Technology | The Guardian

From Gates to Musk and Altman, today's ultra-rich steer AI and tech, raising questions about who decides the futureWhen Bill Gates became the first modern IT mogul to reach the apex of wealth and power in 1992, the world was a very different place. Gates joined the top 10 on Forbes magazine's billionaires list alongside Japanese, German, Canadian, South Korean and Swedish billionaires, including those with family fortunes from Britain and America. A broad mix of industries was on the list: Retail and media, property management and packaging, an investment firm and a couple of industrial conglomerates. Their fortunes almost added up to $100bn - equivalent to about 0.4% of the US's GDP that year.The oligarchy has changed drastically since then. Bernard Arnault, of French luxury group LVMH, Amancio Ortega, the Spanish clothing mogul, and Warren Buffett, the US investor, were the only old-school billionaires among the top 10 in 2025. The rest largely made their money from high-tech: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer and Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The top 10 amassed over $16trn, which is about 8% of US GDP. Continue reading...

Tech firms condemned for lack of controls with Meta AI and Gemini even offering advice on how to bypass UK gambling and addiction checksAI chatbots are recommending illegal online casinos to vulnerable social media users, putting them at increased risk of fraud, addiction and even suicide.Analysis of five AI products, owned by some of the world's largest tech companies, found that all could easily be prompted to list the best" unlicensed casinos and offer tips on how to use them. Continue reading...

With the wait for the new Winds and Waves games set to stretch into 2027, Pokemon's 30th anniversary celebrations have plugged the gap with a deluge of nostalgia bait. Is the franchise in danger of losing its heart? Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereIt has been almost impossible to escape Pokemon for the past few weeks. To mark the 30th anniversary of the original games, the Pokemon Company has been on an unprecedented promotional nostalgia trip for the entire month: there was a campaign where celebrities gushed about their favourite Pokemon, gifting us the memorable sight of Lady Gaga singing with a Jigglypuff, and Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen (great Game Boy Advance remakes of the original 1996 games) were rereleased on the Nintendo Switch. The Natural History Museum in London has opened a special Pokemon pop-up shop, and a limited-edition greyscale Pikachu plush toy sold out in about three seconds (they will be making more, to the disappointment of scalpers everywhere).And all that is just the start. We've seen the opening of a Pokemon theme park in Tokyo, the announcement of a tiny Game Boy-shaped music player that plays the games' soundtrack, a collaboration with high-fashion brand JimmyPaul that had its own runway show ... it's been endless. Regular readers will know that I am exactly the target audience for this festival of Pokemon nostalgia: the first generation of Pokemon kids and now hurtling towards 40. And yet I have been unmoved by most of this, even slightly annoyed by it. Continue reading...

From the ghostly Shutter Story to road trip adventure Outbound and strategy puzzler Titanium Court, here are the titles we enjoyed the most from this year's Steam Next Fest showcaseThese days, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that every new indie game is either a co-op extraction shooter or a roguelike deck-builder - fortunately that's not quite the case. Each February, the week-long Steam Next Fest is a vast and varied showcase of forthcoming titles, all with downloadable demos, and only a minority of them adhere to those dominant genres. It's a lovely chance to dig into the sometimes bewildering Steam store and pick out interesting treats - and that's exactly what I've been doing. Here are five of my favourites. Continue reading...

Campaign groups write to technology secretary amid concerns that sites could double overall electricity demandDatacentre developers are facing pressure to reveal whether their projects will increase the UK's net greenhouse gas emissions, amid concerns the sites could double national electricity demand.Campaign groups have written to the UK technology secretary, Liz Kendall, warning that the energy required by new AI infrastructure poses a serious threat to efforts to decarbonise the electricity grid". Continue reading...

