Investigations reveal limited efforts to ‘clean’ datasets of fascist, pirated and malicious materialFresh fears have been raised about the training material used for some of the largest and most powerful artificial intelligence models, after several investigations exposed the fascist, pirated and malicious sources from which the data is harvested.One such dataset is the Colossal Clean Crawled Corpus, or C4, assembled by Google from more than 15m websites and used to train both the search engine’s LaMDA AI as well as Meta’s GPT competitor, LLaMA. Continue reading...
Chief executive Jonah Peretti says in company-wide email BuzzFeed ‘can no longer continue to fund BuzzFeed News’BuzzFeed is shutting down what remains of its award-winning news department, signalling the end of an era for a website that once promised to upend the industry.Founder Jonah Peretti told staff on Thursday that “the company can no longer continue to fund BuzzFeed News” and would be looking to make substantial redundancies across the company. Continue reading...
Global alliance including NCA and FBI says Meta’s decision to encrypt direct messages could harm childrenAn alliance of the world’s most powerful law enforcement agencies including the FBI, Interpol and Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) have condemned Meta’s plans to encrypt direct messages on Facebook Messenger and Instagram, saying that doing so will weaken the ability to keep child users safe.The Virtual Global Taskforce, made up of 15 agencies, is chaired by the NCA and also includes Europol and the Australian federal police among its membership. The VGT has spoken out, it says, owing to the “impending design choices” by Meta, which it says could cause serious harm. Continue reading...
Drop in company’s gross margins in first-quarter earnings signal price cuts could hurt financials with share prices taking a tumbleTesla narrowly missed Wall Street expectations in the first quarter of 2023 and gross margins dropped significantly in a signal that a series of price cuts could hurt the company’s financials. The company posted a revenue of 85 cents a share on $23.33bn total revenue, just below analysts’ prediction of 86 cents a share on $23.34bn.Gross margins, a figure that investors are paying close attention to this quarter, dropped from 29.1% to 19.3% year-over-year after the company rolled out a series of recent price cuts. Continue reading...
Social media firm will cull 4,000 jobs immediately as part of larger plan to cut 10,000 jobs amid tech industry slumpMeta workers are bracing for thousands of additional layoffs as the embattled social media firm continues to cut costs.A new round of layoffs began on Wednesday, according to a report from CNBC that was confirmed by Meta. The company will cull 4,000 jobs immediately as part of a larger plan to cut 10,000 jobs announced earlier this year, focusing largely on technical roles. Continue reading...
Lindy Cameron speech expected to present the security threat posed by Beijing as an epoch-defining challenge to the westChina poses an “epoch-defining” challenge to the west, the head of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is reportedlyto warn.Lindy Cameron, who is the director of the GCHQ arm, will use a speech in Belfast this week to warn the UK and allies of the “dramatic rise of China as a technology superpower”. Continue reading...
Sundar Pichai calls for global regulatory framework similar to nuclear treaty amid safety concernsGoogle’s chief executive has said concerns about artificial intelligence keep him awake at night and that the technology can be “very harmful” if deployed wrongly.Sundar Pichai also called for a global regulatory framework for AI similar to the treaties used to regulate nuclear arms use, as he warned that the competition to produce advances in the technology could lead to concerns about safety being pushed aside. Continue reading...
Tech experts on how to work out want you need, set a budget and find the perfect device – or upgrade an existing one“The first question we’d ask is: ‘What are you going to be using it for?’” John Webster, the managing director of Digital Doctors in Brighton, says. “That is ultimately what guides us in terms of recommending what a person wants to buy.” Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6AVYN)
Rechargeable, water-resistant lamp you can pick up and take into the gardenThe latest Philips Hue Go smart light aims to be a great indoor table lamp that you can just pick up and head out into the garden with for impromptu illumination wherever you need it.It costs £140 ($160), which makes it fairly expensive for a rechargeable lamp, although in line with fancier designs. It joins the smaller, dish-shaped £80 Hue Go in the company’s portable lineup. Continue reading...
