Technology | The Guardian

Arturo Bejar told Congress that he saw first-hand how the social media giant was not protecting his child from harassmentOn the same day whistleblower Frances Haugen was testifying before Congress about the harms of Facebook and Instagram to children in the fall of 2021, a former engineering director at the social media giant who had rejoined the company as a consultant sent an alarming email to Mark Zuckerberg about the same topic.Arturo Bejar, known for his expertise on curbing online harassment, recounted to the Meta CEO of his own daughter's troubling experiences with Instagram. But he said his concerns and warnings went unheeded. And on Tuesday, it was Bejar's turn to testify to Congress. Continue reading...

Against the odds, world leaders agreed on a landmark declaration to bring stronger oversight to AI. Plus, Sam Bankman-Fried's very bad week Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereFor Max Tegmark, last week's artificial intelligence summit at Bletchley Park was an emotional moment. The MIT professor and AI researcher was behind a letter this year calling for a pause in development of advanced systems. It didn't happen, but it was a crucial contribution to the political and academic momentum that resulted in the Bletchley gathering.[The summit] has actually made me more optimistic. It really has superseded my expectations," he told me. I've been working for about 10 years, hoping that one day there would be an international summit on AI safety. Seeing it happen with my own eyes - and done so surprisingly well - was very moving."Five takeaways from the summit.Sister newsletter First Edition runs through what we learned about the dangers of AI.The great powers signed up to Sunak's meetup - while jostling for position.Zoe Williams is very good on the problem with tech bro philanthropy.It's not AI but the tech giants that control it that need reining in, writes John Naughton.AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li: I'm more concerned about the risks that are here and now."Sunak's summit trades in Silicon Valley celebrity and lays bare the UK's Brexit dilemmas, argues Rafael Behr. Continue reading...

Japan is seen as the home of games, but the sector is struggling - and China is poaching its talent. It's a power shift that may change the gaming landscape for goodIn September, a quarter of a million people journeyed through Japan's punishing late-summer heat to the cavernous expanse of the Makuhari Messe convention centre in the industrial hinterlands east of Tokyo. They came for the 27th Tokyo Game Show, which was back in full ostentatious form this year after a pandemic hiatus and a timorous return in 2022. Most came hoping for the chance to play one of the hundreds of as-yet-unreleased video games on display within the show's 11 hangars. Others hoped to broker deals to have their video game published, or to publish someone else's.To step through the front doors was to enter a scene of roaring overstimulation. A babble of tens of thousands of voices clashed with a competing timpani of video game trailers. Queues for some games were closed just 10 minutes after the show opened, having passed their maximum occupancy. All around were competing visions of the future of video games: traditional troll-battling fantasies; competitive shooting games in which the weapons shoot streams of candy-coloured bath bubbles; virtual reality racers played out from within hi-tech helmets; artificial reality dioramas layered atop the world as seen through a smartphone's camera lens; games filled with supporting characters whose dialogue was written and recorded by AI. (One booth offered a dozen books and manuals on ChatGPT and how it might revolutionise - or rather, cut costs for - the industry.) Continue reading...

Former Daily Mail columnist and far-right agitator show their gratitude after rejoining social media platformThe former Daily Mail columnist Katie Hopkins and the far-right agitator Tommy Robinson have thanked Elon Musk for reinstating their accounts on X after being banned for hateful conduct".Hopkins, who found fame as a candidate on BBC's The Apprentice, was suspended permanently in 2020 on the platform, then known as Twitter. Continue reading...

Binance and Coinbase are under investigation - but bitcoin was trading at highest value in a year as FTX founder convicted of fraudAs the trial of the former crypto star and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried began last month, headlines declared cryptocurrency was on trial too.But when Bankman-Fried was found guilty on seven counts of wire fraud and money-laundering conspiracy on Thursday evening, after less than five hours of jury deliberations, bitcoin was trading at its highest price in a year. Continue reading...

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Worm Club; PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One

Artificial intelligence being used to unpick meanings behind vocal and physical cues of host of creaturesIf an unexpected meow, peculiar pose, or unusual twitch of the whiskers leaves you puzzling over what your cat is trying to tell you, artificial intelligence may soon be able to translate.Scientists are turning to new technology to unpick the meanings behind the vocal and physical cues of a host of animals. Continue reading...

