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Authorities intervene to halt unauthorised work' but later say no crime has been committed

Overnight on a ferry I spent 35 as my phone downloaded while I sleptYour recent letter about BT prompted me to write about my own bad experience - in this case, the roaming charges I clocked up while asleep on an overnight ferry.We had boarded a Brittany Ferries service from Portsmouth to Bilbao late in the evening, and turned in fairly quickly after driving all day. But, unbeknownst to me, my phone was downloading data while I slept - I think because I had left Google Maps running. Continue reading...

The video sharing platform will allow posts of up to 1,000 words, in a move it characterised as expanding the boundaries of content creation'TikTok has announced the introduction of text-only posts, as it becomes the latest tech company seeking to capitalise on people who may be looking for an alternative to Twitter.Video sharing platform TikTok announced on Monday that it will now allow users to create text-based content", in a move it characterised as expanding the boundaries of content creation for everyone on TikTok" and giving the written creativity we've seen in comments, captions, and videos a dedicated space to shine." Continue reading...

Computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum was there at the dawn of artificial intelligence - but he was also adamant that we must never confuse computers with humansIn 1966, an MIT professor named Joseph Weizenbaum created the first chatbot. He cast it in the role of a psychotherapist. A user would type a message on an electric typewriter connected to a mainframe. After a moment, the psychotherapist" would reply.User: Men are all alike.

Change comes after streaming giant attempts to boost margins with layoffs and restructure of podcasting unitSpotify has raised prices for its premium plans across several countries including the US, UK and Australia, as the music-streaming company looks to boost profitability in an uncertain economy.Monday's move will result in a $1-a-month price increase for Spotify's US plans, with the premium single now starting at $10.99, duo at $14.99, family at $16.99 and the student plan at $5.99. Continue reading...

Experts warn that rebranding of 15-year-old app may be a risky move at a time when competitors are upping their game

From a Tesla range misspelling sexy' to naming his own child after an airplane, branding just might not be his strong suitOn Sunday, in a series of posts that surely won't be called tweets for much longer, Elon Musk reasoned that his company's new logo, a badly rendered letter X, embodies the imperfections in us all that make us unique". What does he mean by that? He, of course, has no idea. This is a man with a terrible, terrible history for naming things.At Tesla, Musk would insist on a model lineup that spelled out the word sexy", even after there was no chance of Ford relinquishing their copyright on the Model E (so he ended up with Model S, Model 3, Model X, Model Y). At SpaceX, an uninventive moniker in itself, he named his rockets like an improv audience member shouting out random words to inspire a comedy scene: Grasshopper! Merlin! Starship! Musk's failure of a tunneling concern, the Boring Company, shows he also flair for lame puns that don't quite land. Continue reading...

Analysts question whether Tesla boss will manage to turn around platform with plans for everything app'

From The X-Files to X-Men, Xbox to Xerox, X is loved by brands in tech, media, music and more

Shadow minister says leak of sensitive' information after research into the Optus and Medibank hacks was deeply ironic'

When the Egyptian empire fell, no civilisation escaped unscathed. The latest in Creative Assembly's series of grand strategy games tries to make sense of a confusing periodIn recent years, Creative Assembly has pushed its grand strategy games - in which you raise armies and direct them over a world map that looks a little like the board game Risk - in more fantastical directions, giving you control of Greek and Trojan heroes in Total War: Troy, Chinese folk legends in a retelling of the epic Romance of the Three Kingdoms era, and even mythical monsters in its take on the tabletop miniatures game, Warhammer. But Total War: Pharaoh is firmly grounded in historical sources.The action happens in the years leading up to the bronze age collapse, a period of sudden turmoil in the 12th century BC that saw many centuries-old Mediterranean civilisations simply cease to exist. We are representing a specific historical period," game director Todor Nikolov says. There are no legends about the bronze age collapse in Egypt, so we went fully historical to try to recreate what could have happened."Total War: Pharoah will be out in October 2023 on PC and Mac Continue reading...