Franck Bohbot’s photographs of the city’s gaming spots depict a world of escapism familiar from American movies and artFranck Bohbot grew up in France, and when he arrived in Los Angeles in 2018 he found the sprawl hard to navigate. One reference point for him was the city’s video game bars, whose atmosphere he recognised from favourite adolescent films, including Terminator 2 and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Having wandered into his first one, Blipsy’s in Koreatown, he started chasing their escapist gloom. Several of the bars were bathed in light reminiscent of painter Edward Hopper’s lonely Nighthawks. In nearly all cases his camera found images whose timeframe was hard to locate: the arcade bars were rooted in 1980s gaming culture – Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Track & Field were staple machines – but their regulars, as here in Barcade in the northeast suburb of Highland Park, often referenced styles from the 1950s onwards.The project became a kind of quest: Bohbot went from borough to borough in the city and along the coast, searching out its joystick bars, acting on tipoffs and making lists of leads. It allowed him to draw an alternative map of the city, each location offering a new challenge, like levels of a video game. “Every arcade draws a slightly different crowd,” he noted, “from beachgoers and bar-hoppers to seriously committed gamers. The atmospheres vary, too – some bright, pristine, ordered; some dark, moody, covert.” Several bar owners, passionate about their creations, welcomed him and his camera; other times he had to be more discreet.Back to the Arcade by Franck Bohbot is published by Setanta Books (£55) Continue reading...
As we approach half a year of Musk’s acquisition of the social media firm, this is how key areas of the site’s business have performedOn 28 October 2022 Elon Musk tweeted “the bird is freed” as he marked his $44bn acquisition of Twitter.Nearly six months later, it became a dog. The distinctive avian logo the Tesla CEO had referenced in October had been replaced by a picture of a Shiba Inu canine – the face of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency. Continue reading...
The billionaire’s hamfisted handling of his new toy won’t much matter as long as politicians and media types remain bewitchedLast October, the richest manchild in human history fell into the trap he had dug for himself. Elon Musk was forced to purchase Twitter at an absurd price. He had no clear idea of what to do with his new acquisition, other than realising a fatuous idea about “free speech”. It was like watching a monkey acquire a delicate clock: the new owner started thrashing wildly about, slashing the headcount (from 8,000 to about 1,500) – in the process losing many of the people who knew how the machine worked – and generally having tantrums while tweeting incontinently from the smallest room in the company’s San Francisco headquarters.All of this frenetic activity was watched – and avidly reported for weeks – by the world’s mainstream media, for reasons that would have puzzled a visiting Martian anthropologist. After all, in relation to the other social-media companies, Twitter looked like a minnow. Most people have never used it. So why all the fuss about its acquisition by a flake of Cadbury proportions? Continue reading...
Tesla and Twitter boss said to be bringing together team, weeks after co-signing letter demanding pause in AI researchElon Musk is reportedly planning to launch an artificial intelligence company to compete with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, as Silicon Valley battles for dominance in the rapidly developing technology.The billionaire boss of Tesla and Twitter is in the process of bringing together a team of AI researchers and engineers and is in talks with several investors about the project, according to the Financial Times. Continue reading...
Tables may have freed up at Silicon Valley’s Coupa Cafe, but ‘scalability’ is still on the menu as tech workers look forwardIf you read the news, you’d think that San Francisco is dead. If you try to drive there during rush hour, you’d find that hard to believe.On a sunny Wednesday morning this month, I found myself on the Bay Bridge, en route to inspect the alleged demise of San Francisco and the reports that Silicon Valley’s golden age is coming to a halt. Continue reading...
Nima Momeni, who appeared in court, is suspected of stabbing the Cash App founder with a kitchen knife and leaving him to dieThe killing of the Cash App founder Bob Lee in San Francisco last week was a “planned and deliberate attack”, prosecutors in the case said in a court document on Friday.Officials allege Nima Momeni, a 38-year-old tech consultant, brought Lee to a secluded spot and stabbed him three times with a kitchen knife over an argument related to Momeni’s sister. Continue reading...
