Artificial Intelligence news

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 mo

The actor’s likeness was used in an online advertisement without her permissionScarlett Johansson has taken legal action against an AI app that used her name and likeness in an AI-generated advertisement without her permission.The 22-second ad, posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, by an image generating app called Lisa AI: 90’s Yearbook & Avatar, used real footage of Johansson to generate a fake image and dialogue for her. 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

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 relativ

Politicians at Rishi Sunak’s AI safety summit must understand that regulation is the key to avoiding disasterWhen the great and the good of Silicon Valley pitched up in Buckinghamshire for Rishi Sunak’s AI safety summit, they came with a simple message: trust us with this new technology. Don’t be tempted to stifle innovation by heavy-handed rules and restrictions. Self-regulation works just fine.To which the simple response should be: remember 2008, when light-touch supervision

This live blog is now closed, you can read more on this story hereBack in the inquiry, O’Connor presents another extract from MacNamara’s witness statement in which she quotes an account by Dominic Cummings who recalls her coming into the office on Friday 13 March saying that the country was “absolutely fucked” and that thousands of people were going to die. Cummings has cited this as a very positive intervention that helped to trigger an urgent rethink.MacNamara says thi

AI’s impact on social cohesion and sustainability must be addressed, writes Dr Melanie SmallmanIn focusing on a possible existential risk from artificial intelligence in his speech last week (Report, 26 October), Rishi Sunak missed the most troubling effects of AI and digital technologies that people are experiencing today: their tendency to adversely affect some communities more than others, to drive economic inequality and to use vast amounts of energy. We have already seen the use of AI

US vice-president Kamala Harris rejected what she called the 'false choice' between advancing AI innovation and stopping its progress for public safety on Wednesday, calling for AI safety and reaffirming the US's commitment to work with partners to promote better AI safety frameworks globally. In a speech in London at the Global Summit on AI Safety, Harris acknowledged existential threats posed by AI but added that it was a moment of 'profound opportunity' and this was a chance to 'seize the mom

Former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara is giving evidence to the inquiryBack in the inquiry, O’Connor presents another extract from MacNamara’s witness statement in which she quotes an account by Dominic Cummings who recalls her coming into the office on Friday 13 March saying that the country was “absolutely fucked” and that thousands of people were going to die. Cummings has cited this as a very positive intervention that helped to trigger an urgent rethink.Mac

Former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara says she thinks more people will have been harmed as a result of domestic abuse in lockdownBack in the inquiry, O’Connor presents another extract from MacNamara’s witness statement in which she quotes an account by Dominic Cummings who recalls her coming into the office on Friday 13 March saying that the country was “absolutely fucked” and that thousands of people were going to die. Cummings has cited this as a very positive

Former deputy cabinet secretary tells Covid inquiry she was disappointed Boris Johnson did not stop such languageBack in the inquiry, O’Connor presents another extract from MacNamara’s witness statement in which she quotes an account by Dominic Cummings who recalls her coming into the office on Friday 13 March saying that the country was “absolutely fucked” and that thousands of people were going to die. Cummings has cited this as a very positive intervention that helped

They can take another’s words and sentences and reshape them, on the instant, transforming my stammered-over words into sublimitiesJohn Banville is an author. His latest novel is The Lock-Up
Back in 1985, the Irish government asked me to attend the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which took place that year in Budapest. The theme was culture, hence the choice of a novelist, and a political ignoramus such as myself, to be the delegate from Ireland.At the time the cold war w

Bletchley summit communique does not agree to set up testing hub in UK, as some in government had hoped The UK, US, EU and China have all agreed that artificial intelligence poses a potentially catastrophic risk to humanity, in the first international declaration to deal with the fast-emerging technology.Twenty-eight governments signed up to the so-called Bletchley declaration on the first day of the AI safety summit hosted by the British government. Continue reading...

In the last year, chatbots powered by Large Language Models are everywhere and even … useful. But how do they work?Large language models (LLMs) are the fundamental architecture behind chatbots like ChatGPT or Bard. A question typed in to ChatGPT, such as “What is the capital of France”, has to be processed by an LLM in order to produce an answer like “The capital of France is Paris”.Here’s a visual walk-through of how this type of artificial intelligence work

Former deputy cabinet secretary tells Covid inquiry Hancock’s plans never materialised despite assurancesBack in the inquiry, O’Connor presents another extract from MacNamara’s witness statement in which she quotes an account by Dominic Cummings who recalls her coming into the office on Friday 13 March saying that the country was “absolutely fucked” and that thousands of people were going to die. Cummings has cited this as a very positive intervention that helped to

Former deputy cabinet secretary says relationship between civil service and Boris Johnson’s team was ‘low trust environment’It seems like I’ve got new competition in the live blogging arena. Dominic Cummings is posting a running commentary on Helen MacNamara’s evidence on his Substack account. In his first post he says she was right about the Cabinet Office being unhelpful on documentation (see 10.16am) and right about No 10 being much too confident on the eve of th

US vice-president to say short-term problems with technology as pressing as existential ones, before UK summitUK politics live – latest updatesShort-term threats posed by artificial intelligence to democracy and privacy need to be addressed as urgently as longer term existential threats, Kamala Harris, the US vice-president, is expected to say in a speech setting out the Biden administration’s vision before the UK’s Bletchley Park summit on AI.In a speech in London on Wednesday

Oliver Dowden says ‘former prime minister will give a full account of himself’ at Covid inquiry as he defends Johnson’s leadershipGood morning. The evidence from Dominic Cummings to the Covid inquiry yesterday was not good for Boris Johnson’s reputation. The papers where he either used to be or is now a columnist have led their coverage with an anti-Cummings take, but elsewhere the headlines reflect evidence that emerged that suggests Johnson’s leadership during Cov

Artificial intelligence, debated. Plus: the battle to save Sheffield’s trees
Get the Guardian Weekly magazine delivered to your home addressBletchley Park was the main centre of allied second world war codebreakers, and it’s no coincidence that the English country house was chosen as the venue for this week’s landmark summit on safety in artificial intelligence. The age of AI brings opportunities but also significant risks, as a number of experts in the field outlined in an ope

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 ena

Rishi Sunak has convened a global summit of world leaders and tech executives to discuss how the power of artificial intelligence can be safely harnessed. Dan Milmo reportsA year ago, Rishi Sunak was warning against regulating artificial intelligence, which he views as a lucrative new industry in which Britain can be a leader. He still does – but is poised to open a global summit in the UK addressing the threats the technology poses.Tech moguls such as Elon Musk, Open AI’s Sam Altman

Meta executive’s comments show regulation discussions at UK summit could face tough resistance Nick 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&rdquo

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

Researchers in UK say new tool could help ensure patients at high risk are identified promptlyArtificial intelligence is almost twice as accurate as a biopsy at judging the aggressiveness of some cancers, according to research that experts say could save the lives of thousands of patients.Cancer kills 10 million people globally every year, according to the World Health Organization. For millions more patients, the disease can be thwarted if detected promptly and dealt with quickly. A key challen