The AI boom is pitting local residents against corporate giants seeking to power their energy-hungry networks - but one Welsh city is fighting backDale Johnston opens the gate to his neat suburban garden on the western fringes of Newport in South Wales. There's a trampoline and a slide on the lawn for his grandchildren, and chairs for him and his wife. He should be enjoying the light draining from the perfect autumnal sky - but almost his entire view is blotted out by a vast expanse of prefabricated panels.The 23 metre-high grey hulk looming over him and his neighbours is a hyperscale datacentre. It is heralded by the area's Labour politicians as a job creator, yet all Johnston can think about is what he has lost: Before, the sun used to come around here and it was lovely." The way residents have been treated is disgusting". Continue reading...

BBC series deliberately uses more organic' shots to assure viewers animals are not AI-generated, producers sayThe David Attenborough-narrated series Blue Planet III deliberately includes cloudier, less polished footage to counter AI fakery and assure viewers it is authentic", its producers have said.Nearly a decade after Blue Planet II shone a light on plastic pollution, and 25 years since the first Blue Planet aired, the hit BBC series is returning with more animal behaviour and cutting-edge technology, including the world's first underwater CCTV camera - dubbed stonefish" cam. Continue reading...

Video shows AI likenesses of people linked to Pedro Sanchez's Socialist party appearing to admit to wrongdoingA political ad from Spain's main opposition party that used a deepfake video of the prime minister's wife has sparked outrage and set off a wider debate on AI, as the deeply polarised country gears up for general elections next month.Launched this week across the social media channels of the conservative People's party (PP), the video used artificial intelligence to manipulate the likenesses of various people linked to Pedro Sanchez's Socialist party and appeared to show them admitting to acts such as soliciting prostitutes and taking kickbacks. Continue reading...

Chancellor says government to commit hundreds of millions to develop distinctively British' approach to AIJohn Healey has pledged to use Wednesday's budget to harness the power of artificial intelligence to bolster Britain's security and prosperity against the risks in the accelerating global technology arms race.As he prepares for his debut budget, the chancellor said that Andy Burnham's government would commit hundreds of millions of pounds to develop a distinctively British" approach to AI that would capitalise on the benefits of the frontier technology. Continue reading...

After discovery of severe bug in the PHP programming language, executives warn of vulnerability tsunami'Leaders in cybersecurity are sounding the alarm after the discovery of a major vulnerability this week. They are predicting that artificial intelligence tools will expose more fundamental weaknesses in global internet infrastructure in the months to come.I no longer think we're going to be able to patch all bugs," said Sam Altman on Thursday evening, joining the chorus of executives. In the midst of what's being called Black October", for which researchers used AI to help identify critical flaws in a coding language that is used across millions of websites and may have been unpatched for years, tech executives are warning about the ways AI will be used both to identify and exploit security vulnerabilities at an unprecedented scale and pace. Continue reading...

The closure of the studio responsible for some of the best games of the 21st century leaves the world of RPGs feeling smaller without the hope of another instalment of the much-loved sci-fi seriesEarlier this week, EA announced the closure of BioWare, a game studio with a 30-year history of compelling role-playing games, complex characters and bold, choice-driven narratives. Its forthcoming game in the Mass Effect sci-fi series has been cancelled, and more than 400 people are losing their jobs. As someone who has worked in the video games industry for 15 years and spent almost 20 as a BioWare fan, I am among millions of mourners today.It's not terribly hard to see why BioWare got the chop. Its parent company has been saddled with $20bn of debt thanks to a recent leveraged buyout involving Jared Kushner and the Saudi wealth fund. EA was looking for weight to cut loose, and despite its hardcore fanbase and reputation for genre-defining RPGs such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age, BioWare hadn't put out a critical or commercial hit in over 10 years. Its forthcoming game, titled Mass Effect: Universe according to a leaked trailer, was announced back in 2020. Despite some flashy teases, it was still years away from release. Continue reading...

Anthropic claims AI will shift how work gets done and labor demand - but some experts are skeptical of the visionLast year, the Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei, warned that artificial intelligence could eliminate half of entry-level white-collar jobs and that in six months it would be writing 90% of code. Neither of those predictions came to pass.Now, in a report Anthropic published on Thursday, the company said it was hiring fewer junior technical workers and that human attention has become the new bottleneck" as it increasingly relies on its Claude AI agents. Continue reading...