What better final bonding experience than a video game about a prison break before heading off to uni?My son Charlie leaves home in a few weeks. He will be 3,000 miles away. My heart is breaking. I decide we need one more formative games playing experience. Something we can bond over, that will maybe teach him a few life lessons along the way.A Way Out (PS4, Windows, Xbox One) is a two-player co-op game that has you trying to escape from a prison. It sounds like a perfect father-son activity. Five minutes in, my son’s character is naked, being most aggressively hosed down after an inmate tells him: “You think I’m a pussy? I fuck people up.” Understandably, I’m wondering whether this will be the light, fun bonding experience I’d hoped for. Continue reading...
Recording archive to include 25 more items among ‘defining sounds of nation’s history’, including Madonna’s Like a VirginThe original 1985 theme from Super Mario Bros, Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You and Madonna’s 1984 album Like a Virgin are among “the defining sounds of the nation’s history and culture” to be given places in the US national recording registry, the Library of Congress has announced.The Super Mario Bros music, officially known as the Ground Theme, written by the young Nintendo composer Koji Kondo, becomes the first music from a video game to enter the registry, which the library called “the most recognisable video game theme in history”. The tune has appeared in countless Mario-related incarnations. Continue reading...
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington on (#6APC6)
Citizen Lab says victims’ phones infected after being sent an iCloud calendar invitation in a ‘zero-click’ attackSecurity experts have warned about the emergence of previously unknown spyware with hacking capabilities comparable to NSO Group’s Pegasus that has already been used by clients to target journalists, political opposition figures and an employee of an NGO.Researchers at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School said the spyware, which is made by an Israeli company called QuaDream, infected some victims’ phones by sending an iCloud calendar invitation to mobile users from operators of the spyware, who are likely to be government clients. Victims were not notified of the calendar invitations because they were sent for events logged in the past, making them invisible to the targets of the hacking. Such attacks are known as “zero-click” because users of the mobile phone do not have to click on any malicious link or take any action in order to be infected. Continue reading...
Cyptocurrency’s steady increase in value reignites fears of widespread market manipulationA sharp rise in bitcoin prices has pushed the cryptocurrency above $30,000 (£24,118) for the first time since 10 June last year, just before the Celsius crypto lending company froze withdrawals in the run-up to its collapse.Even given that recovery, the token is still well below its all-time high of $68,000 in November 2021, and far below where it was before the failure of the Terra stablecoin caused the “crypto winter”. Continue reading...
In this week’s newsletter: From massive venture capital investment to sky-high salaries, the days of constant growth backed by low-cost loans may be over
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6ANX1)
Brighter, crisper touchscreen and week-long battery life prove potent combination, but cost increasesThe Forerunner 265 ushers in a new era for Garmin, bringing bright and sharp OLED screens to its class-leading running watches while keeping week-long battery life.But the screen upgrade comes with a price hike. The Forerunner 265 costs £430 ($450/A$769), making it £80 more than its excellent LCD-equipped sibling, the Forerunner 255 Music. OLED screens have long been a feature of smartwatches, such as the Apple Watch, but this marks a departure for serious sports watches. Continue reading...
Families flock in over Easter despite poor reviews, helping Mario collect more than £300m worldwide to become highest grossing game adaptation and animated film over opening weekendThe animated Super Mario Bros Movie has shot to the top of the global box office, taking $377m (£304m) worldwide on its opening weekend.The new film is an origin story about how Brooklyn plumbers Mario, voiced by Chris Pratt, and Luigi (Charlie Day), fall into a rogue pipe and wind up in a world populated by Nintendo’s most famous characters. Continue reading...
