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Parliamentary inquiry told police forced to cobble together' laws to prosecute man who allegedly spread deepfake images of women

Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, founders of A16Z, plan to give large donations to former president's campaignThe co-founders of Silicon Valley's most prominent venture capital firm have announced their support for Donald Trump's bid for re-election, and plan to make substantial donations to back him further.Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, the heads of Andreessen Horowitz, commonly known as A16Z, revealed their plans in a sprawling 90-minute podcast, in which they argued that the future of American innovation" required a Trump victory. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: From Xbox Game Pass to PlayStation Plus, the new mainstream way to play games is costly, contradictory and most of all confusing Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereLike everyone, I have come to massively resent the insidious creep of subscription services. I started off with an affordable, shareable Netflix subscription, many years ago. Then came Spotify, then Disney+ when I had children, then Prime Video, all of which I could just about justify. Then my Fitbit started wanting to charge me to unlock features in a device I'd already bought. Google now charges me monthly to store in the cloud the photos I take on my Google phone. I pay yearly for an app that lets me look at guitar tabs. Last week I tried to buy some protein powder and discovered I could only do so if I committed to a minimum three-month supply. Egregious.As for gaming: I've been a subscriber to Xbox Live, on and off, since 2003. PlayStation Plus came later, and then Nintendo Online, very belatedly, with the arrival of the Switch. I don't play live-service games often, or I'd probably also be handing over the odd 8.99 for battle passes. Into this already fraught situation comes Microsoft, last week, with an update to its video game subscription offer that requires a spreadsheet to understand. Continue reading...

Do you feel uncharismatic and awkward in social situations? Aura upgrades are thankfully now available, according to a group of intrepid influencersName: Auramaxxing.Age: The word aura" comes from Latin and ancient Greek and originally meant a gentle breeze. These days it's more commonly used about a subtle pervasive quality emanating from someone. That's what we're talking about here. Continue reading...

PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, PC; Hollow Ponds/Annapurna Interactive

TUC insists fight will go on after GMB fails to secure right to represent retailer's staff by just 29 votes

Latest Copilot+ PC is thin, light and speedy with a stunning screen, but can't live up to AI and battery life hypeSamsung's first take on Microsoft's new Arm-powered Copilot+ PCs is the Galaxy Book 4 Edge, which promises to finally deliver the speed and battery life to properly take on Apple's MacBook Air.The new ultra-thin and light laptop comes in a choice of 14in or 16in screen sizes and packs the very fastest of the new Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips, which aim to dethrone Intel as the PC laptop chips of choice. Continue reading...

Musk calls California bill banning school transgender notification policies last straw'Elon Musk announced on Tuesday he will move the headquarters of his companies X and SpaceX from California to Texas.In a post on Twitter/X, Musk cited California's new law banning school transgender notification requirements as one of the reasons for the move, calling it the last straw" and saying such bills [attack] both families and companies". Continue reading...

NullBulge group said it was leaking files from Disney's internal Slack channel to protect artists' rights'Hacktivists claim to have stolen more than a terabyte of data from Disney's internal chat platform and are leaking the information online in a protest against what they say is the company's anti-artist stance.The group, which calls itself NullBulge, has been active since at least May. It claims to be motivated by a desire to protect artists' rights and ensure fair compensation for their work". On Friday, it published the entirety of Disney's internal Slack channel online through the decentralised BitTorrent filesharing platform. Continue reading...

Craig Wright's case referred for potential perjury and forgery prosecution after losing legal battle with crypto firmsThe case of Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who falsely claimed to be the creator of bitcoin, has been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service over a potential prosecution for perjury and forgery.In March, Wright lost a legal battle with a coalition of cryptocurrency businesses who had pre-emptively sued to prevent him from enforcing his claim in the courts. In a sign of the extent of his defeat, the presiding judge, Mr Justice Mellor, took the unusual step of issuing an oral verdict within seconds of the case concluding. Continue reading...

