For some, it was a chaos of copyright infringement; for others, a breakthrough in short-form video democracy. The following year, Google bought YouTube for more than $1.6 billion. (Haney, NPR)
Read MoreIn an annual company letter published this week Mohan declared: “YouTube is the new television!” A grandiose statement, but he has a point. More than 100 million people in America now watch YouTube on their TV screens, leaning back on their sofas to watch more than 1 billion hours of pop-cultural ephemera. (Jackson, The Times)
Read MoreThe “godfather of AI” who pioneered Google’s work in artificial intelligence (AI) has accused the company of putting profits over safety after it dropped a commitment to not using the technology in weapons. Geoffrey Hinton, the British computer scientist who last year won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in AI, said the tech giant’s decision to backtrack on its previous pledge was a “sad example” of companies ignoring concerns about AI. (Titcomb & Field, The Telegraph)
Read MoreMarriages in China plummeted by a fifth last year, the biggest drop on record, despite manifold efforts by authorities to encourage young couples to wed and have children to increase the country’s declining population. Declining interest in getting married and starting a family has long been blamed on the high cost of child care and education in China. (Reuters/NBC News)
Read More“Saturday Night Live” was built with a cast of young no-names performing countercultural comedy. Fifty years later, it is firmly part of the culture, dictating mainstream comedy instead of throwing spitballs from the margins. (Kennedy, AP News)
Read MoreTo compile the list, we tapped journalists across The Washington Post newsroom to debate what it means to be “next.” We started with a list of more than 200 names and spent months discussing candidates. We considered how well known they are, how relevant their upcoming projects could be and what their ascents reveal about our society in 2025. (The Washington Post)
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