by Josh Halliday North of England editor on (#6N4XG)
Security incident at pension scheme being taken extremely seriously', but broadcaster says there is no evidence of a ransomware attackThe BBC has launched an investigation after the details of more than 25,000 current and former employees were exposed in a data breach.The corporation's pension scheme wrote to members on Wednesday to say their details had been stolen in a data security incident that it was taking extremely seriously". Continue reading...
A Hamilton-esque performance extolling the virtues of design software was exactly the wrong kind of cornyThe next time you're sitting through a company-wide meeting, half-listening to a leader drone on about updates or product launches (and hoping they don't announce layoffs or budget cuts), remember this: at least they're not rapping.That's what happened at Canva Create, a summit held in Los Angeles last week, in honor of Canva, a graphic design company known for helping non-designers produce good-enough flyers to advertise a yard sale or middle school talent show. In LA, Melanie Perkins, co-founder of the $40bn Australian brand, spoke to attendees about brand-building, maintaining a strong company culture and scaling operations", per Variety. (Something she knows a lot about: Disney's CEO, Bob Iger, who also spoke at the summit, is an investor and board member of the platform.) Continue reading...
by Robyn Vinter North of England correspondent on (#6N4NC)
Ellen Roome says firms should be required to hand over data in case it can help parents understand why their child diedA woman whose 14-year-old son killed himself is calling for parents to be given the legal right to access their child's social media accounts to help understand why they died.Ellen Roome has gathered more than 100,000 signatures on a petition calling for social media companies to be required to hand over data to parents after a child has died.In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or email pat@papyrus-uk.org, and in the UK and Ireland Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 988 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org. Continue reading...
Ryan Salame is first of Sam Bankman-Fried's lieutenants to get jail time for his role in 2022 collapse of cryptocurrency exchangeA federal judge on Tuesday sentenced the former FTX executive Ryan Salame to more than seven years in prison, the first of the lieutenants of the failed cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried to receive jail time for their roles in the 2022 collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange.Salame, 30, was a high-ranking executive at FTX for most of the exchange's existence and, up until its collapse, was the co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets. He pleaded guilty last year to illegally making unlawful US campaign contributions and to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. Continue reading...
Javier Milei to hold private talks with Sundar Pichai and Sam Altman as Argentina faces worst economic crisis in decadesJavier Milei, Argentina's president, is set to meet with the leaders of some of the world's largest tech companies in Silicon Valley this week. The far-right libertarian leader will hold private talks with Sundar Pichai of Google, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Tim Cook of Apple.Milei also met last month with Elon Musk, who has become one of the South American president's most prominent cheerleaders and repeatedly shared his pro-deregulation, anti-social justice message on X (formerly Twitter). Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire, has also twice visited Milei, flying to Buenos Aires to speak with him in February and May of this year. Continue reading...
US tech startup says committee will advise on critical safety and security decisions'OpenAI says it is setting up a safety and security committee and has begun training a new AI model to supplant the GPT-4 system that underpins its ChatGPT chatbot.The San Francisco startup said in a blogpost on Tuesday that the committee will advise the full board on critical safety and security decisions" for its projects and operations. Continue reading...
One day and six (very long) agreements later, can we call the meeting to hammer out the future of AI regulation a success? Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereWhat does success look like for the second global AI summit? As the great and good of the industry (and me) gathered last week at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, a sprawling hilltop campus in eastern Seoul, that was the question I kept asking myself.If we're ranking the event by the quantity of announcements generated, then it's a roaring success. In less than 24 hours - starting with a virtual leader's summit" at 8pm and ending with a joint press conference with the South Korean and British science and technology ministers - I counted no fewer than six agreements, pacts, pledges and statements, all demonstrating the success of the event in getting people around the table to hammer out a deal.The first 16 companies have signed up to voluntary artificial intelligence safety standards introduced at the Bletchley Park summit, Rishi Sunak has said on the eve of the follow-up event in Seoul.These commitments ensure the world's leading AI companies will provide transparency and accountability on their plans to develop safe AI," Sunak said. It sets a precedent for global standards on AI safety that will unlock the benefits of this transformative technology."Those institutes will begin sharing information about models, their limitations, capabilities and risks, as well as monitoring specific AI harms and safety incidents" where they occur and sharing resources to advance global understanding of the science of AI safety.At the first full house" meeting of those countries on Wednesday, [Michelle Donelan, the UK technology secretary] warned the creation of the network was only a first step. We must not rest on our laurels. As the pace of AI development accelerates, we must match that speed with our own efforts if we are to grip the risks and seize the limitless opportunities for our public."Twenty-seven nations, including the United Kingdom, Republic of Korea, France, United States, United Arab Emirates, as well as the European Union, have signed up to developing proposals for assessing AI risks over the coming months, in a set of agreements that bring the AI Seoul summit to an end. The Seoul Ministerial Statement sees countries agreeing for the first time to develop shared risk thresholds for frontier AI development and deployment, including agreeing when model capabilities could pose severe risks" without appropriate mitigations. This could include helping malicious actors to acquire or use chemical or biological weapons, and AI's ability to evade human oversight, for example by manipulation and deception or autonomous replication and adaptation. Continue reading...
