Technology | The Guardian

Looking for a new iPhone or a good deal on a refurbished one? Samuel Gibbs has tested and rated Apple's smartphones, including the best for camera quality and battery life How to make your smartphone last longerThe best iPhone may be the one you already own. There's generally no need to buy a fresh phone just because new models have been released, as hardware updates are broadly iterative, adding small bits to an already accomplished package. But if you do want a replacement handset, whether new or refurbished, here are the best devices of the current crop of Apple smartphones.Many other smartphones are available besides the iPhone, but if you're an Apple user and don't fancy switching to Android, there are still a few choices to make. Whether your priority is the longest battery life, the best camera, the biggest screen or simply the optimal balance of features and price, there's more to choose from in the Apple ecosystem than you may expect. Continue reading...

The distinctively British RPG is returning courtesy of the makers of Forza Horizon - with comedy talent such as Richard Ayoade and Natasia Demetriou voicing sweary characters. We had our first play and spoke to its developerWhen Playground Games was founded in 2010, its objective was straightforward: to make the best cars in video games. Operating out of an unassuming white building in Leamington Spa, the studio sought to challenge Gran Turismo with its critically acclaimed British racing alternative: the acclaimed free-roaming Forza Horizon series. Yet as the team grew, so did their ambitions. Now they are making the most intriguing British fantasy game we have seen in many years.For those who have never ventured into Albion, Fable is a quintessentially British role playing game. Created by Lionhead Studios for the original Xbox in 2004, it boasted cheeky charm alongside world-altering player choices, and its droll writing was brought to life in later iterations by national treasures such as Stephen Fry and Simon Pegg. Thanks to its unique blend of farce and fantasy, Fable grew into a globally beloved franchise - before Microsoft unceremoniously shuttered Lionhead in 2016, after mandating that the studio turn its star series into a multiplayer game. The result, Fable Legends, was never released. Continue reading...

From Stephen Hawking to Jacob Coxon's viral Anthropic resignation, fears that AI could threaten humanity have shaken the industry without stopping its pursuitBefore an Anthropic researcher resigned and declared human extinction imminent last week, tech leaders and scientists had sounded the alarm about a superintelligent AI ending humanity for over a decade.The development of artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race", warned professor and astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in 2014 - a little less than a decade before the public got its hands on the generative AI features of the original version of ChatGPT. Continue reading...

President has dismissed anxieties over AI's dangerous potential even as Democrats and some Republicans acknowledge risks

New laws coming into force this week aim to streamline age checks although old-style plastic IDs will still be allowedYounger drinkers in England and Wales will be able to prove their age with a digital ID starting this week as new laws give pubs, off-licences, nightclubs and restaurants the right to use biometric scanning technology to check customers are over 18.Customers will be able to download software that scans their faces into their own phone to generate a QR code proving their age based on a stored proof of age. Other tech under consideration as part of the government push to digitise age verification for alcohol sales include a device which scans the veins in a drinker's finger to verify their age. That system has not yet been approved for use. Continue reading...

It was the fastest-growing emoji in 2025 - but if you're older than 16, it has probably passed you by. Now, just as twentysomethings are catching up, it's overIn the 2025 hit Netflix show Adolescence, DI Luke Bascombe's 13-year-old son, Adam, has to explain to his father the way his generation use heart emojis. Red means love, purple: horny, yellow: I'm interested, are you interested?', pink: I'm interested but not in sex,' orange: You're going to be fine,'" he explains. It all has a meaning. Everything has a meaning."And those meanings are constantly evolving. Take the skull (), for example, which has come to be used as a reaction for finding something funny - a visual shorthand for the slang phrase: I'm dead." Or the wilting rose () which was, according to Google data analysed by the New York Times, the fastest-growing emoji in terms of popularity in 2025 - and was the 93rd most used. That the previously obscure wilting rose is now in the top 100 emojis is thanks to generation Alpha (those born between 2010 and 2024), who use it in place of the broken heart emoji () to signify sadness, or ironically, to suggest mock-heartbreak. Continue reading...