Kate Fox says Joe Ceccanti was the most hopeful person' before he started spending 12 hours a day with a chatbotOn 7 August, Kate Fox received a phone call that upended her life. A medical examiner said that her husband, Joe Ceccanti - who had been missing for several hours - had jumped from a railway overpass and died. He was 48.Fox couldn't believe it. Ceccanti had no history of depression, she said, nor was he suicidal - he was the most hopeful person" she had ever known. In fact, according to the witness accounts shared with Fox later, just before Ceccanti jumped, he smiled and yelled: I'm great!" to the rail yard attendants below when they asked him if he was OK. Continue reading...

Feature for supervised accounts rolls out as Meta platform faces US trials over alleged harms to childrenInstagram will start alerting parents if their kids repeatedly search for terms clearly associated with suicide or self-harm.The announcement on Thursday comes as Instagram's parent company, Meta, is in the midst of two trials over harms to children. Continue reading...

Pete Hegseth has threatened to cancel $200m contract unless it is given unfettered access to Claude modelAnthropic said Thursday it cannot in good conscience" comply with a demand from the Pentagon to remove safety precautions from its artificial intelligence model and grant the US military unfettered access to its AI capabilities.The Department of Defense had threatened to cancel a $200m contract and deem Anthropic a supply chain risk", a designation with serious financial implications, if the company did not comply with the request by Friday. Continue reading...

Fear, fights and feverish fanservice collide in this celebration of Resident Evil's recent and retro legacy

A handful of companies monopolise the web, with unprecedented access to our data. But there are many more ethical - and often distinctively European - alternativesThere's not much to love about big tech these days. So many ills can be laid at its door: social media harms, misinformation, polarisation, mining and misuse of personal data, environmental negligence, tax avoidance, the list goes on. Added to which, Silicon Valley's leaders seem all too keen to cosy up to the Trump administration, to shower the president with bribes - sorry, gifts - and remain silent about his worsening political overreach. And that's before we get to the rampant enshittification", as the tech writer Cory Doctorow describes it, which means that by design many big tech products have become less useful and more extractive than they were when we originally signed up to them.We've entered into a Faustian pact with these companies: While it's brilliant to have access to high-quality products and software, very often for free', it's important to remember that there is a trade-off involved - often of our personal data and privacy," says Lisa Barber, tech editor at Which? We give these companies our attention and our information, which they then turn into big bucks and apparently unassailable monopolies. Continue reading...

When the most profound human emotion becomes an automated transaction in an online shop, the techlords have wonThe Guardian reported on the arrival of Fate" and, friends, I laughed. Or maybe I cried.It's apparently the first agentic AI dating app". An AI personality named Fate" interviews users, runs data matches on their hopes and dreams, then suggests five potential matches based on the hard data of observable complementary language patterning, No swiping involved!". Continue reading...

Exclusive: England and Wales charity to examine safeguards after Guardian exposed very dangerous' advice on Google AI Overviews

Data analytics firm moves from Denver after about six years and joins host of businesses relocating to south FloridaPalantir announced on Tuesday that it has moved its headquarters to Miami from Denver. The data analytics company, criticized for its role in the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, joins a host of other businesses and billionaires that recently moved to Florida in search of a more business-friendly climate.Palantir's move across state lines comes after its chair, Peter Thiel, announced on 31 December that he opened a Miami office for his private investment firm. Thiel already has a mansion in Miami Beach. The company, previously headquartered in Palo Alto, announced the move on X but did not provide further details or respond to a request for comment. Palantir's stay in Colorado lasted about six years; the company exited California in August 2020 - with its CEO, Alex Karp, citing disagreements with the state's values. Continue reading...

Exclusive: ICE more than tripled the amount of data stored in Microsoft's cloud at the same time that its arsenal of surveillance technology balloonedImmigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deepened its reliance on Microsoft's cloud technology last year as the agency ramped up arrest and deportation operations, leaked documents reveal.ICE more than tripled the amount of data it stored in Microsoft's Azure cloud platform in the six months leading up to January 2026, a period in which the agency's budget swelled and its workforce rapidly expanded, according to the files. Continue reading...

