As thousands of datacentres are constructed across Europe, the Guardian and Investigate Europe have uncovered disturbing evidence that some workers building them are exposed to dangerous conditions and living in fear of speaking out

Sandu* checked his watch. He was winding down the last 15 minutes of his shift at a vast Google datacentre site in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, in March, when the call came in. The 34-year-old electrical tester had already worked almost 10 hours, but says such last-minute jobs were normal: “I had no choice. People have been fired after saying no.”

The task was one Sandu had done many times before and involved a series of tests measuring the safety and integrity of the electrical wiring. A protective suit was locked away in an equipment room. The round trip would have added another 15 minutes to the job, he says, and people were waiting, so he decided not to retrieve the suit.

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© Illustration: Alamy/Mei-Ling McNamara

© Illustration: Alamy/Mei-Ling McNamara

© Illustration: Alamy/Mei-Ling McNamara

As thousands of datacentres are constructed across Europe, the Guardian and Investigate Europe have uncovered disturbing evidence that some workers building them are exposed to dangerous conditions and living in fear of speaking out

Sandu* checked his watch. He was winding down the last 15 minutes of his shift at a vast Google datacentre site in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, in March, when the call came in. The 34-year-old electrical tester had already worked almost 10 hours, but says such last-minute jobs were normal: “I had no choice. People have been fired after saying no.”

The task was one Sandu had done many times before and involved a series of tests measuring the safety and integrity of the electrical wiring. A protective suit was locked away in an equipment room. The round trip would have added another 15 minutes to the job, he says, and people were waiting, so he decided not to retrieve the suit.

Continue reading...

© Illustration: Guardian Pictures/Alamy/Mei-Ling McNamara

© Illustration: Guardian Pictures/Alamy/Mei-Ling McNamara

© Illustration: Guardian Pictures/Alamy/Mei-Ling McNamara

E-commerce company posts high cloud computing sales but gives a cautious sales forecast for the fourth quarter

Amazon offered a mixed picture of its financial health on Thursday in its quarterly earnings report.

The e-commerce company gave a cautious sales forecast for the current fourth quarter, which encompasses the critical holiday shopping period, after delivering fiscal third-quarter results that came in below Wall Street analysts’ expectations.

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© Photograph: Charles-McClintock Wilson/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Charles-McClintock Wilson/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Charles-McClintock Wilson/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

Amazon became the latest tech company to announce swelling investments in A.I. amid stumbling share prices.

© Nathan Howard for The New York Times

Software giant reports $36.6bn in profit, beating Wall Street expectations, as Azure cloud computing division grows 48%

Microsoft gained billions of dollars in stock market value Wednesday afternoon after it reported better than expected revenue and profit, just days after it offered voluntary buyouts to some 60,000 employees.

The office software giant’s growth was fueled by its Azure cloud computing division, which grew by 48% in the September quarter.

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© Photograph: David Ryder/Reuters

© Photograph: David Ryder/Reuters

© Photograph: David Ryder/Reuters

Software giant reports $36.6bn in profit, beating Wall Street expectations, as Azure cloud computing division grows 48%

Microsoft gained billions of dollars in stock market value Wednesday afternoon after it reported better than expected revenue and profit, just days after it offered voluntary buyouts to some 60,000 employees.

The office software giant’s growth was fueled by its Azure cloud computing division, which grew by 48% in the September quarter.

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© Photograph: David Ryder/Reuters

© Photograph: David Ryder/Reuters

© Photograph: David Ryder/Reuters

The author believes we are at a turning point as a species – and even in the shadow of big tech it’s up to us how we want to proceed

‘I am a storyteller by trade,” writes Jeanette Winterson on the first page of her 2021 book 12 Bytes, an idiosyncratic and thought-provoking series of essays in which she considered just how artificial intelligence might change everything about our lives. “And I know everything we do is a fiction until it’s a fact: the dream of flying, the dream of space travel, the dream of speaking to someone instantly, across time and space, the dream of not dying – or of returning.”

She had already been thinking about our possible futures for at least 15 years – her 2007 novel, The Stone Gods, for instance, imagined a post-climate catastrophe world populated by robots and humans who never age, while 12 Bytes was preceded by Frankisstein: A Love Story, which alternates a recreation of the summer Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein with a trans doctor’s travels among present-day cryogenecists and AI-enabled robots.

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© Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

© Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

© Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

Ahead of what could be the largest public listing ever, Anthropic said revenue soared to $16.3 billion in the first half of the year, and it planned to spend $807 billion on A.I. infrastructure.

© Jason Henry for The New York Times