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BBC Newsnight presenter Paddy O’Connell speaks to Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu about why he thinks liberal democracy is in crisis, and how artificial intelligence could make it worse.

Daron argues that liberal democracy worked because people were given a say in how they were governed and then benefited from their country’s economy as it prospered.

But western governments have made major decisions on issues like immigration without first building public agreement, something which was once important.

In an interview with BBC Newsnight, he says that together, these changes have left many working people feeling that politicians no longer listen to them and have helped to fuel a rise in populism.

Now Daron warns that the way artificial intelligence is developed and used, so far without consensus, could make it worse, by widening inequality and putting people out of work.

“AI is going to transform every aspect of our lives, and we’re not being asked. We have no say in how AI is going to shape our society. I mean people in the UK, people in the US. Even worse for 6 billion people who are outside of the US, UK, China. Their lives are going to be completely reshaped by AI and they have zero say whatsoever,” he says.

The Interview brings you conversations with people shaping our world, from all over the world. The best interviews from the BBC, including episodes with Indian activist Sonam Wangchuk, South African minister Gayton McKenzie and New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman.

You can listen on the BBC World Service on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 0800 GMT. Or you can listen to The Interview as a podcast, out three times a week on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presenter: Paddy O’Connell
Producer: Osman Iqbal
Editor: Damon Rose

(Image: Daron Acemoglu. Credit: Europa Press News via Getty Images)

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Berkshire Hathaway is betting that the artificial intelligence boom will create opportunities well beyond technology stocks, with CEO Greg Abel pointing to the significant growth potential of data centers and energy business in the massive infrastructure buildout needed to power AI, a Reuters report said citing Abel’s interaction with CNBC.

Abel said that Berkshire sees significant opportunities from the expansion of AI data centers, following its decision to make Alphabet its third-largest common stock holding.

Reuters reported that Berkshire ended June with nearly 106 million Alphabet shares worth about $37.8 billion, behind only its holdings in Apple and American Express.

Abel called Alphabet a “significant player” in AI in his interaction with CNBC. He said he and Berkshire Chairman Warren Buffett had authorized an additional $10 billion investment three months ago to support the Google and YouTube parent’s AI infrastructure expansion.

“We are all seeing and feeling the impact” of AI, Abel said.

For Berkshire, the AI opportunity is not confined to its Alphabet stake. The technology’s growing appetite for electricity could also benefit Berkshire Hathaway Energy, as data centers require large and reliable power supplies.
Abel estimated that data centers accounted for about 8% of Berkshire Hathaway Energy’s load in Iowa last year, underscoring how quickly AI infrastructure is becoming a meaningful source of electricity demand.”I’ve sort of always had the strong view that energy would be the constraint,” Abel said. “We do still see it as a significant opportunity for Berkshire and Berkshire Hathaway Energy.”

That creates an unusual link between Berkshire’s technology investment and one of its more traditional businesses. As Alphabet and other technology companies pour money into AI infrastructure, Berkshire can potentially participate through both the companies building the technology and the energy systems required to keep their data centers running.

Reuters reported that Buffett initiated Berkshire’s investment in Alphabet last year, while Abel took credit for the latest purchase, made at a 6.5% discount to Alphabet’s stock price. Abel, with Buffett’s help, oversees Berkshire’s capital allocation and its cash holdings, which stood at $364.7 billion at the end of June.

But Abel’s outlook is not uniformly bullish. He said U.S. consumers remain under pressure from elevated inflation and mortgage rates, while the housing market faces a difficult period.

Berkshire agreed in June to pay $6.8 billion for home builder Taylor Morrison and already owns stakes in Lennar and D.R. Horton. Abel said Taylor Morrison could become a “very strong asset” over the next five to 10 years as more people seek homeownership, even if demand remains subdued in the near term.

“We didn’t see any sign of immediate recovery,” in housing, Abel said. “It was going to be a bumpy road for a while.”

“There’s a consumer that is still clearly feeling the pain, and struggling, and having to stretch a lot further with that dollar,” Abel said.