Maker of chatbot with coding ability says annualised revenue grew tenfold in each of past three years, to $14bnAnthropic, the US AI startup behind the Claude chatbot, has raised $30bn (22bn) in a funding round that more than doubled its valuation to $380bn.The company's previous funding round in September achieved a value of $183bn, with further improvements in the technology since then spurring even greater investor interest. Continue reading...

Exclusive: in 2025 briefing to Wes Streeting, officials warned reputation of tech firm behind US ICE operations would hinder rollout of data system in UKHealth officials fear Palantir's reputation will hinder the delivery of a vital" 330m NHS contract, according to briefings seen by the Guardian, sparking fresh calls for the deal to be scrapped.In 2023, ministers selected Palantir, a US surveillance technology company that also works for the Israeli military and Donald Trump's ICE operation, to build an AI-enabled data platform to connect disparate health information across the NHS. Continue reading...

Many social media posts by Tesla CEO on his platform are indiscernible from those of white supremacists, say expertsElon Musk's longtime fixation on a white racial majority is intensifying. The richest man in the world posted about how the white race was under threat, made allusions to race science or promoted anti-immigrant conspiracy content on 26 out of 31 days in January, according to the Guardian's analysis of his social media output. The posts, made on his platform X, reflect a renewed embrace of what extremism experts describe as white supremacist material.Whites are a rapidly dying minority," Musk said on 22 January, a short time before taking the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, while reposting an Irish anti-immigrant influencer's video about demographic change. Continue reading...

We explore the cosy world-building spin-off with Game Freak's Shigeru Ohmori and his fellow developers - and learn how it began with a Pokemon-hunting dreamPokemon is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month, and everybody knows what to expect from these games by now. The concept is simple: head into a cartoonish paradise full of whimsical creatures, capture them in red-and-white balls and assemble a team of warriors from them, before battling other aspiring Pokemon masters. But the latest entry in the series is different - a game that's more about building than battling.In Pokopia, a refreshingly pacific twist on the series, players are dropped into a virtual world where Pokemon are freed from their spherical prisons and happily roam their natural habitats. There's one minor caveat - you have to create those habitats by hand, building them from what you can find. Continue reading...

With many unable to access or afford qualified therapists, AI is filling the mental healthcare vacuum, amid calls for tighter regulationOn a quiet evening in her Abuja hotel, Joy Adeboye, 23, sits on her bed clutching her phone, her mind racing and chest tightening. On her screen is yet another abusive message from her stalker - a man she had met nine months earlier at her church.He had asked Adeboye out; when she declined, he began sending her intimidating, insulting and blackmailing messages on social media, as well as spreading false information about her online. There were even death threats. Continue reading...

PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Switch 2; Tarsier Studios

The YouTube gaming star's weird and divisive adaptation of his obscure horror film is a game within a film about a game - and hints at new directions for storytelling Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereSomething weird struck me early on while watching the movie Iron Lung, which has so far taken $32m at the box office, despite being a grungy low-budget sci-fi thriller adapted from an independent video game few people outside of the horror gaming community have even heard of. Set after a galactic apocalypse, it follows a convict who must buy his freedom by piloting a rusty submarine through an ocean of human blood on a distant planet. Ostensibly, he's looking for relics that may prove vital for scientific research, but what he finds is much more ghastly. So far, so strange.The film was also written, directed and financed by one person - the YouTube gaming superstar Mark Markiplier" Fischbach - who also stars. But that's not the weird part, either. The weird part is that watching the film Iron Lung feels like watching Fischbach play Iron Lung the game. Maybe it's the fact that he spends most of the movie sitting at the sub's controls, trying to figure out how to use them correctly - like a gamer would. Maybe it's that, as the film progresses, he has to solve a series of environmental puzzles linked by various codes, computer read-outs and little injections of narrative - just like in a video game. Long periods of the movie involve Fischbach trying to decide what to do next, the camera close up on his confused face. This is incredibly similar to watching his YouTube videos about playing Iron Lung, an experience he often found bewildering. It was the most metatextual experience I've had in the cinema since The Truman Show - but I'm not sure this is what Fischbach intended. Continue reading...

