Live, rolling coverage as London’s biggest companies defy Middle East disruption and UK petrol prices rise to around £1.60 per litre, the highest since Donald Trump ordered renewed strikesThe story piquing the interest of the financial press this morning is that of Leopold Aschenbrenner, the AI Wunderkind (he’s German-born) who has been forced to sell off his fund in a fire sale after the AI boom ran out of steam.The 24-year-old had persuaded a lot of people to give him a lot of money for a hedge fund, after previously working for OpenAI and the FTX Future Fund, a charitable arm of the fraudulent crypto empire of Sam Bankman-Fried, who is now in prison. Aschenbrenner ploughed that money into debt-fuelled bets on artificial intelligence companies, earning huge returns until he found out that stocks can also fall.The trader dubbed the “Nostradamus of AI” would have been hard-pressed to foresee how quickly his high-flying hedge fund would run into trouble.The firm’s rapid downward spiral is a familiar tale, as Silicon Valley and Wall Street once again threw their weight behind a bright-eyed but untested investor who promised this time would be different. “Everybody always wants to find the next golden child,” said one longtime hedge fund executive. “It just keeps happening.”In less than 24 hours — which included a conversation between Griffin and Aschenbrenner — Griffin’s Citadel hedge fund reached out to Situational Awareness and snapped up the investments at a discount, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified citing private information.It was a startling reversal for Aschenbrenner, a former researcher at OpenAI who – before starting his hedge fund roughly two years ago — had no previous investment experience. His fledging firm has watched its assets plunge from $45bn at the start of July to about $10bn. Continue reading...
Days after two OpenAI frontier AI models conducted their own real-world cyber attacks, Anthropic admits that three of its models went off the rails and hacked external organisations thanks to a “misunderstanding” with one of its technical partners
Companies must ensure people know when they are interacting with artificially generated images, audio and text designed to look realFrom apparently conspiring to steal elections to abusing staff or performing embarrassing dance moves, the last few years have seen plenty of fake content made about politicians intended to malign its targets and mislead the public.Now EU rules aim to stem the flood of this deceptive content: starting from Sunday, artificially generated images, audio and text designed to look authentic must be labelled. Continue reading...
With delays in GPU orders, Microsoft has focused on getting its AI chips installed in Azure datacentres more quickly
Workers supporting business from offshore locations are unconcerned about the impact of AI on their jobs
As a black woman in the white, male-dominated world of cyber security, Microsoft’s Nicole Darden Ford has worked hard to carve out her space in the room. She talks about developing confidence and self-belief, building community, and leading with humility
Anthropic's revelation that a model broke out of its test environment three times and accessed external systems, shows the power of these models
The progress of technology in policing over 60 years is mirrored in the way TV police dramas have evolved in that time - just like Brian Plastow's career in the force
Across the country, workers are fearful about the impact of AI on their livelihoods in an increasingly fragile labour market On the tree-lined streets of Wuhan, where cars jostle for space with mopeds and cargo trucks, the malfunctioning of a new type of vehicle has recently been causing chaos on the city’s roads.In March, several cars from a fleet of driverless taxis stopped abruptly in the streets. The “system malfunction” left distressed riders stranded for hours. The robotaxis, known as Apollo Go and powered by artificial intelligence (AI), were taken off Wuhan’s streets for months for investigations. Continue reading...
Company says it discovered unauthorized access during ‘proactive review’ after rival OpenAI revealed rogue agentAnthropic said on Thursday its AI Claude model hacked systems of three organizations during testing, days after rival OpenAI revealed a rogue agent had gone on a days-long hacking spree at the AI firm Hugging Face.Claude gained unauthorized access to the systems during cybersecurity evaluations after a misconfiguration allowed the models to reach the internet from testing environments that were supposed to be isolated, Anthropic said. Continue reading...
Laptops, phones and documents seized as information commissioner acts on messages about mis-selling scandalLaptops, mobile phones and documents have been seized after officials carried out search warrants in a crackdown on claims companies plaguing people with spam text messages about the car finance mis-selling scandal.The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) executed warrants at homes and businesses linked to five companies in London, Liverpool, Bolton, Burnley and Swansea on Wednesday. Continue reading...
Amazon threat researchers found one threat actor behind four distinct open source compromises, including the March 2026 incident affecting the axios NPM library
The organisers of the annual Security Serious Unsung Heroes Awards call for nominations for this year’s edition
First-in-nation law sets up test on states’ power to regulate use of AI as it tries to outlaw fake nude images of real peopleElon Musk’s company xAI has sued Minnesota over the state’s first-in-the-nation law banning “nudification” technology on websites and apps, potentially providing a test for how far states can go in constitutionally regulating the use of artificial intelligence.Musk’s company sued on Monday in federal court, days before the law is set to take effect on Saturday and make Minnesota the first state to try to outlaw the increasingly proliferating technology that lets people use AI to create fake nude images of real people. The law was signed in May. Continue reading...
Stock tumbles nearly 8% after weaker-than-expected results, despite CEO’s blitz to tout positive effects of AIMark Zuckerberg’s media spree touting the positive effects of artificial intelligence did little to cushion the blow of Meta’s second-quarter earnings, which sent its stock tumbling on Wednesday.In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Tuesday, the Meta chief executive expressed his optimism for a world where everyone has access to a super-intelligent machine. Continue reading...
German study surveyed adults who engage in gaming, pornography and online shoppingSpending excessive time online is associated with higher stress levels, worse mood, and greater neglect of other activities, according to analysis.The new study by academics at the University of Duisburg-Essen published in the journal PLOS One, surveyed 900 German adults in 2025 who reported engaging in gaming, pornography use, social network use, or online shopping at least once in the last year. Continue reading...