Abel made the comments from Tokyo, where Berkshire has built a sizeable investment portfolio through stakes of more than 10% in Japanese trading houses Itochu, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Sumitomo. The company also took a 2.49% stake in insurer Tokio Marine in March as part of a strategic partnership.

Berkshire plans to hold its trading house investments for “many decades,” Abel said, adding that Buffett remains a strong supporter of the strategy.

“Warren absolutely loves the Japanese investments,” Abel said. “It wasn’t easy for Warren that off I went to Tokyo.”

The comments offer an early glimpse of how Abel is deploying Berkshire’s vast capital base: leaning into structural growth opportunities such as AI while continuing to build around energy, housing and long-term investments in Japan.

(Disclaimer: This article is based on inputs from agencies. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)

Trading Standards officers in Scotland say they need extra powers to help tackle what they describe as an “explosion” of illegal tobacco sales in high street shops.

The products include counterfeit cigarettes or those smuggled into the country to avoid tax.

Trading Standards link the UK-wide problem to organised crime.

The Scottish government said illicit tobacco is a serious issue and that it’s working with partners about how best to deal with it.

The BBC’s Katie Hunter joined Trading Standards officers on raids in Inverness.

Filmed and edited by Morgan Spence

Most video games treat money as a simple convenience. You defeat enemies, collect coins, and hand them to a shopkeeper.

Path of Exile 2, the action role-playing game from New Zealand studio Grinding Gear Games, does something far more unusual, and the result is an in-game economy that economists and business-minded players study almost like a live financial market, complete with reserve currencies, speculation, inflation and periodic resets. For anyone interested in how digital economies actually function, it is one of the most instructive examples in modern gaming.

Gold Exists, But It is Not The Currency That Matters

The first surprise is that Path of Exile 2 does have a gold currency, yet it plays almost no role in the real economy. Gold cannot be traded between players. It is earned from defeated enemies, chests and vendor sales, and spent only on personal transactions: buying from the game’s own merchants, resetting your character’s skill allocation, and covering the fees on the in-game trade market.

Because gold is bound to each account and never changes hands, it can never become the benchmark that prices everything else. That is a deliberate design decision. By keeping gold out of player-to-player trade, Grinding Gear Games prevents the lazy “sell everything for coins, buy the best item with coins” loop that flattens most game economies, and forces something more interesting to fill the role of real money.

The Real Currency Doubles as a Crafting Tool

What players actually trade with is a family of consumable items called orbs. This is the concept that reshapes the entire economy, because orbs are not only money. They are also the tools used to modify and upgrade equipment.

Each orb has a crafting function: one rerolls an item’s random properties, another adds a socket, another raises an item’s rarity. So every orb a player spends to improve their gear is, quite literally, currency being consumed. That creates a permanent tension that has no equivalent in an ordinary economy: every unit of money is also a productive asset, and spending it to craft means giving up the chance to trade it. That single mechanic is what gives the market its depth, because supply is constantly being burned rather than simply circulated.

It also means prices are quoted in orbs rather than any abstract coin. An item is not worth “500 gold.” It is worth a set number of a particular orb, and which orb sets the price depends on how valuable the item is.

A Market With No Central Authority

The most remarkable feature is that no one sets the prices. There is no official store fixing values and no exchange rate imposed by the developer. Everything is negotiated between players through third-party trade platforms where offers are listed and going rates are checked in real time.

The outcome behaves like any genuine free market. Speculators buy cheaply at the start of a season and sell high once demand builds. Bubbles inflate when a particular character build becomes popular, and everyone chases the same item. Prices collapse when a balance update rewrites the rules and yesterday’s essential item becomes worthless. For a fantasy game about slaying monsters, the volume of authentic economic behaviour on display is striking, and it is why the game attracts a following well beyond typical ARPG fans.

Divine Orbs and The Emergence of a Reserve Currency

Within that system, a clear hierarchy has formed, and it mirrors how real currencies stratify. Common orbs that make minor changes exist in vast quantities and hold little value. Scarcer orbs concentrate the purchasing power, and at the top sits the Divine Orb.

