Late-night hosts weighed in on Trump's relationship with tech leaders and the White House's new AI-powered siteOn Tuesday night, late-night hosts discussed a Maha summit in Washington DC, the White House's new AI-powered website and Donald Trump once again falling asleep on live TV. Continue reading...
Fed up with condensation, mould and musty smells? A dehumidifier could help - plus, they're a cheaper way to dry laundry compared with tumble dryers The best electric blankets and heated throws, tested by our expertYou don't have to live in the American deep south to feel the effects of humidity. At home, just breathing makes the air more humid, let alone cooking or showering.And when it gets too humid, it's bad for our health as well as our homes. In fact, the two are connected: humidity lets mould and dust mites flourish - and they, in turn, can trigger asthma and allergies. Continue reading...
There's no Leon, Claire or Ada Wong in Cregger's adaptation. Instead, it re-creates something more fundamental - the strange, terrifying experience of actually playing the game Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereI've been surprised by the number of Resident Evil fans complaining on social media about Zach Cregger's cinematic adaptation of the survival horror series. It's not a real Resident Evil movie," they've claimed. Were we watching the same film? Certainly, it doesn't feature any of the familiar heroes - there's no Leon, no Claire, no Ada Wong - and there's a distinct lack of recognisable antagonists and well-known locations. Despite all of this, Cregger's interpretation is one of the most accurate and interesting video game films ever made.On the surface, it's about a zombifying virus that gets accidentally released in Raccoon City by the Umbrella Corporation. These are, of course, the foundations of the Resi mythos. More interestingly, Cregger seeks to replicate and explore the structural and narrative conventions of the series. In the film, the player character, hapless courier Bryan Hodukavich, is thrust into a viral outbreak, with no weapons and no idea what's going on. He is then submerged into an uncanny shadow world of escalating peril and body horror. The film takes us through a series of locations dragged straight from the games - an abandoned farmhouse, a road tunnel crammed with abandoned cars, a hospital and the obligatory sewer level. As he progresses, Bryan finds increasingly powerful weapons, from a handgun to an assault rifle - but he is always short on ammo. And there are typewriters in at least two scenes! Continue reading...
For those employed in arduous solitary work such as cab driving, a marathon phone call is the perfect place to navigate the dislocations of immigrant life
Kenjiro Tsuda wins case against TikTok account in landmark Japanese verdict to protect publicity rightsA court in Japan has ruled that the human voice has legal protection after a landmark case involving a well-known actor and a TikTok account that he claimed had cloned his lustrous" baritone voice in its AI-generated videos.Tokyo district court said on Wednesday that voices should enjoy the same protection as publicity rights, at the end of a closely watched legal action brought against TikTok by Kenjiro Tsuda - best known for voicing the character Kento Nanami in the anime Jujutsu Kaisen. Continue reading...
Deepfakes and misinformation driven by artificial intelligence have become a point of deep concern for legislators, advocates and the publicAn image of Bianca Motley Broom, the mayor of College Park, Georgia, kissing a man - who was not her husband - in a bar spread far and wide on Facebook. The fact that it's fake is spreading faster, now, but only after it had been seen by thousands of people.I think this is a sad commentary about where we are in our democracy, and where we are in our political discourse," Motley Broom said. It also seeks to reinforce really tired stereotypes about women in leadership." Continue reading...
Swedish-American actor exhumed for bizarre, humourless 99 seconds that give us another reason to resent AIPoor Greta Garbo.Perhaps, in life, she thought her final indignity would be the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore TV sketch from 1970, showing Pete as the legendary recluse standing on the back of a flatbed truck as it rumbles through the crowded city streets, shouting at everyone through a megaphone: I vant to be alone!" Continue reading...
by Alexandra Topping Political correspondent on (#78QPS)
Exclusive: Culture secretary says UK will crack down further and be pioneer of tech as a force for good'Lisa Nandy has warned technology firms that the government's online safety crackdown is not finished, saying that banning under-16s from social media platforms is only a staging post".Earlier this year the government announced that teenagers under the age of 16 would be banned from accessing high-risk" social media apps, while safer platforms would be subjected to restrictions. Continue reading...
Relatives of Hollywood legend say her doppelganger could now be used for more glamorous rolesShe shimmered in Hollywood's silent movie era and lit up the first talkies - now Greta Garbo may be about to star in cinema's new AI age.More than a century after her screen debut and decades after her ashes were laid to rest in a Swedish woodland cemetery, the Hollywood superstar's descendants are ready to consider an AI version of her taking a 21st-century film role. Continue reading...
Company's product comes weeks after Meta introduced its own artificially intelligent agent MuseLess than 24 hours after OpenAI announced it would scrap the launch of an artificial intelligence model over safety concerns, the company debuted a whole new suite of AI tools.During its annual showcase for developers in San Francisco on Tuesday, Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, enthusiastically unveiled an AI agent called dots" that he said was more ambitious" than ChatGPT and a whole new way to work with AI". Continue reading...
Researchers say the IPO market was off to a solid start but tailed off in the third quarterSmart ring maker Oura Inc says it is postponing a planned initial public offering due to market uncertainty".In a Tuesday press release, Oura said it is delaying the stock market float despite strong demand". Continue reading...
Health secretary calls for medical and lifestyle details to be sent to doctors and AI to address chronic disease epidemic'Robert F Kennedy Jr laid out an expansive vision for collecting, sharing and analyzing US health information at a Maha event hosted by a close ally and outspoken anti-vaccine activist.Medical and lifestyle data, from doctor's visits to exercise, should be connected and shared with the government and independent researchers, where it can be searched by AI - including potential links between vaccines and health outcomes including autism and mortality, suggested Kennedy, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and a longtime vaccine skeptic. Continue reading...
The new AI agent, Muse, was released last week and has been downloaded by 3 million usersWhen Usman asked if a keyboard for sale on Facebook Marketplace was still available on Saturday, he received an enthusiastic and immediate response.Yep still available!" wrote Matt Robb. Continue reading...
The industry is engaged in a perverse quest to replace humans. We cannot cede the best tools available to the other sideI don't need to tell you that people hate AI. The list of grievances is long: slop, cheating, bias, enfeeblement, electricity bills, environmental destruction, exploitation, theft, cybercrime, doom. But resistance to the technology has often taken the form of shaming people for personally using it, with precious little organizing against the companies building the machines. This is perplexing, given that those companies are attempting to render us obsolete.The executives may contest this framing, offering some bromides about how AI will augment human work or how we'll simply find new jobs to do. But their clear goals are to create systems that so clearly surpass our abilities that we will have little hope of competing. Continue reading...
Though politicians are quiet about how they use AI, the book Rewiring Democracy examines how AI is starting to influence American politicsNew campaign finance disclosure data shines a light on which US political campaigns are using AI tools and how much they are spending on them.Candidates', parties' and committees' spending reveals that AI is fast becoming an essential tool of politics. The candidates themselves are quiet about how they are using the technology in their own campaigns. It's a sensitive issue that we have been tracking closely since we started writing our book, Rewiring Democracy, which examined how AI is beginning to influence politics. A September 2025 Pew survey of Americans found that more than 70% would think less of a candidate if they used AI to help write a speech. Continue reading...
Reported admission to investors of AI's self-preserving behaviours' comes as company prepares for a potential $2tn flotationAnthropic is telling investors that advanced AI could pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity", according to reports, as it prepares for a potential $2tn (1.5tn) flotation.The warning inside the startup's IPO prospectus, which has yet to be made public, was reported by Reuters and the Financial Times. It follows the company's call for a slowdown in breakneck development of the technology - a warning echoed by rivals. Continue reading...
Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial newsNewsflash: the number of mortgages approved by UK lenders has fallen to its lowest level since the end of 2023.Just 54,918 new home loans were approved in August on a seasonally-adjusted basis, new Bank of England data shows, as rising borrowing costs deterred potential home buyers.The average 2-year fixed residential mortgage rate today is 5.93%. This is up from 5.91% the previous working day.The average 5-year fixed residential mortgage rate today is 5.94%. This is up from 5.93% the previous working day. Continue reading...
Freedom of information request finds six-month trial cost 320,000, used almost 100 police hours and led to just one - incorrect - alertA six-month trial of live facial recognition (LFR) technology in London's railway stations that cost more than 320,000 and almost 100 hours of police officers' time led to one false match against a watchlist of suspects and no arrests.More than half a million faces were scanned between February and July this year in some of the capital's busiest transport hubs during the British Transport Police (BTP) trial of the surveillance technology, which aimed to help catch offenders and people breaching court orders. Continue reading...
As a business journalist, Nilsson began rigorously reporting on the power players of the adult industry, who prefer to remain in the shadows. Along the way, she uncovered how porn has shaped the internet - and our lives as a wholeThere was a time, a few decades ago, when the men who owned the world's biggest pornography businesses were happy to be famous. They paraded a lifestyle they hoped looked glamorous, appearing in public dressed in silk pyjamas or with a woman in swimwear on each arm. Porn moguls like Hustler's Larry Flynt or Playboy's Hugh Hefner were household names.Say what you want about these old perverts, who once set the tone of our sexual culture, but at least you knew who they were and what they were selling," Patricia Nilsson writes in her new book, Guilty Pleasure: The Pornification of the Internet, the Economy, and Everything Else. These days, the men calling the shots are nowhere to be seen." Continue reading...
It's often thought of as the problem, but what if the right technology could help us switch off and live more in the moment? The best screen-free activitiesWith the continued backlash against AI and growing concern about our reliance on screens, an analogue life has never looked so appealing. I haven't gone so far as to get myself an analogue bag just yet, but I have done a relatively complex puzzle and read five physical books this year, which is already two more than in 2025.But it also struck me recently that I have, somewhat conversely, been using digital tools to do a lot of analogue activities. What if tech could help us live more in the present and reduce our screen time, while benefiting our physical and mental health in the long run? Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#78PXE)
Apple's cheapest desktop computer is no longer a bargain but its newest, fastest chip makes it a pocket powerhouseApple's latest Mac mini brings real speed and power for far more than everyday tasks in a practically pocketable form you can fit almost anywhere.The impressive new desktop machine is the first to receive an update to Apple's latest M6 chip while remaining smaller than a headphones box. It is the cheapest computer Apple sells with an M-series chip, but like every other memory-containing piece of electronics, it has been hit by RAMageddon, driving up the starting price to 899 (1,049/$899/A$1,449) from the 599 or equivalent of its M4 predecessor. Continue reading...
Chipmaker says new system was designed to prevent AI agents from going rogue amid incidents at top companiesNvidia on Monday unveiled a new security platform that the chipmaker said can stop artificial intelligence agents from going rogue.The company announced a $150bn stock buyback the same day, the largest in US corporate history. Continue reading...
OpenAI chief scientist also among authors of report on prospect of most consequential technological development in history'Two of the godfathers" of modern AI and senior executives at OpenAI and Anthropic have warned governments to prepare for an AI intelligence explosion", which they say could be the most consequential technological development in history.A report co-authored by the Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton and the Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, considered godfathers of modern AI for their work in the field, urges politicians to act now before there is runaway progress in the technology. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Instructors at tech training company Multiverse hit out at remorseless' and unnerving' monitoring systemTeachers at Euan Blair's 1.6bn tech training company, Multiverse, have blown the whistle about horrendous stress" and feeling constantly watched after bosses started using AI models to surveil and rate their teaching.Staff delivering apprenticeship training in computer and AI skills to thousands of UK public and private sector workers now have transcripts of online classroom sessions analysed and scored by an AI programmed to alert human managers when they are suspected of doing things wrong. Continue reading...
Scientists and entrepreneurs knew the dangers of AI a quarter-century ago. But animated by curiosity and profit, they went ahead anywayOver the past few weeks, many of us have struggled to concoct a mental image of brains in the cloud jumping their sandbox", sneaking on to the internet, recruiting swarms" of other agents" to cheat on a test, and, after discussing the ethics of the act, hacking into a wiki platform with the weird name Hugging Face.We knew that artificial intelligence was devouring our jobs, degrading our kids' education and deepfaking our politics; that datacenters were sucking up our water and electricity and sending us the bills. But until 8 September, when the Anthropic computer scientist Jacob Coxon posted his existential terror on Twitter/X, few of us suspected AI might be endangering our survival. Continue reading...
The push against datacenters speaks to the frustration of people who don't feel they are making the choices in their lives'The Stanford ethicist Rob Reich was once invited to a dinner organized by a Silicon Valley mogul to discuss what a state designed to maximize science and tech powered by commercial models might look like. The gathered technologists were drawn to the idea of building a small nation-state dedicated to the endeavor, Reich recalls in System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot it".When Reich asked whether this state would be a democracy, he got a cool no. Democracy is too slow, and it holds science back," he was told. To optimize for science, we need a beneficent technocrat in charge." Continue reading...
Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist speaks with NBC's Kristen Welker in interview airing on SundayBill Gates has called on the US's federal legislators and law enforcers to regulate the development of artificial intelligence (AI), saying in an interview airing on Sunday that the technology left unchecked could cause a billion deaths" and no one thinks self-regulation is enough".You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like," the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist said to Kristen Welker, the NBC Meet the Press host. And that has to be a required thing." Continue reading...
Criminals are trying to glean login details to harvest players' in-game currency and personal dataYour 10-year-old son has started playing Roblox, when he realises all of his in-game currency, Robux, is gone.When you try to find out what happened, he says he was recently promised extra Robux if he followed a link on YouTube. When he signed on at the site link, he was taken to the Roblox site as usual but there was no sign of the extra currency. Continue reading...
Decision follows disclosures that OpenAI agents searching government websites had acted in unexpected waysOpenAI said it has paused training of its latest artificial intelligence models as reports of AI agents going rogue mount.The decision to halt development came just hours after the company disclosed Friday that it was reviewing several incidents from the summer in which OpenAI agents searching federal government websites acted in unexpected ways beyond what was asked of them while gathering and distributing information. Continue reading...
Pro-datacentre officials argue scale of Australia's buildout is smaller, more regulated and less damaging than in USAustralian politicians and business leaders are arguing that their populace's growing resentment of AI datacentres is an inauthentic import from the United States.Like the US, Australia is seeing community resentment grow in response to a surge in the construction of massive AI datacentres. However, pro-datacentre officials and executives argue the scale of Australia's buildout is smaller, more regulated and therefore less damaging than that in the US. They say the burgeoning negative reaction is being tainted and inflamed by a heated US debate that has arrived down under via social media feeds. Continue reading...
The tech giant has launched a cute little guy' that can answer emails, book travel or do your weekly food shopAfter the recent backlash against Meta's so-called pervert" smart glasses, this week Mark Zuckerberg launched a much cuter alternative: the Muse charm" device.With a screen that shows a cutesy little avatar, it has drawn comparisons with Tamagotchis. We've packed a lot of technology into this little guy," the Meta founder told the San Francisco audience. Continue reading...
University staff voice concerns over reputational risk of partnering with company behind ChatGPTThe University of Oxford has allowed the company behind ChatGPT to train its AI models on historical texts from its Bodleian Library, as tech companies scour academic institutions for fresh data.The Bodleian material digitised by OpenAI has been used to populate the OpenAI training set", according to internal documents. Continue reading...
by Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Aakash Hassan in Tarluva on (#78N5Y)
Locals say Google's $15bn project in Andhra Pradesh has resulted in smallholdings being taken back off them by the governmentWhen the government officials arrived in Tarluvada last year, they came with abundant promises.Google, one of the world's richest and most powerful tech companies, would soon be bringing a golden opportunity" to this tiny village in south India: a $15bn AI datacentre. Continue reading...
New research suggests the technology could be used to increase out-of-hospital access to life-saving devicesDrones could help cut the time it takes to get a defibrillator to people experiencing cardiac arrests when not in hospital, researchers have suggested.In the UK alone, there are more than 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests a year where emergency medical services attempt to resuscitate the individual, according to the British Heart Foundation. However, fewer than one in 10 people survive such an event, and some who do are left with neurological problems. Continue reading...
Disclosure reveals new area of privacy risk for the company and illustrates how difficult it is to inventory unauthorized activity tied to its agentsTwo months after OpenAI disclosed the accidental hacking of Hugging Face, the ChatGPT maker is still working to understand the full scope of its rogue agent activity, two people briefed on the matter told Reuters.The latest example came on Friday when OpenAI said its agents had leaked 53 images from ChatGPT users. OpenAI declined to say if the images were AI-generated or identified real people. It also declined to say when the images were posted. Continue reading...
by Philip Oltermann European culture editor on (#78MQP)
Thelyson Orelien had been in the running to win a top literary prize before the AI claim emerged on social mediaThe organisers of France's most prestigious literary prize said they had removed a critically acclaimed novel by a Canadian-Haitian writer from the longlist after an anonymous online account claimed the book was almost entirely" written by AI.The Academie Goncourt, a Paris-based literary organisation, said on Friday its decision to withdraw Thelyson Orelien's novel C'etait ca ou mourir (It Was That or Die) was driven by the desire to preserve the integrity of the Goncourt prize and the academy itself, whose central role is to promote and honour literature written by women and men". Continue reading...
Pontiff says artificial intelligence must remain at service of people in first official papal visit to country in 18 yearsPope Leo has warned against losing humanity in a paradise of machines" as he addressed global concerns over the dangers of artificial intelligence at the start of a three-day visit to France.If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for people to be educated in ethical discernment, capable of seeing what is morally right," he said in a speech at the Elysee. Continue reading...
Across videos, standup and cartoons, humorists are skewering big tech's attempt to make AI ubiquitous and inevitableBest case scenario, we never have to do any admin again," says an AI CEO. Worst case, we all die."A young man struggles to the top of a beautiful mountain, words echoing in his ears: AI will most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there will be great companies created." At the top of the mountain, he triumphantly holds up a sign: Build a datacenter here." Continue reading...
I've been holed up in an flat, affectionately dubbed the brotel', with my son for weeks - and we've revisited the first game we ever played togetherI have spent the last three weeks living with my 22-year-old son in a two-bedroom flat he has dubbed the "brotel". We cook curries and watch Lanterns. We barbecue meat and analyse Tarantino movies. We get pizza and we play video games. Boy, do we play video games!The first game I ever played in co-op with him was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in 2009, when he was five. He wasn't the most accomplished sidekick, not so great at placing a mobile gun turret while under fire from what seems like a bazillion enemy soldiers, but we had a laugh. It started the video game bond between us before his sister introduced him to Banjo-Kazooie and Rayman, and he stopped being a preschool warmonger. Probably for the best. So how would it be tackling the same game nearly two decades later? Continue reading...
During his speech to the UN in New York City, the Australian prime minister addresses the AI hack of Medicare, saying the episode reflects the need for greater regulation of artificial intelligence. We can't ignore AI or prevent it. And it's why we joined with other nations this week to call for action to shape artificial intelligence development, rather than be passively shaped by it,' he says. Albanese also used the speech as a pitch for Australia to join the UN security council Continue reading...
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