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

They are out to steal your password to commit further fraud such as crypto scams or phishing attacksYou have had an X account for years, since it was known as Twitter. When an email arrives about a new login from a location nowhere near where you live, alarm bells begin to ring.We noticed a login to your account from a new device. Was this you?" the email asks. Continue reading...

Australia risks shipping' intellectual capability overseas if educational rigour not restored, experts warn

MPs and industry experts say potential reorganisation will waste time at critical moment for AI and economic growthAndy Burnham's plan to scrap the government's technology department has triggered an angry backlash from MPs, Whitehall officials and tech experts.The incoming prime minister has asked officials to draw up plans to abolish the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology as part of a wider Whitehall shake-up. Continue reading...

Cheerleading by the president, who made $1.2bn last year off uninsured currency, does not bode well for US economyThe scale of the graft is decidedly off the charts, but the revelation that Donald Trump raked in a personal fortune of $2.2bn during his first year in office should come as no surprise. The president didn't even try to hide his venality. Not only did he refuse to sell businesses and put assets in a blind trust, as other presidents have done to limit opportunities for self-dealing; the quid pro quos with foreign governments and assorted magnates were exposed for all to see.It is troubling that the president of the United States would so nonchalantly deploy his official powers to profit from dealings with money launderers and Middle Eastern princes. It is perhaps more so that the supposedly robust checks and balances upholding American governance proved powerless to stop him. (Here's waiting for the supreme court to define Trump's dealings as official acts" in order to exonerate him.) Continue reading...

The Spanish-language broadcaster has won over millions of US viewers with its energetic commentary during gamesSoccer fans looking to watch the 2026 World Cup on US television have been presented with two very different options this tournament.The first is Fox Sports, a cousin of Fox News owned by the same parent company and the sole network airing matches in English in the US. Audiences tuning in to Fox, which acquired the exclusive English broadcast rights in 2015, are met with coverage that reflects the network's America first" aesthetic, with promos for pro-Donald Trump talkshows, advertising breaks during games and the frequent, grating presence of host Alexi Lalas. Continue reading...

Shift in pecking order illustrates that investors are reassessing outlook for artificial intelligenceApple overtook Nvidia on Friday to become the world's most valuable company, reshuffling the top ranks of tech heavyweights as investors reassess the outlook for artificial intelligence.Apple was last valued at $4.88tn as its shares held steady, while Nvidia was roughly at $4.86tn, after a 3.5% decline. Continue reading...

Designers say that as well as offering a degree of protection from surveillance, their clothes make a powerful fashion statement about the importance of privacyAs facial recognition technology is rolled out across Britain's public spaces, a new generation of designers say privacy could be the next big fashion trend.Companies have started incorporating adversarial patterns" in their garments - carefully designed arrangements of shapes, colours and repeated motifs said to exploit weaknesses in some computer vision systems. Continue reading...

Evil Empire creatives explain how it is playing to today's metroidvanias' and honouring the original's legacy with much fresh slaying to be doneSince the last Castlevania game hit the shelves (2014's Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2), Konami's dormant series has unexpectedly spawned a hit genre. With an entire generation raised on metroidvanias" - a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania - millions of players have only ever seen the games inspired by Konami's seminal games. Now with Belmont's Curse, launching in October, Castlevania is finally dashing back to console, where Konami hopes to reclaim its side-scroller throne.Set 23 years after the events of 1989's Castlevania 3 - the same setting as the hit Netflix show - Belmont's Curse shakes off the series' 3D ambitions and takes the Belmonts back to basics. Dispatching players to the demon-infested streets of 1499 Paris, you're placed in the tattered boots of Trevor Belmont's daughter, Rose. As a bishop pleads with the Belmonts to rid Paris of the ancient evil besetting the city, Rose heads into the sewers, longsword in hand, and her demon-slaying adventure begins. Continue reading...

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Since 2017, Iason Gabriel has worked at the tech giant, trying to anticipate - and think through - the impact of AI. But as commercial and geopolitical pressures escalate, can ethicists make any difference?By Robert P Baird. Read by Simon DarwenRead the text version hereSupport the Guardian today: theguardian.com/longreadpod Continue reading...

The petition to Sundar Pichai, the CEO, included more than 4,500 signatures and included calls for buyout optionsGoogle workers on Thursday delivered a petition calling for layoff protections as tech giants continue to slash their workforces while pouring billions into AI.Make no mistake: this is a company that is enjoying massive, unprecedented success," Parul Koul, Google software engineer and Alphabet Workers Union president, said outside the company's California headquarters after delivering the petition to the office of the CEO, Sundar Pichai'. Koul pointed to Google's $4tn valuation, which has quadrupled over the last six years: These layoffs and cuts are not difficult decisions, but simply profit being put over the people that make this company run." Continue reading...

