Today's tech job titles would seem like science fiction back in the 1960s, but what hasn't changed is the human perspective on innovation
This live blog is now closed.Sign up for US Breaking News emailsKash Patel, the FBI director, is now testifying before lawmakers on the Senate judiciary committee. A reminder that the last time he appeared before Congress was in May, when he sparred with senators on the appropriations committee and denied – under oath – allegations of excessive drinking and unexplained absences on the job, dismissing them as “baseless” during a fiery congressional hearing.Today’s hearing is also expected to be full of heated exchanges. “Mr Patel is the least qualified and most partisan FBI director in our nation’s history,” said Senator Dick Durbin, the judiciary committee’s top Democrat. “The bureau has been reshaped as a political weapon against President Trump’s political enemies and a shield to protect the president and his MAGA loyalists, not the American people.” Continue reading...
At San Francisco conference, OpenAI chief Sam Altman calls for more rigorous security measuresAnthropic’s CEO took the stage at a conference in San Francisco on Tuesday to reiterate his call for a slowdown of AI development, while Nvidia’s CEO argued against such deceleration.Dario Amodei used an automotive analogy to make his point: when a competing car company has a safety incident like brake failures, it is a moment for all car companies to stop and review their own practices, he said at Salesforce’s Dreamforce convention on Tuesday. Continue reading...
Digital challenger bank is removing more manual tasks by offering customers the ability to bank through natural speech
We examine claims and counterclaims about the risks and calls to slow down the pace of AI developmentThere have been some shocking claims in recent days about AI safety: we face a 10% chance of doom; AIs are worse than nukes; a “botnet” threatens the entire internet; it’s all a big tech psyop.Below, we look at six claims and reactions to them. Continue reading...
Cisco warns defenders to patch a critical vulnerability in its Secure Email Gateway appliance that may be used by attackers to gain root privileges.
Modern cars are fitted with features like autonomous emergency braking and fatigue monitoring. But do they support motorists or drive them to distraction?This new car I’m test-driving boasts all the latest bells and whistles – or, rather, beeps and bings. Peer sideways for too long checking traffic and the car emits an irritating sound. Should I take a hand off the wheel to scratch an ear, I’m admonished with a strident beep.When the car determines it’s too near a white line, it tugs the wheel against my hands and brakes as a car slows ahead. Its haptic “buttons” feel like fingers pressing back – as if an invisible presence has its hands and feet on the controls: a ghost in the machine I’m inside. Continue reading...
Government Minister tells a packed-out Westminster debate that Capita must sort out pension scheme problems before any decision on scheme's future
With trust in AI agents close to rock bottom in the popular imagination, Splunk and Cisco unveiled a series of platform enhancements designed to enhance observability and confidence in agentic AI.
Cyber attackers linked to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security are targeting opponents and opposition groups with Windows spyware
The rise of AI-generated tributes and bots for ‘talking’ to the dead has experts concerned more people will grieve in isolationTributes rolled in after the death of Dolly Parton last month. Jack White performed Jolene at a London gig. Kesha sang Old Flames (Can’t Hold a Candle to You), a single her mother wrote for the country music titan. Even Pitbull stopped his Madison Square Garden show to memorialize Parton and all the other “powerful women” in the crowd. But one of the strangest – and most viral – eulogies did not come from a celebrity. It did not even come from a person.Run Jolene, at just under five minutes, is an earworm of a country song, containing all the cliches of the genre: twangy singer, banjo licks, corny lyrics. Those lyrics concern Jolene, the fictional romantic rival made infamous by Parton. “Somebody better warn Jolene / Dolly’s coming through those gates,” the voice croons. “Run Jolene / Girl you better move your feet.” Continue reading...
Safety requirements are non-negotiable. They depend on meeting concrete goals, not just adjusting a timelineIt has been a week of high drama in AI, precipitated by the resignation of the AI safety researcher Jacob Coxon from Anthropic. This followed several weeks of increasingly lurid and disturbing revelations about the OpenAI/Hugging Face incident.My inbox yesterday included a message from Business Insider with the subject line: “AI doomsday debate reaches boiling point.” Continue reading...
From Stephen Hawking to Jacob Coxon’s viral Anthropic resignation, fears that AI could threaten humanity have shaken the industry without stopping its pursuit Before an Anthropic researcher resigned and declared human extinction imminent last week, tech leaders and scientists had sounded the alarm about a superintelligent AI ending humanity for over a decade.The development of artificial intelligence “could spell the end of the human race”, warned professor and astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in 2014 – a little less than a decade before the public got its hands on the generative AI features of the original version of ChatGPT. Continue reading...
The UKAEA plans to work with the US Department of Energy to combine supercomputing power for nuclear fusion research
New laws coming into force this week aim to streamline age checks although old-style plastic IDs will still be allowedYounger drinkers in England and Wales will be able to prove their age with a digital ID starting this week as new laws give pubs, off-licences, nightclubs and restaurants the right to use biometric scanning technology to check customers are over 18.Customers will be able to download software that scans their faces into their own phone to generate a QR code proving their age based on a stored proof of age. Other tech under consideration as part of the government push to digitise age verification for alcohol sales include a device which scans the veins in a drinker’s finger to verify their age. That system has not yet been approved for use. Continue reading...