The keys: after the plagues and the apocalypse, the AI snake arrives

There is, excuse me, a terrifying legend about someone who traveled to Thailand, or some island in Oceania, and was attacked by a snake that came out of the toilet. This story, apocryphal or not, exploits the fear that human beings have always had of this reptile, identified in the Bible with the devil. This category of horror stories now includes the digital worms that Anthropic warns about, AI agents that, in a matter of a few months, could begin to self-replicate in refrigerators, ovens and who knows if smart toilets.

On the other hand, Mark Zuckerberg, happy to present his new model, Muse Wonder, claims to have caught up with OpenAI and Anthropic, and considers the warnings of his competitors exaggerated. Who to believe? The CEO of Meta does not seem willing to put on the brakes now that he is entering the race. Meanwhile, through entries on their blog, Amodei and company seem determined to reproduce the Holy Scriptures point by point, with the apocalypse, the plagues and now the serpent. In short, let it be what God wants.

Salaries return to the center of the debate on the back of the housing protest

The Fetico and Valorian unions, the majority in companies such as El Corte Inglés, Ikea or Carrefour, demand salary increases of between 16% and 18% in three years. The good results of these companies give rise to the demands of their workers, who aspire to participate in their prosperity and preserve their purchasing power in the face of the rise in inflation. The news coincides with the request of CC OO and UGT to raise the minimum wage by 7%, among the demands of the general strike of 11N. The wage fight reappears on the back of the housing protest, because the accessibility crisis is about two things: salaries that are too low for such expensive houses.

The challenge of distinguishing between cost increases and price abuses

The Government, which suspects that the increases in energy costs caused by the war in the Middle East have not yet been completely transferred to food, has commissioned the CNMC to monitor how prices evolve. It's not the first time. In 2023 he investigated whether the VAT reduction had reached consumers and concluded that it had.

It is positive that how prices are formed is analyzed in depth. The real challenge will be to distinguish how much of the possible increases respond to the increase in the cost of production, transportation or fertilizers and how much is due to taking advantage of the situation to expand margins. Because just as important as justifying the increases is explaining why prices do not always fall when costs decrease.

The phrase of the day

The US will have to face difficult decisions regarding debt, but I think the challenge now affects France, the United Kingdom and continental Europe more. Simply because the growth rates there are much lower and the deficits are very high.

Jon Gray, president of blackstone

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