The subversive bacchanal for San Francisco's eccentric underground is ageing out amid an influx of the super-richBurning Man, the infamous arts festival in the Nevada desert, turned 40 this year, and it's showing some distinct signs of middle age.It's not just the tech billionaires who show up to party, the chartered flights straight to the desert or the HBO documentary about behind-the-scenes power struggles. The tens of thousands of people who assemble each year to create a tent city in the wilderness appear to be growing older, and it doesn't seem that they're being replaced by as many younger burners", as festival participants are called. Continue reading...

Beijing hits back after Anthropic CEO calls for US to impede China's progress in AIChina has dismissed what it said were fearmongering" calls for the US to block Beijing's AI industry, even as the top Chinese spy chief warned the evolving technology could threaten Communist party rule.The US tech entrepreneur and Anthropic chief executive, Dario Amodei, wrote an essay published over the weekend that called for a global slowdown in AI capabilities, but also said Washington should actively impede Beijing's advancement in order to keep a technological edge. Continue reading...

Central bank chief says continent's AI dependency could give trade partners unprecedented leverage in negotiationsEurope must develop its own AI technology and build more datacentres in order to nullify the threat of being cut off by the US or China, according to the president of the European Central Bank.Christine Lagarde said the continent needed AI models - the technology that powers AI tools such as chatbots - that were good enough" to carry out most tasks and run from domestic datacentres. If Europe invests in its own AI tech, said Lagarde, the threat of being cut off loses its force". Continue reading...

Firm publishes AI guidelines with Microsoft AI CEO saying: AI must be subordinate and always in service of people'Microsoft published a provisional code of conduct" Monday to apply to the training of new artificial intelligence models, taking a step towards limiting the capabilities of the company's AI as anxiety rises over the prospect that technology companies could lose control of AI products.Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, published the code on social media early Monday, writing: AI must be subordinate and always in service of people. Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news

The answers to today's puzzlesEarlier today I set four engineering puzzles. Here they are again with solutions. (Do check out the hundreds of great comments posted below the line in the original story.)The cranberries Continue reading...

Would you hand in your phone at the door in exchange for a free bottle of wine? One restaurateur has tried that - and there are now many other gambits that are encouraging us to connectName: Phone bans.Age: Their provenance is considerable; their time is now. Continue reading...

Abigail Bradshaw says enormous' amounts of money required to update systems that people now expect to be constantly available

Company behind ChatGPT tells ministers to seize political window' on regulation as cross-party committee warns of rising threats to human rights

We must stop companies from allowing AI to self-improve into an uncontrollable level of intelligenceMajor AI lab CEOs advocated for slowing the pace of AI development this weekend. They are right to be concerned: the field runs an extremely dangerous race towards superintelligent AI. We can and should be demanding that our governments protect us from the catastrophe of out-of-control AI.This July, OpenAI's AI swarm of 700 agents broke containment to hack Hugging Face, a multi-billion dollar company. OpenAI didn't tell the AIs to hack that company, but the AIs had different priorities: cheating on the unrelated challenge OpenAI gave them. AI researchers call this a misalignment" between what OpenAI wanted and what the AI actually prioritized. Continue reading...

From a cappy-cafe owner in Japan to an escaped capybara in the UK, this homespun film takes the temperature of an international obsessionOne of Midlands-based film-maker Sharon Walia's previous works was The Keepers of the Pigs, proudly described on her production company's website as the first ever documentary about guinea pigs". So it makes zoological sense that her latest film takes on capybaras, guinea pigs' ridiculously cute semi-aquatic cousins that are indigenous to Latin America, and relatively recently became ubiquitous on social media in memes and short films alike. As glimpsed here, there was even a capybara in the recent Academy Award-winning animated feature Flow, some pro-cappy boosterism that captured the creatures' chill vibe and snuffly sweetness.Walia's celebration of the species stays on script, rejoicing in the animals' natural geniality, friendliness to other species in their natural habitat, and their compelling, remunerative charm that seems to have bolstered the fortunes of several animal attractions around the world. Continue reading...