People under 35 are hunting for no-frills rides they can pay for in cash and fix themselves - defying expectations to take on steep loansJack Price joined the marines in fall 2021 knowing he would need a car to get around base and that he couldn't afford a new one. A joyless, month-long search through dealer classifieds and Facebook Marketplace listings ended when his mother spotted a 2010 Volkswagen Jetta posted on her office listserv by a co-worker moving abroad. With just 60,000 miles (96,560km) on the meter, the car (a manual!) was mechanically sound, and the air conditioning, sunroof and Bluetooth radio worked too. At $6,000, it was a steal. Price paid in cash.Five years on, the Jetta, which he called the Pewter Pebble, is still carting him from A to B in unassuming style. I've completely driven it into the ground," says the 30-year-old, who lives in Los Angeles. All over bases, cross-country a couple times, not really lovingly. I get so much crap from people, but not people my age." Continue reading...

An old idea springs anew as a chorus of influential voices predicts that AI may trigger crises of vast magnitudeIn a preface to his book Capitalism and Freedom, the American economist Milton Friedman famously observed that a crisis can propel once-fringe ideas into the political mainstream.Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around," he wrote. The job of intellectuals, thinktanks and economists, he argued, is to refine the quality of these ambient ideas, so that good ones are ready when disaster strikes. Continue reading...

Biggest Apple smartwatch gets better health tracking and new readiness tools with a battery and chip boost in preparation for controversial audio AIAs the Ultra enters its fourth year as Apple's biggest and beefiest smartwatch it gets the best kind of spec upgrade - longer battery life - while waiting for something potentially more transformative.That's because several of the key features announced as part of Apple's new smartwatch lineup for 2026 have yet to be enabled, awaiting updates towards the end of this year. That leaves the 749 (899/$799/A$1,349) Apple Watch Ultra 4 the top dog, but basically the same as last year's model.Case size: 49 x 44mmCase thickness: 12mmWeight: 63gProcessor: S11Storage: 64GBOperating system: watchOS 27Water resistance: 100 metres (10ATM)Connectivity: Bluetooth 5.3, wifi 4, 5G RedCap/4G, UWBSensors: HR, ECG, spO2, temp, depth, dual-band GPS, compass, altimeter Continue reading...

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Datacenter and chip costs fueled sharp decrease in AI sector although non-AI stocks still had a strong showingThe latest shudder for stocks in the AI industry pulled markets lower worldwide on Thursday, while oil prices hit their highest levels since May on worries about the war with Iran.The S&P 500 fell 1.2% for its worst day since July, while the Nasdaq composite tumbled 2.6%. The weakness for tech stocks was so overwhelming that it masked strength for the rest of the US market, in which the majority of stocks actually rose. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 11 points, or less than 0.1%. Continue reading...

PM will also announce funding for specialised protective gear and the deployment of military aircraftThe UK government is to create an AI Cobra unit to spot wildfires after this year's record-breaking summer saw devastating blazes across the country.The country experienced its hottest-ever summer this year, with prolonged dry periods and extreme heat fuelling wildfires that triggered an emergency alert to mobile phones in England and Wales. Figures released on 8 October showed a clear upward trend in the number of fires recorded each year. Continue reading...

Problem in language that underpins 70% of sites has led governments and companies to pull sites offline to patch fault

Chief executive agrees to remain in California for eight years even if state brings in one-off 5% wealth taxMeta has struck a deal with Mark Zuckerberg to help him foot a possible California wealth tax targeting billionaires.The social media company behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp revealed on Wednesday night that the arrangement would keep its chief executive living in California, where Meta's headquarters are located. Continue reading...

Equating to the loss of 5% of its 93,000 global staff, job cuts come as bank announces jump in quarterly profitsBarclays is cutting 5,000 jobs as part of wider cost-saving plans that its bosses say are being driven by advances in AI.The job cuts will mean losing about 5% of the bank's 93,000 global staff, with executives confirming they had already cut 1,000 workers since the start of the year. Continue reading...

The Audacity is a fearless satire taking on Silicon Valley's egomaniac weirdos'. Its creator and stars talk ayahuasca ceremonies, mining kids for data - and punching CEOsShowrunner Jonathan Glatzer wanted the tagline of his latest TV creation to be: We're so fucked." He laughs. Sadly it got rejected by the network. Hey, maybe I can use it for season two!" The show in question is The Audacity, his darkly comic drama about AI tech titans. Instead, it went with the more PG tagline Move fast and break people" - a twist on Move fast and break things", the Facebook motto coined by Mark Zuckerberg. The Audacity promises to do for tech bros what Succession did for legacy media. Considering Glatzer is a former writer on Succession, that is no empty threat.This acerbic and all-too-timely Silicon Valley satire follows CEO Duncan Park (played by Billy Magnussen), the obscenely wealthy founder of a data analytics company. He's a self-proclaimed inventor of the future" who also happens to be a morally bankrupt man-baby. Duncan is worth about half a billion," says Glatzer. Naturally, that's not enough. He desperately wants to be a billionaire and ascend to what we call God Mountain'. But he's no God." Continue reading...