The entrepreneur is known in Washington as the financial power behind the president's crypto fortune. How did Sun's business love-in with the Trump family spiral into dueling lawsuits?The most infamous financial scandal in US presidential history - the 1920s Teapot Dome affair - involved then president Warren G Harding's interior secretary, Albert Fall, taking roughly $400,000 in bribes. Adjusted for inflation, that's about $6m today. Last year, Donald Trump made at least $2.2bn; his single year of income is on the order of 200 to 300 times larger than the bribe that defined presidential corruption" in the American imagination for a century.It's taken for granted that Trump flogs items like Bibles and gold sneakers as a way to wring more money from his loyal base. But of the president's $2.2bn, at least $1.4bn came from his crypto businesses. That's an extraordinary achievement, even for an unscrupulous sitting president. How exactly did he do it without any prior background in crypto? Continue reading...

Case is one of first brought by an AI company against a user for allegedly using a tool to generate child abuse materialElon Musk's artificial-intelligence startup xAI has sued a South Carolina man arrested earlier this year on charges of sexually exploiting minors, alleging he misused the company's AI system Grok to create child sexual abuse material.xAI alleged in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Texas on Tuesday, that Terry Harwood violated the company's terms of service. The case is one of the first brought by an AI company against one of its users for allegedly using an AI system to generate child sexual abuse material. Continue reading...

Keith Thomas can move arms and hands, and feel sensation of touch after double neural bypass' and months of trainingA man who was paralysed from the chest down in a swimming accident six years ago has been able to feed himself and drink from a cup thanks to a brain implant that bypasses his spinal cord injury.Keith Thomas of Massapequa, New York, could not lift his arms off his wheelchair when he agreed to trial the technology in 2021, but after surgery to implant electrodes in his brain and many months of training, he was able to move the limbs again. Continue reading...

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Ofcom concerned TikTok's age verification is ineffective, leaving some exposed to posts on suicide, self-harm and pornographyTikTok is under formal investigation over concerns it has failed to protect children from harmful content, the UK's online regulator, Ofcom, has announced.The social media platform's approach to checking the ages of users has sparked particular concerns" at the watchdog, almost a year after measures to protect children from the worst of online content came into effect under the Online Safety Act. Continue reading...

Thalha Jubair, 20, and Owen Flowers, 19, sentenced to five and a half years each for cyber-attack that cost Transport for London 39mThe data of millions of commuters was stolen, Londoners were left out of pocket and 27,000 Transport for London staff were forced to reset their passwords.Over four days in 2024 a pair of teenage hackers had London's transport network at their mercy. Thalha Jubair and Owen Flowers had burrowed into the heart of Transport for London's IT systems and held the keys to the kingdom". Continue reading...

Psychologist Candice Odgers has studied adolescent mental health for 25 years. She fears the current debate around smartphones obscures some of the biggest issues facing teenagers - from the impact of Covid to the health of their adult caregiversThe quickest way to make being online safer for children and teens would be to kick all adult men off the internet, the Canadian psychologist Candice Odgers believes. Men are the biggest perpetrators of sextortion and most likely to spread misinformation, she says.Odgers is not recommending this as a policy for governments to adopt: That would be crazy, right? It would be unfair." But she is on a drive to puncture the prevailing narrative that the best way to address online harms is a social media ban for teenagers. Continue reading...

Whistleblower suggests internal security services deployed spyware from 2017 against key domestic and foreign targetsA former member of Morocco's domestic intelligence service has helped to provide an unprecedented insight into how the north African state used hacking software - including Pegasus spyware - to target journalists, human rights defenders, French politicians and Spanish cabinet ministers and police officers.Pegasus, which is manufactured by the Israel-based NSO Group, allows its operator to access everything on a target's mobile phone, including emails, text messages and photographs. It can also activate the phone's recorder and camera, turning it into a listening device. Continue reading...

Uncrewed systems are the future for armed forces and the Netherlands is leading the way to keep people out of danger zones'On each side of the target ship, a black vessel keeps a watchful distance. Defender 1 and Defender 2 are the eyes and ears of the navy - but they have nobody onboard, and their paths are controlled by a computer system.This is the future of the Royal Netherlands Navy, according to Capt Sjoerd Feenstra, head of the expertise centre for unmanned systems. He is leading a five-week mission, off the coast of Den Helder in the north of the country, to test the limits of systems that operate without the human touch. Continue reading...

