Welcome to Tech Beat, your daily read on the stories shaping our digital world.
In Britain, a political fault line is opening up around data giant Palantir. New Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who famously blocked the company from Greater Manchester's health systems, now faces a three hundred thirty million pound question about its NHS contract. How he answers it will signal whether London can push back on Big Tech without fracturing ties with Washington.
Meanwhile, Tesla is facing uncomfortable scrutiny after federal safety data revealed four fatal crashes involving Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems in a single month — a record. These weren't edge cases. They were real people, and the pattern is renewing calls for stricter federal oversight of driver-assist technology before the next generation of autonomous features rolls out.
And in a story that blurs the line between useful and unsettling, a journalist built AI clones of his coworkers using their messages and meeting transcripts. The bots mimicked speech patterns, inside jokes, even pet phrases. It worked — maybe too well. The experiment raises real questions about consent, identity, and what we actually mean when we say someone is present at work.
Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
