Artificial Intelligence news

In isolation, Alexander Grothendieck seemed to have lost touch with reality, but some say his metaphysical theories could contain wondersOne day in September 2014, in a hamlet in the French Pyrenean foothills, Jean-Claude, a landscape gardener in his late 50s, was surprised to see his neighbour at the gate. He hadn’t spoken to the 86-year-old in nearly 15 years after a dispute over a climbing rose that Jean-Claude had wanted to prune. The old man lived in total seclusion, tending to his ga

A sinister Alexa upgrade exerts control on family in an increasingly nonsensical attempt to capture the momentGiven how technology has become the increasingly unstoppable architect of our everyday lives – the world edging closer and closer to a Terminator prequel – it’s not hard to immediately invest in a horror film about the all-consuming threat of artificial intelligence. The film industry itself has been losing ground as AI continues to provide a cheaper and easier alternat

Revisited: Guardian journalist Michael Safi delves into the world of artificial intelligence, exploring the dangers and promises it holds for societyThis week we are revisiting the Black Box series. This episode was first broadcast on 18 March 2024.In January 2020, Robert Williams was arrested by Detroit police for a crime he had not committed. The officers were acting on a tipoff, but not from a witness or informant. In fact, not from a person at all Continue reading...

Doubling of quarterly revenues to £23bn fails to allay worry about delays to next generation of AI chipsShares in the chip designer Nvidia have fallen after investors were spooked by signs of slowing growth and production issues, despite the artificial intelligence company posting a 122% rise in second-quarter revenues compared with the same period last year.The Silicon Valley company’s revenues for the period more than doubled to $30bn (£23bn), beating average analyst estimate

Tanni Grey-Thompson’s train troubles | Keir Starmer’s country | AI reset | The return of the Man from UNCLE | The big fightTanni Grey-Thompson’s experience is beyond disgraceful (ParalympicsGB chief says Tanni Grey-Thompson’s train ordeal ‘a disgrace’, 28 August, but it is not only wheelchair users who are in dire need of a more disability-friendly world. Many people – especially older people – walk around on legs that are stiff, painful or unstead

Groundbreaking bill aims to reduce potential AI risks – requiring model testing and disclosure of safety protocolA California bill that would establish first-in-the-nation safety measures for the largest artificial intelligence systems cleared an important vote Wednesday. The proposal, aiming to reduce potential risks created by AI, would require companies to test their models and publicly disclose their safety protocols to prevent the models from being manipulated to, for example, wipe ou

The government seems to think AI will allow it to do more with less. But there are plenty of reasons to be doubtfulLike so many shiny-eyed new teachers, Ed began his career amid high hopes. He was going to be a gamechanger, his bosses thought; a breath of fresh air, capable of engaging even kids at risk of dropping out. Ed had been trained not only to tailor lessons to each child’s individual needs, but patiently to field all those time-consuming parental questions about everything from te

As debate rages around the ethics and legalities of artificial intelligence, artists are exploring the technology’s possibilities – and its precaritiesCate Blanchett – beloved thespian, film star and refugee advocate – is standing at a lectern, addressing the European Union parliament. “The future is now,” she says, authoritatively. So far, so normal, until: “But where the fuck are the sex robots?”The footage is from a 2023 address that Blanchett a

Doubling of quarterly revenues fails to allay concerns about production delays to its next-generation of AI chipsBusiness live – latest updatesShares in the chip designer Nvidia have fallen after investors were spooked by signs of slowing growth and production issues, despite the artificial intelligence company posting a 122% rise in second-quarter revenues compared with the same period last year.The Silicon Valley company’s revenues for the period more than doubled to $30bn (£

As multinationals and researchers harvest rare organisms around the world, anger is rising in the global south over the unpaid use of lucrative genetic codes found on their landEven in the warm summer sun, the stagnant puddles and harsh rock faces of Ribblehead quarry in North Yorkshire feel like an unlikely frontier of the AI industrial revolution. Standing next to a waterfall that bursts out from the fractured rock, Bupe Mwambingu reaches into the green sludge behind the cascade and emerges wi

Revisited: Guardian journalist Michael Safi delves into the world of artificial intelligence, exploring the dangers and promises it holds for societyThis week we are revisiting the Black Box series. This episode was first broadcast on 14 March 2024.Two stories about the way artificial intelligence could make the world better – and is already doing so. In Montana, when Lee Johnson discovered his wife, Yokie, had cancer, he turned to AI – and was surprised by the answers he got. Meanwh

Chipmaker, third most valuable company in world, records $30.04bn in revenue, showing AI demand continues to riseChipmaker Nvidia reported its latest financial results on Wednesday, recording $30.04bn in revenue over the past three months – a 122% jump from the year prior – and showing that artificial intelligence investment mania shows no signs of cooling.Analysts had anticipated about $28.7bn in revenue. Shares slid more than 3% in after-hours trading. Continue reading...

