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    John Thornhill

    Innovation Editor

    John Thornhill is the Innovation Editor at the Financial Times writing a weekly column on the impact of technology. He is also the founder and editorial director of Sifted, the FT-backed site for European startups, and founder of FT Forums, which hosts monthly meetings for senior executives.

    John was previously deputy editor and news editor of the FT in London. He has also been Europe editor, Paris bureau chief, Asia editor, Moscow correspondent and Lex columnist.

    Email John Thornhill @johnthornhillft  on Twitter (link opens in a new browser window)

    Add to myFT Digest

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    • Thursday, 30 March, 2023
      Technology sector
      Multiple red flags are not yet slowing the generative AI train

      Critics claim the technology carries alarming risks and needs better governance

    • Thursday, 23 March, 2023
      Tech start-ups
      How European entrepreneurs can live the American dream

      The social model designed to maximise happiness, not GDP, creates its own land of opportunity

    • Tuesday, 21 March, 2023
      Tech Tonic podcast25 min listen
      The quantum revolution: ‘Spooky action’

      The weird physics of quantum computers

    • Thursday, 16 March, 2023
      Artificial intelligence
      GPT-4 is as astonishing as it is unnerving

      The new model is more accurate and powerful and has greater reasoning capabilities. But it is also open to abuse

    • Monday, 13 March, 2023
      Instant InsightSilicon Valley Bank
      SVB shows that there are few libertarians in a financial foxhole

      Like banking titans in 2008, tech tycoons favour the privatisation of profits and the socialisation of losses

    • Thursday, 9 March, 2023
      Technology
      ‘Fictional intelligence’ can blind us to real-world dangers

      Policymakers and strategists look to novelists to help envisage the tech accelerating towards us

    • Friday, 3 March, 2023
      FT News Briefing podcast2 min listen
      Introducing Tech Tonic Season 6: The Quantum Revolution

      In this new season, Madhumita Murgia and John Thornhill talks about quantum computing

    • Thursday, 2 March, 2023
      Technology sector
      Israel risks turning into a shut-down nation

      Political unrest is causing the country’s extraordinarily successful tech sector to look elsewhere

    • Thursday, 23 February, 2023
      Artificial intelligence
      AI can help us build imagination machines

      Robot learning models can tackle three barriers to human creativity: boredom, shame and vision

    • Thursday, 16 February, 2023
      Artificial intelligence
      AI warfare can empower the bad guys as well as the good

      There are serious questions about how far national security capabilities should be outsourced to private companies

    • Thursday, 9 February, 2023
      UK business & economy
      Britain’s entrepreneurs need more than support by stealth

      The UK’s dizzying churn of industrial policy changes has left start-ups vulnerable to lures from elsewhere

    • Thursday, 26 January, 2023
      Artificial intelligence
      Can generative AI’s stimulating powers extend to productivity?

      ChatGPT and similar software could prove transformative but we should temper our optimism

    • Thursday, 19 January, 2023
      Artificial intelligence
      Google Translate for the zoo? How humans might talk to animals

      A sonic revolution triggered by advances in hardware and software lets us eavesdrop on planetary conversations

    • Thursday, 19 January, 2023
      FT Magazine
      300 nuclear missiles are heading your way. You must respond. What now?

      Inside Moran Cerf’s quest to modernise the decision-making process that could end life on earth

    • Thursday, 12 January, 2023
      Technology sector
      Quantum computing is harder than herding kittens

      Whether the industry will rewrite the future of cryptography and computation is still up for fierce debate

    • Thursday, 5 January, 2023
      Big tech
      In (partial) defence of Silicon Valley

      For all their faults, tech innovators may at last be making an impact on productivity — and on wider society

    • Sunday, 1 January, 2023
      US-China trade dispute
      Year in a word: Chip choke

      Major powers have realised the critical importance of semiconductors to the global economy

    • Friday, 30 December, 2022
      ReviewMaria Ressa
      How to Stand Up to a Dictator — Maria Ressa on the dark arts of disinformation

      The Filipina journalist shows how demagogues misuse the internet — yet insists it can be a force for good

    • Thursday, 22 December, 2022
      Big tech
      Revenge of reality: how technology was discounted in 2022

      As innovative stocks have deflated, conventional luxury, energy and defence have thrived

    • Friday, 16 December, 2022
      Renewable energy
      ‘Bottling the Sun’: is this a new dawn for the fusion industry?

      The breakthrough this week is good news for renewable energy, but it could take decades to come into effect

    • Thursday, 8 December, 2022
      Artificial intelligence
      ChatGPT is less wowed by itself than we are

      A debate is emerging between paternalistic and libertarian interpretations of AI

    • Thursday, 1 December, 2022
      FIFA World Cup
      Football’s VAR is a lesson in flawed technology

      Robot linesmen are no substitute for the real thing and offer a warning against using inventions for their own sake

    • Thursday, 24 November, 2022
      Social Media
      Elon Musk’s free speech absolutism may endanger fragile democracies

      Badly moderated social media platforms can have chilling real world effects

    • Tuesday, 22 November, 2022
      FT SeriesBest books of the year 2022
      Best books of 2022: Technology

      John Thornhill selects his must-read titles

    • Thursday, 17 November, 2022
      FTX Trading Ltd
      FTX shows founders can still conjure up the ‘reality distortion field’

      Investors consistently fail to drill into the hype around tech entrepreneurs such as Sam Bankman-Fried

    Previous page You are on page 1 Next page

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