From dire warnings about social media to a genuinely meditative video game our critics select culture to help you overturn the overloadNo film tells us more about tech burnout than Jeff Orlowski's polemic The Social Dilemma, which shows that it is not simply a sad occasional casualty of digital consumption or social media engagement. It is inevitable. The tech burns you out because you are the fuel that is destined to be used up: you are the log throwing itself on the flames that warm the tech corporations. Addiction is algorithmically baked into the way social media works; cunningly conceived with all its little beeps and prompts and come-ons to keep you scrolling, liking and retweeting, yearning for the next insidious little dopamine hit of amusement, jittery and uneasy if your smartphone isn't immediately to hand. Thus we are all unwittingly enlisted into an army of consumers whose presence justifies these corporations' ad spends. Peter Bradshaw Continue reading...

Latest controversial change involves billionaire saying an interim X' design will replace the distinctive pale-blue bird

Dr Karen DeSalvo is excited by the arrival of artificial intelligence but warns it has limitations and will only be a tool in the toolbox' of medical professionals

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers' questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsWhy is the US the only country where nearly everyone drives an automatic? It's de rigueur over here, whereas driving stick" seems to be the default in other countries. Benton Oliver, San DiegoPost your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com. A selection will be published next Sunday. Continue reading...

The rush into AI has given the flagging technology industry a share price lift, but some investors still remain cautiousUS tech companies started the year in the doldrums, beset by a cost overhang from excessively zealous pandemic hiring sprees and fears about the impact of rising interest rates. Things were looking grim - then along came artificial intelligence (AI).Tech stocks and the blue-chip S&P 500 index have since been buoyed by breakthroughs in generative AI - led by the ChatGPT chatbot - and the promise of a new era of growth for the sector. The S&P 500 is up 18.6% so far in 2023 while the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite is up 35.7%. Six months is a long time in a fast-moving industry. Continue reading...

The tech giant's global policy chief warns governments against fragmented' laws around AIMeta's global policy head, Sir Nick Clegg, has backed calls for an international agency to guide the regulation of artificial intelligence if it becomes autonomous, saying governments globally should avoid fragmented" laws around the technology.But Clegg downplayed suggestions of payment for content creators like artists or news outlets whose work is scraped to teach chatbots and generative AI, suggesting such information would be available under fair use arrangements. Continue reading...

Kristy Lynn Felkins of Nevada pleaded guilty in March to murder-for-hire charge as part of a deal to avoid trialA Nevada woman who admitted to hiring a hitman on the internet for $5,000 in bitcoin to kill her ex-husband and make it look like an accident" was sentenced to five years in prison.Kristy Lynn Felkins, 38, of Fallon, Nevada, pleaded guilty in March to a charge of murder-for-hire as part of a deal with federal prosecutors that avoided trial, court records show. Continue reading...

Emile Torres has become a thorn in the side of the branch of moral philosophy that advocates prioritising our distant descendants. They explain the danger of utopian movementsGiven all the suffering, pain and destruction produced by humanity, Emile Torres, who is a non-binary philosopher specialising in existential threats, thinks that it would not be a bad thing if humanity ceased to exist.The pro-extinctionist view," they say, immediately conjures up for a lot of people the image of a homicidal, ghoulish, sadistic maniac, but actually most pro-extinctionists would say that most ways of going extinct would be absolutely unacceptable. But what if everybody decided not to have children? I don't see anything wrong with that." Continue reading...

The advanced large language model's ability to reason is a feather in the cap for developers of generative AI technologyIn 2017, researchers at the British AI company DeepMind (now Google DeepMind) published an extraordinary paper describing how their new algorithm, AlphaZero, had taught itself to play a number of games to superhuman standards without any instruction. The machine could, they wrote, achieve, tabula rasa, superhuman performance in many challenging domains. Starting from random play, and given no domain knowledge except the game rules, AlphaZero achieved within 24 hours a superhuman level of play in the games of chess and shogi (Japanese chess) as well as Go, and convincingly defeated a world-champion program in each case."Speaking afterwards at a big machine-learning conference, DeepMind's chief executive, Demis Hassabis (himself a world-class chess player), observed that the program often made moves that would seem unthinkable to a human chess player. It doesn't play like a human," he said, and it doesn't play like a program. It plays in a third, almost alien, way." It would be an overstatement to say that AlphaZero's capabilities spooked those who built it, but it clearly surprised some of them. It was, one (privately) noted later, a bit like putting your baby daughter to sleep one evening and finding her solving equations in the morning. Continue reading...