You Can See Everything, a documentary about the disgraced biotech company founder Elizabeth Holmes, has enjoyed a record-breaking opening in the US. It is a testament to how fascinated we remain by the convicted fraudster, but what is behind the enduring appeal? US technology editor Blake Montgomery tells Madeleine Finlay why Holmes continues to fascinate us, and reflects on whether the Theranos scandal has had a permanent impact on Silicon Valley Continue reading...

Datacenters, AI and distaste for the billionaires developing it has soured Americans on big tech

Company ordered to stop work at two sites in country, which has found itself at forefront of tech firms' latest pushBehind a wire fence lies a vast gaping wound of earth. Before Google's arrival a few months ago, an estimated quarter of a million trees occupied the 330 hectares (815 acres) of forest near the town of Muhos in rural northern Finland. Now they are all gone.After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre - taking even the top soil with it - all that remains is a vast expanse of mud indented with the trail marks of machinery, puddles and mounds of earth, roots and branches. Residents say that brown water flowing off the site is going into a stream that feeds the Oulujoki River. Continue reading...

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Nathan Fielder's conversation-igniting film on the Theranos founder finds its darkest moments in her deceptive, Charlie Kirk-loving fiance Billy Evans

Exclusive: Nvidia, Microsoft and Cisco taskforce urges ministers to offer areas greater benefits from tech infrastructure amid fears of US-style oppositionAI companies have told ministers they have 12 months to head off public opposition to datacentres in the UK or risk US-style protests that could threaten their construction.Successive dry summers and rising energy bills are increasing public scrutiny of plans for the huge computer warehouses that are used to train and run AI models, says a submission to the Labour government from a group including the AI infrastructure companies Nvidia, Microsoft and Cisco. Continue reading...

You Can See Everything, a documentary about the disgraced biotech company founder Elizabeth Holmes, has enjoyed a record-breaking opening in the US. It is a testament to how fascinated we remain by the convicted fraudster, but what is behind the enduring appeal? US technology editor Blake Montgomery tells Madeleine Finlay why Holmes continues to fascinate us, and reflects on whether the Theranos scandal has had a permanent impact on Silicon ValleyClip: You Can See Everything, A24You can't make this stuff up': why we remain fascinated by Elizabeth Holmes Continue reading...

Author withdrawn from France's Prix Goncourt last month has repeatedly denied using artificial intelligence to write novelThe publisher of top-selling Haitian Canadian writer Thelyson Orelien, who was removed from France's most prestigious literary prize list last month, has confirmed the author used artificial intelligence to help write his novel C'etait ca ou mourir (It Was Either That or Die).Orelien has denied allegations that he used AI on his breakthrough novel and, last week, Canadian publisher Les Editions du Boreal said it was standing by the 38-year-old writer. Continue reading...

Precautionary takedowns come as experts say bad actors could exploit vulnerability in language used by 70% of sitesWebsites around the globe have gone dark after a serious vulnerability was found in a computer language used to build much of the world wide web.Belgian, Dutch, Finnish, French and German sites were among those that governments took down temporarily as they scrambled to patch the critical weakness in PHP, a language used by almost 70% of websites. Continue reading...

Jury had found Meta misled consumers after Trump's 2016 presidential campaign obtained user data without consentA judge in New Mexico ordered Meta Platforms to pay $25bn on Wednesday after a jury found the company had misled consumers in a case arising from allegations that a political consulting firm involved in Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign obtained data from millions of Facebook users without their consent.Facebook's wrongdoing - over the course of years and systematically broadcast to the public - goes to the heart of Facebook's core business practices," Judge Francis Mathew wrote in his order following the verdict. Continue reading...

Musk says there's a lot of merit' to potential merger that would require approval of 50% of all Tesla shareholders, but he declined to elaborateInvestors were paying close attention to Tesla's third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday afternoon, after chief executive Elon Musk floated the idea of merging the car company with his rocket and AI company, SpaceX. But they didn't glean further information after the company announced there would be no questions on the matter.With regard to a potential merger with SpaceX, I think I said everything that should be said yesterday," Musk, the CEO of both companies, said on Tesla's earnings call. He repeated a phrase he said on Tuesday: I feel like I'm tap dancing through a minefield." Continue reading...

