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‘This will be a stressful job’: Sam Altman offers $555k salary to fill most daunting role in AI
New head of preparedness at OpenAI will face unnerving in-tray amid fears from some experts that AI could ‘turn on us’ The maker of ChatGPT has advertised a $555,000-a-year vacancy with a daunting job description that would cause Superman to take a sharp intake of breath. In what may be close to the impossible job,…
Bernie Sanders criticizes AI as ‘the most consequential technology in humanity’
Republican senator Katie Britt also proposes AI companies be criminally liable if they expose minors to harmful ideas US senator Bernie Sanders amplified his recent criticism of artificial intelligence on Sunday, explicitly linking the financial ambition of “the richest people in the world” to economic insecurity for millions of Americans – and calling for a…
Louis Gerstner, man credited with turning around IBM, dies aged 83
Gerstner was chair and CEO at a time when the firm was struggling for relevance faced with rivals such as Microsoft Louis Gerstner, the businessman credited with turning around IBM, has died aged 83, the company announced on Sunday. Gerstner was chair and CEO of IBM from 1993 to 2002, a time when the company…
From shrimp Jesus to erotic tractors: how viral AI slop took over the internet
Flood of unreality is an endpoint of algorithm-driven internet and product of an economy dependent on a few top tech firms In the algorithm-driven economy of 2025, one man’s shrimp Jesus is another man’s side hustle. AI slop – the low-quality, surreal content flooding social media platforms, designed to farm views – is a phenomenon,…
Apple seeks to appeal against £1.5bn ruling it overcharged UK customers
If appeal fails, every person in UK who made App Store purchases between 2015 and 2024 could be entitled to compensation Apple is seeking to overturn a landmark £1.5bn court ruling on behalf of millions of UK customers, which found the company overcharged them for years in its App Store. The iPhone maker has applied…
AI boom adds more than half a trillion dollars to wealth of US tech barons in 2025
Elon Musk’s net worth increased by nearly 50% to $645bn with founders of Google and Amazon also seeing huge wealth gains A stock market boom in artificial intelligence companies has added more than half a trillion dollars to the wealth of America’s tech barons in the past year, data shows. The top 10 US founders…
‘It brings you closer to the natural world’: the rise of the Merlin birdsong identifying app
Merlin has been trained to identify the songs of more than 1,300 bird species around the world When Natasha Walter first became curious about the birds around her, she recorded their songs on her phone and arduously tried to match each song with online recordings. After a friend recommended Merlin Bird ID, a free app,…
Activist group says it has scraped 86m music files from Spotify
Platform with 700m users says it is investigating after Anna’s Archive claims to have scraped tracks and metadata An activist group has claimed to have scraped millions of tracks from Spotify and is preparing to release them online. Observers said the apparent leak could boost AI companies looking for material to develop their technology. Continue…
Investment in data centers worldwide hit record $61bn in 2025, report finds
Analysts see ‘global construction frenzy that shows no signs of slowing’ amid surge in demand from AI boom A new report finds that investment in the worldwide data center market reached $61bn this year, setting a new record atop the wave of the artificial intelligence boom. The analysis by S&P Global, first reported by CNBC,…
George Osborne has a new job in tech, and it doesn’t bode well for Britain | Chris Stokel-Walker
OpenAI is the latest to make a political hire as big tech spreads its tentacles around the world. So what’s the attraction? George Osborne getting a new job isn’t exactly news. Since leaving frontline politics, the former chancellor has served as the chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, edited (not entirely successfully) the Evening Standard,…