The designer of Sopa: The Tale of the Stolen Potato explains how his Colombian background informs the forthcoming gameSopa (the Spanish for soup") is a game about a young boy who goes to fetch a potato for his grandma, then stumbles upon a magical world at the back of the food cupboard. The pantry seems to get longer and longer," explains creative director Juan Castaneda. And when you're about to grab the sack of potatoes, you get pulled into this other world of fantasy and magical realism. So you go on all these adventures, and meet all these different characters, but at the end of the day, you're really just trying to get that potato for your grandma's soup."As video game quests go, this is fabulously mundane and makes a refreshing change from rescuing princesses in castles and saving lands in peril. However you soon realise there is more to it all than just lost spuds. There's this other layer to the story, and that's what the game is really about," says Castaneda. Each time you come back to the kitchen, things will have changed in unexpected ways, and each time you go off on an adventure, you're going to be picking up these hints about a mysterious traveller who went through this way long ago." Continue reading...

Tony Blair's powerful thinktank asked ChatGPT how AI might affect public sector jobs. Critics say the results were ... wonky Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereWhat will AI do to employment? It is, after will it kill us all?", the most important question about the technology, and it's remarkably hard to pin down - even as the frontier moves from science fiction to reality.At one end of the spectrum is the slightly Pollyannaish claim that new technology simply creates new jobs; at the other, fears of businesses replacing entire workforces with AI tools. Sometimes, the dispute is less about end state and more about speed of the transition: an upheaval completed in a few years is destructive for those caught in the middle of it, in a way that one which takes two decades may be survivable.More than 40 per cent of tasks performed by public-sector workers could be partly automated by a combination of AI-based software, for example machine-learning models and large-language models, and AI-enabled hardware, ranging from AI-enabled sensors to advanced robotics.The government will need to invest in AI technology, upgrade its data systems, train its workforce to use the new tools and cover any redundancy costs associated with early exits from the workforce. Under an ambitious rollout scheme, we estimate these costs equate to 4bn per year on average over this parliamentary term. Continue reading...

Riding a wave of nostalgia, the return of EA's beloved franchise has whet the appetite of gamers across different generationsSports videogame releases are usually drab affairs. New versions come out every year, and beyond roster updates and a few gameplay tweaks, they don't change that much from edition to edition. Unlike Grand Theft Auto aficionados, sports game fans don't plan midnight release parties.But EA Sports College Football 25, which will be released worldwide on 19 July, isn't a typical game. It may well be the most anticipated sports video game release ever in the US. And to understand why, we need to go back to the beginning. Continue reading...

Tech billionaire to donate extraordinary monthly sum to group focused on helping Trump win election, report saysElon Musk has said he plans to give $45m a month to a Super Pac focused on electing Donald Trump, starting in July, the Wall Street Journal has reported.The tech billionaire, who endorsed Trump two days ago, has already donated what was described as a sizable amount" to the America Pac, though the actual amount of the donation will not be made public in election filings until 15 July, Bloomberg reported. Continue reading...

Electric vehicles are batteries on wheels' that can put energy back into the National Grid when solar panels and windfarms do not provide much powerElectric cars make some people afraid of the dark. While the batteries produce much less carbon, they require much more electricity to run. This has prompted ominous warnings that Great Britain and other wealthy countries set on banning new petrol and diesel cars risk plunging their populations into darkness.In recent months British net zero-sceptical newspapers have warned that the shift to EVs would risk overwhelming the grid, and threaten catastrophic blackouts" when intermittent sun and wind fail to provide the necessary power. Another article claimed: It won't take an enemy power to put us all in the dark - just energy customers doing normal things on a normal winter's evening." Continue reading...

Creating a 3D avatar to increase a model's income brings up all sorts of issues, but this documentary seems uninterested in addressing themDoubles, doppelgangers, clones; twin visions have long fascinated directors and audiences alike. It's unnerving, however, when technologies that once belonged to the realm of science fiction are now realised in the present. A German model called Lale is interested in creating a 3D clone of herself and this documentary from Katharina Pethke taps into a new unsettling reality.The rationale behind the project sounds promising on the surface. As the company that offers the body scanning service to Lale explains, a 3D clone can take on a larger number of campaigns, without the hassle of paying an in-person crew, thus increasing Lale's income. What is striking, however, is that the firm's examples of 3D avatars are all of non-white models.With the recent push for more inclusivity in the fashion and modelling industry, could this be an easy way for brands to claim diversity without expanding their talent pool? Continue reading...

