The company’s UK and Europe boss has become a lightning rod for the British public’s fear of a US tech takeoverThe hall was packed with rightwing radicals when Louis Mosley heralded a coming revolution. Just as Oliver Cromwell – that “crusader for Christ and liberty” – routed King Charles I’s royalists, “a similar revolution is brewing today”, said the UK and Europe boss of Palantir. Globalism’s “twilight” was upon us, he said in a speech dotted with admiring mentions of the podcaster Joe Rogan and “Elon’s Doge”.It was not a typical peroration for a big UK government contractor with more than £600m in deals with the NHS, the Ministry of Defence and police. But Palantir, the world’s most controversial tech company, is no typical contractor. In recent years it has gained firm footholds across Britain’s public sector while appalling critics with its leadership’s rightwing rhetoric and its work for the US and Israeli militaries and Donald Trump’s ICE immigration crackdown. Continue reading...
Machines may soon translate every conversation flawlessly. But language is more than information – it is curiosity, intimacy and cultural discoveryOne of my earliest assignments as a young interpreter was to provide simultaneous interpretation for the proceedings of an ecumenical council that brought together all Christian denominations. As my homework, I dutifully read scripture, the gospels, papal encyclicals and the conclusion of the first council of Nicaea.There was, however, one thing I had not foreseen. Mass was held not in the conference hall, but in the church itself, where there were no booths and the interpreter was required to stand discreetly at the altar. Here, translation alone would not suffice – the interpreter had to perform the part of the priest, with his unmistakable clerical timbre, the arms outstretched then folded in prayer, the gaze repeatedly lifted towards heaven. Continue reading...
The Computer Weekly Security Think Tank considers the intersection of AI and IAM. In this article, explore the changing nature of the identity stack and learn what will change as identity evolves into a real-time control plane for agentic systems.
IT supplier will pay bonuses to UK staff again this year as it continues to hold back contribution to costs of Post Office scandal
Expansion of Europol’s mandate should be paused while allegations investigated, a number of MEPs say
UK mid-market supplier showcases the three stages of AI – assistance, co-work and orchestration – but faces a reality in which most users have yet to arrive at first base
A booming tech sector has disrupted translation jobs in publishing – but they could be needed for a while longer yetIn February 2022, while he was plugging away at rendering the US writer Dana Spiotta’s novel Wayward into French, the literary translator Yoann Gentric decided he needed a bit of light relief. He would test whether AI could put him out of work.Gentric had been grappling with a short non-verbal sentence that described the book’s protagonist’s feelings upon opening a window: “Bright, sharp night air, bracing.” He put the prompt into DeepL, a neural-network-powered machine translation engine that regularly outperforms Google Translate in accuracy assessments. Continue reading...
Journalist Jamie Bartlett on the people trying to get AI to say things it shouldn’t … for the safety of us allAll the major AI chatbots – from ChatGPT to Gemini to Grok to Claude – have things they should and shouldn’t say.Hate speech, criminal material, exploitation of vulnerable users – all of this is content that the most successful large language models in the world shouldn’t produce, that their safety features should guard against. Continue reading...
Criminals are manipulating pictures found on school websites and social media to create sexually explicit images UK schools should remove pictures of pupils’ faces from their websites and social media accounts because blackmailers are using them to create sexually explicit images, experts have said.Child safety experts and the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) warn that criminals are using AI to manipulate photos of children and then demand cash not to publish them. Continue reading...
Facebook and Instagram owner claims charges should not be calculated based on a company’s global revenueMeta has launched a legal challenge against the UK’s media regulator over the fees and fines regime it is enforcing under landmark digital safety legislation.The Facebook and Instagram owner is claiming that Ofcom’s methodology for calculating the charges is flawed and should not be based on a company’s global revenue. Breaches of the Online Safety Act can be punished by fines of up to 10% of qualifying worldwide revenue (QWR) or £18m – whichever is higher. Continue reading...
As sovereign AI strategies accelerate across the Gulf, organisations are shifting their focus from ‘how do we use AI?’ to ‘where does the data live?’, turning data residency into a strategic differentiator rather than a compliance exercise
World is approaching point where no one can shut down a rogue AI, says director of body behind researchIt’s the stuff of science fiction cinema, or particularly breathless AI company blogposts: new research finds recent AI systems can independently copy themselves on to other computers.In the doom scenario, this means that when the superintelligent AI goes rogue, it will escape shutdown by seeding itself across the world wide web, lurking outside the reach of frantic IT professionals and continuing to plot world domination or paving over the world with solar panels. Continue reading...
AI is increasingly being woven into every aspect of our lives - but the technology's full potential cannot be delivered without addressing shortcomings in digital inclusion
In the second of an exclusive series of articles by the former deputy director of data engineering at NHS England, we examine the key elements of the data architecture that supports the Federated Data Platform programme
Partnership between top startup DeepL and Amazon comes amid concern about Silicon Valley’s monopoly over digital infrastructureAI companies in Europe risk losing their world-leading status in the field of machine translation, industry figures have said, after the decision by one of the continent’s leading startups to partner with Amazon’s cloud computing division provoked alarm.While businesses in the EU have generally lagged behind the US and China in AI adoption, a small group of European companies have cornered the global market for high-quality machine translations for professional use. Continue reading...
Teams of security pros from UK financial services organisations came together at the end of April to participate in a hackathon exercise