Researchers say bans need to be part of wider strategy to tackle negative impact of mobile use on childrenBanning smartphones at school does not by itself improve academic grades and children's wellbeing, a study suggests.Researchers from the University of Birmingham did find that spending longer on phones and social media in general was linked to lower grades, poor sleep, disruptive behaviour and a lack of exercise. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6V2DX)
New smartphone has 2025's fastest Qualcomm chip, two-day battery life, great camera and standout designOnePlus is trying to prove you don't need a Samsung or a Google to have a top-tier premium Android in 2025, and mostly succeeds.The OnePlus 13 is the latest in the Oppo sub-brand's series of keenly priced phones. Despite becoming more expensive every year, the 899 (1,049/$899) new model still costs a little less than its 1,000-plus Google and Samsung rivals. Continue reading...
Revenue slowdown reflects challenging year' firm has had and 2025 may be year it loses competitive edge, say analystsShares of Google's parent company Alphabet fell more than 6% after the company reported a slight miss in expected revenue on Tuesday. The company reported $96.5bn, compared with analyst expectations of $96.67 bn. The company surpassed investors' expectations of $2.13 in earnings per share, however, with $2.15 in EPS.Q4 was a strong quarter driven by our leadership in AI and momentum across the business," Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai wrote in a statement. We are building, testing, and launching products and models faster than ever, and making significant progress in compute and driving efficiencies." Continue reading...
Elon Musk has achieved astonishing power in Trump's administration - and spent the weekend wielding itSince declaring his support for Donald Trump in July of last year and subsequently spending more than $250m on his re-election effort, Elon Musk has rapidly accumulated political influence and positioned himself at the heart of the new administration. Now as prominent as the president himself, Musk has begun to make use of that power, making decisions that could affect the health of millions of people, gaining access to highly sensitive personal data, and attacking anyone who opposes him. Musk, the world's richest man and an unelected official, has achieved an astonishing level of power over the federal government.Over the weekend, workers with Musk's department of government efficiency" (Doge) clashed with civil servants over demands for unfettered access to the computer systems of major US government agencies in a breakneck series of confrontations. When the dust settled, several top officials who opposed the takeover had been pushed out, and Musk's allies had gained control. Continue reading...
Meta's Yann LeCun says current systems too limited to create domestic robots and fully automated carsOne of the godfathers" of modern artificial intelligence has predicted a further revolution in the technology by the end of the decade, and says current systems are too limited to create domestic robots and fully automated cars.Yann LeCun, the chief AI scientist at Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, said new breakthroughs are needed in order for the systems to understand and interact with the physical world. Continue reading...
Meta and Microsoft commit to tens of billions to build out AI infrastructure, having lavished tens of billions alreadyHello, and welcome to TechScape. It's been another wild few days in Elon Musk news. Stay tuned for our coverage. In personal news, I deleted Instagram from my phone to try out a month without it there. Instead of scrolling, I've been listening to Shygirl and Lady Gaga's new music. Continue reading...
Home affairs minister Tony Burke says decision follows advice from intelligence agencies and is not in response to AI chatbot's country of origin, China
From an intergalactic puzzle-solving beetle to a search for the Tusk of Ganesh, developers have put Sony's impressive console to astoundingly imaginative useIf you're just discovering PlayStation 5 a few years after its debut, you've arrived at a great time. Sony's in-house studios have produced some of their best work in this generation, exploiting the technical prowess of the console while crafting vast narratives and interesting characters. Meanwhile, both major third-party studios and tiny indie developers have exploited the machine and its innovative controller to astounding effect. Continue reading...
O2 has introduced 'AI granny' Daisy for a short period to show what could be done with artificial intelligence to counter the scourge of scammers, who have become so ubiquitous. Daisy is not a real grandmother but an AI bot created by computer scientists to combat fraud. Her task is simply to waste the time of the people who are trying to scam her. Using a mixture of ambivalence, confusion about how computers work and an eagerness to reminisce about her younger days, the '78 years young' Daisy draws sighs and snapping from fraudsters on the other end of the line
Experts and thinkers signed open letter expressing concern over irresponsible development of technologyArtificial intelligence systems capable of feelings or self-awareness are at risk of being harmed if the technology is developed irresponsibly, according to an open letter signed by AI practitioners and thinkers including Sir Stephen Fry.More than 100 experts have put forward five principles for conducting responsible research into AI consciousness, as rapid advances raise concerns that such systems could be considered sentient. Continue reading...