By contrast, prompts for Israeli' do not generate images of people wielding guns, even in response to a prompt for Israel army'A WhatsApp feature that generates images in response to users' searches returns a picture of a gun or a boy with a gun when prompted with the terms Palestinian", Palestine" or Muslim boy Palestinian", the Guardian has learned.The search results varied when tested by different users, but the Guardian verified through screenshots and its own tests that various stickers portraying guns surfaced for these three search results. Prompts for Israeli boy" generated cartoons of children playing soccer and reading. In response to a prompt for Israel army" the AI created drawings of soldiers smiling and praying, no guns involved. Continue reading...

Even China is part of the UK's Bletchley declaration' - but Britain is not the only country ambitious to lead on the issueSitting in a purpose-built hut in the grounds of the historic Bletchley Park country estate, British officials believed they had pulled off a diplomatic coup.On stage in front of them was the UK's technology secretary, Michelle Donelan, and behind her were high-level representatives from the US and China, together for the first time to discuss the international regulation of artificial intelligence. Continue reading...

PlayStation 5 (version tested), Xbox Series X/S, PC; Don't Nod

Ilya Sutskever, one of the leading AI scientists behind ChatGPT, reflects on his founding vision and values. In conversations with the film-maker Tonje Hessen Schei as he was developing the chat language model between 2016 and 2019, he describes his personal philosophy and makes startling predictions for a technology already shaping our world. Reflecting on his ideas today, amid a global debate over safety and regulation, we consider the opportunities as well as the consequences of AI technology. Ilya discusses his ultimate goal of artificial general intelligence (AGI), a computer system that can do any job or task that a human does, but better', and questions whether the AGI arms race will be good or bad for humanity.These filmed interviews with Ilya Sustkever are part of a feature length documentary on artificial intelligence, called iHumanIlya Continue reading...

Elon Musk, the world's richest man; Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind; and King Charles among those weighing inThe global AI safety summit opened at Bletchley Park on Wednesday with a landmark declaration from countries including the UK, US, EU and China that the technology poses a potentially catastrophic risk to humanity.The so-called Bletchley declaration said: There is potential for serious, even catastrophic, harm, either deliberate or unintentional, stemming from the most significant capabilities of these AI models." Continue reading...

The PM's fear of stifling innovation makes him too hesitant to deal with problems that Washington and Brussels are already addressingThe challenge of regulating artificial intelligence is sometimes compared to the management of nuclear energy: there are valuable civil applications alongside terrifying military ones, and a credible risk of existential calamity if it all goes wrong. But nuclear weapons are expensive and hard to acquire. By contrast, AI can distribute awesome power at relatively low cost. This adds unprecedented complexity to the task facing attenders at an AI safety summit that Rishi Sunak is hosting this week at Bletchley Park.The prime minister wants to position the UK as a global leader in the field. It is a creditable diplomatic endeavour, partly vindicated by the Bletchley declaration" in which 28 countries agree to a sustained global dialogue on managing emerging AI risks. Significantly, both the US and China have signed. Continue reading...

PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch; Outerloop Games/Annapurna Interactive

US vice-president to say short-term problems with technology as pressing as existential ones, before UK summit

My possessions were dumped outside and there was no way I could get helpOn the last night of my stay in a Washington DC Airbnb, I returned late to find all my possessions - including my passport - dumped in the street outside the apartment in carrier bags. Eerily, the apartment had been cleaned. The host arrived and told me I had to leave since someone else had booked that night. By then it was midnight. I showed my booking confirmation stating checkout was 11am the following morning, and she looked sheepish. No guest materialised, since the host had clearly muddled her dates, and I was allowed to stay the night.I tried to contact Airbnb and discovered that, in an emergency, you are given just three options: phone the police, contact your host, or ask your host for a partial refund. There is no phone number to call - instead, you can only request a callback. It didn't call me until 3am (when, mercifully, I had made it to bed). It had been told by the host I had refused" to check out. I had to remind Airbnb of my booking dates. Continue reading...

