Follow the day’s news liveGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastGood morning, and happy Friday. Nick Visser here to take over the blog. Let’s get to that weekend, shall we?Police officer killed in crash in Sydney Continue reading...
Given the reach of its platforms, Meta is making its Muse agentic system a platform for orchestrating third-party services on behalf of users
The danger is not a conscious machine, but a dazzling prediction engine that moves faster than we can supervise. The real risk is that we hand over the controls too easily
The US military has for the first time confirmed the existence of orbital weapons, but has not divulged details of their capabilities or whether they have been integrated with Space Force’s growing arsenal of AI systems
With 170 employees and European Commission endorsement, Nextcloud’s founder is building Europe’s open source answer to Microsoft 365
Artificial intelligence is lowering the barrier to entry for cyber criminals, accelerating attack speeds and increasing the complexity of threats, prompting organisations to rethink resilience, governance and security operations
Former deputy PM now involved in tech industry says many within sector are ‘winding themselves up into a lather’Nick Clegg has dismissed fears over AI’s “godlike power to exterminate humanity”, calling it a sign that tech bosses are “breathing their own fumes”.The former UK deputy prime minister said that tech bosses should focus on addressing known specific threats such as cybersecurity and bioweapons rather than the “slightly hand-wavy view that this technology is unavoidably going to develop some godlike power which is going to turn on us and exterminate humanity”. Continue reading...
A draft architecture published under the Dutch Digitalisation Strategy spells out what full software sovereignty requires and why full hardware sovereignty remains out of reach
There are concerns that a lack of funds for the police investigation could prevent the full Post Office scandal truth getting out
National Centre for Information Defence will disrupt information warfare from hostile states, UK prime minister Andy Burnham has announced
PM aims to ‘stem poisonous tide’ of disinformation and deepfakes with National Centre for Information DefenceSecurity chiefs will set up a new national centre to tackle disinformation and deepfakes from hostile states such as Russia, Andy Burnham has announced, saying the government had a duty to “stem the poisonous tide” from damaging British interests.The National Centre for Information Defence will “detect, attribute and disrupt” information attacks by foreign powers, many of which are enabled by AI, bringing together the intelligence agencies, law enforcement and social media companies. Continue reading...
As animal behaviorists increasingly use AI in their research, they grapple with how to wield the technology responsiblyI’m sitting in a small boat in Shark Bay, Australia, eavesdropping on a conversation between some of Earth’s most intelligent beings. The motor is off, the turquoise sea is glassy, and Stephanie King and I are motionless, transfixed by the whistles, clicks and squeezy, whirring noises made by the dolphins swimming below us.If anyone could tell me what these big-brained social mammals are saying, it would be her. Based at the University of Bristol, she co-leads Shark Bay Dolphin Research, one of the longest-running wild dolphin research projects in the world. She has spent thousands of hours watching and listening to this population. Continue reading...
Former chancellor, now senior figure at OpenAI, says UK needs datacentres to maintain ‘sovereignty’ over AI techUK politics live – latest updatesDatacentre nimbys are holding Britain back, George Osborne has said in reaction to nationwide protests about the giant water- and energy-guzzling structures.The former Tory chancellor is now the head of AI for countries at OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. His job is to represent the company to governments around the world and he also has a role in enabling the building of datacentres and other infrastructure. Continue reading...
Lawyers say Black employees at Tesla experienced ‘rampant racism’ that was left unchecked for years at their flagship factory in CaliforniaDozens of Black employees at Tesla’s flagship plant in California said they were subject to racist slurs, unequal pay and promotions, and bullying by supervisors on a daily basis, a situation management did little to nothing to fix.Their complaints form the basis of a lawsuit brought against the Elon Musk-owned electric car company by the state of California, which began trial with opening statements on Monday. Continue reading...
Citizens Advice says providers of essential services such as energy, banking, phone and internet should guarantee the ‘right to talk to a human’Stop relying on AI chatbots for customer care and guarantee the “right to talk to a human”, Citizens Advice has urged essential service providers, as research found they wasted time, caused stress and delayed problem solving for more than half of users.The spread of the AI-powered systems to provide help about the provision of vital services such as energy, banking, phones and internet, is making it harder for millions of already digitally excluded people to handle snags, according to the frontline charity that last year provided more than 2.7 million people with one-on-one help in England and Wales. Continue reading...
Jensen Huang dismisses warnings from former Anthropic researcher and others as ‘doomsday narratives’ The boss of the chipmaker Nvidia has said AI will not develop to a point that will lead to the extinction of the human race within a few years, rejecting such assertions as overblown “doomsday narratives”.Jensen Huang, the co-founder and chief executive of the $5tn AI chipmaker, said the claims made on social media by the former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon that AI could become “superhuman” and kill off humanity within the decade were “irresponsible”. Continue reading...