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner and Angela Giuffrida on (#6V0WH)
Husam El Gomati, who reports on links between Italian government and Libya's coastguard, fears for his sourcesA Sweden-based Libyan activist who has been a vocal critic of Italy and its dealings in Libya was alerted by WhatsApp last week that he had been targeted with military-grade spyware, raising new concerns about the possible use of powerful cyberweapons by European governments.The alleged breach of Husam El Gomati's mobile phone - as well as the mobile phones of 89 other activists, journalists and members of civil society - was discovered by WhatsApp in late December. Continue reading...
ChatGPT developer announces AI agent amid growing challenge from rivals such as China's DeepSeekOpenAI has stepped up its development of artificial intelligence agents by announcing a new tool that crafts reports which it claims can match the output of a research analyst.The ChatGPT developer said the new tool, deep research", accomplishes in 10 minutes what would take a human many hours". Continue reading...
by Peter Walker Senior political correspondent on (#6V0RG)
Then opposition leader's address was dangerously obvious' and lacked two-factor authentication, book reportedly saysKeir Starmer stopped using a personal email account when he was opposition leader after being warned about a suspected hack by a Russian group, it has been reported.The suspected breach happened in 2022, shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to a book about the Labour leader, reported the Times. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Cern's next director general Mark Thomson says AI is paving the way for huge advances in particle physicsAdvanced artificial intelligence is to revolutionise fundamental physics and could open a window on to the fate of the universe, according to Cern's next director general.Prof Mark Thomson, the British physicist who will assume leadership of Cern on 1 January 2026, says machine learning is paving the way for advances in particle physics that promise to be comparable to the AI-powered prediction of protein structures that earned Google DeepMind scientists a Nobel prize in October. Continue reading...
Trump's treasury secretary gives the world's richest person entry to one of the most sensitive US government databasesElon Musk's government-slashing crew, the department of government efficiency", has been given access to the federal payment system, exposing the sensitive personal data of millions of Americans as well as details of public contractors who compete directly with Musk's own businesses, an influential US senator has confirmed.Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon and the ranking member of the Senate finance committee, posted on Bluesky that sources had confirmed to him that the Treasury's highly sensitive database had been opened up to the tech billionaire and his team. Continue reading...
The long-running series in which readers answer other readers' questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsWhy can't I stop looking at myself on video calls? It's become obsessive, to the point where I have to turn off the camera. Daniel Brown, LondonPost your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published next Sunday. Continue reading...
While privacy fears are justified, the main beef Silicon Valley has is that China's chatbot is democratising the technologyNo, it was not a Sputnik moment". The launch last month of DeepSeek R1, the Chinese generative AI or chatbot, created mayhem in the tech world, with stocks plummeting and much chatter about the US losing its supremacy in AI technology. Yet, for all the disruption, the Sputnik analogy reveals less about DeepSeek than about American neuroses.The original Sputnik moment came on 4 October 1957 when the Soviet Union shocked the world by launching Sputnik 1, the first time humanity had sent a satellite into orbit. It was, to anachronistically borrow a phrase from a later and even more momentous landmark, one giant leap for mankind", in Neil Armstrong's historic words as he took a small step" on to the surface of the moon. Continue reading...
The first volume of the tech baron turned philanthropist's memoirs focuses on his parent's struggles to control him - and a painful early lossThe enduring mystery about William Henry Gates III is this: how did a precocious and sometimes obnoxious kid evolve into a billionaire tech lord and then into an elder statesman and philanthropist? This book gives us only the first part of the story, tracing Gates's evolution from birth in 1955 to the founding of Microsoft in 1975. For the next part of the story, we will just have to wait for the sequel.In a way, the volume's title describes it well. In the era before machine learning and AI, when computer programs were exclusively written by humans, the term source code" meant something. It described computer programs that could be read - and understood, if you knew the programming language - enabling you to explain why the machine did what it did. Continue reading...