AI-friendly president shared a post saying governor Kathy Hochul should scrap the one-year policy IMMEDIATELY'Donald Trump railed against the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, for pausing the construction of large new datacenters, the resource-intensive facilities that power artificial intelligence.New York became the first US state to enact a moratorium on new datacenters on Tuesday, when Hochul signed an executive order mandating a one-year statewide pause on so-called hyperscale" datacenters. Continue reading...

All the young people the Guardian spoke to disagreed with aspects of the government's proposed blockSixteen- and 17-year-olds in Britain are to be encouraged to observe a midnight to 6am social media curfew but will be able to opt out by changing their account settings.From next spring, they will be urged to refrain from using certain apps, with the block being switched on by default. But the curfew will not be mandatory and can be overridden. Continue reading...

Star Wars director calls AI technology the future' of film-making and says there's nothing you can do about it'The Star Wars director, George Lucas, has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking.Speaking in an interview with A Rabbit's Foot, Lucas, 82, said: Artificial intelligence means it's much easier for us to make movies." Continue reading...

As global anxieties multiply, video games from Resident Evil to Mouthwashing are providing rich source material to help decode society's problems Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereHorror is so hot right now. There's Obsession, Evil Dead Burn and Hokum in the cinema, Widow's Bay, From and Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen on TV, and, of course, a rotting smorgasbord of horror games including Resident Evil Requiem (pictured top) and Reanimal, soon to be joined by Silent Hill: Townfall, Silver Pines and Dreadmoor. We're also seeing weird cross-pollinations, with horror movie studio Blumhouse making games, while games themselves become horror films and the whole backrooms genre infects every medium it touches.So it was fascinating to attend last week's horror and gaming conference at Falmouth University, in Cornwall: a gathering of students, researchers and lecturers, all engaged in the academic study of horror games. There were brilliant talks on zombies and posthumanism, the gothic in games, and the role of monstrous little girls in survival horror (there are a lot of them!). Subjects as diverse as masculine fragility, disability and ageing came up; Will Doyle, creative director at Supermassive Games, gave a great keynote on the art of creating horror in games using tools such as revulsion, spatial alienation and the human instinct of apophenia. I learned a lot about theorists such as Julia Kristeva and Mark Fisher, and about the technical similarities between indie horror games and film noir (for example, the use of darkness and creative camera techniques to hide" budget restrictions). It was incredible fun. Continue reading...

For months, artists and activists have been calling on the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to act on the AI boom as datacentres pop up around the country. Today he made a major speech at the University of Sydney addressing copyright, the regulation of datacentres and the future of AI in Australia

PM lays out plan for datacentre development and rejects prospect tech companies will be given free use of Australian data

EV owners were sent hefty PCNs but say some signs in private car parks fail to warn of fees to park and recharge carDoes refuelling your car class as parking? The answer appears to be yes if it's an electric vehicle. Guardian Money has been contacted by several readers who were fined after charging their cars away fromhome.The motorists report being caught out by signs that fail to make clear that charging points are subject to parking tariffs or to store opening times. Also, they have found some chargers being advertised as available for use when it would be a breach of the carpark's terms and conditions to use them. Continue reading...

Lawsuit filed by dozens of employees says people who took maternity or disability leave were disproportionately selected for layoffsDozens of Meta employees have sued the social media company over claims that it used artificial intelligence tools to tag workers for mass layoffs. The workers allege that those AI tools targeted them after they asked for protected or maternity leave or disability accommodation.The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in the northern district of California, points to Meta's workforce reduction of about 8,000 employees earlier this year. Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The suit alleges that Meta used a constellation of internal artificial intelligence systems", including AI performance ratings and keystroke- and activity-monitoring data, to pinpoint who to lay off. Continue reading...

Midnight to 6am block on some apps is latest stage of Labour's bid to protect young people from online harmsSixteen and 17-year-olds are to be encouraged to observe a midnight social media curfew, in the latest stage of Labour's bid to protect the next generation" from online harms, including poor sleep caused by night-time scrolling.From next spring, Britain's oldest children will be urged to refrain from using certain apps with a midnight to 6am block being switched on by default. But the curfew will not be mandatory and can be overridden. The move is an extension of the under-16 social media ban announced last month, which included restrictions on platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X. Continue reading...