Starmer’s warning| Beveridge redux | Enver Hoxha | OAP Oasis | AI advice Keir Starmer revealed his inner Tory when he told us that there is no alternative to his planned hair-shirt cuts (Starmer hints at tax rises as he warns of ‘painful’ budget, 27 August). Apparently his policy will be to grow the economy through cuts in public expenditure – the policy pursued by George Osborne, which failed dismally because it is economic illiteracy.
Peter Fuller
Morpeth, Northumberlan

Live coverage of business, economics and financial markets as water company for southeast England says proposed cuts plan ‘is not tenable and renders our plan uninvestible’More electric vehicle news: Polestar has replaced its chief executive Thomas Ingenlath with the former boss of Opel. Michael Lohscheller will take over from Ingenlath from 1 October.Polestar was spun out of Sweden’s Volvo, but it is owned by China’s Geely, which manufactures many of its vehicles.I am ve

Live coverage of business, economics and financial markets as Equinor says controversial Rosebank development could be affectedMore electric vehicle news: Polestar has replaced its chief executive Thomas Ingenlath with the former boss of Opel. Michael Lohscheller will take over from Ingenlath from 1 October.Polestar was spun out of Sweden’s Volvo, but it is owned by China’s Geely, which manufactures many of its vehicles.I am very proud of what we’ve achieved together in the las

Revisited: Guardian journalist Michael Safi delves into the world of artificial intelligence, exploring the dangers and promises it holds for societyThis week we are revisiting the Black Box series. This episode was first broadcast on 11 March 2024.When Eugenia Kuyda created Replika, an AI companion app, she had no idea it would be downloaded millions of times all around the world. The results were more powerful than she could ever have predicted. But so was the backlash Continue reading...

Special access granted to DfE resources to train AI models to generate workbooks and lesson plansTech companies are being urged to create better AI tools for reducing teachers’ workloads, as ministers announced they would give AI models special access to the Department for Education’s (DfE) bank of resources.The education minister Stephen Morgan said the move was “a huge step forward for AI in the classroom”, with the government spending £3m to create a “conte

Journalists are using artificial intelligence avatars to combat Maduro’s media crackdown since disputed electionThe Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, who spent some of his happiest years chronicling life in Caracas, once declared journalism “the best job in the world”.Not so if you are reporting on today’s Venezuela, where journalists are feeling the heat as the South American country lurches towards full-blown dictatorship under President Nic

Revisited: Guardian journalist Michael Safi delves into the world of artificial intelligence, exploring the dangers and promises it holds for societyThis week we are revisiting the Black Box series. This episode was first broadcast on 7 March 2024.For the past six months, the Guardian journalist Michael Safi has been trying to find out who is behind an AI company that creates deepfakes. These deepfakes are causing havoc around the world, with police and lawmakers baffled about how to deal with t

A sociologist has produced a timely warning about the dangers of losing the relational in pursuit of efficiency and profitIn 2019, the Dutch supermarket company Jumbo began reserving some of its checkout lanes for those who wanted to stop and chat with the cashier on their way out. The move was a response to widespread loneliness, with the store’s chief commercial officer explaining that “it’s a small gesture but it’s a valuable one, particularly in a world that is becomi

Exclusive: Developers say the Fieldworker robot will soon be in use in the UK, Australia and PortugalA new version of the world’s first raspberry-picking robot, a four-armed machine powered by artificial intelligence and able to do the job at the speed and effectiveness of a human, is to be employed on farms in the UK, Australia and Portugal over the coming 12 months.The developers claim that Fieldworker 1, nicknamed Robocrop, can detect more accurately than previous models whether a berry

Revisited: Guardian journalist Michael Safi delves into the world of artificial intelligence, exploring the dangers and promises it holds for societyThis week we are revisiting the Black Box series. This episode was first broadcast on 4 March 2024.This is the story of Geoffrey Hinton, a man who set out to understand the brain and ended up working with a group of researchers who invented a technology so powerful that even they do not truly understand how it works. This is about a collision betwee