UK will be first country to bring in tough new laws to tackle the technology behind the creation of abusive materialBritain is to become the first country to introduce laws tackling the use of AI tools to produce child sexual abuse images, amid warnings from law enforcement agencies of an alarming proliferation in such use of the technology.In an attempt to close a legal loophole that has been a major concern for police and online safety campaigners, it will become illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to generate child sexual abuse material. Continue reading...
Sam found himself getting sucked deeper and deeper in to betting, sometimes risking 11,000 in a day. Now a judge has ruled he was unlawfully targetedAt 1.17pm on 15 August 2018, Sam* logged in to his online betting account and gambled five days' worth of wages. Already deep in debt - having taken out 13 loans over three years, and with his marriage under strain - he had been desperate to quit.But Sky Betting & Gaming, operator of Sky Bet, Casino, and Vegas, had other ideas. Having labelled him a high value" customer, and not realising he was at risk, it had sent him an email promising a 100 bonus if he spent 400 on a casino game. Well done on making it past level 2. Can you make it even further this week?" it said. Soon after receiving it, Sam deposited 400. Continue reading...
The cheap Chinese chatbot has stunned tech giants - and opened up the possibility that other countries, not just China, could now afford to enter the AI raceAt 2.16pm California time last Sunday, the US billionaire tech investor Marc Andreessen called it. DeepSeek R1 is AI's Sputnik moment," he posted on X.A Chinese startup, operating since 2023 and helmed by a millennial mathematician, had unveiled a new chatbot that seemed to equal the performance of America's leading models at a fraction of the cost. Continue reading...
The AI startup has upended the industry by developing a model that costs much less to produce - and is available free to a universe of tinkerersNothing cheers up a tech columnist more than the sight of $600bn being wiped off the market cap of an overvalued tech giant in a single day. And yet last Monday that's what happened to Nvidia, the leading maker of electronic picks and shovels for the AI gold rush. It was the biggest one-day slump for any company in history, and it was not alone - shares of companies in semiconductor, power and infrastructure industries exposed to AI collectively shed more than $1tn in value on the same day.The proximate cause of this chaos was the news that a Chinese tech startup of whom few had hitherto heard had released DeepSeek R1, a powerful AI assistant that was much cheaper to train and operate than the dominant models of the US tech giants - and yet was comparable in competence to OpenAI's o1 reasoning" model. Just to illustrate the difference: R1 was said to have cost only $5.58m to build, which is small change compared with the billions that OpenAI and co have spent on their models; and R1 is about 15 times more efficient (in terms of resource use) than anything comparable made by Meta. Continue reading...
James Florence, 36, agreed to plead guilty after using victim's information to guide chatbots in impersonationA man from Massachusetts has agreed to plead guilty to a seven-year cyberstalking campaign that included using artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots to impersonate a university professor and invite men online to her home address for sex.James Florence, 36, used platforms such as CrushOn.ai and JanitorAI, which allow users to design their own chatbots and direct them how to respond to other users during chats, including in sexually suggestive and explicit ways, according to court documents seen by the Guardian. The victim's identity has been kept confidential by law enforcement officials. Continue reading...
Chatbots we tested can write a mean sonnet and struggled with images of clocks, but vary in willingness to talk politicsChatGPT and its owners must have hoped it was a hallucination.But DeepSeek is very real. Continue reading...
by Hannah Al-Othman North of England correspondent on (#6TZNN)
Experts say use of groups to warn others about dangerous men is indictment on governments' failure to keep women safeAny info on Chris* please? Thanks." The words in a Facebook post, above three pictures of a man. In the comments, a woman replies: He was also posted a few days ago by someone."Further down, a second woman replies: I'm shaking, I'm his fiancee." Continue reading...