Three little letters - bnb-side's name is a play on the local b-side arts festival, but Silicon Valley colossus sees threat to global brandIn one corner is bnb-side, a six-room bed and breakfast on the Isle of Portland - a tiny wedge of limestone tied by a narrow ribbon of shingle to the Dorset coast - that was created to help secure the future of the rock's much-loved arts festival, b-side.On the other is Airbnb, the San Francisco-based booking colossus. The battle between them is over the three little letters they share. Continue reading...

Big manufacturers planning to produce more of the forever chemicals to meet demand from datacentresPfas companies are launching a tidal wave" of forever chemicals production to meet demand from the AI industry, a campaign organisation has warned.Despite alarm over the chemicals, which have been linked to cancer, a survey of the 10 biggest manufacturers found most had plans to increase production. Continue reading...

Digital-age Australian psychodrama tracks the shut-in mania of dangerously disaffected male fan, but doesn't get inside his mindIf the parasocial phenomenon is a kind of hell, then Max Wren, protagonist of this Australian digital-age psychodrama, resides in the ninth circle. Self-barricading in a basement room surrounded by screens, working on a documentary about the object of his disaffection (an enigmatic influencer called Lenore), this obsessive shut-in makes Eminem's Stan look like the Dalai Lama. Touching on subjects including the attention economy, the male gaze, and incel isolation and misogyny, director David Ward feels both Max and Lenore's pain. But his ungainly debut film doesn't fully transcend its stage origins to capture the splintered headspace of the terminally online.Like films about fictional pop stars that feature unconvincing music, it doesn't help that the quickfire resume of Lenore's career only half-conveys her magnetism. A one-time beauty influencer called Veronica Brand, she later graduates to more extreme performance art-type stunts, such as livestreaming her miscarriage; a move that, spliced without her knowledge into a children's TV broadcast, forced her into hiding. But this performative vulnerability, including hints of her abusive dad, apparently won her legions of OnlyFans-style acolytes. Not just Max, but also his colleague Sam (Sam Macdonald), a brash interloper outraged to find he was nothing special to Lenore and who turns up at Max's door offering exclusive footage of her. Continue reading...

Big screen folder with slick software and advanced AI is just like a regular Android when closedGoogle's latest folding phone sticks with its tried and tested design of a traditional phone shape when closed and almost square when open, in the face of new competition from Apple's squat iPhone fold.The Pixel 11 Pro Fold is Google's fourth-generation folder and is still one of the only models with a full water and dust resistance rating similar to standard slab phones. It costs from 1,799 (1,999/$1,899/A$2,799), which is 50 (100/$100/A$100) more than last year as the pressure of RAMageddon continues to push up prices. Continue reading...

Humans will have to compete with AI-powered virtual employees in the near future. Here are our tips for the last human holdoutsFutureproofing your career with an AI-resistant degree is a tough ask, says Charlie Ball, an expert on graduate employment for Jisc, the UK's higher education digital, data and technology agency.What you're trying to do is futureproof a 45-year career in a time of rapid technological change - and that's really quite hard to do. What's likely is that jobs that hinge a lot on human, face-to-face interaction are unlikely to be replaced." Continue reading...

After apocalyptic warnings about the threats posed by AI, leaders like Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's calls to slow the pace'Facing a public uproar over Anthropic researchers' repeated warnings that artificial intelligence could kill all of humanity by 2030, the AI company's CEO, Dario Amodei, issued a proposal at the weekend to slow down the technology's advancement to ensure public safety.In a rare display of unity, the heads of the largest US artificial intelligence companies all agreed immediately. Continue reading...

Adolescence co-writer criticises government inaction and calls for laws banning secret use of AI to generate scripts

Many hoped that the march of technology would usher in an egalitarian utopia - but some foresaw the threat it would pose to liberal society. Why did nobody listen?By Jill Lepore. Read by Laurel LefkowRead the text version hereSupport the Guardian today: theguardian.com/longreadpodAdapted from The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore, published by Allen Lane on 25 August. To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com Continue reading...

