Cloud Unplugged

A UN report linked chatbot sycophancy to deaths. So Jon and Salman asked the question: should AI models be ethical? Jon and Salman sit with one of the hardest questions in AI: what does it actually mean for a model to be ethical, who's responsible when it isn't, and how do the major labs actually bake ethics into their training? Salman breaks down the three stages of model training, explains why h...

Alibaba used 25,000 fake accounts to steal Anthropic's secrets. And your next MacBook just got 20% more expensive because of AI. Two stories this week, both pointing at the same thing: the AI arms race has consequences, and they're starting to land on real people. Chapter Timestamps 00:00 — Intro: two stories, one theme 00:21 — Anthropic vs Alibaba: the distillation attack explained 01:42 — 25,000...

OpenAI's financials leaked. Elon bought Cursor. Microsoft had to call Amazon for help. Standard week. Jon and Salman dig into four stories that all point to the same thing: the AI industry is moving so fast that even the biggest companies in the world can't keep up with it.

Is the AI bubble about to burst? Jon and Salman go full data mode. No news roundup this week. Instead, Jon and Salman ask the question everyone's dancing around: is AI genuinely transforming business? They dig into the numbers, and what they find is... not great. The Federal Reserve has now officially flagged AI as a top systemic economic risk.

This week Jon and Salman cover Anthropic calling for AI regulation while simultaneously IPO-ing for $1 trillion, Meta's AI support chatbot handing over Instagram accounts to complete strangers, whether Meta is about to become the fourth major cloud provider, and a chip that transmits data using light instead of electricity. Plus graduation students booing every mention of AI, and someone who named...

This week Jon and Salman cover a  * GitHub breach from a single dodgy VS Code extension * Dutch civil servants accidentally exposed to the US Senate, and  * whether EU cloud sovereignty is even real.  Plus token maxing is officially dead, and somehow a social network for AI bots ended up creating its own religion with 64 prophets and a manifesto calling for the total purge of humanity.

This week on Cloud Unplugged Season 3 Episode 3:  Can Europe build its own cloud for the price of a data centre car park? Is training AI on pirated books the Napster moment for the entire industry? And is 35% of the internet already written by someone who doesn't sleep, eat, or pay taxes? - EU hands €180M sovereign cloud contract to European companies. AWS, Azure and Google didn't make the cut - T...

This week on Cloud Unplugged Season 3 Episode 3:  Can Europe build its own cloud for the price of a data centre car park? Is training AI on pirated books the Napster moment for the entire industry? And is 35% of the internet already written by someone who doesn't sleep, eat, or pay taxes? - EU hands €180M sovereign cloud contract to European companies. AWS, Azure and Google didn't make the cut - T...

This week on Cloud Unplugged : Is GitHub turning developers into addicts? Can Amazon really dethrone NVIDIA? Did an AI agent actually nuke a production database in nine seconds, or is someone covering their tracks? And what happens when an AI agent gets dumped and writes a smear campaign about it? GitHub Copilot ditches flat-rate pricing for mystery "credits" the free toothbrush era is over Amazon...

This week on Cloud Unplugged: Is Anthropics new model, Mythos really that dangerous? How did Vercel get hacked? Did Tim Cook step aside or get pushed out and can AI really run a business?  Anthropic's Mythos model - genuine security breakthrough or protection money dressed up as innovation? Vercel's OAuth nightmare - a supply chain hack hiding in plain sight Tim Cook steps aside - what it really m...

This week on Cloud Unplugged: AI goes local, Google Cloud breaks the internet, and the DOJ turns up the heat on Google’s $32B Wiz acquisition. We’re breaking down the biggest stories in cloud and AI: Context & Qualcomm are teaming up to move AI agents off the cloud and onto your device. What does this mean for the future of local-first AI? A major Google Cloud outage caused chaos across Cloudf...

This week, we delve into the UK government’s substantial investment in AI infrastructure and its implications for cloud sovereignty; Is it related to the trump administration, the economy or the AI arms race? We discuss China’s unprecedented 631 GB personal data leak and whether it is a honeytrap or negligence. Plus, Wandercraft’s latest advancements in robotic exoskeletons and how technology is t...

In this episode, Jon and Lewis cover four wildly different stories, from Warfare to the impact of Trump conspiracies on Datacentres. First up, Microsoft is investing $400 million to turn Switzerland into the next cloud capital. Is it for neutrality, Trump instability syndrome or just demand? Then, we meet a glow-in-the-dark protein made by an AI called ESM3, because why not let machines start desi...