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington on (#6TZHF)
Francesco Cancellato, whose reporting exposes fascists within PM Meloni's far-right party, condemns violation'An Italian investigative journalist who is known for exposing young fascists within prime minister Giorgia Meloni's far-right party was targeted with spyware made by Israel-based Paragon Solutions, according to a WhatsApp notification received by the journalist.Francesco Cancellato, the editor-in-chief of the Italian investigative news outlet Fanpage, was the first person to come forward publicly after WhatsApp announced on Friday that 90 journalists and other members of civil society had been targeted by the spyware. Continue reading...
Move to issue 03-mini model follows sudden arrival of much cheaper Chinese rival DeepSeek's R1OpenAI is releasing a new artificial intelligence model for free, after the company said it would speed up product releases in response to the emergence of a Chinese rival.The startup behind ChatGPT is issuing the AI, called o3-mini, after the surprise success of a rival product by China's DeepSeek. It will be available without charge - albeit with usage limits - to people who use the free version of OpenAI's chatbot. Continue reading...
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Washington on (#6TZ1G)
Messaging app said it had high confidence' some users were targeted and possibly compromised' by Paragon Solutions spywareNearly 100 journalists and other members of civil society using WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Meta, were targeted by spyware owned by Paragon Solutions, an Israeli maker of hacking software, the company alleged on Friday.The journalists and other civil society members were being alerted of a possible breach of their devices, with WhatsApp telling the Guardian it had high confidence" that the 90 users in question had been targeted and possibly compromised". Continue reading...
If China has done to Sam Altman what his OpenAI has been accused of doing to creatives, it would take a heart of stone not to laughI once saw an episode of America's Dumbest Criminals where a man called the cops to report his car stolen, only for it to turn out he'd stolen it from someone else in the first place. I couldn't help thinking of him this week while watching OpenAI's Sam Altman wet his pants about the fact that a Chinese hedge fund might have made unauthorised use of his own chatbot models, including ChatGPT, to train its new little side project. This is the cheaper, more open, extremely share-price-slashing DeepSeek.As news of DeepSeek played havoc with the tech stock market, OpenAI pressed its hanky to its nose and released a statement: We are aware of and reviewing indications that DeepSeek may have inappropriately distilled our models, and will share information as we know more," this ran. We take aggressive, proactive countermeasures to protect our technology." Oooooooooh! I want to say welcome to America's Dumbest Tech Barons", except I can't, because I think we all know that no law enforcement is coming to get Sam for the stuff he's alleged to have made unauthorised use of first. That was the good type of alleged theft, whatever the claims of all the lawsuits belatedly trying to claw something back for the alleged copyright victims of his firm's own inappropriate methods.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...
It's bizarre that a game featuring Hitler and Mussolini on their rise to power feels comforting, but here at least it is entirely permitted - indeed encouraged - to beat up NazisI have played many games that have great openings. Final Fantasy VII puts you in the middle of a raid. Mass Effect 2 introduces you to a world, then immediately destroys it. Sonic the Hedgehog bombards you with impossibly fast objects hurtling through a world of colourful danger.I have never played a game in my life that starts by telling you not to be a Nazi. But that's what greeted me when I played Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Before a single artefact was raided, before a whip was cracked, before you even see lead actor Troy Baker doing his best Harrison Ford impression in next generation graphics (amazing!), comes this warning: Continue reading...
In contrast to the current crop of swaggering tech bros, the Microsoft founder comes across as wry and self-deprecating in this memoir of starting outBill Gates is the John McEnroe of the tech world: once a snotty brat whom everyone loved to hate, now grown up into a beloved elder statesman. Former rivals, most notably Apple's Steve Jobs, have since departed this dimension, while theGates Foundation, focusing on unsexybut important technologies such as malaria nets, was doing effective altruism" long before that became a fashionable term among philosophically minded tech bros.
Using thermogalvanic technology as cooling mechanism may significantly reduce power usage, research saysA novel use of technology could make refrigerators cheaper and more environmentally friendly, according to a report.Domestic refrigerators and freezers consumed close to 4% of global electricity in 2019, according to one estimate, so an innovation that significantly reduces their power usage would not be insignificant. Continue reading...