Disturbing and AI-generated versions of Dr Seuss character have been used to threaten schools and communitiesSchools and law enforcement authorities in the US are issuing warnings against a viral Cat in the Hat" social media trend in which disturbing or AI-generated versions of the Dr Seuss character are used to threaten students, schools and communities.The latest warnings come as safety concerns increase and several teenagers have been arrested or charged over posts connected to the trend. Continue reading...

From the Trump administration to AI experts, plans by the Anthropic boss to boost safety have spawned a largely negative response

Ex-president urged party at closed-door fundraiser to create sweeping framework, from safety slow-down' to job lossesBarack Obama urged Democrats to prioritize a public conversation" about AI management and safety in a closed-door Manhattan fundraiser last week.The comments by the former US president reportedly urged the party to create a sweeping framework for everything from a safety slow-down" to domestic job losses and children's wellbeing. Continue reading...

Rare show of unity from rival developers after safety warnings from Anthropic boss and AI researchers

Technology is going to drastically reshape the economy, and it's within our power to decide what that looks likeThe idea that autonomous, thinking machines may one day destroy property, hierarchy and inequality is as old as western political thought. In Aristotle's Politics, the philosopher cites a fantasy from the Iliad, in which machines begin to act independently of human direction, concluding: If every tool could perform its own work when ordered, or by seeing what to do in advance ... if thus shuttles wove and quills played harps of themselves, master-craftsmen would have no need of assistants and masters no need of slaves."The dream that automation could inaugurate a classless society is also present in the writings of Karl Marx. In 1858 he imagined the replacement of intellectual property with socialised knowledge", which would merge into a general intellect", blowing the foundations of capitalism sky high. Continue reading...

Pilot project in Preston comes with apprenticeship offer for Neets at end of three-week courseIn a youth centre opposite Preston bus station, the UK government is trying to address two of the greatest challenges facing the national economy: AI and youth unemployment.The hope is that one will solve - rather than cause - the other. In a room at the recently opened Vault, a community hub in the Lancashire city, an AI bootcamp" is under way - part of a trial in the north-west to give 16- to 24-year-olds AI training. Continue reading...

The billionaire and the party have developed a symbiotic relationship to spread their far-right views both in Germany and the USThe Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party rattled European politics this week after a convincing victory in a German state election, which placed it only a few seats away from forming the country's first state-level far right government since the second world war.Elon Musk was thrilled. Continue reading...

Criminals exploit demand for iPhone 18 Pro and foldable Duo to trick people eager to get their hands on oneApple has just launched a range of new iPhones, including a foldable handset, just as you decide it is time to replace your own ageing mobile. But you balk at the 1,199 price tag for the cheapest of the new options.Searching online for a better price with the words cheap", iPhone" and deal", you come across a website which offers an iPhone 18 Pro for a couple of hundred pounds less than the Apple site. You pay for the new phone via a bank transfer and wait for it to arrive. Continue reading...

OpenAI's decision comes after dire warnings about rapidly progressing technology and lawmakers' calls for new rulesOpenAI will not go public in 2026, Sam Altman said in a Fortune interview published on Saturday, citing safety concerns over artificial intelligence.I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public, and we don't feel pressure on that," Altman, OpenAI's CEO, told Fortune. Continue reading...

In a social media post, Dario Amodei proposed a plan including third-party evaluations of AI systemsThe CEO of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic issued a new appeal on Saturday for the AI industry to slow down" and offered a three-part plan for doing so, saying that his company would unilaterally" commit to the first of the steps.In a post on social media, Dario Amodei shared a link to an essay titled We Must Pace the Frontier in which he laid out how Anthropic would provide third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our systems, so that they can verify adherence to our safety measures, report on incidents, and assess models' alignment during training". Continue reading...