Revisited: Guardian journalist Michael Safi delves into the world of artificial intelligence, exploring the dangers and promises it holds for societyThis week we are revisiting the Black Box series. This episode was first broadcast on 29 February 2024.
The beginning of a new series that explores seven stories and the thread that ties them together: artificial intelligence. In this prologue, Hannah (not her real name) has met Noah and he has changed her life for the better. So why does she have c

Amid global political and technological chaos, there’s something strangely comforting about seeing skilled craftspeople calmly mending old timepiecesLately, I’ve been lying awake in the small hours, hypnotised by watch repair videos – pinions, train wheel bridges, pallet forks, barrel arbors, the literal works. Am I interested in watches? No. I could only become less interested in horology by slipping into a coma. My wristwatch hasn’t worked in months, and I may never wan

Transparency campaigners welcome government move to publish details of system algorithmsArtificial intelligence and algorithmic tools used by central government are to be published on a public register after warnings they can contain “entrenched” racism and bias.Officials confirmed this weekend that tools challenged by campaigners over alleged secrecy and a risk of bias will be named shortly. The technology has been used for a range of purposes, from trying to detect sham marriages t

Transparency campaigners welcome government move to publish details of system algorithmsArtificial intelligence and algorithmic tools used by central government are to be published on a public register after warnings they can contain “entrenched” racism and bias.Officials confirmed this weekend that tools challenged by campaigners over alleged secrecy and a risk of bias will be named shortly. The technology has been used for a range of purposes, from trying to detect sham marriages t

Australian Barbara O’Neill’s ‘natural self-healing’ remedies found a certain audience through her own efforts. But her image has run wild thanks to unaffiliated groups exploiting her name on social mediaGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastFive years ago, Barbara O’Neill was permanently banned from providing any health services in New South Wales or other Australian states.O’Neill, whose website describes her as “an in

AI images posted to Truth Social bore the watermark of a tiny Texas non-profit looking to bankroll X usersWhen Donald Trump shared a slew of AI-generated images this week that falsely depicted Taylor Swift and her fans endorsing his campaign for president, the former US president was amplifying the work of a murky non-profit with aspirations to bankroll rightwing media influencers and a history of spreading misinformation.Several of the images Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, which sho

Apple is about to launch a ChatGPT-powered version of Siri as part of a suite of AI features in iOS 18. Will this change the way you use your phone – and how does it affect your privacy? Artificial intelligence (AI) is coming to your iPhone soon and, according to Apple, it’s going to transform the way you use your device. Launching under the brand name “Apple Intelligence” the iPhone maker’s AI tools include a turbocharged version of its voice assistant, Siri, backe

With adjustments to the way we teach students to think about writing, we can shift the emphasis from product to process It’s getting close to the beginning of term. Parents are starting to fret about lunch packs, school uniforms and schoolbooks. School leavers who have university places are wondering what freshers’ week will be like. And some university professors, especially in the humanities, will be apprehensively pondering how to deal with students who are already more adept user

Forget Hollywood depictions of gun-toting robots running wild in the streets – the reality of artificial intelligence is far more dangerous, warns the historian and author in an exclusive extract from his new bookThroughout history many traditions have believed that some fatal flaw in human nature tempts us to pursue powers we don’t know how to handle. The Greek myth of Phaethon told of a boy who discovers that he is the son of Helios, the sun god. Wishing to prove his divine origin,

British tech entrepreneur who sold his Autonomy software group to Hewlett-Packard and was later cleared after a long-running US fraud case Mike Lynch, who has died aged 59 in the wreck of his yacht, was sometimes described as “Britain’s Bill Gates”. It was a huge exaggeration, but Lynch could claim two parallels with Gates: he developed world-leading technology (in his case in machine learning or AI) and, unlike so many UK scientists, he learned how to turn it into commerc

Case is seen by many as unsettling example of how AI might be used to influence groups of voters and democracyA company that sent deceptive calls to New Hampshire voters using artificial intelligence to mimic Joe Biden’s voice agreed on Wednesday to pay a $1m fine and bolster its caller identification and authentication features, US regulators said.Lingo Telecom, the voice service provider that transmitted the robocalls, agreed to the settlement to resolve enforcement action taken by the F