With You Can See Everything, Holmes joins other such high-profile subjects as Lance Armstrong, Imelda Marcos and Anthony Weiner to allow film-makers to document their lives. But do they ever come out well?In You Can See Everything, convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes invites film-makers Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim into her home in a supposed act of radical transparency". Holmes is filmed, along with her partner, Billy Evans, and their two young children, in the weeks before starting a prison sentence for defrauding Theranos investors. The best way for people to see who she is," Evans says, is to give as much access as possible into our daily lives". It may also be the best way to market Theranos 2.0", which the couple are working on during filming. But the documentary questions whether Holmes is presenting her authentic self or a manufactured persona. Fielder speaks for the audience when he asks Holmes in a tense exchange whether she's being real" with him. I'm always being real," she says.That question of authenticity is at the heart of documentary film-making. You Can See Everything is as much about the ambiguous relationship between film-maker and subject as it is about Holmes herself. There is often a power struggle over narrative control in documentaries, with both sides of the dynamic wanting different outcomes from the final film. Watching You Can See Everything inevitably prompts the question: why would Holmes, days before she heads to jail, invite the scrutiny of a film crew? Continue reading...

After months of controversy over the possible use of AI by winners of prestigious awards, the Prix Pascal de Litterature IA is rewarding fiction written with the help of LLMsA prize for AI-written books has launched this week.The Prix Pascal de Litterature IA invites submissions of manuscripts co-written with AI tools, with the winner promised publication. Continue reading...

As video games chase spectacle, Modern Warfare 4 makes a case for putting character and consequence at the heart of its biggest battles Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereIn these strange, subdued weeks before the much-anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto VI, there have still been some welcome surprises. Onimusha: Way of the Sword revived a half-forgotten samurai action series with much aplomb, while Silent Hill: Townfall transported all of the franchise's bloody, dread-filled psychological horror to ... the picturesque Scottish coast. Even more shocking to games writers, though, is the fact that the forthcoming Modern Warfare 4 has one of the best Call of Duty campaign modes for at least six years - and might even be up there with the original Modern Warfare trilogy.The setting is an invasion of South Korea by its northern neighbour - a setup that could have fuelled a hundred instantly forgettable Netflix films, but has proved controversial in a video game. The authoritarian regime has a new (fictitious) ruler and a powerful experimental weapon, which it's not afraid to use as the opening gambit in an explosive attack. You take on the role of Park Hyun Jun, a conscripted South Korean soldier who, along with his small unit of similarly inexperienced grunts, gets caught in the firestorm as cities burn and enemy paratroopers fill the skies. Continue reading...

Whether you want a colour screen, somewhere to scribble notes or a child-friendly model, here's what we recommend from Amazon's e-reader range The best e-readersFrom that fresh paperback smell to the wrinkles in the spine, nothing beats a real book. But if you're sick of the space they take up in your home, or the weight they steal from your holiday luggage allowance, it might be worth considering an Amazon Kindle. It can fit thousands of weighty reads into as little as 158g, and as tech goes, it's almost immune to the sort of pathological time-wasting features that come with modern phones and tablets.Amazon Kindles have been available in the UK for more than 15 years, so they're an old-school gadget at this point. But in 2024, the biggest update yet arrived: colour, which added an important extra option to the existing Kindle lineup, alongside readers for children, for note-taking and for tighter budgets. Continue reading...

Popcorn makers, Lego Fortnite and the coolest water bottle around ... surprise the mini tween in your life with our pick of the top gifts and toys The best gifts for eight-year-oldsThe start of the tween years, nine years old, is a sweet spot between curiosity and growing independence, making it a fun, though sometimes tricky, age to buy for.Kids at this age are up for a challenge, whether that means trying a trickier craft set, playing a more complex game or stepping up their sporting interests. Pitch a gift right and you'll not only get the whoop of joy when they first receive it, but something that will hold their interest and help them develop their skills, interests and hobbies over time. Continue reading...

Volunteers and new recruits come together for wikithon' to put more detail about industry into public domainAnyone can edit Wikipedia," the adage goes. But, it turns out, a relatively small number actually do.What is worthy of a digital page in the world's largest and most-read encyclopedia is decided by roughly 270,000 active volunteers, enthusiasts who populate the online resource with information on anything from 19th-century medicine to TikTok trends. Inevitably, some subjects are sidelined - the global south, notable women - but a new batch of Wikipedian recruits are waging war on one neglected topic: the arms industry.