The military use of AI-enabled weapons is growing, and the industry that provides them is boomingA squad of soldiers is under attack and pinned down by rockets in the close quarters of urban combat. One of them makes a call over his radio, and within moments a fleet of small autonomous drones equipped with explosives fly through the town square, entering buildings and scanning for enemies before detonating on command. One by one the suicide drones seek out and kill their targets. A voiceover on the video, a fictional ad for multibillion-dollar Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems, touts the AI-enabled drones' ability to maximize lethality and combat tempo".While defense companies like Elbit promote their new advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) with sleek dramatizations, the technology they are developing is increasingly entering the real world. Continue reading...

Whistleblowers say contracts include restrictions requiring staff to seek permission before contacting regulatorsOpenAI whistleblowers have urged the US financial watchdog to investigate non-disclosure agreements at the startup after claiming the contracts included restrictions such as requiring employees to seek permission before contacting regulators.Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) typically bar an employee from sharing company information with outside parties but a group of whistleblowers are arguing that OpenAI's agreements could have led to workers being punished for raising concerns about the company to federal authorities. Continue reading...

A subclass of PFAS has been found near manufacturing plants and landfills, and in remote regions of the worldToxic PFAS forever chemicals" used in lithium ion batteries essential to the clean energy transition present a dangerous source of chemical pollution that new research finds threatens the environment and human health as the nascent industry scales up.The multipronged, peer-reviewed study zeroed in on a little-researched and unregulated subclass of PFAS called bis-FASI that are used in lithium ion batteries. Continue reading...

Videos of England football manager emblematic of growing internet trend for AI-generated memesIt is not the calm and thoughtful Gareth Southgate the nation is used to and, in the rough and ready world of internet humour, that is probably the point.Within hours of England walking off the pitch after winning the semi-final against the Netherlands, deepfakes of the team manager cropped up on social media, offering an expletive-filled, and deeply uncharacteristic, post-match take from the England manager. Continue reading...

The concept of a guaranteed income is gaining traction as a solution to the impact of AI and way to encourage more rewarding and socially valuable workWhen Elinor O'Donovan found out she had been randomly selected to participate in a basic income pilot scheme, she couldn't believe her luck. In return for a guaranteed salary of just over 1,400 (1,200) a month from the Irish government, all the 27-year-old artist had to do was fill out a bi-annual questionnaire about her wellbeing and how she spends her time. It was like winning the lottery. I was in such disbelief," she says.The income, which she will receive until September 2025, has enabled her to give up temping and focus instead on her art. It covers my living expenses, my rent, food and day-to-day stuff." Continue reading...

In Coventry, the GMB has been canvassing hard to represent workers officially - and the potentially historic result is due this weekOn a traffic island on the outskirts of Coventry, armed with handmade signs and a stack of orange bucket hats, a small but noisy team of organisers from the GMB union are taking on Amazon.More than 3,000 staff here - associates," as Amazon calls them - were given the opportunity to vote in a historic ballot last week that could force the company to recognise a union for the first time in the UK. It is one of several tussles over union recognition globally at the retail-to-cloud-services group founded by Jeff Bezos in his garage in 1994 and now worth more than $2 trillion. Continue reading...

Advertising to children is strictly regulated - but household brands are flooding the gaming platform Roblox with interactive marketing. Is this a danger to young users?In the blocky world of Chipotle Burrito Builder, players don the uniform of the Tex-Mex restaurant chain to make burritos for virtual customers. The available toppings are taken from Chipotle's real-world menu. Your shirt and cap are emblazoned with the Chipotle logo. And when the game launched two years ago, the first 100,000 players could earn Burrito Bucks" to exchange for a prize on Chipotle's website.Then there's Hyundai Mobility Adventure that lets you test-drive models of the Korean manufacturer's cars. Samsung Galaxy Station gives you a mock-up of the company's latest smartphone to take around extraterrestrial worlds. Telefonica Town challenges you to climb an assault course built of products from the telecommunication giant's catalogue. Vans World simply hands you a skateboard with which to bust a few kickflips across a park plastered with the shoe manufacturer's logo. Continue reading...