The hosts of the Dudesy podcast were shocked when their robot companion created an hour-long standup specialHave you heard the one about the American football player who tries standup comedy?After Tom Brady’s deadpan appearance in the February film 80 for Brady, rumors swirled that the NFL legend might try standup. His recent divorce, second pro football retirement and forthcoming commitment to a televised comedy roast made the prospect seem believable enough. Continue reading...
Alluring and useful they may be, but the AI interfaces’ potential as gateways for fraud and intrusive data gathering is huge – and is only set to growConcerns about the growing abilities of chatbots trained on large language models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing Chat, are making headlines. Experts warn of their ability to spread misinformation on a monumental scale, as well as the existential risk their development may pose to humanity. As if this isn’t worrying enough, a third area of concern has opened up – illustrated by Italy’s recent ban of ChatGPT on privacy grounds.The Italian data regulator has voiced concerns over the model used by ChatGPT owner OpenAI and announced it would investigate whether the firm had broken strict European data protection laws. Continue reading...
Company that matches artists with brands is understood to have laid off most of its staff and faces legal action by creditorsA tech company that claimed to “democratise creativity” by matching artists with design briefs for major brands is on the brink of collapse after being issued with a winding-up petition over unpaid debts.Talenthouse, whose clients have included Netflix, Coca-Cola, Nike and the UN, is facing legal action by creditors in the UK and is understood to have laid off most of its workforce, with top executives also departing its parent company in recent days. Continue reading...
A year after a ‘historic’ victory in Staten Island, New York, hope for a wave of union victories is looking less momentousA year ago, Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York won a “historic” victory – overcoming a multimillion-dollar campaign by the multibillion-dollar corporation to win the right to organize Amazon’s first-ever union.A year on from that victory – which labor leaders had hoped would trigger a wave of union victories – is looking less momentous and another union election win at Amazon has remained elusive. Continue reading...
Cameras affixed on cars sent videos of customers and their property to the EV maker’s offices and spread ‘like wildfire’Tesla assures its millions of electric car owners that their privacy “is and will always be enormously important to us”. The cameras it builds into vehicles to assist driving, it notes on its website, are “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy”.But between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras, according to interviews by Reuters with nine former employees. Continue reading...
Sales fall at world’s biggest memory chip maker amid decline in global demand for semiconductorsSamsung Electronics will cut back on chip production, as it faces a sharp decline in global demand for semiconductors that has sent prices plunging.The world’s biggest memory chip maker said it would make a “meaningful” cut to chip output after sales dropped sharply and it flagged a 96% drop in first-quarter profits, worse than expected. The fellow South Korean firm SK Hynix and Micron Technology of the US have also reduced production. Continue reading...
Half a century after its debut, the end of the combustion engine Golf is nigh – but it will always have a place in drivers’ heartsAfter nearly 50 years in production, the Golf Mark 8 will be the last combustion engine version of the VW Golf. For many drivers, it spells the end of an era. Here, Guardian readers share their memories of driving the vehicles in decades past. Continue reading...
Mainstream adoption of generative AI and conversational bots has left few spaces untouched, even religious communities“Write a sermon in the voice of a rabbi of about 1,000 words that relates the Torah portion Vayigash to intimacy and vulnerability. Cite Brené Brown’s scholarship on vulnerability.” That was the prompt Rabbi Joshua Franklin put in ChatGPT, the results of which he used to deliver a sermon to congregants of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in December 2022.The sermon the chatbot came up with spoke of Joseph, the son of Jacob and a prophet in the Abrahamic faiths. It quoted from a book by Brown, a professor who specializes on topics of intimacy, to define vulnerability as “the willingness to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome”. Being vulnerable could mean “we are able to form deeper, more meaningful bonds with those around us”, the chatbot wrote. Continue reading...