Adriana Retyte took her own life after viewing high-risk' material on the video-sharing platform TikTokA 14-year-old schoolgirl's death after TikTok served her suicide content has prompted renewed calls for UK watchdogs to crack down on toxic" social media feeds.Adriana Retyte, a pupil at Langley school in Norfolk, took her own life after she viewed videos and images related to suicide on the video-sharing platform, according to a coroner who last week found her access to the material on TikTok may have played a significant part in her decision to take her life". Continue reading...

The midterms will be a referendum on the GOP's alignment with tech overlords over the public they're meant to serveWelcome back to How We Win, a Guardian opinion series with leading thinkers, offering bold ideas for America's political future. Last week, Robert Reich highlighted the link between corruption and affordability. Today's edition was written by Guardian US columnist Rebecca Solnit. Sign up for future editions here.The world should accept some bad things happening," Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, said recently, for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency." Like so many things tech oligarchs say, it's incoherent, since Altman would like to deny the world and the people in it the agency to decide whether or not we should accept his bad things. Surveys show that most Americans would like to pause AI; opposition to AI datacenters is a factor in many races in the midterm elections. People are outraged and anxious about what tech hath wrought, mad enough to fight back in what is coming to seem like a human v machine battle. Continue reading...

Our dependence on internet services of a few key tech companies leaves us vulnerable to cloud failures, bugs and more, experts sayIt happened again. A power outage hit a datacentre in London, and things cascaded from there: multiple banking services faltered, court hearings were put on hold and patients reported temporary glitches on the NHS app.The datacentre in question was in Google's europe-west2-b zone, one of more than a dozen zones" that the US search giant maintains in Europe to service its clients. Continue reading...

Ann Altman, the Open AI CEO's sister, accused her brother of repeatedly sexually abusing her over two decades agoA judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Sam Altman's sister against him on Tuesday. Ann Altman accused the OpenAI CEO of repeatedly sexually abusing her more than two decades ago, which he has denied.In dismissing Ann Altman's lawsuit, the US district judge Zachary Bluestone wrote that she had refused to appear for an independent medical examination despite warnings that failure to do so would result in the case's dismissal. Continue reading...

A computer program has finally outdone humans at solving cryptic crosswords. Plus, more from around the puzzleverse Don't get Cluesletter, our weekly puzzles newsletter, delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereWhen the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov at chess in 1997, it was an early victory for artificial intelligence over the human mind, and the culmination of decades of attempts. Almost 30 years later, a computer program has finally outdone humans at solving cryptic crosswords.Earlier this month, a model called Darmok solved the final puzzle of the Times's annual cryptic crossword competition about three minutes faster than Liam Hughes, 29, who became the contest's youngest (human) winner.Wolf trap missing its lowest crosspiece? (5)"Proportion of inspiration and perspiration? It's roughly 45% and 42% (5)Kick-off leads to decisive early goal for PSG (5)To read the complete version of this newsletter including the exclusive Letter Adder game, subscribe to receive Cluesletter in your inbox every Tuesday. Continue reading...

Is your television listening to every conversation? Filling your home with highly invasive ads? Some viewers have had enough of tech violating their privacyWhen Dan had had enough of his television, he threw a rock straight through the screen. The offence? His smart TV was downloading its third update in three days. It drove me crazy with what seemed like daily software updates that never fixed anything and features' that never seemed to work," says the 71-year-old from Illinois. And of course, constantly trying to push me to subscribe to paid-for services when all I wanted to do was watch over-the-air TV, play a DVD or stream something from my computer."Some may accuse Dan of being a luddite, but his master's degree in computer science and decades of experience in telecommunications would suggest otherwise. The tech is not intimidating," he explains, just increasingly enshittified." Continue reading...

As SpaceX impacts Ukraine and AI-generated music divides artists and fans, critics are asking what happens when technology has too much control over our lives

Australian workers expect the government to act to protect them from AI harms. There is a clear reform solution at hand

Use of tools may result in the transfer of sensitive data' to China, defense department saysThe US government on Monday ordered its agencies to stop using artificial intelligence (AI) tools from the Chinese startup DeepSeek, as the countries race for dominance in the fast-moving sector.A notice from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the ban on products developed by DeepSeek - and tools created using DeepSeek by third parties - saying they must be removed from IT devices. Continue reading...