The Divine Orb’s function is to reroll the numeric values on an already-strong item, the final refinement on high-end gear. Because it is both scarce and universally wanted, it has effectively become the economy’s reserve currency, the nearest thing the game has to a gold standard. Expensive goods are priced directly in Divine Orbs, and the Divine’s exchange rate against lesser orbs such as the Exalted Orb rises and falls throughout a season, much as a strong national currency floats against weaker ones. Players track these rates on community pricing tools with the seriousness of a trading desk, and an entire support industry has grown up around the market, from valuation platforms to services where time-poor players can pick up PoE 2 currency instead of farming a stockpile across dozens of hours.

The Scheduled Reset That Keeps The Economy Healthy

The final piece is the league system. Every few months, Path of Exile 2 resets its economy entirely with a new temporary league. Existing characters and accumulated wealth are moved to a separate permanent realm, and the whole player base begins again from nothing at the same moment.

From a business perspective, this is a fascinating mechanism. A periodic, total reset would be unthinkable in the real world, but in a game it solves the problems that plague long-running digital economies. It prevents established players from hoarding an insurmountable lead, guarantees newcomers can enter on equal footing, and forces the market to rediscover its own prices each season rather than calcifying into a fixed hierarchy. It is planned obsolescence turned into a feature, and it is a large part of why the economy stays liquid and active year after year.

Why It Matters

Path of Exile 2’s economy is a case study in deliberate design. Gold is kept personal and untradeable so it cannot dominate; the real currency doubles as a crafting resource, so supply is constantly consumed; Divine Orbs rise to the role of a reserve standard, prices are set entirely by players, and the whole system resets on a schedule to stay fresh. The effect is an in-game market that behaves less like a shop counter and more like a functioning economy, with all the speculation, volatility and opportunity that implies.

MIAMI — Consumer packaged goods veteran Jean-Pierre Comte has joined Brazilian baked foods manufacturer Bauducco as chief executive officer of North America.

Most recently president of Rana Meal Solutions, Comte starts in the new role effective immediately, Sao Paulo-based Bauducco said in announcing his hiring on Sept. 1. With the addition of Comte, Bauducco said International Business Unit CEO Stefano Mozzi becomes CEO of Pandatura Group, which includes the Bauducco, Casa Bauducco, Ellece Logística, Visconti and Tommy brands.

Comte brings more than 30 years of experience in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector, as well as a track record for driving sustainable growth, building high-performing teams and executing transformational business strategies, Bauducco noted. He was president of Rana Meal Solutions for more than three years, overseeing US and Canadian operations. Before that, he spent more than 13 years at Barilla Group, most recently as president of the Americas region, in which he led the business across multiple countries and brands. That followed more than 17 years at Procter & Gamble, including sales and marketing leadership roles in Western Europe.

Bauducco, whose US headquarters is in Miami, said Comte joins the company at a key time. In June, Bauducco opened its largest US manufacturing plant in Zephyrhills, Fla. The 160,000-square-foot facility is expected to double production capacity for the US market, sharpen supply chain efficiency, speed the response to changes in market demand, and bring new categories to US manufacturing, including panettone, biscuits and wafers.

“I am honored to lead Bauducco at such an exciting moment in the company’s history,” Comte said. “Joining the Bauducco family is a unique and exciting opportunity to build on a brand with 75 years of global heritage and authentic quality, and I look forward to expanding Bauducco’s presence across North America.”

A 16-year veteran of Bauducco, Mozzi has extensive experience in its global operations, including fueling steady performance in the United States and playing an integral role in advancing the brand’s international expansion, the company said. In his new role, he is charged with leading Bauducco’s next growth phase and accelerating its globalization.

“Jean-Pierre is exactly the leader Bauducco needs at this critical juncture in our North American journey,” said Mozzi, who is global CEO and has 30 years of experience in consumer goods. “His track record demonstrates consistent excellence in brand building, portfolio innovation, customer relationships and team development — skills that are fundamental to accelerating Bauducco’s expansion in an increasingly competitive US market.”

The Zephyrhills plant is being developed in three phases, with the second phase slated to go into operation by 2028 and the third phase by 2030, according to Bauducco. At full production, the facility is expected to employ over 600 people.