Tag Archives: SHUTTERSTOCK

30Oct/26

How Agentic AI Replaces Software

October 30, 2026Technology.google, Academic disciplines, al., Alex Chan, alixpartners, Articles, Artificial intelligence, Artificial intelligence in video games, Bick, Cloud computing, Daniel, DEEPSEEK, duckduckgo, Francis Fong, Kernel, Klarna, Microsoft, Oracle, PRAXIS Labs, Salesforce, SHUTTERSTOCK, Technology, United States, UPWORK, Video game development, William Nordhaus, Workdayadmin

The Tollbooth Trap: Why Commoditized Middlemen Are Losing Ground to Autonomous Intelligence.

Fri, July 30 2026 /Mpelembe Media/ — The rapid evolution of generative artificial intelligence and autonomous multi-agent architectures is driving a structural transformation across the digital economy, dismantling traditional business models founded on search arbitrage, manual creative services, seat-based software licensing, and intermediation. Legacy stock photography illustrates this vulnerability, highlighted by Getty Images filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after losing more than 99 percent of its peak market valuation amid competition from on-demand text-to-image generators that undercut conventional pay-per-image licensing. Similar pressures are impacting online labor markets such as Upwork, where freelancers in occupations exposed to language and image models experienced a 2 percent decline in contracts and a 5 percent decrease in earnings, with high-reputation professionals disproportionately impacted as automated systems compress human skill differentials. Concurrently, commoditized intermediaries across travel booking, online retail, and mid-market SaaS face severe disintermediation. Over 100 publicly listed mid-market software providers are caught in a major squeeze between low-cost AI startups and cloud hyperscalers, prompting enterprises to replace traditional per-seat subscriptions with internal autonomous agents. Continue reading →

01Dec/25

Racism never went away – it simply changed shape

December 1, 2025PoliticsAdolf Hitler, Anti-communism, Authoritarianism, Birmingham, Creative Commons, Cultural racism, Elon Musk, Enoch Powell, Eugenics, Fascism, Francis Galton, Germany, Historical race concepts, Ivor Stanbrook, Katie Hopkins, Katie Lam, Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch, Lars Cornelissen, Margaret Thatcher, Matthew Goodwin, Nazism, Nigel Farage, Nuremberg, Racism, Robert Jenrick, Scientific racism, Shabana Mahmood, SHUTTERSTOCK, Suella Braverman, Tommy Robinson, Totalitarianism, United Kingdom, W.E.B. Du Bois, Wes Streeting, White supremacyadmin

Lars Cornelissen, Manchester Metropolitan University; Independent Social Research Foundation

Prime Minister Keir Starmer thinks that racism is returning to British society. He has accused Nigel Farage’s Reform UK of sowing “toxic division” with its “racist rhetoric”.

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05Sep/25

What I’ve learned from photographing (almost) every British wildflower

September 5, 2025Human InterestBen Lawers, Brownfield land, Creative Commons, Edinburgh, Estonia, Norway, Orchid, Plant, Richard Milne, Scotland, SHUTTERSTOCK, United Kingdom, Vlad Krivtsov, Wales, Yorkadmin

The author’s project took him all over Britain.
Montage images: Pajor Pawel/Shutterstock (background); Richard Milne (flowers)

Richard Milne, University of Edinburgh

The wildflowers of Britain include all manner of treasures – yet many people are only aware of a few, such as bluebells and foxgloves. A lot of its other flora are rare because of Britain’s location at the northern, western or even southern edges of their natural geographic – and hence climatic – ranges.

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13May/25

AI can guess racial categories from heart scans – what it means and why it matters

May 13, 2025TechnologyArtificial general intelligence, Artificial intelligence, Artificial intelligence in healthcare, Computational neuroscience, Creative Commons, Cybernetics, Data science, Ethics of artificial intelligence, Explainable artificial intelligence, king's college london, SHUTTERSTOCK, Tiarna Lee, United Kingdomadmin

Tiarna Lee, King’s College London

Imagine an AI model that can use a heart scan to guess what racial category you’re likely to be put in – even when it hasn’t been told what race is, or what to look for. It sounds like science fiction, but it’s real.