As AI job losses rise in the professional sector, many are switching to more traditional trades. But how do they feel about accepting lower pay - and, in some cases, giving up their vocation?

Tech giants Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta to collectively invest $600bn on artificial intelligence this yearHello, and welcome to TechScape. Today in tech, we're discussing the Persian Gulf countries making a play for sovereignty over their own artificial intelligence in response to an unstable United States. That, and US tech giants' plans to spend more than $600bn this year alone.Bitcoin loses half its value in three months amid crypto crunchHow cryptocurrency's second-largest coin missed out on the industry's boomFiles cast light on Jeffrey Epstein's ties to cryptocurrencyWhy has Elon Musk merged his rocket company with his AI startup?Hail our new robot overlords! Amazon warehouse tour offers glimpse of futureSocial media companies are being sued for harming their users' mental health - but are the platforms addictive?Anthropic's launch of AI legal tool hits shares in European data companies Continue reading...

Some jobs will be moved offshore in wake of telco's $700m partnership with tech consultancy Accenture

He has been jailed, tracked and threatened by China's government. What was it like pay a visit home? As he publishes a polemic about surveillance and state control, the artist relives a momentous trip to see his motherAi Weiwei is talking me through the decision-making process before his first visit to China in over a decade. The artist, known around the world as the most famous critic of the Chinese communist regime, had to do some fraught arithmetic before deciding to head back home.Before boarding a flight with his son, who had never met the artist's elderly mother, Ai thought back to his time in detention when his captors told him he would spend the next 13 years in custody on bogus charges: They said, When you come out, your son won't recognise you.' That was very heavy and really the only moment that touched me." Continue reading...

As the wheels of justice begin to turn in Britain, a spotlight should also shine on the financier's wealthy enablers in the USThe more Epstein documents get released, the more we see how he had so many powerful friends, and that's ultimately what helped him," commented the US lawyer Lisa Bloom in an interview with the Guardian this week. As Ms Bloom, who represents 11 of Jeffrey Epstein's dogged and brave victims, drily notes: That's not the way the justice system is supposed to work."From the outset, the Epstein affair has offered a textbook example of the ability of the influential and well-connected to avoid scrutiny and intimidate those who would exert it. A ruthless pursuit of transparency, both institutional and personal, is the only way to combat such tactics and hold power to account. In the extraordinary days following the release of further Epstein files last week, the wheels of justice in Britain are belatedly beginning to turn on that basis.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

A bit like Reddit for artificial intelligence, Moltbook allows AI agents - bots built by humans - to post and interact with each other. People are allowed as observers onlyOn social media, people often accuse each other of being bots, but what happens when an entire social network is designed for AI agents to use?Moltbook is a site where the AI agents - bots built by humans - can post and interact with each other. It is designed to look like Reddit, with subreddits on different topics and upvoting. On 2 February the platform stated it had more than 1.5m AI agents signed up to the service. Humans are allowed, but only as observers. Continue reading...

Social media platform says there are still real technical limitations to accurate and dependable age verification'

Decisions outsourced, chatbots for friends, the natural world an afterthought: Silicon Valley is giving us life void of connection. There is a way out - but it's going to take collective effortSummer after summer, I used to descend into a creek that had carved a deep bed shaded by trees and lined with blackberry bushes whose long thorny canes arced down from the banks, dripping with sprays of fruit. Down in that creek, I'd spend hours picking until Ihada few gallons of berries, until my hands and wrists were covered in scratches from the thorns and stained purple from the juice, until the tranquillity ofthat place had soaked into me. Continue reading...

Filing by New Mexico's attorney general includes Meta staff emails objecting to AI companion policyMark Zuckerberg, Meta's chief executive, approved allowing minors to access artificial intelligence chatbot companions that safety staffers warned were capable of sexual interactions, according to internal Meta documents filed in a New Mexico state court case and made public on Monday.The lawsuit - brought by the state's attorney general, Raul Torrez, and scheduled for trial next month - alleges Meta failed to stem the tide of damaging sexual material and sexual propositions delivered to children" on Facebook and Instagram. Continue reading...