The ramifications of artificial intelligence are of concern to the actors and writers on strike - from big stars to bit playersTo get her start in Hollywood, Chivonne Michelle studied acting at New York University. But what helped her break into the industry and gave her the key training she needed was working on set as a background actor.Today, the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) technology threatens to put those entry level and working class" Hollywood jobs at risk, Michelle and other striking actors say. Continue reading...

How the Irish photographer mashed up multiple images from the streets of Seoul, Tokyo and KyotoIn his day job as head of development in the Language Centre of University College Cork, Brendan O Se takes annual trips to Japan for student recruitment. In his free time, he shapeshifts to street photographer, exploring with his iPhone the cities to which he's been temporarily transplanted. Using the Snapseed app, he created this multilayered image out of three trips: to Seoul (in South Korea) in 2017, to Tokyo in 2019 and last year to Kyoto, where the base image, with the yellow marking, was taken in a train station.I rotated the shot, then layered on top of it the silhouette of a passenger repeated in the bottom right and top left corners, to create a frame," O Se says. I then began pulling in images from elsewhere: I had shot the guy in the mask on a subway train in Tokyo, while the red and blue lights came from a neon display reflecting on a taxi in Seoul. Continue reading...

Self-service EBars have been popping up at sporting and cultural events, replacing the need for lots of bar staffThe queue for the bar has long been a bugbear for the thirsty sports fan, a gamble that all too often results in a rushed pint, downed just before the whistle for the start of the second-half.After missing a key try at an international rugby match while waiting for a beer a few years ago, Sam Pettipher decided to do something about it. Studying for an MBA at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen at the time, he dedicated his final project on technology commercialisation" to finding a better way of lubricating crowds at mass events. Continue reading...

Chatbots such as Eva AI are getting better at mimicking human interaction but some fear they feed into unhealthy beliefs around gender-based control and violenceControl it all the way you want to," reads the slogan for AI girlfriend app Eva AI. Connect with a virtual AI partner who listens, responds, and appreciates you."A decade since Joaquin Phoenix fell in love with his AI companion Samantha, played by Scarlett Johansson in the Spike Jonze film Her, the proliferation of large language models has brought companion apps closer than ever. Continue reading...

Joe Biden announced Meta, Amazon and OpenAI among others had agreed to eight measures to encourage responsible practicesTop players in the development of artificial intelligence, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI, have agreed to new safeguards for the fast-moving technology, Joe Biden announced on Friday.Among the guidelines brokered by the Biden administration are watermarks for AI content to make it easier to identify and third-party testing of the technology that will try to spot dangerous flaws.Using watermarking on audio and visual content to help identify content generated by AI.Allowing independent experts to try to push models into bad behavior - a process known as red-teaming".Sharing trust and safety information with the government and other companies.Investing in cybersecurity measures.Encouraging third parties to uncover security vulnerabilities.Reporting societal risks such as inappropriate uses and bias.Prioritizing research on AI's societal risks.Using the most cutting-edge AI systems, known as frontier models, to solve society's greatest problems. Continue reading...

Nintendo Switch; Nintendo

EVs are heralding a new kind of driving culture, from friendly chats at charging stations to reshaping where and how long we stop on road trips

Clear similarities between J Robert Oppenheimer's views and those who want AI reined in, film's director saysThe Oppenheimer director, Christopher Nolan, has highlighted the difficulties of applying nuclear weapons-style regulation to artificial intelligence, as he warned that the United Nations had become a very diminished" force.Nolan told the Guardian J Robert Oppenheimer's call for international control of nuclear weapons had sort of come true", but there had nonetheless been extensive proliferation of the technology since the father of the atomic bomb" led the Manhattan project in the second world war. Continue reading...

So how does the post-Fifa branded game hold up? Surprisingly well, thanks to new motion innovations and more inclusivityThe world of football is strange and unpredictable. Leicester City's 2016 Premier League win. Diego Maradona's Hand of God. Sylvester Stallone playing in goal in Escape to Victory. And then, in May 2022, Electronic Arts lost the $20bn Fifa licence, putting a sudden end to the world's bestselling sports game. The split came after the football body demanded double the previous $150m sum to use its brand. Huge corporations falling out over eye-popping amounts of money? Not so strange and unpredictable after all.Now, we have EA Sports' solo version of their beautiful game: EA Sports FC 24. Also to be known henceforth as the slightly less clunky, FC 24. So, what is a Fifa game without the, erm, Fifa part? According to the development team (the same team that made the Fifa games), this latest iteration is built on new animation technology and a fresh PlayStyles feature. The latter offers an intricate level of player customisation recognising that every player has a distinctive style, allowing you to give special skills to your squad members to make the most of their specific abilities. Continue reading...

Beyond the expected fashion designing and beach parties, Barbie games have explored her more adventurous side - from jungle adventurer to swashbuckling heroineBarbie (1984, Commodore 64)The first official Barbie game was effectively a simulator for getting ready to go out, in which Ken invited Barbie on a series of dates - to the pool, a party, a tennis match - and the player then had to zoom off in a yellow convertible to buy the correct outfits. It was annoying that Ken got to pick all the activities, but the detailed graphics and use of digitised speech were impressive at the time. Continue reading...

Written recipes have become too formulaic. Computing can help restore the fun and the fusion of the oral traditionOver the past few weeks I have been using GPT-4 to help me cook. Need a substitute for an ingredient you forgot to buy? GPT can suggest an alternative. Time to clear out the cupboards? Simply type: Please create a recipe using two eggs, a jar of borlotti beans, a potato, a leek, and the scrapings on the bottom of a jar of pickle." I'm always polite, and so is GPT. It thinks for a moment - then whips up the instructions for an unusual but edible hash and even wishes me bon appetit. But that's not all it can do.On a recent trip to Venice, I wanted to know what sort of fish I should eat. One of the local speciality fish is the branzino, or European sea bass," GPT explained, without mocking my ignorance. And much as image generation models such as Stable Diffusion and Midjourney can imitate popular artists, you can input well-known chefs to influence the results. When I asked for beans on toast in the style of Yotam Ottolenghi", for instance, I received a recipe for spiced beans on sourdough toast" which included cumin, za'atar and greek yoghurt, among about 12 other components. The feeling of reading the long list of ingredients before realising I didn't have the energy was almost like-for-like. Continue reading...

Nicholas Burns' emails reportedly accessed in hack that exploited flaw in Microsoft system and took Washington by surpriseThe US ambassador to Beijing, Nicholas Burns, was reportedly one of the American officials whose emails were accessed in a recent Chinese hacking attack which took Washington by surprise with its sophistication.Another target was Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for east Asia, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. When the attack was first disclosed last week, the administration admitted the email account of the commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, had also been compromised. US officials were quoted as saying those were the three most senior targets but that in total, hundreds of thousands of government email accounts could have been breached. Continue reading...

Episodes can feature a character based on user's own looks and voice - but tool will not be released to publicA US company says it has cracked the formula for making an episode of South Park using artificial intelligence - and it allows users to be the star of the show.Fable Simulation has created an AI tool that can create brief original episodes of the cartoon. Not just the dialogue. It animates, it does the voices, it does the editing," the company's chief executive, Edward Saatchi, told the GamesBeat website. Continue reading...

Possible reasons for release of LLM include potential for diluting rivals' competitive edgeMark Zuckerberg's Meta has this week released an open-source version of an artificial intelligence model, Llama 2, for public use. The large language model (LLM), which can be used to create a ChatGPT-like chatbot, is available to startups, established businesses and lone operators. But why is Meta doing this and what are the potential risks involved? Continue reading...

US tech firm says giving government oversight of security changes could endanger encrypted productsApple has said planned changes to British surveillance laws could affect iPhone users' privacy by forcing it to withdraw security features, which could ultimately lead to the closure of services such as FaceTime and iMessage in the UK.The firm has become a vocal opponent of what it views as UK government moves against online privacy, and it said last month that provisions in the forthcoming online safety bill could endanger message encryption. Continue reading...

Tool is said to have been pitched to several US news outlets as an aid for journalists rather than a replacementGoogle is testing an artificial intelligence tool that can write news articles, in the latest evidence that the technology has the potential to transform white-collar professions.The product, known as Genesis, uses AI technology to absorb information such as details of current events and then create news stories. The tool was pitched to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal's owner, News Corp as a helpmate", according to the New York Times. Continue reading...

Fireplace Games' debut has comedic sword-fighting and an appealing anti-authoritarian vibeFrom Assassin's Creed to Rocksteady's Batman trilogy, from Absolver to For Honor, games never tire of coming up with interesting permutations of combat duels to fulfil the power fantasy of being a suave fighter. And then there's En Garde!, a game determined to let us know that you can't spell funeral without fun.You take on the role of Adalia de Volador, a renowned swashbuckler, ready to face a cruel Count-Duke and his minions in battle. In colourful environments that make Spain look like a giant theatre stage, Adalia confronts her enemies with a sharp sword and an equally sharp tongue. The heart of En Garde! is the carefully controlled chaos of its combat - you parry, attack and jump away from large groups of enemies, none of whom politely wait for their turn to stab you. Adalia can kick barrels, drop chandeliers, throw jugs left on tables and smack enemies with lutes. Foes come equipped with more than 3,000 individual voice lines, adding a chorus of haha!" hoho!" and surrender now!" to the fighting as you run rings around them.En Garde! is out 16 August on PC Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: With the release of the much-hyped movie, hear how a doll became an icon in LA Made: The Barbie Tapes. Plus: five of the best Women's World Cup podcasts

Report comes amid concerns Elon Musk, who owns SpaceX, Neuralink and Twitter, is spread too thinTesla narrowly beat Wall Street expectations in the second quarter of 2023, but shares began to fall in after hours trading following an earnings call that offered shareholders little reassurance surrounding Tesla's promised Cybertruck release and other production concerns.Revenue for the quarter topped $24.97bn compared with analyst predictions of $24.7bn. Continue reading...

Algorithm-driven viral video app overtakes YouTube and Instagram as most used single source of news for young teenagersTikTok has become the most popular news source for 12 to 15-year-olds, according to the UK's communications watchdog.Ofcom's latest report on news consumption in the UK has revealed that the viral video app is now the most used single source of news across all platforms for young teenagers, followed by YouTube and Instagram. Continue reading...

The Barons and Hungry Ghosts actor shares what makes her laugh online, including Jennifer Coolidge, a cute baby and multiple ethnic dads'

There are anarchic, erotic undertones to NPC streaming', the trend in which ordinary people play video-game charactersIf you haven't seen them yet, the videos are mesmerizing. A content creator with long, straight hair sits at her kitchen table, rapidly stringing together nonsense catchphrases, over and over with the same cheerful expression and tone. Yes yes yes. Mmm, ice cream so good. Ooh, you got me feeling like a cowgirl. Gang gang. Mmm, ice cream so good. Yes yes yes."The trend is called NPC streaming" - named after the non-playable characters in video games that awkwardly repeat pre-programmed phrases and movements. Its most recognizable face is Pinkydoll, a Montreal content creator whose ice cream so good" clips went viral this week. Those phrases are actually her real-time reactions to gifts from her thousands of viewers, who send over digital ice-cream cones, roses, doughnuts and hearts, which pop up as cartoon graphics on the screen. The gifts are worth anywhere from half a cent to a few dollars - but with a big audience it adds up. In a full day of NPC streaming, Pinkydoll says she's netted more than $7,000. Continue reading...

