Business, Spoken

​As one of the earliest, and first, female investors in Twitter, I had great hopes for its potential to improve human connectedness and relationships. Today, it’s become clear it’s done the opposite—by becoming a thunderously divisive tool weaponized by the leader of the free world. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Susan Wu (@sw) is an entrepreneur, engineer, and angel investor.

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Looking back at the year's most-read WIRED business stories, one theme clearly emerges: people are very concerned with the future of work. Will the robot revolution will eradicate positions? (It's more complicated than that.) What are the right skills for future-proofing ourselves? (Learn code.) Could implementing a universal basic income really work? (A real-world case study suggests it might.) Other stories captured our readers attention too, of course.

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Republicans argue that the lower taxes for corporations and wealthy individuals promised in the tax bill currently before Congress will result in new investment in businesses and more jobs. But in the age of artificial intelligence and automation, trickle-down economics won't create employment. What corporations and the US economy at large need most in this emerging era is not more free cash, but a new approach to machine-assisted human productivity and purpose. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Olaf J.

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We owe a lot to 9th century Persian scholar Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi. Centuries after his death, al-Khwarizmi's works introduced Europe to decimals and algebra, laying some of the foundations for today’s techno-centric age. The latinized version of his name has become a common word: algorithm. In 2017, it took on some sinister overtones. Take this exchange from the US House Intelligence Committee last month.

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Last week’s repeal of net neutrality regulations by the Federal Communications Commission generated considerable controversy. Many characterized the decision as a win for telecom and cable companies at the expense of both consumers and content companies.

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A year ago, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi (sha-oh-me) had fallen from the world’s most valuable unicorn to a “unicorpse.” Sales plunged in 2016, pushing the company from first to fifth place among China’s smartphone makers. No firm had ever come back from a wound that severe in the trench warfare of the global smartphone business. Today, Xiaomi is being called a “Chinese phoenix.

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Facebook Friday made available a tool to allow users to see whether they had liked or followed a page linked to Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 US election. Facebook had promised to make such a tool available in November, after the company revealed in a congressional hearing that more than 140 million people may have been exposed to Russia-linked propaganda during the 2016 election cycle.

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Eric Schmidt wound up at Google by compromise. In 1998, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had made a promise to the two venture-capital firms that funded them---they would hire an experienced CEO to manage the company once it began to take off. But two years later they were hedging, insisting they could scale Google to a global power by themselves. VC John Doerr convinced them to keep interviewing potential leaders.

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Chat is almost as old as the internet itself. But this year, investors and big tech companies alike treated workplace messaging as the next big thing. Slack announced a $250 million investment in September from Japanese tech company SoftBank, bringing its total funding to $790 million and boosting its valuation from $3.8 billion to $5.1. In June, rumors surfaced that Amazon wanted to buy the company for as much $9 billion.

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For all the hype about killer robots, 2017 saw some notable strides in artificial intelligence. A bot called Libratus out-bluffed poker kingpins, for example. Out in the real world, machine learning is being put to use improving farming and widening access to healthcare. But have you talked to Siri or Alexa recently? Then you’ll know that despite the hype, and worried billionaires, there are many things that artificial intelligence still can’t do or understand.

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