The UK’s Supreme Court rules that Bahrain cannot claim sovereign immunity for infecting the computers of two UK-based dissidents with German-made FinFisher spyware.
Artificial intelligence firm should provide $100m for cyber defences, says Hugging Face CEOThe boss of the startup hacked by an OpenAI agent has called for the investigation into the incident to show “radical transparency”.Clément Delangue, the chief executive of Hugging Face, said the “unprecedented” attack on his business required a similar response. Continue reading...
Nvidia and several businesses have formed a cross-industry alliance to promote open, secure AI to improve cyber defences
The offensive potential is no longer theoretical. We need to develop systems to strengthen public health as quickly as AI is accelerating biological designAs artificial intelligence rapidly transforms the biological sciences, it is pushing the future of biology in two opposing directions. AI can help bad actors generate recipes for biological weapons with just a few keystrokes and computational prompts. At the same time, AI can track disease outbreaks and deliver critical public health information to millions of people in real time – potentially stopping a deadly outbreak in its tracks. What we are dealing with in this moment is profound: a race between offense and defense. Between the proliferation of dark biology, where deadly pathogens are engineered in secret, and the promise of a new era of collective global health.Every infectious disease outbreak begins with a handful of cases. Public health wins by learning about an outbreak before it spreads wide, before hospitals fill and a crisis starts to spiral out of control. As transmission rates explode, options shrink. One of AI’s greatest values is its ability to compress the timeline between outbreak and detection. Speed can mean the difference between containing an outbreak and confronting an epidemic, or another global pandemic. Continue reading...
UK-headquartered bank will develop artificial intelligence in Singapore-based centre of excellence
Federal government touts emergency warning alert test as a success and says no approach works 100% of the timeFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastA blaring emergency warning alert Australians had been warned about was anti-climactic for some – and totally missed by others.Almost every phone in the country, alongside some smartwatches and tablets, was supposed to let off a loud noise at about 2pm AEST and receive a pop-up notification with the text “TEST MESSAGE” and “NO ACTION IS REQUIRED”. Continue reading...
The sheer complexity of migrating off VMware is one of the reaons some organisations continue their VCF subscriptions
As the UAE’s retail sector expands and operations become more complex, AI agents are being deployed across pricing, inventory and merchandising, but fragmented data and the rise of shadow AI could create risks for businesses
Research shows AI accounts are gaining millions of views on TikTok by spreading dubious health adviceMisleading health claims online pose a “huge danger to public safety”, experts have warned, after research has shown that AI-generated doctors are gaining millions of views on TikTok by spreading dubious health advice.The British Medical Association council deputy chair, Dr Emma Runswick, flagged the risks posed by AI accounts that “peddle medical myths and promote so-called miracle cures”. Continue reading...
Super-premium Android has top performance, long battery life and good cameras, but is let down by softwareHonor’s svelte Android phone-tablet has been given a glow-up for its sixth version, offering a great alternative to Samsung for a fancy foldable with a red suede-like back framed in gold.The Magic V6 continues the Chinese challenger brand’s strategy of taking a razor-thin device and slapping a giant circular lump on the back to fit in top-class cameras, something others often forgo. It costs a not inconsiderable £1,500 (€1,700/A$2,999) but only until August when the price jumps to a cool £2,000 (€2,300) – a solid £300 more than last year’s model as the cost of RAMageddon continues to bite, even at the very top end of the market.Main screen: 7.95in (403ppi) 120Hz OLED flexible displayCover screen: 6.52in (406ppi) 120Hz OLEDProcessor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5RAM: 16GBStorage: 512GBOperating system: MagicOS 10 (Android 16)Camera: 50MP + 50MP ultrawide + 64MP 3x tele; 2x 20MP selfieConnectivity: 5G, dual sim + esim, USB-C, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 6, GNSSWater resistance: IP68/69 (1.5 metres for 30 minutes)Dimensions folded: 156.7 x 74.5 x 8.75-9mmDimensions unfolded: 156.7 x 145.6 x 4.0-4.1mmWeight: 219-224g Continue reading...
Former LEO programmer Peter Byford reflects on working with the world's first business computer
The legal question is whether software has become an economic resource. The practical question is whether your platform has a sanctions kill switch.
More than 3,600 people sign petition for careful assessment of proposed AI hub, now a flashpoint for national debate on datacentre boomFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastFor some residents it started with a letter in the mailbox. It was a “friendly introduction from the team behind the Victorian AI hub”.“I am knocking on doors to explain what we have in mind and, most importantly, to listen,” the letter from Syncline Energy stated. Continue reading...
Avtar spent decades wondering what happened to the mother he never got to know. Thousands of miles away, Nicci was haunted by the story of a half-brother given away before she was born. How did a chatbot bring them together?As a small boy growing up in Amritsar, India, in the 1960s, Avtar Singh used to hear whispers. Your mum isn’t really your mum, the rumours would say. Your mum lives abroad. Avtar didn’t really pay any attention to it. “I thought, the neighbours are just making up stories.” But the stories were true: the woman raising Avtar was actually his grandmother. When he was too young to remember it, his father had emigrated to Canada to work as a teacher, leaving Avtar in the care of his paternal grandparents. His grandfather, a police officer, was a fearsome authoritarian, but his grandmother brought him up with tenderness, as if he were her own son. She called him by his nickname, Titu. He felt loved.When Avtar was around eight years old, he was told about his family in Canada: his dad, his mum and a little brother were waiting for him there, and he would soon travel to join them. Just after his ninth birthday, Avtar found himself sitting on a plane, dressed in a three‑piece suit and tie. He was travelling alone. He had never flown before. He didn’t speak a word of English. He landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Christmas Eve, 1968; his family met him at the airport and took him home. “I didn’t know what to think,” Avtar, now 66, tells me in a video call from his home in Abbotsford, British Columbia. “Before I knew it, it was the first week of January, and I was put in school.” Continue reading...
Two US congressmen have introduced a bill to give Washington the power to pull the plug on rogue AI models in an emergency
New US petition demands review of plans from tech companies amid fears of environmental destructionSpace datacenters proposed by SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin and others would release staggering levels of pollution that would probably alter the Earth’s atmosphere and be “catastrophic” for the planet, space industry experts and environmental groups warn in a new petition demanding a review of their impacts.Tech companies have collectively proposed millions of “orbital datacenters” and are pressing forward with plans, which require Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval. Among other issues, pollution from satellites and rockets burning up upon re-entry appears to be accumulating in the stratosphere at alarming levels. The spacecraft release black soot, rare metals, aluminum oxides and other pollutants with unknown effects. Continue reading...