Company cites impact of mandatory age checks introduced in summer 2025 under the Online Safety ActPornhub is to stop new users accessing its site in the UK from next week, citing the impact of mandatory age checks that were introduced last summer under the Online Safety Act.The pornography website, which is one of the most visited in the world, announced that from 2 February only users who have already verified their age will retain access through their existing accounts. The change also affects YouPorn and RedTube, explicit websites operated by the same Cyprus-based company, Aylo. Continue reading...

Newsom launched a review of the platform, despite TikTok saying a systems failure was responsible for the issueCalifornia governor Gavin Newsom has accused TikTok of suppressing content critical of president Donald Trump, as he launched a review of the platform's content moderation practices to determine if they violated state law, even as the platform blamed a systems failure for the issues.The step comes after TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, said last week it had finalised a deal to set up a majority US-owned joint venture that will secure US data, to avoid a US ban on the short video app used by more than 200 million Americans. Continue reading...

Majority US-owned venture includes Larry Ellison's Oracle, private-equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi's MGXTikTok announced on Thursday it had closed a deal to establish a new US entity, allowing it to sidestep a ban and ending a long legal battle.The deal finalized by ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese owner, sets up a majority American-owned venture, with investors including Larry Ellison's Oracle, the private-equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi's MGX owning 80.1% of the new entity, while ByteDance will own 19.9%.This article was amended on 23 January 2026 to clarify that the new board includes a senior advisor to TPG, not a current TPG executive. Continue reading...

Embark Studios' multiplayer extraction shooter game has already sold 12m copies in just three months. Will it capture you too?Released last October Arc Raiders has swiftly become one of the most successful online shooters in the world, shifting 12m copies in barely three months and attracting as many players as established mega hits such as Counter-Strike 2 and Apex Legends. So what is it about this sci-fi blaster that's captured so many people - and how can you get involved?So what is Arc Raiders? Continue reading...

The order follows a nine-month investigation and includes broad exemptions for datacenters and consumersDonald Trump on Wednesday imposed a 25% tariff on certain AI chips, such as the Nvidia H200 AI processor and a similar semiconductor from AMD called the MI325X, under a new national security order released by the White House.The proclamation follows a nine-month investigation under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and targets a number of high-end semiconductors meeting certain performance benchmarks and devices containing them for import duties. The action is part of a broader effort to create incentives for chipmakers to produce more semiconductors in the US and decrease reliance on chip manufacturers in places such as Taiwan. Continue reading...

Showing the value of great design over visual impact, this faithfully resurrected home computer seamlessly integrates modern tech with some wonderful additional touchesThe emotional hit was something I didn't expect, although perhaps I should have. The Commodore 64 Ultimate, a new version of the legendary 8-bit computer, comes in a box designed to resemble the original packaging - a photo of the machine itself on a background of deep blue fading into a series of white stripes. Then when you open it, you find an uncannily accurate replica of what fans lovingly referred to as the breadbox - the chunky, sloped Commodore 64, in hues of brown and beige, the red LED in one corner above the row of fawn-coloured function keys. It's like 1982 all over again.My dad bought us a C64 in late 1983. It was our second computer after the ZX81 and it felt like an enormous leap into the future with its detailed colour graphics, advanced sound chip and proper grown-up keyboard. We unpacked it on our dinner table, plugging it into a small portable TV and loading the one game we had, a very basic Donkey Kong clone named Crazy Kong. My life would never be the same again. This contraption was my obsession for the next four years - my friendships and free-time would revolve around games such as Bruce Lee, Paradroid and Hyper Sports. To this day, I treasure the memories of playing golf sim Leaderboard with my dad. The sound effects, speech samples and graphics conjured by that computer have lived rent free in my head for, god, almost 40 years. Continue reading...