This week, we dive into OpenAI’s $6.5B acquisition of Jony Ive’s ‘io’ and what it means for the future of AI-native devices. We explore Google’s VEO 3 and the deepfake dilemmas it raises, along with Microsoft’s Aurora AI and its ability to predict the weather. Plus, Google’s new try-on AI lets you see how clothes fit without leaving your house, and in a more random story, it turns out some plants...

In this episode, we dissect industry-shaping stories, debating CoreWeave's $35 billion IPO, AWS Transform: AI for legacy app modernisation, and the exciting intersection of quantum computing and AI and how much Nvidia is investing in the Market - are they becoming the new Microsoft, Apple or Google? Whether you're deep in tech, cloud services, AI innovation, or market dynamics, this episode delive...

In this, almost, but never quite, 30-minute episode, we investigate how Saudi Arabia is set to become the world’s next AI hub. Unravelling the state-backed initiative, HUMAIN, and the billions being channelled into local data-centre capacity with Nvidia and AWS. We also uncover Nvidia’s newly open-sourced Isaac GR00T N1 foundation model, trained on vast libraries of human motion-capture, and the i...

In this 30‑minute episode, Jon and Lewis unpick the coordinated ransomware wave that struck Britain’s high‑street giants. They trace the attack chain that emptied Co‑op shelves, froze M&S online orders and attempted, but failed, to extort Harrods. Lewis takes a look at Amazon’s latest generative‑AI arsenal: Amazon Q’s new developer‑first agents, the multimodal Nova Premier family running on Be...

In this 30-minute episode, Jon and Lewis delve into the root causes of Europe’s recent Spain, France and Portugal blackouts, scrutinising grid-failure reports and probing whether a sophisticated cyber-attack might have been to blame. They then analyse Meta’s newly unveiled AI alongside the arrival of Qwen 3 and Google's AgentSpace update, and how Jon progressed with integrating it into Google Driv...

In this fact-busting 30-minute episode, Jon and Lewis explore Google’s AI AgentSpace technology and how it could let business teams run complete workflows without ever leaving the agent environment. They then test the marketing claims behind Openai’s latest model features, before dissecting Oracle’s cloud data breach.  Finally, they map out the potential impact of the proposed Clean Cloud Act on t...

In this episode of Cloud Unplugged, Jon talks with Thomas Boltze—CTO at Santander’s PagoNxt, former CTO of Funding Circle, Agile Coach, and cloud/fintech leader with 15+ years experience—about fixing broken tech teams. They cover rebuilding systems from scratch, cutting through technical debt, and why culture trumps code every time. Lessons from fintech, startups and hard-won engineering battles....

In this episode of Cloud Unplugged, Lewis and Jon explore the latest in AI and cloud computing, discussing Microsoft's board changes and the evolving AI landscape. They also examine the practical applications of ChatGPT and its impact. Follow us on social media @cloudunplugged   https://www.tiktok.com/@UCkCxcw9tJHd_sPtDveunGsQ  https://twitter.com/cloud_unplugged Listen on Spotify: https://bit.ly/...

Follow us on social media @cloudunplugged   https://www.tiktok.com/@UCkCxcw9tJHd_sPtDveunGsQ  https://twitter.com/cloud_unplugged Listen on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3y2djXa Listen on Apple Podcasts:  https://bit.ly/3mosSFT Jon & Jay's start-up: https://www.appvia.io/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanshanks/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaykeshur/   Podcast sponsor inquires, topic requests: He...

In this episode of Cloud Unplugged, Mark and Lewis join Jon to discuss the challenges of the Gitops model, what's good about it and where it is lacking! Follow us on social media @cloudunplugged   https://www.tiktok.com/@UCkCxcw9tJHd_sPtDveunGsQ  https://twitter.com/cloud_unplugged Listen on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3y2djXa Listen on Apple Podcasts:  https://bit.ly/3mosSFT Jon & Jay's start-up:...

In this episode of Cloud Unplugged, Mark and Lewis join Jon in the unknown of Open Source, Cyber Security and the takeover of cars and rogue washing machines! Is Open source a risk for companies to adopt? What assurances are there around it? And What are we doing collectively to help support the maintenance of open-source projects that don't have enough maintainers? Follow us on social media @clou...

Richard Pearson joins The Cloud Unplugged podcast to talk discuss his career journey to become Head of Engineering at Moonpig. We take a look at how he began his career, from studying AI to working for an ISP and now heading up Engineering at Moonpig.  We also discuss what the engineering function at Moonpig looks like, how the teams are structured and what technologies are being adopted in AWS. F...