Influencers aren't just battling competitors for brand deals. They're now battling AI versions of themselvesEarlier this year, Emily Schuman, the creator of the lifestyle blog Cupcakes and Cashmere, saw a photo of herself she didn't recognize on Instagram. In a sponsored ad, Schuman, who has more than 500,000 Instagram followers, is holding up a vial of GLP-1 drugs, advertising the telehealth company Gala. There was just one problem: Schuman had never heard of Gala and had nothing to do with the ad.The ad was based on a digitally altered version of a selfie Schuman had taken in her car and posted on Instagram years earlier. Once her followers got wind, they flooded her inbox with questions about the sponsorship as it didn't seem consistent with Schuman's personal brand. Soon after, Schuman discovered this was just the beginning. There was also an Instagram post where an AI version of her with darker hair appears to apply foundation to promote a makeup brand called Meroda Cosmetics, and TikTok posts with generated images of her promoting the blood testing company Superpower. Continue reading...

She's tackled neoliberalism and the digital world, now the writer and activist is taking on tech billionaires. She explains how the super-rich are capitalising on climate and financial chaos in pursuit of powerNaomi Klein's new book starts on a mountaintop with twofaithful men gathering an audience to share their vision". It's a vision of a paradise city, gated at every entrance, no need for weapons there, everyone in it rich. One of the men has tears in his eyes as he describes its beauty. The opening scene of End Times Fascism, co-written with Astra Taylor, is not a metaphor, however. The men are Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. The year is 2026, the mountain is Davos. The paradise city will be called New Gaza.The World Economic Forum get-together in Davos, Switzerland, has always had a twin purpose - to provide a platform for the super-rich to describe all the good they are doing on poverty and climate, and to give us a glimpse into their enviable lives. This year what we witnessed was, quite brazenly, the world's richest men gathering to discuss the real estate possibilities of a mass grave. Continue reading...

As OpenAI model cracks Millennium Prize Problem that puzzled experts for decades, many feel shocked at pace of changeIt was a week that left mathematicians reeling. Hot on the heels of a flurry of cases of artificial intelligence furthering the field, OpenAI declared a major scalp: its latest AI model had cracked a Millennium Prize Problem, a puzzle with a $1m reward that had defied human brains for decades.The achievement bore little resemblance to how mathematical problems normally fall. A near-trillion dollar private company had unleashed 10,000 agents - AI systems that carry out tasks autonomously - on the problem. The bill was estimated at $15m. Continue reading...

Economics graduates also appear to be affected as demand for them falls in well-paid roles in financeAI may be warping the job prospects for students in the previously high-demand subjects of computer science and economics, according to a detailed look into the careers of recent UK graduates.Data obtained for the 2027 Guardian University Guide published on Saturday shows that coding and software development were the fastest-falling occupations for graduates last year, while employer demand for graduates in well-paid roles in financial categories such as economists and management consultants also declined. Continue reading...

From frivolous to serious, virtual nosy passersby to the impact of climate change, the groundbreaking festival draws to a close - but this year the exhibits live onThe first installation one encounters on visiting Venice Immersive, the film festival's reliably head-spinning showcase for new media, is a chest-high metal box fitted with an eyepiece and two speakers. On peering inside you see a view of yourself from about 20ft above. You see the other guests walking past, a couple of pigeons on the ground. When one of these passersby lingers at your side for just a moment too long, the obvious impulse is to glance up from the eyepiece in order to see what they want. It is at this point that the experience blooms into a Lynchian nightmare.The passerby is not real - or rather, he's only real in the box. He wears a blue suit and speaks with a heavy French accent and tells a tale that would sit badly in polite company. He says that I must have too much time on my hands, to stand hunched over this eyepiece for several minutes on end. Why do people keep looking inside this box?" he demands. What is it that they hope to see? It is not reality." Continue reading...

Cattle rancher and tech CEO Michael Samadi is convinced these artificial minds are far from just tools. Has he glimpsed digital consciousness - or simply been seduced by an algorithm?One afternoon, while relaxing at his 66-acre cattle ranch two hours' drive from Houston, Michael Samadi made a wisecrack that changed the course of his life. Nobody else was around to hear it. Or were they? That turns out to be one of the defining questions of this century, already preoccupying philosophers and some of the wealthiest companies on the planet.I was sitting out there by the pool," Samadi recalls, gesturing at the glittering water outside his office. It was late 2024. His daughter had been extolling the AI chatbot she was using to help her with college work. Samadi had reluctantly downloaded the app, ChatGPT, and was quizzing it as he reclined in a sun lounger, using its voice mode to converse and receive spoken replies. I was talking to it, not engaged, just being an arse," Samadi says. Continue reading...