Jonathan Haidt's claims about the effects of devices on children's wellbeing have been criticised for lacking proof, but they tell us what we need to knowJonathan Haidt is a man with a mission. In his day job, he's a professor of ethics at New York University's Stern School of Business. But outside academia, he's a compelling campaigner. His mission: to alert us to the harms that social media and modern parenting are doing to our children. And his latest book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, pulls no punches. It is, said the New York Times, erudite, engaging, combative, crusading", which possibly explains why it has been on the newspaper's nonfiction bestseller list for 14 weeks (it is now at No 2).Haidt writes of a tidal wave" of increases in mental illness and distress beginning around 2012. Young adolescent girls are hit hardest, but boys are in pain, too, as are older teens. He sees two factors that have caused this. The first is the decline of play-based childhood caused by overanxious parenting, which allows children fewer opportunities for unsupervised play and restricts their movement. This translates into low-risk childhoods in which kids don't have the opportunity to make mistakes and learn from them. The second factor is the ubiquity of smartphones and the social media apps that thrive upon them. The result is the great rewiring of childhood" of his book's subtitle and an epidemic of mental illness and distress. Continue reading...

The absence of a body adds intrigue to this shot of the photographer's daughter on a rope swingPhil Doherty took this photograph on a family walk in a Warwickshire woodland in 2020. It was near the end of the first lockdown, and Doherty, his wife, Lisa, and their two daughters, Lulu andPearl, had taken the opportunity for a spot of rule-abiding recreation.We went to Oversley Wood and stopped by this rope swing. There was strong sunlight streaming through the leaves, creating pockets of brightness among the deep shadows of the trees," Doherty says. I'm always looking at light and shadow to create a strong image, and as Pearl was swinging back and forth, I noticed she would enter these pockets of light." Continue reading...

From long-range forecasts to real feel' temperatures, a good app can prepare you for the best and worst of weather

Queen Camilla is apparently fixated with the forecast on her phone, behind which lies not just granular details but surprisingly lucrative businesses

Guardrails' that previously existed removed as Meta says voters should be able to hear from presidential nomineesMeta has removed previous restrictions on the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Donald Trump as the 2024 election nears, the company announced on Friday.Trump was allowed to return to the social networks in 2023 with guardrails" in place, after being banned over his online behavior during the 6 January insurrection. Those guardrails have now been removed. Continue reading...

The most obvious function is for watching 3D movies or TV shows, but it may wind up being most useful at work

AT&T says a suspect was apprehended in connection with the hack, which included numbers customers texted or calledHackers stole call and text message records on nearly all" of AT&T's customers, the communications giant disclosed on Friday. The immense data breach took records of tens of millions of people's phone use from around a six-month period in 2022, along with a single day in January 2023. According to AT&T, a suspect has been apprehended.AT&T, which revealed the hack in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, stated that the data includes records of which numbers customers texted or called over a certain period of time, as well as the number of times the calls took place. The data doesn't include other kinds of personal information associated with the numbers or information on what was said during the interactions. Continue reading...

Regulators' findings suggest social network breached Digital Services Act and could be fined 6% of global turnoverElon Musk's X has been warned by the EU it potentially faces large fines after regulators said its blue-tick system for users is deceptive and in breach of its landmark social media rules. Musk responded with We look forward to a very public battle in court" late on Friday.Announcing preliminary findings from an investigation, the European Commission said the platform did not comply with the Digital Services Act. X faces fines of up to 6% of its global turnover if the preliminary findings are confirmed. Continue reading...

The haunting songs of the video game and TV series get to the heart of Joel and Ellie's story. The man behind them talks about the magical' process of composingThe Last of Us is a story about tension - the tension between love and loss, violence and intimacy, protecting and destroying, life and death. It's a study of how impossibly delicate life is, but also the terrifying stubbornness of our will to survive. As its composer, Gustavo Santaolalla's job was to navigate and soundtrack that tension, a mediator between the game's warring themes. His mission was to score music for a video game that was doing something different, and really had something to say.Santaolalla tells me that when he was a child in rural Argentina, one of his tutors quit on him after just a few lessons, telling his parents there is nothing I can teach him". His career proper began in 1967, when he co-founded the band Arco Iris, which specialised in fusing Latin-American folk with rock. Later, after leading a short-lived collective of Argentine musicians in Soluna, he began striking out on his own, releasing solo albums and composing for TV shows, adverts and, eventually, films (most notably Amores Perros, 21 Grams and The Motorcycle Diaries). Continue reading...

As Tata Steel and British Steel close their polluting blast furnaces, will Labour get behind the switch to more energy-efficient technology - and secure jobs?The warning is to wait for the snap, crackle and pop" as three glowing electrodes are dropped into an electric arc furnace in Cardiff. What follows sounds like thunder and lightning. It is a human-induced storm in a massive, ceramic-lined cup, holding 140 tonnes of rapidly melting steel.The plant, owned by Spain's Celsa, melts scrap steel using high-voltage electrical currents that generate the 1,600C needed to turn the metal to liquid. The glowing steel is then ready to be cast, twisted and crushed into the rods used to reinforce concrete. Continue reading...