Investors pay close attention to tech company's foray into AI after Apple Intelligence's glitches and inaccuraciesApple slightly beat analysts' expectations in its first-quarter earnings for fiscal year 2025 on Thursday. The iPhone-maker's revenue rose by 4%, coming in at $124.30bn, barely above estimates of $124.12bn. Earnings per share were $2.40, just ahead of analysts' expectations of $2.35.Shares rose more than 8% in extended trading after Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, indicated in an earnings call on Thursday that the company was on the trajectory for revenue growth next quarter. Continue reading...
Rachel Mason's three-part documentary about parents who put their lives online to make big money asks questions about entitlement, child safety, relationships with followers and moreThose of you who already feel that the world is too much would be best advised to stay well away from all three parts of the documentary An Update on Our Family. The family in question are the Stauffers - married couple Myka and James and their children - who were, until very recently, colossally successful family vloggers.Director Rachel Mason's series starts slowly, spending most of the first hour introducing the uninitiated to the world of YouTubers who specialise in filling their channels with videos of their gorgeous homes, gorgeous children and perfect lives, and to the fans who glom on to these affectless yet somehow intimate and generally wildly aspirational portraits of domestic bliss. I was literally a part of their life every day," says former devotee Hannah Cho. She and around 700,000 subscribers to The Stauffer Life channel watched as Myka revealed positive pregnancy tests, had babies, a miscarriage, gave house cleaning tips, appraisals of her post-partum body and altogether so much desirable content that she began to accumulate sponsorship deals and the family's videos became the family's (very) lucrative business. Continue reading...
Settlement originates from lawsuit by president against the platform, one of several filed after 6 January violenceMeta has agreed to pay $25m to settle a lawsuit with Donald Trump. The suit originated in 2021 when Trump sued the social media company for suspending his accounts after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. The settlement was first reported by the Wall Street Journal and has been confirmed by a Meta spokesperson.The majority of the settlement, $22m, will go toward a fund to pay for Trump's presidential library, according to the Wall Street Journal. The remainder will pay for legal fees and go to other plaintiffs listed in the case. The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Continue reading...
Mark Zuckerberg tells analysts this is going to be a really big year' as company sees quarterly revenues of $48.39bnAfter an unprecedented delay, Meta reported earnings more than half an hour after market close on Wednesday. The company posted $48.39bn in fourth-quarter revenue and earnings per share of $8.02, handily beating Wall Street projections of $46.9bn and $6.75 in earnings-per-share.We continue to make good progress on AI, glasses and the future of social media," said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO. I'm excited to see these efforts scale further in 2025." Continue reading...
Despite disappointing sales and delivery figures, the company's stock price has doubled in the past yearTesla reported earnings for the fourth quarter of 2024 on Wednesday after US stock markets closed, capping a bruising year for the company's sales but a stellar one for its stock price.The car company reported $0.73 per share and $25.71bn in revenue, slightly below Wall Street analysts predictions of revenue coming in at $27.22bn. Profit also declined year-over-year. Continue reading...
Microsoft beat Wall Street's expectations as questions over multibillion-dollar spending on AI mountMicrosoft reported its second-quarter earnings for fiscal year 2025 on Wednesday, beating market expectations even as questions over multibillion-dollar spending on artificial intelligence continue to mount, spurred by DeepSeek's shock to the US stock market just days ago.The tech giant reported earnings per share of $3.23, an increase of 10% on a year earlier, and revenue of $69.6bn, an increase of 12%. Wall Street had expected $3.11 a share from revenue of $68.9bn. Continue reading...
by Robert Booth, Jakub Krupa and Angela Giuffrida in on (#6TXGY)
Italian and Irish regulators want answers on how data harvested by chatbot could be used by Chinese governmentThe Chinese AI platform DeepSeek has become unavailable for download from some app stores in Italy as regulators in Rome and in Ireland demanded answers from the company about its handling of citizens' data.Amid growing concern on Wednesday about how data harvested by the new chatbot could be used by the Chinese government, the app disappeared from the Apple and Google app stores in Italy with customers seeing messages that said it was currently not available in the country or area you are in" for Apple and the download was not supported" for Google, Reuters reported. Continue reading...