Invented images of Taylor Swift fans in T-shirts supporting the former president aren’t meant to be believed – he just craves the attentionA couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump decided it would be fun to accuse the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, of using AI in images showing a large crowd greeting her at an airport. “Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport?” Trump furiously thumbed into his phone. “There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘AI&rsqu

Agreement modelled after Canadian legislation will pay roughly $250m to support news and AI research programCalifornia will be the first US state to direct millions of dollars from taxpayer money and tech companies to help pay for journalism and AI research under a new deal announced Wednesday.Under the first-in-the-nation agreement, the state and tech companies will collectively pay roughly $250m over five years to support California-based news organizations and create an AI research program. T

Victor Miller proposed customized ChatGPT bot to govern Cheyenne, Wyoming – but fared badly at the ballot box A mayoral candidate in Wyoming who proposed letting an artificial intelligence bot run the local government lost his race on Tuesday – by a lot.The candidate, Victor Miller, announced his run for mayor of Cheyenne earlier this year, and quickly made headlines after he decided to run with his customized ChatGPT bot, named Vic (Virtual Integrated Citizen), and declared his

Victor Miller proposed customized ChatGPT bot to govern Cheyenne, Wyoming – but fared badly at the ballot box A mayoral candidate in Wyoming who proposed letting an artificial intelligence bot run the local government lost his race on Tuesday – by a lot.The candidate, Victor Miller, announced his run for mayor of Cheyenne earlier this year, and quickly made headlines after he decided to run with his customized ChatGPT bot, named Vic (Virtual Integrated Citizen), and declared his

Party tries experimental tech to persuade voters of color to choose Kamala Harris over Donald TrumpLatino and Black-led Democratic and progressive organizations are mobilizing to come up with novel uses of AI to reach voters of color.On Discord, a social messaging app that connects gamers, it’s taking the form of a smiling chatbot powered by artificial intelligence that evokes Pixar’s animated robot Wall-E. When you click, a conversation opens up that says: “This is the very be

OAIC says decision stands that company must cease collecting images and delete those on record, but Clearview AI is yet to prove complianceFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastThe Australian privacy regulator has ended its pursuit of Clearview AI over use of the images of Australians’ faces in its facial recognition service, despite no sign from the company it has complied with a ruling ordering the i

Deal ‘meets audience where they are’ by pairing publisher’s content within tech startup’s products, including ChatGPTCondé Nast and OpenAI announced a multi-year partnership on Tuesday to display content from the publisher’s brands such as the Vogue, Wired and the New Yorker within the AI startup’s products, including ChatGPT and its SearchGPT prototype.The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The Microsoft-backed, Sam Altman-led firm has sig

Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson allege company misused work to teach chatbot ClaudeThe artificial intelligence company Anthropic has been hit with a class-action lawsuit in California federal court by three authors who say it misused their books and hundreds of thousands of others to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude, which generates texts in response to users’ prompts.The complaint, filed on Monday by writers and journalists Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk

My close read of the world’s most powerful posting addict turned up surprising results. Plus, a viral press release about AI, and Nvidia is accused of ‘unjust enrichment’• Don’t get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article here“I hope I don’t have to cover Elon Musk again for a while,” I thought last week after I sent TechScape to readers. Then I got a message from the news editor. “Can you keep an eye on Elon Musk&rsquo

Presidential nominee shares AI-generated images, contributing to spread of online election disinformationUS politics – live updatesDonald Trump shared several AI-generated images of Taylor Swift and her fans vowing their support for his presidential campaign on Sunday, reposting them with the caption “I accept!” on his Truth Social platform. The deepfakes are part of a slew of images made with artificial intelligence that the former president has disseminated in recent days str

Presidential nominee shares AI-generated images, contributing to spread of online election disinformationDemocratic national convention – live updatesDonald Trump shared several AI-generated images of Taylor Swift and her fans vowing their support for his presidential campaign on Sunday, reposting them with the caption “I accept!” on his Truth Social platform. The deepfakes are part of a slew of images made with artificial intelligence that the former president has disseminated

Accuracy of 80% claimed for screening of children aged under two based on machine learningArtificial intelligence may help experts identify toddlers who may be autistic, researchers have said after developing a screening system they say has an accuracy of about 80% for children under the age of two.The researchers say their approach, which is based on a type of AI called machine learning, could bring benefits. Continue reading...