At a table where democratic accountability should dominate, a diminished nation is trading in Silicon Valley celebrityWho is the more trustworthy custodian of machines capable of diverting the course of human civilisation: Elon Musk or the Chinese Communist party? Will it be the billionaire megalomaniac tycoon who meddles in international crises as if they were video games loaded on to his personal propaganda console? Or the authoritarian superpower that likes digital technology best when it enables more efficient and ruthless social engineering and political repression?Neither is the answer - and thankfully, other options are available. But asking the question in starkly polarised terms illuminates the challenge posed by artificial intelligence that is evolving faster than any effort to bring it under responsible supervision.Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Chosen from a list that includes greedflation', nepo baby' and deinfluencing', use of term has quadrupled this yearThe technology that is set to dominate the future - for good or ill - is now the word of the year. AI" has been named the most notable word of 2023 by the dictionary publisher Collins.Defined as the modelling of human mental functions by computer programs", AI was chosen because it has accelerated at such a fast pace and become the dominant conversation of 2023", the publisher said. The use of the word (strictly an initialism) has quadrupled over the past year. Continue reading...

Meta executive's comments show regulation discussions at UK summit could face tough resistanceNick Clegg has compared the clamour over artificial intelligence to the 80s-era moral panic" over video games, firing a warning shot to international politicians and regulators as they gather for a two-day summit on AI safety.The former UK deputy prime minister who is now president of global affairs at Mark Zuckerberg's Meta said AI was caught in a great hype cycle" but warned that new technologies inspired a mixture of excessive zeal and excessive pessimism. Continue reading...

The case was filed in California by two passengers who survived a 2019 crash, in which the driver diedTesla on Tuesday won the first US trial over allegations that its autopilot driver assistance feature led to a death, a major victory for the automaker as it faces several similar lawsuits across the country.The case, in a California state court, was filed by two passengers in a 2019 crash who accused the company of knowing the autopilot feature was defective when it sold the car. Tesla argued that human error caused the crash. Continue reading...

Regulator figures show huge differences in banks' treatment of fraud victims, from 94% of claims refunded by TSB to 6% at MonzoThe shocking disparity in the way the banks refund fraud victims has been laid bare in figures that show TSB refunded 94% of customer fraud claims in full last year, while for Monzo the figure was just 6%.According to the data, published on Tuesday by the Payments System Regulator (PSR), TSB was the standout bank in terms of refunding victims of authorised push payment (APP) fraud. Continue reading...

BetterBlends promised to invest in the city's beleaguered downtown but closed its doors in under two monthsIn September, a bespoke AI nutrition" store opened in beleaguered downtown San Francisco to much fanfare, promising smoothie concoctions generated by AI and a much-needed boost to the area. Less than two months later, it has seemingly closed without explanation.BetterBlends advertised Your Smoothie, powered by AI" and received positive press upon its opening, ginning up excitement for a new business and a novel use of artificial intelligence. Its AI model would take customer orders and preferences to generate a smoothie recipe that would then be blended by hand by co-founders Michael Parlato and Clayton Reynolds, who worked in the shop. Continue reading...

Gather round and hear three of the latest scary stories from Silicon Valley and beyond that will frighten you long after the candy is eaten Don't get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereThe nights are drawing in, the carved pumpkins are in windows and the neighbourhood children are preparing to cause trouble, so here's three tales of tech terror - ones that will resonate long after the candy is gone.Bankman-Fried's decision to testify in his own defense is a risky one, as it will allow prosecutors the chance to cross-examine him. He has so far remained silent through a three-week trial as former members of his inner circle testified that he directed them to commit crimes, including diverting customer funds from FTX to his hedge fund, Alameda Research, and that he lied to investors and lenders.He was asked in November 2022 during his first interview after the exchange evaporated: Are your lawyers suggesting it's a good idea for you to be speaking?" Bankman-Fried answered: No, they are very much not ... I have a duty to talk; I have a duty to explain what happened."I made a number of small mistakes and a number of large mistakes," Bankman-Fried, 31, said in sharing his version of the rise and fall of crypto trading platform FTX. The biggest mistake, he said, was not implementing a dedicated risk management team. There were significant oversights," he said. His testimony also suggested that he will attempt to clarify the encryption and data-retention practices at FTX, and explain away seemingly spurious movements of money.The banks that financed Elon Musk's $44 billion purchase of Twitter are still struggling a year later to contain the damage to their balance sheets.The banks currently expect to take a hit of at least 15%, or roughly $2 billion, when they sell the debt, people familiar with the matter said ... Bankers close to the deal say that Musk's capricious management and a weakening advertising market could point to a junk-bond rating, a designation reserved for companies at higher risk of defaulting.Games must never trick you out of your time. You should never wonder what am I even doing with my life?" when you play a game. Good games are a collaborator to you in the pursuit of fun. Good games inspire curiosity. Continue reading...

