Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary wants to bring the epic poem to the big screen using the power of artificial intelligence. It can’t be any goodThe thing about unfilmable works of literature is that most of them eventually turn out to be quite filmable after all. The Lord of the Rings was a bit of a mess when shot in rotoscope on a minuscule budget by the guy who filmed Fritz the Cat; it won Oscars when handed to Peter Jackson, given the GDP of a small nation and a visual effects department the size of Gondor. The 1984 version of Dune was a disappointment, despite the presence of David Lynch in the director’s chair, largely because all that gleaming, tawdry galactic opulence couldn’t make up for the comprehensively bad acting, clotted exposition and obsession with freaky heart plugs. And yet the 2021 adaptation from Denis Villeneuve ended up being a tour de force of masterly restraint and monolithic scale.Milton’s Paradise Lost? The 17th-century epic poem has always felt like an outlier, a work of literature too religiously inspired to be filmed purely as a work of fantasy, yet too riotously bonkers to be treated with puritanical reverence. It contains more drama than the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe in every line of thunderous God-baiting iambic pentameter. And now Roger Avary, co-writer of Pulp Fiction and director of Killing Zoe and The Rules of Attraction, wants to bring it to the big screen using the power of AI. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Worker pointed to Iran war and Pentagon’s Anthropic feud as indications the department is ‘not a responsible partner’Workers developing Google’s artificial intelligence products in the UK have voted to unionize, in part out of concerns about a deal between the company and the US military that was announced last week.In a letter slated to go to management on Tuesday and shared exclusively with the Guardian, workers at Google DeepMind, the company’s AI research laboratory, requested recognition of the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as joint representatives of the lab’s UK-based staff. Continue reading...
In this week’s Computer Weekly, we look at how digital twins of the human body are helping athletes prepare for the London Marathon. We find out how AI is set to deliver new driving experiences in the latest cars. And we speak to a 146-year-old bank about taking an entrepreneurial approach to tackling legacy IT. Read the issue now.
Musk won’t have to give up any money he allegedly saved from delaying disclosure of initial purchase of Twitter stockSign up for the Breaking News US newsletter emailElon Musk settled the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil lawsuit accusing the world’s richest person of waiting too long in 2022 to disclose his initial purchases of stock in Twitter, now known as X.A trust in Musk’s name will pay a $1.5m civil penalty, without admitting wrongdoing. Musk won’t have to give up any money he allegedly saved from the delay. Continue reading...
Ryan Cohen said he didn’t understand questions about how the video games retailer could afford its $55.5bn bidSign up for the Breaking News US newsletter emailGameStop’s shares fell more than 10% on Monday as questions emerged about how the company would finance its surprise $55.5bn bid for eBay.In an interview with CNBC, Ryan Cohen, GameStop’s CEO, skirted repeated inquiries about how the video games retailer could afford the deal, saying he didn’t understand the questions. Continue reading...
Reform UK is ‘doing something right when it comes to visibility’ on multiple AI systems, say researchersAI platforms are more likely to reference Nigel Farage than any other UK leader when prompted about British politics, according to an AI search analytics firm.“We are confident in saying that Reform are showing up significantly more than you would expect,” said Malte Landwehr, an expert at Peec AI, the firm that did the research. “So they’re doing something right when it comes to LLM [large language model] visibility.” Continue reading...
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is backing new version of app called Divine, where content must be made by a humanAs a pioneer of the short-form video format, Vine has been credited as one of the most influential – if short-lived – social media platforms.The app, which allowed users to record a looping six seconds of video, boomed in popularity after its launch in 2013, spawning a plethora of viral comedy sketches and internet memes. It hit 100 million monthly active users at its peak and helped launch the careers of influencers such as Logan Paul. Continue reading...
Vulnerability discovery and mitigation continues to exercise the top minds at Britain’s NCSC as cyber experts continue to debate the impact of frontier AI models such as Mythos
Video game retailer’s CEO warns that unsolicited bid could turn hostile if it is rebuffed by resale site’s board US video games retailer GameStop has offered to buy eBay for $55.5bn (£41bn) in an unsolicited bid that its boss warned could turn hostile if the proposal is rebuffed by eBay’s board.GameStop, which has quietly accumulated a 5% stake in eBay, said it was willing to pay $125 a share, split 50-50 between cash and stock. Continue reading...
A detailed understanding of how containerised applications work with data storage is needed to migrate enterprise IT to a cloud-native architecture
Exclusive: Biometrics commissioners say face-scanning not as effective as claimed and new laws needed to regulate useHow does live facial recognition work and how many police forces use it? Guilty until proven innocent: shoppers falsely identified by facial recognitionBritain’s biometrics watchdogs have warned that national oversight of AI-powered face scanning to catch criminals is lagging far behind the technology’s rapid growth.With the Metropolitan police almost doubling the number of faces they scan in London over the past 12 months and a rising use of the technology by retailers in the UK, Prof William Webster, the biometrics commissioner for England and Wales, said the “slow pace of legislation was trying to catch up with the real world” and “the horse had gone before the cart”.An independent audit of the Met’s use of facial recognition technology (FRT) has been indefinitely postponed after the police requested delays.Polling shows 57% of people believe the systems are “another step towards turning the UK into a surveillance society”.A whistleblower claimed shop-based face-scanning systems had sometimes been misused by shop or security staff “maliciously” adding members of the public to watchlists. Continue reading...
Oracle Red Bull Racing massively improved the efficiency of its aerodynamics testing procedures after implementing new identity technology from 1Password. Learn more about this unlikely link
During the annual CETaS showcase in London, experts discussed the potential cyber risk of tools such as Claude Mythos
The government’s annual cyber security report reveals UK businesses are still struggling with the impact of attacks and breaches
As data sovereignty comes under scrutiny the more chimera-like it looks, but ventures like Google’s S3NS in France show potential