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03May/25

Perfect storm of tech bros, foreign interference and disinformation is an urgent threat to press freedom

May 3, 2025MediaBrazil, China, Creative Commons, Deception, Disinformation, Disinformation attack, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Fake news, Hungary, India, Internet manipulation and propaganda, Jair Bolsonaro, Jeff Bezos, Journalism, Lying, Mark Zuckerberg, Media manipulation, Misinformation, Moldova, Propaganda, Propaganda techniques, Robert Fico, RT, Russia, SHUTTERSTOCK, Slovakia, Tom Felle, Twitter, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Viktor, VOICE OF AMERICAadmin

Tom Felle, University of Galway

Media freedom has long been essential to healthy democracy. It is the oxygen that fuels informed debate, exposes corruption and holds power to account. But around the world, that freedom is under sustained attack.

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28Apr/25

Why the energy transition won’t be green until mine waste disasters are prevented

April 28, 2025EnvironmentBolivia, Creative Commons, Dam, Eva Marquis, Ghana, Indonesia, Kafue River, Karen Hudson-Edwards, Kitwe, Mining, Mining waste, Oil sands tailings ponds, Philippines, Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, SHUTTERSTOCK, Tailings, Tailings dam, Zambiaadmin

Eva Marquis, University of Exeter and Karen Hudson-Edwards, University of Exeter

On February 18, contamination in the Kafue river, Zambia, led to a mass death of fish. Its water turned a deathly grey and adjacent farmland was poisoned. The drinking water it supplied to half a million residents of the town of Kitwe was suddenly cut off.

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10Dec/24

People who are good at reading have different brains

December 10, 2024Human InterestAudiology, Auditory cortex, Auditory system, Auditosensory cortex, Cerebral cortex, Cerebrum, Creative Commons, Gyrus, Heschl, Human brain, Insular cortex, Mikael Roll, SHUTTERSTOCK, Superior temporal gyrus, Temporal lobe, United Kingdomadmin

Mikael Roll, Lund University

The number of people who read for fun appears to be steadily dropping. Fifty percent of UK adults say they don’t read regularly (up from 42% in 2015)
and almost one in four young people aged 16-24 say they’ve never been readers, according to research by The Reading Agency.

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23Nov/24

Parents lie to children all the time – but they should think twice about it

November 23, 2024FamilyBen, Creative Commons, Deception, Immanuel Kant, Lie, Lying, Rebecca Brown, Sally, SHUTTERSTOCK, Truth-default theoryadmin

Rebecca Brown, University of Oxford

Parents frequently lie to their children. “No, you can’t have any chocolate – it’s all gone,” when there’s a jumbo bar of Dairy Milk in the cupboard. “No, you can’t have my phone to watch YouTube – the battery’s flat,” when it’s at a solid 65%.

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08Oct/24

Can Kemi Badenoch claim to have ‘become working class’ while working in McDonald’s – and why would she want to?

October 8, 2024PoliticsBadenoch, Boris Johnson, coutts, Creative Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Keir Starmer, Kemi Badenoch, McDonald’s, Michael Gove, Michael Rees, Middle class, Nigel Farage, Nigeria, Pierre Bourdieu, SHUTTERSTOCK, Social classes, United Kingdom, Working classadmin

Michael Rees, Nottingham Trent University

Conservative MP Kemi Badenoch recently caused controversy by claiming that while she was born to a middle-class family, she “became working class” when working in McDonald’s to earn money while she was in college. In fairness to Badenoch, having a diversity of experience is an admirable attribute for an MP – something you wouldn’t associate with someone like recently deposed Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg for example.

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18Jul/24

Some say a shot of olive oil can prevent a hangover – here’s what the science says

July 18, 2024Food and DrinkAlcohol, Alcohol abuse, Alcohol and health, Benny Blanco, Creative Commons, Drinking culture, Hair of the dog, Hangover, Health effects of alcohol, Jimmy Fallon, Justin Stebbing, Olive oil, SHUTTERSTOCK, Substance-related disordersadmin

Justin Stebbing, Anglia Ruskin University

The search for alcohol hangover cures is as old as alcohol itself. Many cures and remedies are sold, but scientific evidence for their effectiveness is lacking.

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