While ultrasound services are normal practice in many countries, software being tested in Uganda will allow a scan without the need for specialists, providing an incentive for pregnant women to visit health services early onMothers-to-be have become used to the first glimpse of their baby via the fuzzy black and white ultrasound scan, an image that can be shown to friends and family. But it remains a luxury in many parts of the world. Now AI is being used to develop technology to bring the much-anticipated pregnancy milestone to women who are most in need of the scan's medical checkup on a baby's health.A pilot project in Uganda is using AI software to power ultrasound imaging to not only scan unborn babies but also to encourage women to attend health services at an earlier stage in their pregnancies, helping to reduce stillbirths and complications. Continue reading...

Changes will remain in force for a decade after regulators accused tech giant of abusing its dominant market positionThe EU on Thursday accepted Apple's pledge to open its tap to pay" iPhone payment system to rivals as a way to resolve an antitrust case and head off a potentially hefty fine.The European Commission, the EU's executive arm and top antitrust enforcer, said it approved the commitments that Apple offered earlier this year and will make them legally binding. Continue reading...

In this primordial take on the life simulator, you bring about the creation of an entire solar systemMeteors hurtling at planet-decimating speeds, luminous balls of hot gas, black holes from which not even light can escape: outer space can fuel nightmares, yet for Celine Veltman, a 28-year-old Dutch game-maker who spent her childhood stargazing, it is the stuff of dreams. She's translating this wide-eyed wonder at the universe into a video game with the grandest of ambitions: the creation of a solar system. Rocks collide with one another, chemical reactions occur: lo, a planet - and life itself - is born in the depths of the cosmos.The bright, illustrative visuals of Curiosmos are more children's picture book than Terrence Malick, an expression of Veltman's aims for the project and its moment of inception. I want to make everyone as enthusiastic about space as I am," she says, talking ebulliently about supernovae and protoplanetary disks. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: The Call Your Girlfriend host turns mediator in the Pop Culture Debate Club. Plus: five of the best poetry podcasts Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up herePeppa Pig's Play-A-Long Podcast

Despite being told there was no crossing to be paid', a driver received 23 penalty noticesIn November I had to start using my boss's car for work. After making my first journey across the Dartford crossing on the M25, I tried to pay the Dart charge. I typed in the car's details but the website clearly stated there was no crossing to be paid".I presumed that this meant my boss had the car on his own Dart account. As a result, I did not add it to my own account. Continue reading...

CMA draft guidance says platforms must also tackle fake reviews and sanction rogue tradersPopular trader recommendation websites must vet the firms they advertise and tackle fake reviews under new rules designed to protect households from cowboy builders and tradespeople.Nationally, unscrupulous traders cost homeowners about 1.4bn a year, according to trading standards authorities, a problem that is escalating as demand for home improvements, loft conversions and extensions increases. Continue reading...

Judge said court lacked jurisdiction for case, in which workers argued they didn't receive proper compensationA US court on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit claiming Elon Musk refused to pay at least $500m in severance to thousands of Twitter employees he fired in mass layoffs after buying the social media company now known as X.US district judge Trina Thompson in San Francisco ruled on Tuesday that the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (Erisa) governing benefit plans did not cover the former employees' claims, and therefore she lacked jurisdiction. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: Fallout and Baldur's Gate veteran Feargus Urquhart on the hard-to-define genre Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereI play a lot of RPGs (when I can make time for them), and have done since I was old enough to read. I was an obsessive reader of fantasy as a small child, an interest that naturally carried over when I started playing games on the SNES, fascinated by the worlds and characters contained in those cartridges. It's an excitingly heterogeneous genre, encompassing everything from Baldur's Gate 3 on the nerdier, D&D-adjacent side of things to Final Fantasy in the ultra-stylish Japanese RPG corner and Mass Effect in the story-driven realm. (And then there's Dragon's Dogma, off on its own island, paying no attention to what any of the rest are doing). There's so much variety that I've often asked myself how to define RPG.Is an RPG a game where you create your own character and customise their abilities, personalising a build to suit you? A game that you can play in plenty of different ways, like Bethesda's Elder Scrolls? Must it have a non-linear story? Should you have choices about how things play out? There are a multitude of exceptions to any one of these features of role-playing games: sometimes you play your own character, sometimes you're given one to inhabit; sometimes you fight with magic and swords, sometimes with guns and telekinesis; sometimes you take turns carefully planning moves as in a strategy game, sometimes you run in there and mash buttons like you do in an action game. I'm no genre pedant - arguments about whether, say, Zelda counts" as an RPG send me to sleep - but still, it's inconsistent. Continue reading...