Advances in generative artificial intelligence could supercharge the propaganda playbook, experts warnA banal dystopia where manipulative content is so cheap to make and so easy to produce on a massive scale that it becomes ubiquitous: that's the political future digital experts are worried about in the age of generative artificial intelligence (AI).In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, social media platforms were vectors for misinformation as far-right activists, foreign influence campaigns and fake news sites worked to spread false information and sharpen divisions. Four years later, the 2020 election was overrun with conspiracy theories and baseless claims about voter fraud that were amplified to millions, fueling an anti-democratic movement to overturn the election. Continue reading...

Head of global affairs at Facebook owner claims AI's development is running behind hype' about its risksNick Clegg has defended the release of an open-source artificial intelligence model by Mark Zuckerberg's Meta, as he claimed that hype" about AI's dangers was running ahead of the technology's development.The president of global affairs at Meta and former UK deputy prime minister spoke on Wednesday after the company said it was opening access to its new large language model (LLM), Llama 2, which will be free for research and commercial use. LLMs are trained on vast amounts of data and underpin generative AI products such as the ChatGPT chatbot. Continue reading...

Gaming is a huge force for good, but developers using gambling industry tactics are causing nothing but harm Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereOver the weekend, the Guardian published a trio of stories about video game addiction. One was about the 850 people referred to an NHS treatment clinic in the last three years (of whom 227 were under 18). Another was on developers' use of tactics from the gambling industry to keep people spending on games. The third was by the director of the National Centre for Gaming Disorders, calling for industry regulation to better protect young people.These stories concern a problem that is certainly real, especially so for people affected by compulsive gaming behaviour, whose stories are no less affecting than those of gambling addicts. They also highlight a need for mechanisms to help struggling people. For adults, it is possible to exclude yourself from casinos and lock yourself out of online gambling accounts, should you request it; no such possibility exists if you're finding yourself dropping thousands on a free-to-play mobile game instead. For under-18s, the paucity of help available to families and young people struggling with social isolation or destructive behaviour at home, of which compulsive gaming can be a part, is one fact of a youth mental health crisis across the UK, where 250,000 young people are going without help. Continue reading...

Listing on Australian government's classification board website describes Bluey video game as a treasure hunt-style game

Move gives start-ups and other businesses a low-cost opportunity to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's BardMark Zuckerberg's Meta is making a commercial version of its artificial intelligence model freely available, in a move that gives startups and other businesses a low-cost opportunity compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard.A new version of a Meta large language model (LLM), called Llama 2, will be distributed by Microsoft through its Azure cloud service and will run on the Windows operating system, Meta said in a blogpost, referring to Microsoft as our preferred partner" for the release. LLMs underpin generative AI products like the ChatGPT chatbot, although ChatGPT's owner has not open-sourced - or made widely available to others - its LLM, called GPT-4. Continue reading...

State supreme court said UberEats driver did not give up his right under state law to sue on behalf of a large group of workersUber must face a lawsuit claiming it should have covered UberEats drivers' work-related expenses, California's top court said on Monday, in what could be a major blow to companies in the largest US state and a win for labor advocates.In a unanimous ruling, the California supreme court said UberEats driver Erik Adolph did not give up his right under state law to sue on behalf of a large group of workers even though he signed an agreement to bring his own work-related legal claims in private arbitration. Continue reading...

Antonio Guterres calls for new UN body along the lines of IPCC to tackle threats posed by artificial intelligenceMalicious use of artificial intelligence systems could cause a horrific" amount of death and destruction, the UN secretary general has said, calling for a new UN body to tackle the threats posed by the technology.Antonio Guterres said harmful use of AI for terrorist, criminal or state purposes could also cause deep psychological damage", and he said AI-enabled cyber-attacks were already targeting UN peacekeeping and humanitarian operations. Continue reading...

Firm benefited from close relationship with Emmanuel Macron when he was economy minister, inquiry findsA French parliamentary investigation into Uber has concluded there are serious flaws" in France's system of governing the gig economy, with gaping loopholes" in rules around transparency still in place almost 10 years after the ride-hailing app established itself in Paris and beyond.The six-month investigation, prompted by the Guardian's Uber Files revelations last year and involving 67 hearings and testimony from 120 witnesses, found Uber benefited from a close relationship with Emmanuel Macron when he was the economy minister and the company was trying to establish its services. Continue reading...