The fight for tech talent intensified this week as world leaders gathered at Davos for the World Economic Forum. Increasingly, with the rise of AI, raw talent capable of getting the job done unaided by AI has made favourable policies to attract these talents a priority for many countries.
As the United States opts to exit the stage by raising the cost of H1B visas, the UK says it would now swoop in with one of the best packages so far from a world leader: visa cost reimbursements. UK’s Chancellor Rachel Reeves told the Davos crowd that the government wants to make the UK “the first choice for top talent coming to work, study, and build businesses.”
The new visa cost reimbursement policy would apply to tech talent including researchers in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and semiconductors.
In the US, recalibrating around a visa policy that works to bring in tech talent seems to still be a pipe dream. After Anthropic’s CEO said in Davos that he had “engineers within Anthropic who say, ‘I don’t write any code anymore. I just let the model write the code. I edit it,’” critics within the US of the H1B visa seized on his comments to ask why high-skilled foreign tech talent was needed in the US since AI can now do the job.
The AI Safety Debate Just Got Personal
Also, this week, Elon Musk and Sam Altman were at each other’s throats again, this time over whose product is more responsible for deaths. Musk warned followers on X not to use ChatGPT after a post claimed that it was linked to nine deaths. Altman pushed back, writing that “Apparently more than 50 people have died from crashes related to Autopilot.” How did their relationship get so sour? We have the complete timeline of their feud.
Apple is working on a chatbot to replace Siri as soon as later this year. The project, code-named Campos within the company, is expected to launch with iOS 27, iPadOS 27 (code-named “Rave”), and macOS 27 (code-named “Fizz”). We have a detailed report on all the features and the unlikely competitor that is powering it.
The Kids Are Cancelling Convenience
Have you ever heard of something called friction maxxing? Young people are now going out of their way to introduce more friction into their lives, embracing dumbphones and hikes over ChatGPT and Amazon. The ideology invites people to go analogue and “build up tolerance for inconvenience.”
What happened in gaming this week?
- Ubisoft Cancels Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Remake and Five Other Games
- All the Free Steam Games You Can Claim in 2026 (So Far)
- This Chinese Modder Built a Single Console That Runs PS5, Xbox, and Switch 2
- Xbox Game Pass January 2026: The Headline Games, Hidden Gems, and What to Play First
- Microsoft Is Testing Free Xbox Cloud Gaming — But You’ll Watch Ads First
- Epic Games Bans Prize Wheel and Loot Box Sales in Fortnite Creator Islands
- Helldivers 2’s Redacted Regiment Warbond Finally Gets a New Release Date
Crypto Advocates Take Centre Stage at Davos
At Davos, advocates of crypto pitched it as the future of finance. As a new wealth taxation law is debated in the West, David Sacks offered the jet crowd crypto as a way forward. “This is not a tax. This is an asset seizure. This is saying that we’re going to take 5% of everything you own,” he said. Other advocates from crypto at Davos this year include Donald Trump, Larry Fink, and Brian Armstrong. Read our dispatch from the 2026 World Economic Forum.
The first thing to understand when looking to invest in crypto is the technology. The next is to never make investments based on emotions. This is according to an Ethereum investor who in half a decade grew to make 1200% profits from his investment. “If you cannot explain to your cousin what a coin does, then you should not buy it yet,” he told us in a recent interview. Check out all the details of how he did it.