AI is increasingly getting good at doing some tasks, but it can never replace human workers' judgmentAutonomous cars, which may be the safest we have built, keep getting easily avoidable parking tickets. While Waymos crash far less often than human drivers over tens of millions of miles, they're still terrible at performing basic tasks - keeping out of disabled parking spots and tow-away zones, or steering clear of a church garage during Sunday service, according to the Wall Street Journal.That is the state of AI today: impressively capable at something complex, yet embarrassingly clumsy at something easy. And it has implications for what work will remain human and what will be automated by AI.Madhu Shashanka is co-founder, chief scientist and chief technology officer at Concentric AI, a data security software company Continue reading...

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as Google suffers a a major Cloud outage in its London regionThe pound has rallied after Britain's unemployment rate fell unexpectedly this morning to 4.7%.Sterling has gained half a cent against the US dollar to $1.3352, as the City welcomes the news that employment rose in the last quarter.This data has caught the market on the hop, with traders scrambling to respond and boost exposure to the pound. Good news has been a touch more prevalent for the UK of late, which is just the kind of framing the government needs heading into the budget, though signs of more resilience in the labour market do of course mean the BoE has more room to respond to higher inflation."The labour market remains relatively flat overall. This resilience in the face of headwinds driven by global events is welcome. But underlying problems remain, with around one million young people not in education, employment or training and overall employment more than two million short of the Government's 80% employment rate target.To fix those challenges we need to change the benefit system so it offers active help to all who need it, but also make it easier for employers to create jobs. Continue reading...

Services restored for most users, but power fault stalled hearings and left Revolut, Lloyds and HSBC customers unable to pay or move money

As a freaky Val Kilmer doppelganger stars in a new western and faux starlet Tilly Norwood is set for her feature debut, experts are split on whether mainstream adoption is a long way down the line - or just around the cornerDon't fear the dead - and don't fear me." An exact facsimile of a young Val Kilmer, not quite dead and not quite alive, utters that baiting line in the trailer for the new western As Deep as the Grave. Director Coerte Voorhees knows exactly what he is doing - this is an AI-created version of the late actor, approved by his family but bringing with it a heap of controversy about whether such technology could make flesh-and-blood thespians redundant.Not just yet, judging by the extended glimpse of the film released earlier this year: it looks like a thirtysomething Kilmer, if a robot version had been sent back to the 1920s American wilderness by Skynet and, as well as being strangely rigid, had forgotten to download his voice, let alone his signature air of spacey shrewdness. Kilmer's estate signed off on it, citing his enthusiasm for new technology that expands storytelling, but surely he would have been dismayed by this freaky doppelganger. Continue reading...

Great hardware let down by software flaws on these pricey machines that combine ChromeOS with AndroidGoogle's attempt to create a new type of laptop to compete with Windows and macOS machines is finally here, combining the best of ChromeOS and Android into the new Googlebook. With advanced links to Android phones and the best of Google built in, can these Googlebooks really compete with a MacBook Air or Surface Laptop? I took two for a spin to find out.For years, Chromebooks have been the boss of budget laptops, but Googlebooks take a different, far more premium approach. Made by a range of traditional PC makers, including Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo, they start at 999 (1,099/$899/A$2,299) - a far cry from the 160 Chromebooks. Continue reading...

The government says it can transform the state with AI, but it is no match for the resulting stream of machine-generated slop. And we all pay the costAnother morning, another avalanche of emails. Even after a guilty cull, my inbox is sitting at well over 7,000, but lately I've started subscribing to the Quentin Crisp theory of housework: why bother, when after four years or so you stop noticing the accumulating dust? Empty inboxes just fill up again anyway.In theory, email was supposed to save hours of meetings, phone calls and standing over photocopiers. Instead, we just spend hours deleting stuff people wouldn't have bothered telling us if it had meant picking up the phone, but which they can now spam to their entire database at the click of a button. The glorious ease and convenience of being able to reach the world in seconds came, we now know, with the inconvenience of them being able to reach you right back.Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

In his annual speech on threats to the nation, Sir Ken McCallum, the head of the UK's intelligence service, MI5, warned that AI had the potential to change the stakes' on existing and even new bioweapons. To find out why, and how, Ian Sample speaks to Dr Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Bloomberg School of Public Health. He explains what has governments so worried and what measures could be put in place to reduce the risksCould AI change the stakes' in the development of bioweapons?Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod Continue reading...