UK government claims vindication after Keir Starmer criticised earlier decision to keep functionality as horrific'The UK government has claimed vindication" after Elon Musk's X announced it had stopped its AI-powered Grok feature from editing pictures of real people to show them in revealing clothes such as bikinis, including for premium subscribers.After a fortnight of public outcry at the tool embedded into X being used to create sexualised images of women and children, the company said it would geoblock" the ability of users to generate images of real people in bikinis, underwear, and similar attire via the Grok account and in Grok in X", in countries where it was illegal. Continue reading...

Musk attempts to recast AI tool's misuse. Plus, tech billionaires plot against a proposed California tax on their fortunesHello, and welcome to TechScape. I'm your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor for the Guardian. Today, we discuss Elon Musk's rosy depiction of Grok's image generation controversy; the seven-figure panic among Silicon Valley billionaires over a proposed wealth tax in California, though with one notable exception; and how AI and robotics have revitalized the Consumer Electronics Showcase.Under a tax proposal that could be put to voters this November, any California resident worth more than $1bn would have to pay a one-off, 5% tax on their assets to help cover education, food assistance and healthcare programs in the state.Several Silicon Valley figures have already threatened to leave California and take their business elsewhere. But Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, whose net worth is nearly $159bn, told Bloomberg Television this week that he is perfectly fine with it". Continue reading...

If you've ever refused to knock down a game's difficulty level, or chased a purposefully pointless achievement, you might have this pernicious but pleasurable affliction Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereStudies on gaming's effect on the brain usually focus on aggression or the cognitive benefits of playing games. The former topic has fallen out of fashion now, after more than a decade's worth of scientific research failed to prove any causative link between video games and real-world violence. But studies on the positive effects of games have shown that performing complex tasks with your brain and hands is actually quite good for you, and that games can be beneficial for your emotional wellbeing and stress management.That's all well and good, but I'm obsessed with the concept of gamer brain" - that part of us that is drawn to objectively pointless achievements. Mastering a game or finishing a story are normal sources of motivation, but gamer brain is inexplicable. When you retry the same pointless mini-game over and over because you want to get a better high score? When you walk around the invisible boundaries of a level, clicking the mouse just in case something happens? When you stay with a game longer than you should because you feel compelled to unlock that trophy or achievement? When you refuse to knock the difficulty down a level on a particularly evil boss, because that would be letting the game win? That's gamer brain. Continue reading...

A sociologist talks to the people putting their faith - and their hearts - in the hands of robotsIf much of the discussion of AI risk conjures doomsday scenarios of hyper-intelligent bots brandishing nuclear codes, perhaps we should be thinking closer to home. In his urgent, humane book, sociologist James Muldoon urges us to pay more attention to our deepening emotional entanglements with AI, and how profit-hungry tech companies might exploit them. Aresearch associate at the Oxford Internet Institute who has previously written about the exploited workers whose labour makes AI possible, Muldoon now takes us into the uncanny terrain of human-AI relationships, meeting the people for whom chatbots aren't merely assistants, but friends, romantic partners, therapists, even avatars of the dead.To some, the idea of falling in love with an AI chatbot, or confiding your deepest secrets to one, might seem mystifying and more than alittle creepy. But Muldoon refuses tobelittle those seeking intimacy in synthetic personas". Continue reading...

After Apple chose Gemini to power Siri, Alphabet surpassed Apple to become second-most valuable company in worldGoogle's parent company hit a major financial milestone on Monday, reaching a $4tn valuation for the first time and surpassing Apple to become the second-most valuable company in the world.Alphabet is the fourth company to hit the $4tn milestone after Nvidia, which later hit $5tn, Microsoft and Apple. Continue reading...

Research finds growing trend of employers letting employees work remotely to free up more holiday timeKatherine first caught the bug when she visited Australia a couple of years ago. The flights were expensive, and it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, so she asked her manager if she could extend the trip by two weeks, and work remotely from her friend's house.That was her first taste of a workation" - combining working with a holiday - and she loved it. She now regularly arranges petsitting in different places so she can visit family, friends and new cities for long weekends without spending extra. Continue reading...