Andrew Bailey warns that US will not be able to achieve its ambitions aloneThe Bank of England governor has called for international cooperation to tackle growing AI threats, warning that the US and Trump administration would not be able to achieve their ambitions alone.Andrew Bailey's comments come weeks after the US president, Donald Trump, temporarily banned foreigners from using Anthropic's powerful Claude Mythos model. Continue reading...

Group of major publishers accuses the tech giant of one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history'A group of major publishers have filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of illegally using millions of copyrighted books to help build its Gemini artificial intelligence models, in one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history".The case, filed in federal court in New York, has been brought by three publishers - Hachette Book Group, Cengage Learning, and Elsevier - and bestselling American author Scott Turow. Continue reading...

Governor Kathy Hochul issues executive order enacting a moratorium on the large, resource-intensive AI facilitiesNew York became the first US state to enact a moratorium on new datacenters on Tuesday.Governor Kathy Hochul issued an executive order mandating a one-year statewide pause on the large facilities used to power artificial intelligence products, which she signed at a mid-morning press conference. Continue reading...

IBM issued profit warning after weak second quarter, triggering selloff in software sector including MicrosoftShares in IBM plunged more than 25% on Tuesday after the US tech giant released disappointing preliminary second-quarter results. IBM's stock was on track for an even steeper single-day decline than it suffered during the 1987 Black Monday" crash.IBM had issued a profit warning and blamed shifts in corporate customers' spending. The company said revenue for the three months ending in June came in at $17.2bn, up just 1% year-over-year. Continue reading...

UK fears a triple whammy': oversized investment in AI stocks, slower adoption of AI than predicted and the breakneck pace of AI's developmentHello, and welcome to TechScape. I'm your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian. Today, we're discussing the UK's difficult position in the AI race, new doubts over OpenAI's path toward a trillion-dollar stock market debut and the changes to IRL tech reporting in the age of AI.My patients use ChatGPT for therapy. Now I use it too | Sarah Darghouth | The GuardianChasing new skills, going back to basics and pushing for collective action: how software engineers are adapting to AI Continue reading...

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PM to declare Australia the first country worldwide to bring economic, social, security and environmental issues from AI under single office in major speech

A combination of fact and fiction leaves the celebrated documentarian's puzzling project about software training wanting for depthMarc Isaacs' new film is a curious, intriguing, semi-sincere affair that I couldn't make friends with. It is an odd, shallow piece of work about artificial intelligence that is itself exasperatingly artificial, a self-aware docudrama hybrid. Isaacs is, or rather pretends to be, licensing the vivid characters from his previous, acclaimed documentaries to a fictional AI research lab called Synthetic Sincerity at the fictional University of Southern England, so that the lab's software can be trained" in the creation of AI human figures on screen.The lab's research staff are played by actors, or at any rate people acting; these include Lebanese independent film-maker Lynn El Safah. Isaacs has amusing scripted conversations about this project with a disapproving AI avatar on screen, like Max Headroom of old, whose face is digitally modelled on Romanian actor Ilinca Manolache, from Radu Jude's Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. The film, however, does not show the process by which Manolache was approached and her face transformed into an AI figure. Continue reading...

Snappy performance, long battery life, great keyboard and excellent new haptic touchpad make the best of Windows 11Microsoft's Surface laptop for consumers is back, faster and with longer battery life and a hefty price increase because of the high cost of memory and chips.The Surface Laptop 8 is a straight replacement for the seventh edition from 2024, which was the first of Microsoft's new generation of ARM-based, Qualcomm-powered PCs designed to better rival Apple's MacBook Air and other thin and light machines. Continue reading...

Labor MP says a fair day's pay for a fair day's work' was a founding principle of the ALP as media union calls for tougher new rules on AI use of creative work

Don't float through the world in an AirPod bubble - enjoy music or podcasts and carry on using these tested favorites

Labor sources say the PM will discuss safety concerns in speech this week but will not provide an update on copyright reforms to protect artists

Higher temperatures can cause radio, TV and microwave signals to travel hundreds of miles farther, upsetting communicationsIt was 3am in north-east Indiana's Huntington county when the outdoor emergency alarm went off on 1 July.The only issue? There wasn't a storm, tornado or any other emergency weather event forecast or present anywhere for hundreds of miles. Continue reading...

The union for 12 nurses laid off by Montefiore hospital say company broke contract they recently won through a strikeMarilyn Shuler has worked as a utilization review nurse for 39 years at Montefiore hospital in the Bronx in New York City, helping to read patient charts and communicate with insurance companies over coverage.After nearly four decades in her job, Shuler is one of 12 nurses who were laid off Sunday after being replaced with AI-powered software, according to the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), which represents nurses at the hospital. Continue reading...