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‘A feedback loop with no brake’: how an AI doomsday report shook US markets
Shares in Uber, Mastercard and American Express fall on back of apocalypse scenario posted on Substack US stock markets have been hit by a further wave of AI jitters, this time from yet another viral – and completely speculative – warning about the impact of the technology on the world’s largest economy. The latest foreboding…
Reddit fined £14.5m in UK over use of under-13s’ data
Information Commissioner’s Office imposes largest fine yet for a breach of children’s privacy The UK information regulator has fined the social news service Reddit £14.5m for using the data of children under the age of 13 unlawfully and potentially exposing them to inappropriate and harmful content. The hefty punishment from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)…
Police AI chief admits crime-fighting tech will have bias but vows to tackle it
Exclusive: NCA’s Alex Murray says he hopes new £115m police AI centre can limit unfairness found in tools ‘It’s not Robocop’: UK police embrace AI ‘efficiency’ in complex investigations A police chief has admitted artificial intelligence used to boost crime fighting will contain bias but pledged to combat the risks. Labour wants a dramatic expansion…
US AI giant accuses Chinese rivals of mass data theft
Anthropic says three Chinese firms used ‘distillation’ technique to extract information from its Claude chatbot US artificial intelligence company Anthropic said on Monday it had uncovered campaigns by three Chinese AI firms to illicitly extract capabilities from its Claude chatbot, in what it described as industrial-scale intellectual property theft. OpenAI leveled similar charges last month.…
New datacentres risk doubling Great Britain’s electricity use, regulator says
Ofgem says about 140 proposed projects, driven by AI use, could require more power than current peak demand The amount of power being sought by new datacentre projects in Great Britain would exceed the national current peak electricity consumption, according to an industry watchdog. Ofgem said about 140 proposed datacentre schemes, driven by use of…
If AI makes human labor obsolete, who decides who gets to eat?
Amid talk of artificial intelligence taking our jobs, the big unasked question is: how will we be fed? How will we be fed? That’s the biggest question not seriously being addressed amid all this talk about whether or not artificial intelligence will end up taking over all of our jobs. Formidable though the technology appears,…
US farmers are rejecting multimillion-dollar datacenter bids for their land: ‘I’m not for sale’
Families are navigating the tough choice between unimaginable riches and the identity that comes with land When two men knocked on Ida Huddleston’s door last May, they carried a contract worth more than $33m in exchange for the Kentucky farm that had fed her family for centuries. According to Huddleston, the men’s client, an unnamed…
OpenAI considered alerting Canadian police about school shooting suspect months ago
Company behind ChatGPT last year flagged Jesse Van Rootselaar’s account for ‘furtherance of violent activities’ ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has said it considered alerting Canadian police last year about the activities of a person who months later committed one of the worst school shootings in the country’s history. OpenAI said last June the company identified the account…
The splinternet: how online shutdowns are getting cheaper and easier to impose
Iran has shown how plausible blackouts now are, with far-reaching consequences for the internet as we know it During the height of Iran’s blackout in January, people could still access a platform that, in some senses, was like the internet. Iranians could message family members on a government-monitored app and watch clips of Manchester United…