Educators are trying to understand how these tools work and, perhaps most pressingly, how they can be misusedIn the year since OpenAI released ChatGPT, high school teacher Vicki Davis has been rethinking every single assignment she gives her students. Davis, a computer science teacher at Sherwood Christian Academy in Georgia, was well-positioned to be an early adopter of the technology. She's also the IT director at the school and helped put together an AI policy in March: the school opted to allow the use of AI tools for specific projects so long as students discussed it with their teachers and cited the tool. In Davis's mind, there were good and bad uses of AI, and ignoring its growing popularity was not going to help students unlock the productive uses or understand its dangers.It's actually changed how I design my projects because there are some times I want my students to use AI, and then there are times I don't want them to," Davis said. What am I trying to teach here? Is this an appropriate use of AI or not?" Continue reading...

In gaming as in cinema, all of the most personal, creative and risk-taking horror can be found away from the mainstream. And happily it's also a genre in which budget constraints can be turned into an advantageLeaf through the history of independent video games and the pages are drenched in horror. It was there in the 1990s shareware era of Doom and Hugo's House of Horrors. It was there too in the Flash games of the early 2000s: Exmortis, the House series, the now lost Hotel 626. And it is here now, in the modern indie age. Lone coders and small development studios have always explored dark stories in haunted houses, lonely forests and seemingly abandoned spacecraft populated by demonic entities. Some of the greatest ever horror games are indies: Amnesia: Dark Descent, Devotion, Slender, Iron Lung. And of course there's Five Nights at Freddy's, one of the most successful indie games of the past decade, which took hold initially as a playground legend.They're not as polished or widely known as Resident Evil or Dead Space, but their very obscurity adds to the terror and uncertainty they instil. So why is horror so popular among independent developers? Why do so many of them set out to terrify? Continue reading...

Charges of 12.99 a month smartphone users for and 9.99 for desktop introduced to comply with EU data privacy rulesFacebook and Instagram users in the European Union will be charged up to 12.99 a month for ad-free versions of the social networks as a way to comply with the bloc's data privacy rules, parent company Meta said on Monday.Starting in November, users on desktop browsers can pay 9.99 ($10.50) a month, while Apple iOS or Android users will pay roughly 12.99. The higher prices reflect commissions charged by the Apple and Google app stores on in-app payments, the company said in a blogpost. Continue reading...

In 2003 a franchise was launched that combined Hollywood tragedy and euphoria with innovative narrative and gameplay, changing the face of the industry for everWhat struck you most at the time was the sheer cacophony of it. The explosions, the gunfire from dozens of other soldiers around you, the sheer chaos and confusion. While other first-person shooters of the era usually put the player in full control of a single character taking on whole platoons of enemies singlehandedly, the original Call of Duty, which is 20 years old this week, dumped you into the middle of major onslaughts, surrounded by AI comrades. You weren't Rambo, you were just a grunt, a cog in the second world war machine.It wasn't quite the first game to do this. The Medal of Honor titles from Electronic Arts were already dabbling in the whole idea of the epic battlefield shooter, but when the creative team behind the best instalment in that series Allied Assault, grew dissatified with life under EA, 22 of them set up their own studio and signed a publishing deal with Activision. That was in 2002, and the studio was Infinity Ward. Barely a year later Call of Duty arrived. Continue reading...

Experts say artificial intelligence can play an important role in exploiting the potential of countries' fast-growing populationsIn South Africa, there are drones monitoring weeds; in Mauritius, there are computers crunching health data for better outcomes for patients; and in Nairobi, surveillance systems impose a modicum of order on the chaotic traffic.The bright new future of artificial intelligence in Africa is part of the bright new future of the continent as a whole, advocates say. Continue reading...

There's some inspired direction as Misery meets Ex Machina in this sci-fi psychological thrillerIn what has the distinctively zoned-out vibe of another lockdown-born project, Natalie Kennedy's sci-fi psychological thriller sees Clare Rivers (Rachel Shelley), an author with writer's block, sign up for a deluxe writing retreat operated entirely by AI. Sealed hermetically into her unit by a virus that corrupts the system, she can't leave until she has produced a book, making Blank play out like Misery and Ex Machina spliced.Taking place in a near future where writing is all holographic word processors and genial AI assistants rather than tattered notebooks and half-eaten Twixes, the profession seems to have moved on. Or perhaps not: Clare's blockage is aggravated by being locked in with only a malfunctioning amnesiac android called Rita (Heida Reed) for company. Reset every day and refusing to open the external doors until Clare has delivered the goods, in the face of the writer's exasperation Rita can only passive-aggressively reel off: You seem distressed. Maybe you should have a lie down." Continue reading...

