A moment’s silence, please, for the death of the Metaverse

A moment’s silence, please, for the death of the Metaverse

Meta sank tens of billions into its CEO’s virtual reality dream, but what will he do next?

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to remember the metaverse, which was quietly laid to rest a few weeks ago by its grieving adoptive parent, one Mark Zuckerberg. Those of you with long memories will remember how, in October 2021, Zuck (as he is known to his friends) excitedly announced the arrival of his new adoptee, to which he had playfully assigned the nickname “The Future”.

So delighted was he that he had even renamed his family home in her honour. Henceforth, what was formerly called “Facebook” would be known as “Meta”. In a presentation at the company’s annual conference, Zuckerberg announced the name change and detailed how his child would grow up to be a new version of cyberspace. She “will be the successor to the mobile internet”, he told a stunned audience of credulous hacks and cynical Wall Street analysts. “We’ll be able to feel present – like we’re right there with people no matter how far apart we actually are.” And no expense would be spared in ensuring that his child would fulfil her destiny.

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Ministers not doing enough to control AI, says UK professor

Ministers not doing enough to control AI, says UK professor

Stuart Russell, former government adviser, says ChatGPT could become part of super-intelligent machine that can’t be constrained

One of the professors at the forefront of artificial intelligence has said ministers are not doing enough to protect against the dangers of super-intelligent machines in the future.

In the latest contribution to the debate about the safety of the ever-quickening development of AI, Prof Stuart Russell told the Times that the government was reluctant to regulate the industry despite the concerns that the technology could get out of control and threaten the future of humanity.

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‘Beyond expectation’: Nintendo’s latest Zelda title launches to critical acclaim

‘Beyond expectation’: Nintendo’s latest Zelda title launches to critical acclaim

Tears of the Kingdom set to continue success of fantasy series, already being called one of the greatest video games ever made

If university lecture halls and offices looked a little quiet on Friday, it may be down to Nintendo.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – the latest in Nintendo’s long-running series of vast, life-absorbing adventure video games – has launched for the firm’s Switch console to a chorus of critical praise.

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The lawyer whose sex trafficking case against Instagram could spell trouble for big tech

The lawyer whose sex trafficking case against Instagram could spell trouble for big tech

Annie McAdams represents clients who claim Meta’s products connect vulnerable people with sex buyers

On 14 March 2022, Annie McAdams, a personal injury lawyer running a small firm in Houston, Texas, filed a civil action suit on behalf of one of her clients. The plaintiff was a 23-year-old woman, who had endured years of sexual exploitation at the hands of a convicted trafficker. The defendant was one of the most powerful technology companies in the world.

Contained within McAdams’s federal suit was a series of allegations that Meta – the owner of Facebook and Instagram, which are used by more than 3 billion people every day – had knowingly created a breeding ground for human trafficking and was actively facilitating the buying and selling of people for sex online.

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‘Why would we employ people?’ Experts on five ways AI will change work

‘Why would we employ people?’ Experts on five ways AI will change work

From farming and education to healthcare and the military, artificial intelligence is poised to make sweeping changes to the workplace. But can it have a positive impact – or are we in for a darker future?

In 1965, the political scientist and Nobel laureate Herbert Simon declared: “Machines will be capable, within 20 years, of doing any work a man can do.” Today, in what is increasingly referred to as the fourth industrial revolution, the arrival of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace is igniting similar concerns.

The European parliament’s forthcoming Artificial Intelligence Act is likely to deem the use of AI across education, law enforcement and worker management to be “high risk”. Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “godfather of AI”, recently resigned from his position at Google, citing concerns about the technology’s impact on the job market. And, in early May, striking members of the Writers Guild of America promised executives: “AI will replace you before it replaces us.”

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On the trail of the Dark Avenger: the most dangerous virus writer in the world

On the trail of the Dark Avenger: the most dangerous virus writer in the world

Bulgaria in the 1980s became known as the ‘virus factory’, where hundreds of malicious computer programs were unleashed to wreak havoc. But who was writing them, and why?

In the 1980s, there was no better place than Bulgaria for virus lovers. The socialist country – plagued by hyperinflation, crumbling infrastructure, food and petrol rationing, daily blackouts and packs of wild dogs in its streets – had become one of the hottest hi-tech zones on the planet. Legions of young Bulgarian programmers were tinkering on their pirated IBM PC clones, pumping out computer viruses that managed to travel to the gleaming and prosperous west.