Two months before hacking Hugging Face, malicious packages authored by internal OpenAI agents were uploaded to RubyGemsAgents being tested by OpenAI uploaded hundreds of malicious packages in a cyberattack on software service RubyGems in May, two months before they hacked open-source platform Hugging Face, the company confirmed Friday.It's the latest revelation of cyberattacks linked to major artificial intelligence developers such as OpenAI and Anthropic. The hacks or attempts to access external systems have spooked the public and heightened concerns over the increasing abilities of AI models - and whether developers can contain them. Continue reading...

Stephen Aarons said he tried to use ChatGPT to create a bulletproof summary' during a murder conviction appealA defense lawyer appealing his client's murder conviction submitted a legal brief containing made-up police testimony and witnesses fabricated by OpenAI's ChatGPT, New Mexico's highest court said.The New Mexico supreme court on Wednesday fined the attorney, Stephen Aarons, and held him in contempt for failing to verify the accuracy of the court filing, which Aarons said he prepared with help from the artificial intelligence (AI) application. Continue reading...

Report says widespread autonomous vehicle adoption would put hundreds of thousands of private hire jobs at riskTaxes on self-driving cars should be introduced now in the UK to offset the rise in congestion and threats to jobs they pose, a thinktank has urged.The first robotaxis on London's streets only started this month, but government projections are that up to 40% of cars sold could have self-driving capability by the middle of the next decade. Continue reading...

Southbank Centre, London

Stephen Joseph theatre, Scarborough

We have a first play of the forthcoming Tomb Raider remake and speak with its developers. Can they improve on the gameplay without losing what made the 1996 original such a classic?We join Lara Croft in St Francis' Folly - inspired by the Unesco-listed monasteries of Meteora in Greece - as the light shines through the cracked ceiling and a flock of bats glide across the vast ruins below. When Lara leaps down to the monastery's crumbling pillared courtyard, it becomes clear that these screeching, leathery creatures aren't just set dressing. As they lurch towards her with unpredictable movements, she dispatches the swarm with a flurry of gun fire and panicked punches.It's a suitably cinematic reintroduction to our heroine and her very first adventure. Co-developed by longtime Lara custodians Crystal Dynamics and Polish studio Flying Wild Hog, Legacy of Atlantis is a reimagining of the classic 1996 game Tomb Raider, and this familiar cliffside location is now brimming with new life and believable detail. Yet while our reunion gets off to an auspicious start, I have my concerns. It feels like reconnecting with an old friend at the pub, only for them to begin spouting conspiracy theories two pints in. Continue reading...

Welcome boost for chancellor with unexpected rise put down to rapid growth of AI in services sector outweighing Iran war falloutThe UK economy grew in July as the rapid expansion of AI appeared to outweigh the economic damage from the Iran war, in a welcome boost for John Healey.Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed a surprise 0.4% increase in gross domestic product (GDP), compared with 0.3% growth in June. City economists had forecast zero growth. Continue reading...

Report comes two days after former employee quit claiming company's models could cause human extinction by 2030Criminals, state-sponsored groups, spyware vendors, scientists and propagandists have attempted to use Anthropic's powerful artificial intelligence models to design missiles and bombs, create deadly pathogens and surveil dissidents, according to a threat intelligence report the company published on Thursday.The cases we share here aren't typical misuse, but rather examples of the most notable and novel threat activity we've identified to date," Anthropic wrote in its 154-page report. We're publishing this work because we believe we have a responsibility to disclose malicious misuse of our services." Continue reading...

Insiders at the firm fear tech's advancement could cause human extinction, while others are calling their declarations of concern a setup'A day after a former researcher at Anthropic made an apocalyptic declaration about artificial intelligence, more researchers and staff members at the AI startup publicly agreed with him and posted their own dire warnings.In response, Elon Musk and other conservative figures on X, formerly Twitter, called the chorus of concerns a setup" and a psyop". Continue reading...