Bryan Caplan was skeptical after AI struggled on his midterm exam. But within months, it had aced the testThe economist Bryan Caplan was sure the artificial intelligence baked into ChatGPT wasn’t as smart as it was cracked up to be. The question: could the AI ace his undergraduate class’s 2022 midterm exam?Caplan, of George Mason University in Virginia, seemed in a good position to judge. He has made a name for himself by placing bets on a range of newsworthy topics, from Donald Trump’s electoral chances in 2016 to future US college attendance rates. And he nearly always wins, often by betting against predictions he views as hyperbolic. Continue reading...
‘Finfluencers’ to be asked to consult checklist before accepting deals for ‘get-rich-quick’ schemesThe UK financial and advertising regulators have warned social media influencers of the risks of promoting “get-rich-quick schemes” such as cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens to their followers.The Financial Conduct Authority and Advertising Standards Authority have launched a campaign to prevent content creators from marketing investment scams and risky financial products. Continue reading...
Play a cat trying to please its human, uncover pickup artists’ dark arts or find out how being pregnant feels at Now Play This in London, designed to make us look at video games differentlyOutside Somerset House this week, you might notice that two lampposts are blinking at each other. Unless you are fluent in Morse code, however, you probably won’t clock that they are performing Act II, Scene II of Romeo and Juliet. The installation by Geraint Edwards welcomes you to Now Play This, an experimental games festival, where you could also play a game about getting over a breakup by wielding a sword while riding a motorbike through a neon city, or listen to artist Laurence Young give a talk about getting his mother into the fantasy video game Elden Ring. Inside, attendees lounge around a digital fire, browsing books of love poetry.Now Play This – now in its ninth year at Somerset House – can be relied upon to bring people together in unexpected ways. It has hosted everything from giant ball mazes to outdoor playground games and a game about chucking fascists out of your garden. But this year’s theme, love, has created an especially open, even intimate atmosphere. On a giant arcade cabinet in the largest exhibition room, you can play Breakup Squad, a game about keeping your friend away from their toxic ex at a party; outside, you can play Triangulate, a puzzle game where three players are given random instructions (“point at someone with one leg; rotate slowly; hold hands with a different person”) and have to negotiate how to use their bodies to find a solution that works for everyone.Now Play This is at Somerset House, London, until 9 April Continue reading...
by Presented by Chanté Joseph, with Rhianna Pratchet on (#6AJ4M)
You don’t need to look far to see that gaming is everywhere with film versions of Tetris, Super Mario Bros and Dungeons & Dragons in cinemas this week. Chanté talks to Rhianna Pratchett, video game writer on Tomb Raider, Timi and Joey from The Nerd Council podcast and the Guardian’s video games editor Keza MacDonald about why it is dominatingSign up to the Guardian’s Documentaries newsletter Continue reading...
The second film adaptation of the phenomenally successful video game is a disappointment to rival the firstFilms or TV shows based on games don’t have to be terrible – as proved in various ways by Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves and The Last of Us. Even The Angry Birds Movie wasn’t too bad. The trick is usually to make it look as if the game was based on the movie, rather than the other way round. But this much-trailed, much-hyped new animated feature is tedious and flat in all senses, a disappointment to match the live-action version in 1993. It’s visually bland in ways that reminded me of European knockoff animations and utterly inert in narrative terms, with a baffling lack of properly funny lines.It is of course based on the global video game phenomenon, born in the 80s, from Kyoto-based gaming giant Nintendo, with its wackily eccentric idea of Italian-American plumbers Mario and Luigi. They are called the Super Mario Bros, even though “Mario” is not their surname – like Dostoevsky inventing a videogame called The Brothers Dimitri. This movie revives the ancient and surreal quest undertaken by Mario (voiced by Chris Pratt) and his brother Luigi (Charlie Day), Brooklyn plumbers who only do the silly and borderline-offensive cod Italian voice for their cheesy TV ad. Continue reading...