The lowdown on where and what to buy and avoiding the pitfalls while trying to save moneyIf you need a new smartphone but want to save money and be more sustainable, buying a refurbished one is the answer.As with brand-new phones, there are many places to buy them from, but there are also various types of refurbished handsets, and a few potential pitfalls to avoid. Here's what you need to know. Continue reading...

Plenty of power, camera and fancy AI features packed into a smaller frame that is cheaper than rivalsGoogle's standard Pixel 8 gets a little smaller, faster and smarter, while lasting longer than the competition with seven years of updates.The new Android costs 699 (799/$699/A$1,199) - a 100 increase on last year's model - but still undercuts the competition from Samsung and Apple, which cost about 800.Screen: 6.2in 120Hz FHD+ OLED (428ppi)Processor: Google Tensor G3RAM: 8GBStorage: 128 or 256GBOperating system: Android 14Camera: 50MP + 12MP ultrawide, 10.5MP selfieConnectivity: 5G, eSIM, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3 and GNSSWater resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 minutes)Dimensions: 150.5 x 70.8 x 8.9mmWeight: 187g Continue reading...

Motorists locked inside their cars, while an NHS doctor said her BMW iX accelerated to 65mph and then crashedAn electric car owner has claimed her vehicle's autopilot engaged without warning and accelerated to 65mph, zigzagged across the road and caused a serious crash, the Guardian can reveal.The alleged incident involved a doctor, Ravpreet Kaur, who was travelling in Buckinghamshire with her son in the family's 80,000 BMW iX. Her husband said they were lucky to escape unhurt. Continue reading...

By digitising scents as we have images and sounds, researchers hope they can transform everything from food and agriculture to disease preventionDid you ever try to measure a smell?" Alexander Graham Bell once asked an audience of graduands at a high school in Washington DC.He then quizzed the probably confused class of 1914 as to whether they could tell when one scent was twice the strength of another, or measure the difference between two distinct odours. Eventually, though, he came to the point: Until you can measure their likenesses and difference, you can have no science of odour," Bell said. If you are ambitious to find a new science, measure a smell." Continue reading...

Silicon Valley overshadows its transatlantic rivals. But as artificial intelligence grows - and with a global summit on it this week - some think it could offer a Euro startup the chance to become a new GoogleArthur Mensch is one of a new generation of entrepreneurs hoping to solve a longstanding problem with the European economy: its failure to produce a Silicon Valley-style tech behemoth.The 31-year-old Frenchman is chief executive of Mistral, a startup that achieved a 240m (206m) valuation in its first round of financing - four weeks after it was founded. And he believes artificial intelligence (AI) will be the great leveller, putting Europe on a par with its previously uncatchable competitors across the Atlantic. Continue reading...

We've watched in horrified fascination as the town square that was once the world's collective pulse has gone up in flamesOver the last year, we've watched with horrified fascination as Elon Musk, the world's richest man, rained deathblow after deathblow upon a social network that once served as the global town square for the world's most influential people, brands and institutions.Since buying Twitter for $44bn in October 2022, Musk has fired thousands of staffers, including those working in content moderation, trust and safety, and public policy. He's opened up verification, once reserved for notable users, to anyone that pays a $8 subscription fee, making it impossible to tell who's real and who's not. He's blown up messaging, restricting the platform's ability to privately text nearly any user to only those who pay. He's booted journalists he doesn't like from the service, labeled NPR as state-affiliated media", throttled traffic to news sites, reinstated previously-banned white nationalists, resurrected Donald Trump's account, unleashed threats and harassment on former staff members, killed the best bots, feuded with the Anti-Defamation League, deprecated headlines, toyed with putting the whole site behind a paywall, installed a CEO who will forever be known for a disastrous first public interview, and destroyed one of the world's most recognizable brand names - Twitter - by changing it to X. Continue reading...

Bankman-Fried says his biggest mistake was not implementing a dedicated risk management team for crypto trading platform FTXSam Bankman-Fried admitted to making management mistakes while at the helm of FTX, his former multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency empire, during testimony in his defense at trial.I made a number of small mistakes and a number of large mistakes," Bankman-Fried, 31, said in sharing his version of the rise and fall of crypto trading platform FTX. The biggest mistake, he said, was not implementing a dedicated risk management team. Continue reading...