In 1989, an article appeared in Bulgaria’s leading computer magazine saying the media’s treatment of computer viruses was sensationalist and inaccurate. The article, in the January issue of Bulgaria’s Computer for You magazine, titled The Truth About Computer Viruses, was written by Vesselin Bontchev, a 29-year-old researcher at the Institute of Industrial Cybernetics and Robotics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia. Fear of computer viruses, Bontchev wrote, was turning into “mass psychosis”.

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Google’s Bard AI chatbot launches in Australia with vow to develop it ethically

Google’s Bard AI chatbot launches in Australia with vow to develop it ethically

Company says its AI programs will include watermarks and metadata saying content is AI-generated as ChatGPT rival rolls out in more than 180 countries

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Google’s AI chatbot Bard launched for Australian users on Thursday as the company showcased its advancements in artificial intelligence and pledged to roll out the technology ethically.

Until now, Bard was only available in the US and the UK, but on Thursday at the company’s annual I/O conference Google announced it would open up the chatbot to users in more than 180 countries around the world, including Australia.

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Twitter admits to ‘security incident’ involving Circles tweets

Twitter admits to ‘security incident’ involving Circles tweets

Feature allows users to set a list of friends and post tweets that only they are supposed to be able to read

A privacy breach at Twitter published tweets that were never supposed to be seen by anyone but the poster’s closest friends to the site at large, the company has admitted after weeks of stonewalling reports.

The site’s Circles feature allows users to set an exclusive list of friends and post tweets that only they can read. Similar to Instagram’s Close Friends setting, it allows users to share private thoughts, explicit images or unprofessional statements without risking sharing them with their wider network.

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AI is feared to be apocalyptic or touted as world-changing – maybe it’s neither

AI is feared to be apocalyptic or touted as world-changing – maybe it’s neither

Too much discourse focuses on whether AIs are the end of society or the end of human suffering – I’m more interested in the middle ground

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What if AI doesn’t fundamentally reshape civilisation?

This week, I spoke to Geoffrey Hinton, the English psychologist-turned-computer scientist whose work on neural networks in the 1980s set the stage for the explosion in AI capabilities over the last decade. Hinton wanted to speak to deliver a message to the world: he is afraid of the technology he helped create.

You need to imagine something more intelligent than us by the same difference that we’re more intelligent than a frog. And it’s going to learn from the web, it’s going to have read every single book that’s ever been written on how to manipulate people, and also seen it in practice.”

He now thinks the crunch time will come in the next five to 20 years, he says. “But I wouldn’t rule out a year or two. And I still wouldn’t rule out 100 years – it’s just that my confidence that this wasn’t coming for quite a while has been shaken by the realisation that biological intelligence and digital intelligence are very different, and digital intelligence is probably much better.”

A document from a Google engineer leaked online said the company had done “a lot of looking over our shoulders at OpenAI”, referring to the developer of the ChatGPT chatbot.

“The uncomfortable truth is, we aren’t positioned to win this arms race and neither is OpenAI. While we’ve been squabbling, a third faction has been quietly eating our lunch,” the engineer wrote.

Giant models are slowing us down. In the long run, the best models are the ones which can be iterated upon quickly. We should make small variants more than an afterthought, now that we know what is possible in the <20B parameter regime.

On the trail of the Dark Avenger: the most dangerous virus writer in the world.

For more on Hinton, I spoke on the Today in Focus podcast about why he thinks humanity is at a crossroads.

Meanwhile, AI is quietly authoring more and more of the internet. When I turn my attention away from Hinton’s nightmares, this is the type of transformation that concerns me most.

Would-be Twitter-replacement Bluesky (I’ll write about it in next week’s newsletter) has asked users not to invite heads of state on to its platform.

Google tried to fix the web – by taking it over. When the company’s AMP product launched, it was the good cop to Facebook’s Instant Articles bad cop. But now it doesn’t look so shiny.

Ministers have been warned that WhatsApp isn’t bluffing when it says it wouldn’t be able to operate in the UK if the “intentional ambiguity” of the online safety bill isn’t solved.

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Apple co-founder warns AI could make it harder to spot scams

Apple co-founder warns AI could make it harder to spot scams

Steve Wozniak says content created with artificial intelligence should be labelled and calls for regulation

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has warned that artificial intelligence could be used by “bad actors” and make it harder to spot scams and misinformation.

Wozniak, who was one of Apple’s co-founders with the late Steve Jobs and invented the company’s first computer, said AI content should be clearly labelled, and called for regulation for the sector.

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How to get a better mobile phone deal in the UK

How to get a better mobile phone deal in the UK

With above-inflation increases, tips and tricks to find the right plan are even more important

There’s a dizzying array of mobile phone tariffs, and with many providers recently imposing above-inflation increases, it is even more important to choose the right deal. So how can you navigate the networks to get a plan that is right for you? What are the top tips for saving money?