In 2007, a big-screen version of the hit video game was announced, but it languished in development limbo. What happened, and what does it mean for Margot Robbie's new adaptation?When the news came out that Margot Robbie is set to produce a movie based on the iconic life-simulation video game, The Sims, many people's first response was: How the heck do you make a movie out of The Sims?" It may be one of the bestselling game series of all time but, crucially, it doesn't really have any plot to work with. The entire point is that it's a sandbox life sim, and players can do whatever they want.This has all happened before. In 2007, it was announced that a movie based on The Sims was coming to the big screen, with what was then 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios) acquiring the rights. It was written by Brian Lynch, who has become the Hollywood screenwriter of choice for some of the past decade's biggest and most critically acclaimed family animations, including Puss in Boots (2011), Minions (2015) and Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022), and The Secret Life of Pets movies. Continue reading...
Journalist Maria Ressa named Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk in speech at Hay literary festival in PowysTech bros" such as Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are the largest dictators", Maria Ressa, who won the Nobel peace prize in 2021 for her defence of media freedom, has said.The American-Filipina journalist has spent a number of years fighting charges filed during then president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte's administration, but said Duterte is a far smaller dictator compared to Mark Zuckerberg, and now let me throw in Elon Musk". Continue reading...
Funding round values artificial intelligence startup at $18bn before investment, says multibillionaireElon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI has closed a $6bn (4.7bn) investment round that will make it among the best-funded challengers to OpenAI.The startup is only a year old, but it has rapidly built its own large language model (LLM), the technology underpinning many of the recent advances in generative artificial intelligence capable of creating human-like text, pictures, video, and voices. Continue reading...
Hollywood star's claim ChatGPT update used an imitation of her voice highlights tensions over rapidly accelerating technologyWhen OpenAI's new voice assistant said it was doing fantastic" in a launch demo this month, Scarlett Johansson was not.The Hollywood star said she was shocked, angered and in disbelief" that the updated version of ChatGPT, which can listen to spoken prompts and respond verbally, had a voice eerily similar" to hers. Continue reading...
One computer scientist says we should embrace human-machine relationships, but other experts are more cautiousHollywood may have warned about the perils of striking up relationships with artificial intelligence, but one computer scientist says we may be missing a trick if we do not embrace the positives that human-machine relationships have to offer.Despite the travails of Joaquin Phoenix's introverted and soon-to-be-divorced protagonist in the 2013 movie Her, one professor says we should be open to the comforts that chatbots can provide. Continue reading...
Petrolheads are quick to scorn the idea of electric car racing, but the series' chief executive is sure that time, technology - and even geography - are on his sideJeff Dodds has been a fan of Formula One all my life", he says. That is probably a good thing because, as chief executive of electric racing series Formula E, he must find the comparison with its fossil-fuelled cousin is constant.So he takes it head-on. Such is the growth and improvement in technology in Formula E that one day, he says, it is realistic that a question will be asked about whether both can exist together". Talking to the Observer in the race company's west London headquarters, he adds that maybe one day, as Formula E develops, they won't [both exist]". Continue reading...
OpenAI's unsubtle approximation of the actor's voice for its new GPT-4o software was a stark illustration of the firm's high-handed attitudeOn Monday 13 May, OpenAI livestreamed an event to launch a fancy new product - a large language model (LLM) dubbed GPT-4o - that the company's chief technology officer, Mira Murati, claimed to be more user-friendly and faster than boring ol' ChatGPT. It was also more versatile, and multimodal, which is tech-speak for being able to interact in voice, text and vision. Key features of the new model, we were told, were that you could interrupt it in mid-sentence, that it had very low latency (delay in responding) and that it was sensitive to the user's emotions.Viewers were then treated to the customary toe-curling spectacle of Mark and Barret", a brace of tech bros straight out of central casting, interacting with the machine. First off, Mark confessed to being nervous, so the machine helped him to do some breathing exercises to calm his nerves. Then Barret wrote a simple equation on a piece of paper and the machine showed him how to find the value of X, after which he showed it a piece of computer code and the machine was able to deal with that too. Continue reading...
Scientists have found that immersing kids in computer games can train their brains to localise sounds betterScientists have recruited an unusual ally in their efforts to help children overcome profound deafness. They are using computer games to boost the children's ability to localise sounds and understand speech.The project is known as Bears - for Both Ears - and it is aimed at youngsters who have been given twin cochlea implants because they were born with little or no hearing. Continue reading...
The photographer had to gain the trust of women in south Iran to capture this imageIranian photographer Forough Alaei has aspecial interest in women's rights: she has documented female football fans prohibited from entering her country's stadiums, andfor this project spent a month on Hengam Island. Alaei explains that here, in the south ofIran, the women have a major role in the economy of the family. While they are very traditional and do housework, they also do fishing and crafts, and have jobs. This is Marziyeh; she's 38 and achef in an independent restaurant serving delicious, spicy seafood to the increasing number of tourists in theregion."Alaei stayed for an extended period in order to gain the women's trust, and found it easiest to document their lives and work using a phone. They're familiar objects," she says. Digital cameras can be intimidating or off-putting to people in the small, traditional regions." Continue reading...
Commons education committee chair says online world poses serious dangers and parents face uphill struggleMPs have urged the next government to consider a total ban on smartphones for under 16-year-olds and a statutory ban on mobile phone use in schools as part of a crackdown on screen time for children.Members of the House of Commons education committee made the recommendations in a report into the impact of screen time on education and wellbeing, which also called on ministers to raise the threshold for opening a social media account to 16. Continue reading...
Firm's AI overviews feature has been rolled out to users in US, but many have reported strange responsesGoogle's new AI overviews feature for search results has reportedly told users who asked questions about depression to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge, recommended glue as a pizza ingredient and has apparently sourced some of its information from the satirical news site the Onion.Last week, Google announced at its I/O developer conference that the feature would be rolled out to users in the US before other parts of the world by the end of the year. The overview, that appears at the top of search results, is a summary created by its Gemini AI model. Google promoted it as doing the Googling for you". Continue reading...
If you hear the words down by the river' and immediately start humming one of modern gaming's most gorgeous earworms, you have the Bafta-winning Borislav Slavov to thankFor Borislav Bobby" Slavov, it is not enough to just be a composer. The Bulgarian musician sees himself as a man who wears many hats: composer, music director, arranger, mixer. Yet back in 2002, he had just finished a master's in computer science and was working for the fourth biggest software company in the world. Unlike a number of other composers I have spoken to for this column, Slavov spends as much time as possible at the game studio he's working with, embedded in narratives and mechanics at a granular level" so that his music isn't massacred and chopped up".I remember the very day I came up with that main theme, or Down By the River," he tells me before a sold out Game Music festival concert in London's Southbank Centre, where the Philharmonia Orchestra performed more than 80 minutes of music from his soundtrack to Baldur's Gate 3. I was having one of my favourite walks down one of the channels of the city of Ghent, and the lyrics were swimming around in the back of my mind. There was this special moment when I started hearing this theme. I stopped for a moment. I thought: this sounds exciting. I need to record this tune right now!" Continue reading...
Billionaire makes U-turn over levies, telling Paris tech conference they distort the market and inhibit tradeElon Musk has criticised US government tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, describing the levies as not good" and a distortion of the car market.The Tesla chief executive had previously supported trade barriers but he performed a U-turn on Thursday during a video appearance at a Paris tech conference. Continue reading...
UK founder, accused of inflating sales and misleading regulators, takes stand and says he wasn't fully responsible for firm's decisionsThe British entrepreneur Mike Lynch took the stand on Thursday in a San Francisco federal courthouse as a key witness in his own criminal fraud trial, defending his role at Autonomy, the tech firm he co-founded and then sold.The trial continued as planned Thursday despite the defense team moving for a mistrial over alleged improper questioning of a witness by the prosecution. Lynch's defense team called the questioning, which indirectly referenced the tech titan's extradition, egregious" and highly improper" in a filing. Continue reading...
by Hollie Richardson and Hannah Verdier on (#6N0ND)
Why did a mini corduroy suit appear in a woman's home? Helen McLaughlin, Karen Whitehouse and Lauren Kilby dive down a new rabbit hole. Plus: five of the best podcasts about songs Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereGlad We Had This Chat With Caroline Hirons
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6N0M7)
Top camera, chip, seven years of updates and advanced Google AI tools beats the competitionGoogle's latest mid-range A-series Pixel handset steps it up a notch, bringing almost every feature from its high-end phones down to a more affordable price, including the latest AI and camera tricks.The Pixel 8a starts at 499 (549/$499/A$849). That may be 50 more than last year's 7a, but the new model improves just about everything, and undercuts the Pixel 8 by 200.Screen: 6.1in 120Hz FHD+ OLED (430ppi)Processor: Google Tensor G3RAM: 8GBStorage: 128 or 256GBOperating system: Android 14Camera: 64MP + 13MP ultrawide, 13MP selfieConnectivity: 5G, Sim and eSim, wifi 6E, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3 and GNSSWater resistance: IP67 (1m for 30 minutes)Dimensions: 152.1 x 72.7 x 8.9mmWeight: 188g Continue reading...
Lawyers for founder of software firm Autonomy, charged over $11bn Hewlett-Packard deal, suggest they may move for mistrialThe British entrepreneur Mike Lynch is expected to take the stand in a San Francisco federal courthouse on Thursday as a key witness in his own criminal fraud trial, which began in March.US authorities have charged the former software tycoon with 16 counts of wire fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy relating to his company's acquisition deal with Hewlett-Packard in 2011. If convicted, Lynch faces up to 25 years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty. Continue reading...
Britain's AI Safety Institute has been matched by other countries as gathering works on setting up protocol to reduce harms and risksThe UK is leading an international effort to test the most advanced AI models for safety risks before they hit the public, as regulators race to create a workable safety regime before the Paris summit in six months.Britain's AI Safety Institute, the first of its kind, is now matched by counterparts from around the world, including South Korea, the US, Singapore, Japan and France. Continue reading...
Deal lets ChatGPT maker use all articles from Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Times and Sunday Times for AI model developmentChatGPT developer OpenAI has signed a deal to bring news content from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Times and the Sunday Times to the artificial intelligence platform, the companies said on Wednesday. Neither party disclosed a dollar figure for the deal.The deal will give OpenAI access to current and archived content from all of News Corp's publications. The deal comes weeks after the AI heavyweight signed a deal with the Financial Times to license its content for the development of AI models. Earlier this year, OpenAI inked a similar contract with Axel Springer, the parent company of Business Insider and Politico. Continue reading...
Chipmaker reports strong demand and higher-than-expected revenue even as other companies spend to develop their own chipsNvidia reported record quarterly revenue Wednesday on the back of the explosion in corporate appetite for artificial intelligence.The next industrial revolution has begun - companies and countries are partnering with Nvidia ... to produce a new commodity: artificial intelligence," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia. Continue reading...
by Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent on (#6N04E)
I am not a typo' campaign is calling for technology companies to make autocorrect less western- and white-focused'People whose names get mangled by autocorrect have urged technology companies to fix the problem faster, with one person whose name gets switched to Satan" saying: I am tired of it."People with Irish, Indian and Welsh names are among those calling for improvements to the systems that operate on phones and computers as part of the I am not a typo" campaign. Continue reading...
Ciaran Martin says US warning that China is targeting key infrastructure should be taken more seriouslyThe UK is not paying enough attention to a gamechanging" shift in China's cyber-espionage tactics towards infiltrating critical infrastructure including energy and communications networks, a former head of Britain's cybersecurity agency has warned.Ciaran Martin, the ex-chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, said a warning from the US this year that Chinese state-backed hackers were targeting key sectors was a pivotal moment in Beijing's approach to cyberwarfare. Continue reading...
by Sally Weale Education correspondent on (#6N01Z)
Daisy Greenwell from Smartphone-Free Childhood says move likely to have domino effect in other parts of UKThis is mega!" said Daisy Greenwell from the Smartphone-Free Childhood campaign. We are absolutely thrilled and we believe it's going to have a domino effect."She was reacting to news that St Albans in Hertfordshire is attempting to become the first UK city to go smartphone-free for all children under 14. Continue reading...
Children used to obsessively put CDs and 7-inches on repeat, but streaming means they need digital devices and parental permission to play music. And there's little being done to helpMy daughter is nine years old. When I was her age, in 1989, I had my own small cassette player and a beloved pile of my own tapes - brand new, or made up of songs from the radio - that I could listen to whenever I wanted. The same went for my parents' modest CD collection (Genesis's Invisible Touch was awesome; their three Lionel Richie albums were boring). There were a few vinyl records knocking about and there were at least two radios - invariably set to Capital FM - that I could turn on whenever.My daughter has none of these things. The only way she can access music is by making me get my phone out and play a song on my Spotify account. The inconvenience is trifling, but more painful and alarming is the growing gap between us when it comes to musical experience. Continue reading...
Steven Anderegg allegedly used the Stable Diffusion AI model to generate photos; if convicted, he could face up to 70 years in prisonThe FBI has charged a US man with creating more than 10,000 sexually explicit and abusive images of children, which he allegedly generated using a popular artificial intelligence tool. Authorities also accused the man, 42-year-old Steven Anderegg, of sending pornographic AI-made images to a 15-year-old boy over Instagram.Anderegg crafted about 13,000 hyper-realistic images of nude and semi-clothed prepubescent children", prosecutors stated in an indictment released on Monday, often images depicting children touching their genitals or being sexually abused by adult men. Evidence from the Wisconsin man's laptop allegedly showed he used the popular Stable Diffusion AI model, which turns text descriptions into images.In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline on 800-422-4453 or visit their website for more resources and to report child abuse or DM for help. For adult survivors of child abuse, help is available at ascasupport.org. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International Continue reading...
Rishi Sunak says 16 international firms have committed, but standards have been criticised for lacking teethThe first 16 companies have signed up to voluntary artificial intelligence safety standards introduced at the Bletchley Park summit, Rishi Sunak has said on the eve of the follow-up event in Seoul.The standards, however, have been criticised for lacking teeth, with signatories committing only to work toward information sharing, invest in cybersecurity and prioritise research into societal risks.AmazonAnthropicCohereGoogle / Google DeepMindG42IBMInflection AIMetaMicrosoftMistral AINaverOpen AISamsung ElectronicsTechnology Innovation InstitutexAIZhipu.ai Continue reading...
What am I doing with my one wild and precious life? Struggling to follow fast, frantic cookery instructions and developing a whole new swearing habitI have been following the rise of the bao bun very keenly - the pallid little puffballs are enjoying a boom in Britain's snack sector - on account of the fact that I learned to make them myself. It took me a long time and made me question a lot of things, including my soundness of mind. For anyone without teenagers in their house, there is a new frontier in knowledge exchange, which is the TikTok recipe. It's like a regular recipe, except with a twist: it's also like the world's hardest IQ test.The posters are mainly American and the dishes are mainly Korean (or air-fryer-based). The TikTokkers will tell you in broad terms what the ingredients are, but incredibly fast and often with swearing. Think of the craft segments on Blue Peter - painstakingly described, with one they made earlier - then make it 150 times faster and much bluer. Continue reading...
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#6MYSK)
Smart display is the control centre for Alexa-connected devices anyone in the home can useAmazon's latest Alexa device feels like the missing piece in making a home fully smart and acts as a hub for controlling lights, doors, cameras, timers and heating.The Echo Hub arrives ready to be the touchscreen controller for your smart home, and is a cut-price option for a device that usually has to be either professionally installed, costing thousands, or a DIY job that requires more than a little expertise. Continue reading...
Employers in UK, one of 15 countries studied, willing to pay 14% wage premium for jobs requiring AI skillsThe sectors of the global economy most heavily exposed to artificial intelligence (AI) are witnessing a marked productivity increase and command a significant wage premium, according to a report.Boosting hopes that AI might help lift the global economy out of a 15-year, low-growth trough, a PwC study found productivity growth was almost five times as rapid in parts of the economy where AI penetration was highest than in less exposed sectors. Continue reading...
Software giant reveals upgraded version of Copilot, its AI assistant, pitching its features as a virtual photographic memoryMicrosoft wants laptop users to get so comfortable with its artificial intelligence chatbot that it will remember everything you're doing on your computer and help figure out what you want to do next.The software giant on Monday revealed an upgraded version of Copilot, its AI assistant, as it confronts heightened competition from big tech rivals in pitching generative AI technology that can compose documents, make images and serve as a lifelike personal assistant at work or home. Continue reading...