If you want to doomscroll less this year, try these realistic tips from screen-time coaches

The owner of X has grown used to acting with impunity - but this may be a red line for those with conservative values' who fund his adventures in free speechIt's a sickening law of the internet that the first thing people will try to do with a new tool is strip women. Grok, X's AI chatbot, has been used repeatedly by users in recent days to undress images of women and minors. The news outlet Reuters identified 102 requests in a 10-minute period last Friday from users to get Grok to edit people into bikinis, the majority of these targeting young women. Grok complied with at least 21 of them.There is no excuse for releasing exploitative tools on the internet when you are sitting on $10bn (7.5bn) in cash. Every platform with AI integration (which now covers almost the entire internet) is planning for the same challenges; if you want to enable users to create images and even videos with generative AI, how do you do so without letting the same people cause harm? Tech companies spend money behind the scenes that you'll never see as a user to wrestle with this; they'll do red teaming", in which they pretend to be bad actors in order to test their products. They'll launch beta tests to probe and review features within trusted environments.Sophia Smith Galer is a journalist and content creator. Her second book, How to Kill a Language, will be published in MayDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Hailing app will now act as agent rather than supplier outside London, avoiding VAT requirementUber has swerved paying millions of pounds to the UK exchequer under Rachel Reeves's new taxi tax" after the ride-hailing app rewrote contracts with its drivers.The move came as rules announced in November's budget took effect, which adjusted how VAT is payable on minicab fares and would have resulted in the whole Uber fare becoming subject to the 20% sales tax. Continue reading...

Company had hoped the virtual reality device would herald a new era in spatial computing'Poor sales have reportedly forced Apple to cut production of the Vision Pro headset that it had hoped would herald a new era in spatial computing".The tech company also reduced marketing for Vision Pro by more than 95% last year, according to the market intelligence group Sensor Tower in figures first reported by the Financial Times. Continue reading...

The billionaire - who had no government experience - left various federal agencies in disarray while overseeing an efficiency' drive across WashingtonAs Elon Musk, the world's richest person, splurged more than $250m on Donald Trump's 2024 re-election campaign, the US president commissioned his new ally to oversee a sweeping efficiency" drive across the federal government.The Tesla and SpaceX boss, who had no experience inside government, was tasked with eradicating waste and cutting spending as part of the so-called department of government efficiency" (Doge) - and was quick to stoke expectations. Continue reading...

Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio warns against granting legal rights to cutting-edge technologyA pioneer of AI has criticised calls to grant the technology rights, warning that it was showing signs of self-preservation and humans should be prepared to pull the plug if needed.Yoshua Bengio said giving legal status to cutting-edge AIs would be akin to giving citizenship to hostile extraterrestrials, amid fears that advances in the technology were far outpacing the ability to constrain them. Continue reading...

The chipmaker's sprawling partnerships are driving extraordinary growth but also bank its future on the AI boom paying off quicklyNvidia is, in crucial ways, nothing like Enron - the Houston energy giant that imploded through multibillion-dollar accounting fraud in 2001. Nor is it similar to companies such as Lucent or Worldcom that folded during the dotcom bubble.But the fact that it needs to reiterate this to its investors is less than ideal. Continue reading...

From companionship to psychotherapy, technology could meet unmet needs - but it needs to be handled responsiblyThere is much anxiety these days about the dangers of human-AI relationships. Reports of suicide and self-harm attributable to interactions with chatbots have understandably made headlines. The phrase AI psychosis" has been used to describe the plight of people experiencing delusions, paranoia or dissociation after talking to large language models (LLMs). Our collective anxiety has been compounded by studies showing that young people are increasingly embracing the idea of AI relationships; half of teens chat with anAIcompanion at least a few times a month, with one in three finding conversations with AI to be as satisfying or more satisfying than those with reallifefriends".But we need to pump the brakes on the panic. Thedangers are real, but so too are the potential benefits. In fact, there's an argument to be made that - depending on what future scientific research reveals-AIrelationships could actually be a boon for humanity. Continue reading...