ChatGPT creator warns Chinese startups are constantly' using its technology to develop competing productsOpenAI has warned that Chinese startups are constantly" using its technology to develop competing products and said it is reviewing" allegations that DeepSeek used the ChatGPT maker's AI models to create a rival chatbot.OpenAI and its partner Microsoft - which has invested $13bn in the San Francisco-based AI developer - have been investigating whether proprietary technology had been obtained in an unauthorised manner through a technique known as distillation". Continue reading...
Ahead of a new digital archive of video game history, I got to thinking about how the games, magazines and other material says as much about the player as the games themselvesI just finished writing a feature about the Video Game History Foundation in Oakland, California, and how it is preparing to share its digital archive of games magazines. From 30 January, you'll be able to visit the institute's website and explore a collection of about 1,500 publications from throughout the history of games, all scanned in high detail, all searchable for keywords. It's a magnificent resource for researchers and those who just want to find the first-ever review of Tetris or Pokemon. I can't wait to visit.While researching the article, I spoke to John O'Shea and Ann Wain from the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield, which is also collecting games mags and other printed ephemera. They said something that really fascinated me. The museum is looking for donations to build its archive, but its focus is not so much on the magazines themselves, but on who brings them in. We're particularly interested in fan perspectives," O'Shea told me. We're not intending to develop an exhaustive collection of every video game magazine ever made - we're interested in the full suite of an individual's video game experience ... in how games connect to their lives." Wain continued: We're interested in the stories of why - why did they collect these particular things, what were they looking for? It's that kind of social context we're after." Continue reading...
Wide-ranging investigation says impact on work likely to be profound, but opinion on risk of human extinction variesThe International AI Safety report is a wide-ranging document that acknowledges an array of challenges posed by a technology that is advancing at dizzying speed.The document, commissioned after the 2023 global AI safety summit, covers numerous threats from deepfakes to aiding cyberattacks and the use of biological weapons, as well as the impact on jobs and the environment. Continue reading...
Our reviewer sheds some light on adding brightness to your mornings with the best dawn simulation alarms, from Lumie and Philips to Hatch The best sleep aids recommended by experts: from blue light-blockers to apps to help you napTo wake each day in darkness is a plight you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, yet that's what many of us do routinely throughout winter. Getting up in the dark decouples our life from our circadian rhythm (our body clock), with bodily processes such as cognition and metabolism put to work before they're fully prepped.Thank heavens, then, for sunrise alarm clocks. These dawn simulation" devices glow with gradually intensifying brightness as your wake-up time approaches, kickstarting your circadian rhythm before you get out of bed. For many users, this results in a happier, healthier start to the day.Best overall sunrise alarm clock:
The industry's liberal reputation is misleading. Its reactionary tendencies - celebrating wealth, power and traditional masculinity - have been clear since the dotcom mania of the 1990sAn influential Silicon Valley publication runs a cover story lamenting the pussification" of tech. A major tech CEO lambasts a Black civil rights leader's calls for diversifying the tech workforce. Technologists rage against the PC police".No, this isn't Silicon Valley in the age of Maga. It's the tech industry of the 1990s, when observers first raised concerns about the rightwing bend of Silicon Valley and the potential for technofascism". Despite the industry's (often undeserved) reputation for liberalism, its reactionary foundations were baked in almost from the beginning. As Silicon Valley enters a second Trump administration, the gendered roots of its original reactionary movement offer insight into today's rightward turn. Continue reading...
Audit watchdog finds 58 critical IT systems assessed in 2024 had significant gaps in cyber-resilience'The threat of potentially devastating cyber-attacks against UK government departments is severe and advancing quickly", with dozens of critical IT systems vulnerable to an expected regular pattern of significant strikes, ministers have been warned.The National Audit Office (NAO) found that 58 critical government IT systems independently assessed in 2024 had significant gaps in cyber-resilience", and the government did not know how vulnerable at least 228 ageing and outdated legacy" IT systems were to cyber-attack. The NAO did not name the systems for fear of helping attackers choose targets. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian