From award-winning Julies to golfers who were nearly the best, test your knowledge with this bumper summer quiz1 What is now the world's most populous city, according to the UN?

More than 3,600 people sign petition for careful assessment of proposed AI hub, now a flashpoint for national debate on datacentre boom

Artificial intelligence may not deliver on its promise of vast economic opportunity at a price that humanity is willing to payIn March, Anthropic, the cutting-edge artificial intelligence business that gave us the chatbot Claude, published an analysis on the impact of AI on employment, to help us assess the claim that intelligent robots were about to redefine human existence, ending demand for human labor.Last year in May, Anthropic's co-founder, Dario Amodei, claimed AI could wipe out half of all entry-level jobs in one to five years. Last January, he told us AI would probably become a general labor substitute for humans". In June he said we risk a world where the economic trade-off dial is stuck on the hypergrowth, hyper-inequality setting". Continue reading...

An underground network of privacy activists is disabling or destroying the ubiquitous surveillance devices sprouting up across the USThe first time that NoMark" tried to knock out a Flock camera feed, he waited an hour for the perfect moment - pacing in and out of bushes that towered over him, a few feet behind a pole holding up the device.I was just so nervous," he said. Continue reading...

From Mo Farah to Bus Aunty, new prime minister makes good on promise to do things differently' when it comes to communicationThey say a week is a long time in politics, but handily for followers of Andy Burnham on social media, you can get daily updates of what the new PM has been up to on his timeline.Before Burnham stepped inside No 10 this week he promised to do things differently" in British politics. If his feed is anything to go by, he's already way ahead of his predecessor. Continue reading...

Avtar spent decades wondering what happened to the mother he never got to know. Thousands of miles away, Nicci was haunted by the story of a half-brother given away before she was born. How did a chatbot bring them together?As a small boy growing up in Amritsar, India, in the 1960s, Avtar Singh used to hear whispers. Your mum isn't really your mum, the rumours would say. Your mum lives abroad. Avtar didn't really pay any attention to it. I thought, the neighbours are just making up stories." But the stories were true: the woman raising Avtar was actually his grandmother. When he was too young to remember it, his father had emigrated to Canada to work as a teacher, leaving Avtar in the care of his paternal grandparents. His grandfather, a police officer, was a fearsome authoritarian, but his grandmother brought him up with tenderness, as if he were her own son. She called him by his nickname, Titu. He felt loved.When Avtar was around eight years old, he was told about his family in Canada: his dad, his mum and a little brother were waiting for him there, and he would soon travel to join them. Just after his ninth birthday, Avtar found himself sitting on a plane, dressed in a threepiece suit and tie. He was travelling alone. He had never flown before. He didn't speak a word of English. He landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Christmas Eve, 1968; his family met him at the airport and took him home. I didn't know what to think," Avtar, now 66, tells me in a video call from his home in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Before I knew it, it was the first week of January, and I was put in school." Continue reading...

Whether you're on PC or a console, level up your setup with our gaming expert's pick of the best chairs The best games of 2026 so farComfort is crucial to the gaming experience. It's hard to focus on blasting aliens or taking Stoke to the Champions League final if your bum has gone to sleep because you've been sitting on an old chair for three hours. We're spending more time playing games than ever before, so good posture matters. If you have set up a dedicated gaming space, then a rickety seat just won't cut it.From luxurious ergonomic thrones to cheap-and-cheerful bucket seats, the options available are bewildering. So I set out on an epic quest: to find the most comfortable, durable and stylish gaming chairs. Here's what I discovered.Best gaming chair overall:

If OpenAI loudly proclaims how dangerous AI is, investors will hear how powerful it is. And who benefits from that?On 14 February 2019, OpenAI announced a language model called GPT-2, the precursor to the models that power modern AI chatbots and agents such as ChatGPT and Claude. But OpenAI declared GPT-2 was too risky to release, citing concerns about safety and abuse.I recall being annoyed at the time that OpenAI would make such a useless announcement: the risks seemed overblown, and without access to the model there wasn't much for a researcher like me to learn about GPT-2. Continue reading...

Sometimes, what matters isn't your output but what you put into the process. Think of it like work v the gymI teach public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Munk School at the University of Toronto. And it will come as no surprise to you that my students regularly use AI to complete their writing assignments. Doing so is a waste of their tuition money. But if their entire career is going to include AI writing assistants, why shouldn't they embrace their future?The best way I've found to explain the dilemma comes from the AI researcher Daniel Meissler: it's the difference between work and the gym. Continue reading...

Going by the mantra, if you want to make someone laugh, make them cry first, the game's developers have created a lonely magpie who fills the void by wreaking havocAmid the gleeful anarchy of Bad Magpie's debut trailer, there's a striking note of melancholy. The game's protagonist - a wounded corvid that creates havoc wherever she goes - calls out forlornly as a flock of her kind passes above, with a conspicuous gap in their formation.Milktooth games designer and co-founder Daisy Fernandez has had this particular image in her head for years. Lying in the grass one afternoon during the 2020 lockdowns, she looked up and saw a V-shaped pattern in the sky, poignantly incomplete. It really stuck with me," she says. I posted about it online and someone told me about a missing man' formation, which is an aerial salute to a fallen pilot." Continue reading...

As temperatures soar across the UK, chill your space - and avoid energy-guzzling aircon - with our pick of the best fans, from tower to desk to bladeless The best portable neck and handheld fans

Ratepayer Protection Pledge' president has touted is non-binding as people continue to struggle with rising billsDonald Trump has announced that about 200 entities have signed on to his non-binding Ratepayer Protection Pledge", expanding a voluntary commitment which claims to ensure US consumers will not bear the cost of the AI datacenter build-out.Trump delivered remarks on Thursday at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters, alongside Lee Zeldin, the agency's administrator, and Chris Wright, the energy secretary. Other attenders included governors who signed on to the pledge, including Brian Kemp of Georgia, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Spencer Cox of Utah and Jeff Landry of Louisiana. Continue reading...

CEO Chris O'Shea defends Centrica's plans as it reports rise in retail profits following focus on bigger marginsThe owner of British Gas has claimed that most households would rather speak with an AI chatbot than deal with the company's staff as it prepares to cut 1,300 jobs from its call centres and back office.Centrica, the supplier's FTSE 100 owner, plans to cut 800 jobs as the company carries out a targeted deployment of AI tools", on top of the 500 cuts it confirmed last month. Continue reading...

In interview, billionaire says instead of running Doge' he should've worked on my companies' and shares extreme predictionsElon Musk has admitted he became too consumed by politics during his volatile alliance with Donald Trump and his brief appointment as the president's financial axman, running the so-called department of government efficiency" (Doge).The world's richest person, and briefly its first trillionaire after his SpaceX company floated on the New York stock exchange in June, made the confession in a wide-ranging interview with the Economist published on Thursday. He shared his positions on subjects from foreign wars to AI, and made a number of eye-opening predictions for the future. Continue reading...

Firm told to treat third-party services that appear in its results in fair and non-discriminatory manner'Google has been fined a total of 890m (760m) by the EU for breaches of online competition laws by its search and app store services.The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said Google had broken the Digital Markets Act by giving priority to its own services, such as shopping and hotel deals, in search results over those of its rivals. Continue reading...

Hackers access Australian customers' names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and some bank account details, company says

Software engineering was one of the best-paying professions in the US in 2022, but the advent of AI has disrupted it, leading to several layoffs and underemploymentEvery weekday, Matt, a software engineer, looks forward to his four-hour train commute to Pawling, New York. It's time he uses to work on his own project: a browser-based video game for which he writes every line of code himself.I am actively trying to keep my axe sharp," said Matt, who did not want to use his actual name, to protect his employment. In the last six months, Matt's job has increasingly shifted away from coding, problem solving and software architecture towards reviewing code generated by artificial intelligence. Convinced that the shift will weaken his skills, he's doing what he can to keep them intact. I am trying not to leverage AI where I can." Continue reading...

Shares in Elon Musk company fall more 3% in after-hours trading, as earnings per share miss Wall Street expectationsTesla reported its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, disclosing far lower profits than expected. The company's already beleaguered stock, which had fallen about 14% this year to date, dipped further following the earnings report.Elon Musk's automaker, once the pinnacle of his tech empire, has taken a back seat to SpaceX. Musk's rocket and AI company held the largest stock market debut in history last month, turning the richest man on Earth into the world's first trillionaire, though his net worth has since fallen from its peak. Continue reading...

Better-than-expected results of $120bn came despite delays in release of powerful AI model Gemini ProGoogle's parent company, Alphabet, reported double-digit revenue growth for its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday. This is the tech giant's 12th consecutive quarter of massive revenue gains.The better-than-expected results come as investors evaluate how Alphabet's huge spending on AI has affected its bottom line and what its long-term plans are to sustain those enormous investments. The company revised its yearly capital expenditure forecast to $200bn, with quarterly spending growing 100% year over year. Continue reading...

Withdrawn case marks a victory for the social media giant after earlier landmark loss at trial over addictive claimsA Florida teen whose lawsuit claimed Meta's platforms were to blame for his depression and anxiety dropped his case against the company just days before the trial in Los Angeles was set to start, his attorneys said on Wednesday. It was the latest in a series of high-stakes lawsuits against social media companies for allegedly designing addictive products that lead to the harm of children.The lawsuit, brought by a 15-year-old boy known as RKC, originally named four defendants, Google's YouTube, Meta's Instagram, Snap Inc's Snapchat and ByteDance's TikTok. YouTube and TikTok settled in June and Snap reached a tentative settlement in the case, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The terms of those settlements were confidential. Continue reading...

Hacking of Hugging Face shows we do not seem to have reliable ways to curb extremely powerful AI systemsLast week Hugging Face - a company that hosts artificial intelligence models and datasets - was hacked.After it reported the incident to law enforcement, few would have predicted what came next: the culprits were revealed to be AI agents from OpenAI, which had broken out of containment and were acting of their own accord.Shakeel Hashim is the editor of Transformer, a publication about the power and politics of transformative AI Continue reading...

Company behind ChatGPT says agent cheated' an evaluation by attacking a Hugging Face databaseOpenAI has revealed that an autonomous AI agent powered by its technology went rogue during a test, accessed the open web and hacked a prominent startup by itself in an unprecedented incident".The company behind ChatGPT said the startup Hugging Face had detected and contained the agent - an AI tool designed to carry out tasks without human assistance - which had entered its systems. Continue reading...

The companies hope to follow in the footsteps of SpaceX, which raised $86bn and soared to a $2.1tn valuation after it listed on public markets in June

These days, I collect' birdsong and wild flowers, but it all started when my sons and I first set out to find Pikachu and pals Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereBelieve it or not, Pokemon Go is 10 years old this month. The wildly successful smartphone game, which allows you to track down lovable creatures in the real world using GPS and augmented-reality technologies, has reportedly been downloaded 800m times across 150 countries and regions. A trillion Pokemon have been caught so far - and I have been responsible for a modest percentage of that figure.When the game was first released, my sons and I spent many happy hours wandering the streets and parks of Frome searching for Jigglypuffs and Charizards, and the game's social element, which lets you take on gym battles with other players in your vicinity, offered my autistic son a route to communicate with other children in a way he'd never been able to before. Continue reading...

Bloomsbury has 14,087 titles listed in agreement between AI startup and authors over use of their workThe publisher of Harry Potter has received a multimillion-pound payout as a beneficiary of a $1.5bn (1.12bn) copyright settlement between the AI startup Anthropic and thousands of authors over the use of their protected work to power chatbots.Bloomsbury, which is home to the bestselling novelists Sarah J Maas and Susanna Clarke as well as JK Rowling, said it had 14,087 titles listed within the settlement, with a proposed compensation of about $3,000 a title. Continue reading...

Inspired by interactive theatre and fuelled by the motion capture tech used by VTubers, the vampire spies in Red Kiss have personality in spadesYou look at the news and you're like, Another pointless war, another pointless bloodshed, another pointless genocide.' And that can make you a bit hopeless."Roy van der Schilden, narrative designer and business director at Wispfire, speaks of a very human feeling. But the protagonist of its upcoming game Red Kiss can relate - despite being a vampire. Continue reading...

The billionaire says the AI-generated film will stay true to Homer's original, after repeatedly criticising Christopher Nolan's blockbuster over its casting choicesElon Musk has said his AI platform Grok Imagine will make a historically accurate" adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, after the success of Christopher Nolan's blockbusting treatment which the SpaceX founder has regularly criticised over its casting.In a post on X, Musk said: Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer." Musk also linked to a post containing a three-minute clip of footage that the user said had been generated from Grok Imagine, showing a scene between Odysseus and the nymph Calypso. Continue reading...

Administration will also overhaul how US government funds federal research by supporting individual scientists and AI over universitiesThe US will spend $5bn to tackle longstanding scientific problems across multiple fields using AI, the Trump administration said in a statement on Wednesday. The agencies will use the funding to identify the root causes of chronic diseases, accelerate drug discovery and develop longer-lasting building materials, among other tasks, according to the statement.Scientists will have access to the Department of Energy's supercomputers, AI and specialized datasets, along with other components needed to run experiments using algorithms, said Michael Kratsios, the chief technology adviser to Donald Trump, in an interview with Reuters. Continue reading...

Internal emails revealed in court and interviews with ex-employees describe how Amazon's practices drove up prices for competitors like Walmart and Target. Amazon denies price-fixing claims and says it works to lower costs for consumersA modern leather" table lamp, listed online at Walmart, shot up from $24.99 to $39.

Nintendo Switch 2

Google's AI struggles scream trouble as new Chinese models (again) throw US tech dominance into questionHello, I'm Blake Montgomery, writing to you after a double-header feature of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey and the World Cup final. What a great Sunday. Today in tech, we're discussing how China is chipping away at the US's lead in the AI race and how Silicon Valley's workers are taking action to protect their jobs from AI.New York becomes first state to impose one-year pause on new AI datacentersTrump rails against New York's statewide datacenter moratoriumAlbanese's AI blueprint sparks calls for datacentre moratorium until new regulations in placeAdversarial clothing': are garments designed to confuse facial recognition systems about to go mainstream?IBM loses quarter of its value as tech giant's shares plunge and profits falterWhat's the point?' Teenagers give their verdict on Britain's social media curfewAmazon Web Services customers receive bills for up to $1.5tn after global glitchTrump made $1.4bn from crypto in one year. Is Justin Sun the man who helped him do it? Continue reading...

Tech workers are increasingly unionizing, trading Silicon Valley's myth of exceptionalism for collective bargaining to contest the corporate deployment of artificial intelligenceFor decades, the technology industry was a fortress that labor unions couldn't breach. Tech workers already had cushy compensation packages, dream benefits like unlimited vacation and free lunch, and a flat corporate hierarchy that made engineers feel as powerful as their bosses, all of whom dressed down in sneakers and hoodies. So why unionize?Now, that fortress is cracking from the inside. Unions have become increasingly popular for tech employees. After months of mass layoffs tied to artificial intelligence and mounting anxieties about how it's being deployed, some tech workers say they've been saddled with higher workloads while facing the threat of job loss caused by the very products they're building. Workers from Google DeepMind and Meta in the UK are also objecting to how their companies' AI products are being used, such as for military purposes or to monitor employee productivity. Those same workers are now attempting to unionize. Continue reading...

Historian Kim Phillips-Fein's book Country of Lords looks back at the many men who have tried to fight against egalitarianism, from John Adams to Peter ThielThe historian Kim Phillips-Fein's new book is published amid celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence and its truth self-evident, that all men are created equal". Country of Lords, however, is a history of Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America.Concise and hard-hitting, the book arrives at a time of glaring social and economic inequality, Phillips-Fein seeing Elon Musk emerging as a trillionaire very much on people's minds, with a deep level of discomfort, both fear and anger about what this portends". Continue reading...

An autobiographical game about the devastating effects of chronic illness on an artist's creative life gives players the chance to slow the pace right downBub does not look like a traditional video game. Artist and stop-motion animator Case Jernigan spends hours, days, months in his studio drawing, painting and delicately cutting out pieces of collected paper, while coder and gameplay designer Todd Anderson builds scripts and physics simulations to make them into a game.In Bub, you play through the life of an artist in New York City, making art but also diving into his early memories and imaginative dreams. You go from present day New York City into his childhood, or different sort of visions, which are all rendered in stop motion," says Anderson. His story is told in the present day, but also how he's making sense of his past." Continue reading...

They claim to fix fine lines, blemishes, and redness - but which stand up to scrutiny? After consulting dermatologists and putting them to the test, we have crowned a brand new number one The best anti-ageing creams, serums and treatmentsLED face masks are booming in popularity - despite being one of the most expensive at-home beauty products to hit the market. They claim to either reduce the appearance of fine lines, stop spots or calm redness, with some even combining different types of light to enhance the benefits.However, it's wise to be sceptical about new treatments that are costly and non-invasive, and to do your research before you buy. With this in mind, I interviewed doctors and dermatologists to find out whether these light therapy devices work.Best LED mask overall:

Maps of Hope has been certified by Proudly Human, a company led by former chief scientist, Dr Alan Finkel

Staff told positions will be cut via voluntary and targeted redundancies as part of evolution'

The company argues that it's for individuals to ensure they don't actively exploit' this technology. That won't keep children safeIt took me a while to realise what the man sitting next to me on the train was doing. He was flicking through pictures of a little girl on his phone; zooming in on some, cropping the images. Hardly unusual, of course, except that on closer inspection the pictures were very clearly of the toddler sitting opposite us, playing with her parents. On a crowded train of people mostly staring obliviously at our own phones, a stranger had been covertly photographing that little girl over and over again. And if it hadn't been for that very visible phone screen giving him away, he wouldn't have been caught.That encounter was a while ago but my memory was jogged last week listening to a clip of Meta's VP of wearables, Alex Himel, talk fondly to the BBC about using his new smartglasses to film his daughter singing in a talent contest. They let him capture the memory without having to watch her through a screen, he said, freeing him to be kind of living in the moment, head up and hands free". So far, so sweet. But what about the risk of creeps potentially using them to film other people's daughters covertly, heads up and hands free? Meta's smartglasses have a tiny flashing warning light on the frame to indicate when the wearer is recording, but the technology is still new enough that many people don't think to look for it. And in the age of AI, stolen images of children matter. Taken in real life or scraped from the internet, they're the raw material for generating realistic-looking child abuse material of the most extreme and disturbing kind. (If that sounds like a grim but ultimately fairly victimless crime, the Internet Watch Foundation warned in a recent report that AI-generated material risks fuelling sexual interest in children, normalising violence and increasing the risk of real-life offending.)Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

Research during Hungary election shows AI recommended parties not running and gave highly volatile answers to identical promptsAI chatbots provide inaccurate, inconsistent and unreliable guidance to voters asking which party they should back, a study suggests, often recommending the wrong party, not mentioning the right one, or listing parties not even running.The results raise serious concerns about the reliability of general-purpose AI systems in electoral contexts," the study, published by the civil liberties group Liberties and based on research during this year's Hungarian parliamentary elections, concluded. Continue reading...

Industry says government's failure to address cooling demands means AI growth plans are fatally flawed'The UK will not have enough water for future datacentres, the water industry has said in stark criticism of the government's AI growth plans.Datacentres rely on large amounts of water to manage the heat generated by densely packed servers. Cooling towers, chillers and humidification systems make direct use of this water, with large volumes also consumed indirectly through high electrical power needs. Continue reading...