Questions remain about gathering unlikely to help PM fulfil aspiration of UK shaping global approachNo one is yet quite sure who will attend or what, if anything, will be decided, but Rishi Sunak's government is adamant that next week's AI safety summit will be a vital first step towards getting to grips with a subject that is moving at a pace even the experts cannot fully comprehend.Understandable worries inside No 10 that the Israel-Gaza war could mean a summit lacking in world leaders have eased slightly with confirmation that the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, will attend. Continue reading...

Who's never off The Crown group chat? Who sings whole songs in the Game of Thrones one? And who dropped a bombshell on the Bridgerton bunch? TV talent tell all about their WhatsApp groupsBehind every big TV series there is now a buzzing WhatsApp group. From spitballing ideas for great plotlines to arranging sweepstakes, and those dramatic has left the chat" notifications, the action-packed groups used by people in television shows are constantly ablaze.If you put nine show-offs in a group, it becomes lively pretty quickly," laughs Ghosts co-creator Larry Rickard - who plays caveman Robin and the head of Tudor spectre Humphrey. To manage the wildness while making the hit BBC comedy, he set up multiple group chats. There is one for all the lead actors called Ghosts" (which - out of the goodness of our hearts - we also let livings' Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Charlotte Ritchie into"), with another named Idiot News" specifically for the writers - and not the cast (They already know we're massive nerds; they don't need to see proof"). They're packed with impersonations delivered via voice note (Jim Howick does a helium-voiced cockney and Martha Howe-Douglas sounds like Noddy Holder"), but not everybody is always fully engaged. You might wait a month to get a reply from Simon Farnaby - it's like a visit from the Queen. In fact, one time he didn't reply because he was actually with the Queen!" Continue reading...

Advertisers are spending less, regulators are circling, staff is at less than 50% of what it used to be and user numbers are downElon Musk wrote within hours of buying Twitter that he didn't do it because it would be easy".That statement has proven to be one of the few certainties about his ownership of the influential social media platform, which has tipped the business into a state of constant flux, with advertisers slashing spending, user numbers down, regulators circling and the staff at less than 50% of what it used to be. Continue reading...

Retailer predicts robust margins for rest of year despite rise in interest rates and people returning to bricks-and-mortar storesProfits almost tripled at Amazon in the latest quarter as consumers continued to spend heavily despite the sharp rise in interest rates.The world's largest retailer forecast that sales would continue to rise at a robust pace for the rest of the year. Growth had been knocked by surging prices and customers returning to bricks-and-mortar stores. Continue reading...

A competently made yet maddeningly dull attempt to bring the hit video game to the big screen makes for an instantly forgettable night at the moviesThere are five nights to be survived at cursed old pizza spot Freddy Fazbear's yet it feels like an awful lot more in this surprisingly flat attempt to turn a hit video game into a hit movie. At a flabby, sign-of-the-times 110 minutes, there's far too much of so many things - dream sequences, exposition, first act buildup - and far too little of what one would naturally expect from something as surface-level silly as this - fun.It's partly because writer-director Emma Tammi and game creator Scott Cawthon, acting as co-writer here, seem frighteningly unsure of how seriously they're supposed to take Five Nights at Freddy's and so we're left equally confused. It clangs from straight-faced speeches about childhood trauma to cartoonish kids' movie-level goofiness, tonally awkward and strangely, maddeningly dull, unravelling a mystery that's as predictable as it is uninteresting. A film about murderous animatronic animals should not have one checking their watch quite so much ... Continue reading...

PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC; Remedy Entertainment/Epic Games

The hip-hop mogul who signed Tupac talks about 90s rap from a San Diego correctional facility. Plus: five of the best nostalgic podcasts Don't get Hear Here delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereOne of the greatest joys of podcasting is that anyone can have a go. This week Suge Knight, the record label boss that signed Tupac, Snoop Dogg and Dr Dre, launched his own series from prison, while serving 28 years for killing a man with a car. Collect Call With Suge Knight is a crackly recording of phone conversations from San Diego's RJ Donovan correctional facility. Might this year's hottest new podcasting genre involve 90s rap moguls settling scores from behind bars? Probably not, judging by this meandering episode. But it's certainly a colourful addition to the world of podcasts.In other, less incarceration-based retro thrills, we've got a look at the best nostalgic podcasts out there, from odes to 90s pop culture to a homage to the neon glitz and glamour of the 80s. It's joined by a review of Jason Derulo's new romantic thriller podcast (yes, really) and a new series from Alexi Mostrous, the host of our favourite podcast of 2022. It's another diverse week.