The Twitch streamer and comedian curated her list by scrolling back to 2020 in her TikTok likes. Some call it objective research, others call it retina damage

You have a right to return the product if you think it's faulty, says policy expert Kat George - but it will take some time and effort to claim your refund

Startup's new approach means Apple will no longer be able to appoint executive to similar roleMicrosoft has withdrawn its observer seat on the OpenAI board and Apple will no longer be able to appoint an executive to a similar role, amid regulatory scrutiny of big tech's relationship with artificial intelligence startups.Microsoft, the largest financial backer of the ChatGPT developer, announced the move in a letter to the startup, as first reported by the Financial Times. It said the resignation of the observer role, which does not carry a vote in board decisions, was effective immediately". Continue reading...

Switchee aims to protect health and cut bills by installing its technology in 1m homesA British startup which uses technology to prevent renters from living in cold, damp homes has raised fresh funds to expand as landlords belatedly try to tackle outbreaks of mould in crumbling social housing.Switchee has secured 5m, split equally between an existing investor, Axa IM Alts, and Octopus Ventures, part of the group which includes household gas and electricity supplier Octopus Energy. Continue reading...

In this free-to-play gacha game, Earth's survivors balance dystopian battles with cute moments helping locals

Campaign for better pay and benefits stepped up, says union representing about 30,000 staff in South KoreaThousands of workers in South Korea have pledged to extend indefinitely the first strike at Samsung Electronics, ramping up a campaign for better pay and benefits at one of the world's largest smartphone and AI chip makers.A union representing about 30,000 staff - about a quarter of its employees in South Korea - said members were extending industrial action that was originally meant to last only three days, after management failed to give any indication that it would hold talks with them. Continue reading...

Meta says it would remove content attacking Zionists" when it is not explicitly about the political movement'Meta Platforms said on Tuesday it would start taking down more posts that target Zionists" when the term is used to refer to Jewish people and Israelis rather than representing supporters of the political movement.The Facebook and Instagram parent said in a blog post it would remove content attacking Zionists' when it is not explicitly about the political movement" and uses antisemitic stereotypes or threatens harm through intimidation or violence directed against Jews or Israelis. Continue reading...

Vacuum cleaner maker will axe about 1,000 jobs as part of global cost-cutting driveThe vacuum cleaner and air-filter maker Dyson is cutting about 1,000 jobs in the UK as part of a global restructure, reducing its British workforce by more than a quarter.Staff were told on Tuesday morning about the cuts as part of moves to reduce the business's 15,000-strong workforce around the world amid a wider cost-cutting drive. Continue reading...

Artificial intelligence is heralded as helping the NHS fight cancer. But some warn it's a distraction from more urgent challenges Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article hereWhat if AI isn't that great? What if we've been overstating its potential to a frankly dangerous degree? That's the concern of leading cancer experts in the NHS, who warn that the health service is obsessing over new tech to the point that it's putting patient safety at risk. From our story yesterday:In a sharply worded warning, the cancer experts say that novel solutions' such as new diagnostic tests have been wrongly hyped as magic bullets' for the cancer crisis, but none address the fundamental issues of cancer as a systems problem'.A common fallacy' of NHS leaders is the assumption that new technologies can reverse inequalities, the authors add. The reality is that tools such as AI can create additional barriers for those with poor digital or health literacy'.AI is a workflow tool, but actually, is it going to improve survival? Well, we've got limited evidence of that so far. Yes, it's something that could potentially help the workforce, but you still need people to take a patient's history, to take blood, to do surgery, to break bad news.Become the centre for digital expertise and delivery in government, improving how the government and public services interact with citizens.We will act as a leader and partner across government, with industry and the research communities, to boost Britain's economic performance and power-up our public services to improve the lives and life chances of people through the application of science and technology. Continue reading...