Month: May 2024

Journalist Maria Ressa named Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk in speech at Hay literary festival in Powys “Tech bros” such as Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are “the largest dictators”, Maria Ressa, who won the Nobel peace prize last year for her defence of media freedom, has said. The American-Filipina journalist has spent a number …

Social media bosses are ‘the largest dictators’, says Nobel peace prize winner Read More »

Funding round values artificial intelligence startup at $18bn before investment, says multibillionaire Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has closed a $6bn (£4.7bn) investment round that will make it among the best-funded challengers to OpenAI. The startup is only a year old, but it has rapidly built its own large language model (LLM), the technology …

Elon Musk’s xAI raises $6bn in bid to take on OpenAI Read More »

Hollywood star’s claim ChatGPT update used an imitation of her voice highlights tensions over rapidly accelerating technology When OpenAI’s new voice assistant said it was “doing fantastic” in a launch demo this month, Scarlett Johansson was not. The Hollywood star said she was “shocked, angered and in disbelief” that the updated version of ChatGPT, which …

Scarlett Johansson’s OpenAI clash is just the start of legal wrangles over artificial intelligence Read More »

If you hear the words ‘down by the river’ and immediately start humming one of modern gaming’s most gorgeous earworms, you have the Bafta-winning Borislav Slavov to thank For Borislav “Bobby” Slavov, it is not enough to just be a composer. The Bulgarian musician sees himself as a man who wears many hats: composer, music …

From IT worker to god of music: the unlikely story of Baldur’s Gate 3 composer Borislav Slavov Read More »

One computer scientist says we should embrace human-machine relationships, but other experts are more cautious Hollywood may have warned about the perils of striking up relationships with artificial intelligence, but one computer scientist says we may be missing a trick if we do not embrace the positives that human-machine relationships have to offer. Despite the …

Could AI help cure ‘downward spiral’ of human loneliness? Read More »

Scientists have found that immersing kids in computer games can train their brains to localise sounds better Scientists have recruited an unusual ally in their efforts to help children overcome profound deafness. They are using computer games to boost the children’s ability to localise sounds and understand speech. The project is known as Bears – …

Virtual reality games helping UK’s deaf children to understand speech Read More »

OpenAI’s unsubtle approximation of the actor’s voice for its new GPT-4o software was a stark illustration of the firm’s high-handed attitude On Monday 13 May, OpenAI livestreamed an event to launch a fancy new product – a large language model (LLM) dubbed GPT-4o – that the company’s chief technology officer, Mira Murati, claimed to be …

If Scarlett Johansson can’t bring the AI firms to heel, what hope for the rest of us? | John Naughton Read More »

Petrolheads are quick to scorn the idea of electric car racing, but the series’ chief executive is sure that time, technology – and even geography – are on his side Jeff Dodds has been a fan of Formula One “all my life”, he says. That is probably a good thing because, as chief executive of …

Jeff Dodds: the Formula E boss planning a move into pole position Read More »

The photographer had to gain the trust of women in south Iran to capture this image Iranian photographer Forough Alaei has a special interest in women’s rights: she has documented female football fans prohibited from entering her country’s stadiums, and for this project spent a month on Hengam Island. Alaei explains that here, in the south of Iran, …

‘I always aim to show the beauty, power and free will of Iranian women’: Forough Alaei’s best phone picture Read More »

Max Tegmark argues that the downplaying is not accidental and threatens to delay, until it’s too late, the strict regulations needed Big tech has succeeded in distracting the world from the existential risk to humanity that artificial intelligence still poses, a leading scientist and AI campaigner has warned. Speaking with the Guardian at the AI …

Big tech has distracted world from existential risk of AI, says top scientist Read More »