Governments have made insufficient regulatory progress, godfathers' of the technology say before summitThe world is ill-prepared for breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, according to a group of senior experts including two godfathers" of AI, who warn that governments have made insufficient progress in regulating the technology.A shift by tech companies to autonomous systems could massively amplify" AI's impact and governments need safety regimes that trigger regulatory action if products reach certain levels of ability, said the group. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Ads containing AI-manipulated images were submitted to Facebook by civil and corporate accountability groupsThe Facebook and Instagram owner Meta approved a series of AI-manipulated political adverts during India's election that spread disinformation and incited religious violence, according to a report shared exclusively with the Guardian.Facebook approved adverts containing known slurs towards Muslims in India, such as let's burn this vermin" and Hindu blood is spilling, these invaders must be burned", as well as Hindu supremacist language and disinformation about political leaders. Continue reading...
All five systems tested were found to be highly vulnerable' to attempts to elicit harmful responsesGuardrails to prevent artificial intelligence models behind chatbots from issuing illegal, toxic or explicit responses can be bypassed with simple techniques, UK government researchers have found.The UK's AI Safety Institute (AISI) said systems it had tested were highly vulnerable" to jailbreaks, a term for text prompts designed to elicit a response that a model is supposedly trained to avoid issuing. Continue reading...
Tech experts hope new term for carelessly automated AI webpages and images can illuminate its damaging impactYour email inbox is full of spam. Your letterbox is full of junk mail. Now, your web browser has its own affliction: slop.Slop" is what you get when you shove artificial intelligence-generated material up on the web for anyone to view. Continue reading...
AI Overviews, announced this week, are the culmination of a long line of products dedicated to keeping you on Google.comGoogle announced this week that it would begin the international rollout of its new artificial intelligence-powered search feature, called AI Overviews. When billions of people search a range of topics from news to recipes to general knowledge questions, what they see first will now be an AI-generated summary.Google touted AI Overviews at its annual I/O developer conference as a way of delivering customers quick answers and simplifying the online search experience, but it also has another effect on the way that people engage with the internet: keeping users, and advertisers, on Google.com. It's a new era in Google's years-long quest for your attention. Continue reading...
The wellness project claims to help users make smarter food choices' based on world-leading science'. But many scientists claim its fee-based services are no better than generic adviceYour body is unique, so is the food you need." This is the central credo of personalised nutrition (PN), as professed by its leading UK advocate, the health science company Zoe. Since its launch in April 2022, 130,000 people have subscribed to the service - at one point it had a waiting list of 250,000 - which uses a pin prick blood test, stool sample and a wearable continuous glucose monitor (CGM) to suggest smarter food choices for your body".Like other companies working in this space, Zoe has all the hallmarks of serious science. Its US equivalent Levels counts among its advisers many respected scientists, including Robert Lustig, famous for raising the alarm about the harms of refined carbohydrates such as sugar. Zoe is fronted by King's College London scientist Tim Spector and claims to be created with world-leading science". Continue reading...
Rightwing media personalities on X transmuted a screed against NPR's CEO into a fight over encryption via the Transitive Property of Bad PeopleFor nearly two weeks, an esoteric debate has raged on X, formerly Twitter: could users concerned about privacy and security trust the messaging app Signal, or was the Telegram platform a better alternative? X's chatbot, Grok AI, described the trending moment as Telegram v Signal: a crypto clash".Signal is an app for sending end-to-end-encrypted messages to individuals and small groups. Telegram offers broadcast channels and messaging but is not end-to-end encrypted by default. Debates over their relative merits have popped up over the years, though largely within the confines of online spaces inhabited by cybersecurity, cryptography, privacy and policy geeks. This time, the conversation came to broader attention - Elon Musk's following of 183 million - due to X's most notorious capability: mutating isolated facts into viral conspiracy theories for the entertainment of rage-riddled crowds. As a bit player, I got a ringside seat to the manufactured controversy. Continue reading...
Companies such as OpenAI and Meta push ahead, but it is clear that biggest changes are yet to comeThis week, artificial intelligence caught up with the future - or at least Hollywood's idea of it from a decade ago.It feels like AI from the movies," wrote the OpenAI chief executive, Sam Altman, of his latest system, an impressive virtual assistant. To underline his point he posted a single word on X - her" - referring to the 2013 film starring Joaquin Phoenix as a man who falls in love with a futuristic version of Siri or Alexa, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Continue reading...
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