. This happens, for example, with physical exercise programs designed by AI. Perhaps it is not so much that the tool gives incorrect answers, but rather that the right questions are not asked, something for which a professional is more prepared. But AI has one crucial advantage: price.