Game developers, musicians and artists reflect on Hideo Kojima's landmark political stealth-thriller on its 25th anniversaryFor me, there are few games that encapsulate the turn of the millennium better than Metal Gear Solid. This month marks the 25th anniversary of its release on PlayStation in Japan, but it hit UK shelves a few months later in 1999, the same year as the first Matrix movie. While my school peers were mimicking Keanu and dodging invisible bullets, whispers reverberated around the playground of a PlayStation game that was somehow even cooler. You played a grizzled spy who snarled at you through the speakers. You took out helicopters, duelled with cyborg ninjas and spent a lot of time hiding under cardboard boxes. It was all exhilaratingly bizarre, and the hype seemed almost impossible to live up to.Booting up the game 25 years later, and somehow it still conjures awe. From its wonderfully delivered voice acting (a technical marvel on PlayStation 1) to its inimitable character design, it's an endearingly bonkers fiction unlike any other. It influenced a generation of game designers, played a huge part in the invention and establishment of the stealth genre, and made a celebrity out of its idiosyncratic creator Hideo Kojima, who remains one of game design's most recognisable figures. Continue reading...

MIT professor behind influential letter says unchecked development is allowing a few AI firms to jeopardise society's futureA handful of tech companies are jeopardising humanity's future through unrestrained AI development and must stop their race to the bottom", according to the scientist behind an influential letter calling for a pause in building powerful systems.Max Tegmark, a professor of physics and AI researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the world was witnessing a race to the bottom that must be stopped". Tegmark organised an open letter published in April, signed by thousands of tech industry figures including Elon Musk and the Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, that called for a six-month hiatus on giant AI experiments. Continue reading...

It has Wear OS 4, new chip and better apps - but still lags behind rivals on workouts and can't be repairedGoogle's second-generation Pixel smartwatch fixes many of its predecessor's problems, with a much faster chip, longer battery life and better health features - but it still isn't repairable, which is a huge shame.The Pixel Watch 2 costs 349 (399/$349.99/A$549) and aims to be the Apple Watch for Android, but faces stiff competition from Samsung's longstanding Galaxy Watch line. Continue reading...

Government document says impossible to rule out technology poses existential threatArtificial intelligence brings new dangers to society that must be addressed head on", the prime minister will warn on Thursday, as the government admitted it could not rule out the technology posing an existential threat.Rishi Sunak will refer to the new opportunities" for economic growth offered by powerful AI systems but will also acknowledge they bring new dangers" including risks of cybercrime, designing of bioweapons, disinformation and upheaval to jobs. Continue reading...

Company reports third-quarter revenue of $34.15bn, beating expected $33.56bn, and shares jumped in after-hours tradingMeta soared past analyst expectations in its third-quarter earnings report, solidifying investor confidence that the previously embattled tech company is out of the woods after several volatile years. Its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said the company enjoyed its highest operating margin in two years".The company reported a third-quarter revenue of $34.15bn, beating the expected $33.56bn, up 23% year-over-year. Shares jumped in after-hours trading, with results boosting investor confidence after Meta spent several years in volatility as it attempted to restructure its business model and expand beyond the social media products it built its empire upon. That said, advertising remains its primary revenue driver. Continue reading...

In this week's newsletter: The chilling genius of horror games like Remedy Entertainment's Stephen King-inspired sequel is what their warped heroes tell us about our own neuroses Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereWith Halloween fast approaching there was only one game release to talk about this week: Alan Wake 2. The sequel to Remedy Entertainment's cult action-adventure promises a chilling next-gen horror experience with the eponymous hero trapped in a nightmarish alternate dimension tied to Bright Falls, Washington, the tiny town from which he disappeared 13 years ago.The original game was heavily inspired by Stephen King, its troubled horror-writer protagonist providing a cipher for the bestselling author himself and the psychologically damaged heroes of his novels, especially The Shining and The Dark Half. But Alan Wake also slots into a long history of incredibly messed-up horror-game heroes who often manifest the very monsters they're looking to destroy. Continue reading...