When I couldn’t turn on the lights she told me there was ‘no account associated with this device’In December I came home and, as usual, shouted to Alexa to turn on the lights but was surprised when she responded that there was “no Amazon account associated with this device”. Frustrated and in the dark, I tried to log in, only for the app to confirm there was no account associated with my email.I have a disability that means I cannot make phone calls, so my husband used his account to seek help. Eventually, someone called us back but confirmed there was no account and told me to set up a new one. Continue reading...
Today influencers sell ideas about science and medicine as well as products. But the integrity on which their status rests, says the US author, is as unknowable as the algorithms that push their contentIn the early 00s, Emily Hund dreamed of a career as a journalist at a glossy fashion magazine. But after internships with New York media companies and having witnessed falling circulations and redundancies, she switched to studying one of the catalysts for these changes: social media and the influencers whose YouTube, TikTok and Instagram posts sell ideas, lifestyles and products to their followers. The influencer industry ranges from global stars such as the Kardashians to micro-influencers who post on niche interests. What they have in common is that they work with brands to promote or sell to an audience. Hund is now a research affiliate at Pennsylvania University’s Centre on Digital Culture and Society and her first book on influencers is published in the UK this month.How did social media take hold in people’s lives?
Just months after the FTX collapse, a US watchdog is suing Changpeng Zhao’s firm, the world’s biggest digital-asset market, over a slew of allegations that make jaw-dropping readingBinance is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange and a cornerstone of the $1tn digital asset market. It has 128 million customers, handles $65bn in daily trades and its commercial partners include Cristiano Ronaldo, Italy’s Lazio football team and TikTok megastar Khaby Lame. So when a US regulator announced last week it was suing Binance for “wilful evasion of US law”, it was a significant moment for a sector still reeling from the collapse of FTX.The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed the civil enforcement action in a federal court in Chicago, seeking punishments including fines and permanent trading bans. It is suing Binance’s Canadian founder and chief executive, Changpeng Zhao, and three entities that operate the Binance global trading platform over numerous alleged violations of its regulations and of the Commodity Exchange Act. Binance’s former chief compliance officer, Samuel Lim, is also being sued. Continue reading...
Measure is in place ‘until ChatGPT respects privacy’, says Italian Data Protection AuthorityItaly’s privacy watchdog has banned ChatGPT, after raising concerns about a recent data breach and the legal basis for using personal data to train the popular chatbot.The Italian Data Protection Authority described the move as atemporary measure “until ChatGPT respects privacy”. The watchdog said it was imposing an “immediate temporary limitation on the processing of Italian users’ data” by ChatGPT’s owner, the San Francisco-based OpenAI. Continue reading...
The statement has been revealed to have false signatures and researchers have condemned its use of their workA letter co-signed by Elon Musk and thousands of others demanding a pause in artificial intelligence research has created a firestorm, after the researchers cited in the letter condemned its use of their work, some signatories were revealed to be fake, and others backed out on their support.On 22 March more than 1,800 signatories – including Musk, the cognitive scientist Gary Marcus and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak – called for a six-month pause on the development of systems “more powerful” than that of GPT-4. Engineers from Amazon, DeepMind, Google, Meta and Microsoft also lent their support.Reuters contributed to this report Continue reading...
Our roundup of drama to watch at home includes a Big Night of Musicals, You Bury Me and James Earl Jones in King LearGame of Thrones stars Emilia Clarke and Indira Varma reunited for Jamie Lloyd’s typically bold and radical Chekhov production in the West End last year. It now joins the National Theatre at Home archive alongside the Donmar Warehouse’s Henry V, starring another GoT alumnus, Kit Harington. Continue reading...
Appeal judges uphold previous ruling, citing ‘implied threat’ in CEO’s tweet directed at Fremont employees who wanted to join unionA US appeals court has ruled that Elon Musk violated federal labour law by tweeting that employees of Tesla would lose stock options if they joined a union.The New Orleans-based 5th US circuit court of appeals upheld a decision by the US National Labor Relations Board that said the 2018 tweet amounted to an unlawful threat that could discourage unionising and ordered Musk to delete it. Continue reading...
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