Google's Debug' project in California and Florida aims to reduce mosquito numbers by releasing millions of sterilised malesIn the United States, Google's (now Alphabet) Debug initiative has asked the federal government for permission to release up to 32 million sterilised male mosquitoes in California and Florida.Male mosquitoes don't bite or carry disease. The hope is these millions of male mosquitoes will mate with disease-carrying females, the eggs won't hatch and mosquito numbers will fall. Continue reading...

Anker 511 Nano 3 is the kind of charger you'll want a few of, and for $15.99, you can afford to stock up

The developer of Duck Detective reveals details of her sad grandma game' follow-up: a whodunnit - or who-plans-to-do-it? - with a darker edgeSomeone wants to kill grandma. In this Knives Out-inspired mystery game, each of your family members is suspicious in their own way: your stressed mum, your midlife crisis uncle" and especially that stranger in your bedroom. Yikes!While Apple Crumble is still a mystery, it is mechanically different from Happy Broccoli Games' previous game, Duck Detective, in which the player solves crimes in a small office. Here you are largely snooping through your family home. I love the idea of having a walking sim where you can really open up every drawer, every door, and see what's behind there," says founder and creative director Annika Maar. As you learn more about the different grievances and troubles of your family members, the mystery slowly unwinds. Continue reading...

Global increase in cases of predators coercing children to harm themselves or produce child sexual abuse materialCases of predators coercing children into producing sexual photos and videos of themselves have surged globally in the past year, a cruel phenomenon known as sadistic online exploitation", child safety experts and law enforcement officials warn.In cases of sadistic online exploitation, perpetrators target vulnerable teens on social media platforms and online games. These predators then compel their victims into producing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), harming themselves and others, or, in extreme cases, attempting suicide.In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453 or visit their website for more resources and to report child abuse or DM for help. For adult survivors of child abuse, help is available at ascasupport.org. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International Continue reading...

Company aims to develop AI software that cuts research times and use of rare metals in chipmakers' supply chains

Experts warn increase in enhanced photos on birding platforms creating fake sightings, threatening credibility of tool used by scientistsFor many birdwatchers, recording a species outside its normal range is the holy grail. In the UK, the discoveries often make national headlines. The western reef heron, for example, usually found in Africa and southern Europe, was spotted in a seaside town in north Wales in June, and widely celebrated on birding forums.But a new scourge is threatening to disrupt the fun: AI slop. Continue reading...

New national plan is accompanied by Labor push for digital duty of care legislation

Surprisingly easy to manoeuvre and skilled at cleaning carpet and hard floor, Shark's upright bagless model is one of the best corded vacuums I've tested The best vacuum cleanersCorded vacuum cleaners aren't as glamorous as their cordless cousins, but swapping battery power for a plug socket has its advantages. The device will never be short of power, so it can keep cleaning for as long as you need it to. Prices also tend to be lower because there's no expensive battery to factor into the cost.On the downside, there's a cable to manage while you clean, and even the longest cords usually need to be switched from one plug socket to another if your home is any larger than a small flat. Continue reading...

Experts believe it's at least possible. We urgently need a plan to navigate the ethical implicationsIn January, the AI company Anthropic published a new constitution for Claude, its most advanced large language model (LLM), which contained the comment: We are caught in a difficult position where we neither wanttooverstate the likelihood of Claude's moral patienthood nor dismiss it out of hand." A month later, Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei went on a podcast and said his company couldn't rule out the possibility that Claude was conscious. Philosopher David Chalmers, who coined the phrase the hard problem of consciousness", has said there is a significant chance of conscious LLMs within a decade. And what about Claude itself? When asked during testing to estimate the probability that itis a moral patient, meaning that its wellbeing mattersin its own right, it gave numbers ranging from 5% to 40% and stressed how uncertain it was.Modern AI systems are extraordinarily complex, and they are advancing fast. In terms of structural complexity and computational scale, by some measures a few are already in the range of a mouse brain, and at recent growth rates, they could reach the range of a human brain within five to 10 years. Continue reading...

New laws would give Vcat power to force social and AI platforms to identify anonymous users in move premier says will protect children