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On the trail of the Dark Avenger: the most dangerous virus writer in the world

On the trail of the Dark Avenger: the most dangerous virus writer in the world

Bulgaria in the 1980s became known as the ‘virus factory’, where hundreds of malicious computer programs were unleashed to wreak havoc. But who was writing them, and why?

In the 1980s, there was no better place than Bulgaria for virus lovers. The socialist country – plagued by hyperinflation, crumbling infrastructure, food and petrol rationing, daily blackouts and packs of wild dogs in its streets – had become one of the hottest hi-tech zones on the planet. Legions of young Bulgarian programmers were tinkering on their pirated IBM PC clones, pumping out computer viruses that managed to travel to the gleaming and prosperous west.

In 1989, an article appeared in Bulgaria’s leading computer magazine saying the media’s treatment of computer viruses was sensationalist and inaccurate. The article, in the January issue of Bulgaria’s Computer for You magazine, titled The Truth About Computer Viruses, was written by Vesselin Bontchev, a 29-year-old researcher at the Institute of Industrial Cybernetics and Robotics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in Sofia. Fear of computer viruses, Bontchev wrote, was turning into “mass psychosis”.

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How to get a better mobile phone deal in the UK

How to get a better mobile phone deal in the UK

With above-inflation increases, tips and tricks to find the right plan are even more important

There’s a dizzying array of mobile phone tariffs, and with many providers recently imposing above-inflation increases, it is even more important to choose the right deal. So how can you navigate the networks to get a plan that is right for you? What are the top tips for saving money?

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The digital media bubble has burst. Where does the industry go from here?

The digital media bubble has burst. Where does the industry go from here?

Buzzfeed, Vice, Gawker and Drudge Report are all traffic-war casualties, but they succeeded in shaking up the media landscape

Toward the end of Traffic, a new account of the early rock n roll years of internet publishing, Ben Smith writes that the failings of Buzzfeed News had come about as a result of a “utopian ideology, from a kind of magical thinking”.

No truer words, perhaps, for a digital-based business that for a decade paddled in a warm bath of venture capital funding but never fully controlled its pricing and distribution, a basic business requirement that applies to information as much as it does to selling lemonade in the school yard or fossil fuels.

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The brief Age of the Worker is over – employers have the upper hand again

The brief Age of the Worker is over – employers have the upper hand again

The pandemic ushered in an era of ‘quiet quitting’ and ‘bare minimum Mondays’ but workers have since lost leverage

It seems that it was only yesterday that the media was filled with stories about workers calling the shots. There were the work-from-homers who refused to come back to the office after the pandemic was long over. There were the “quiet quitters” who proudly – and publicly – admitted that, even though they were collecting a paycheck from their employer they weren’t doing much at all during the day except looking for another job. And then there’s the group of workers who were advocating for “bare minimum Mondays” because apparently, a five-day workweek was just too much to bear.

During the past few years, we’ve heard employees publicly demand unlimited paid time off, four-day workweeks, wellness sabbaticals, gigantic bonuses to switch jobs and even “pawternity leave” – getting time off when you adopt a puppy. Facing labor shortages, customer demands and supply chain headaches, most employers caved. The Age of the Worker blossomed.

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‘We’ve discovered the secret of immortality. The bad news is it’s not for us’: why the godfather of AI fears for humanity

‘We’ve discovered the secret of immortality. The bad news is it’s not for us’: why the godfather of AI fears for humanity

Geoffrey Hinton recently quit Google warning of the dangers of artificial intelligence. Is AI really going to destroy us? And how long do we have to prevent it?

The first thing Geoffrey Hinton says when we start talking, and the last thing he repeats before I turn off my recorder, is that he left Google, his employer of the past decade, on good terms. “I have no objection to what Google has done or is doing, but obviously the media would love to spin me as ‘a disgruntled Google employee’. It’s not like that.”

It’s an important clarification to make, because it’s easy to conclude the opposite. After all, when most people calmly describe their former employer as being one of a small group of companies charting a course that is alarmingly likely to wipe out humanity itself, they do so with a sense of opprobrium. But to listen to Hinton, we’re about to sleepwalk towards an existential threat to civilisation without anyone involved acting maliciously at all.

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How to get a better mobile phone deal in the UK

How to get a better mobile phone deal in the UK

With above-inflation increases, tips and tricks to find the right plan are even more important

There’s a dizzying array of mobile phone tariffs, and with many providers recently imposing above-inflation increases, it is even more important to choose the right deal. So how can you navigate the networks to get a plan that is right for you? What are the top tips for saving money?

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I’m glad you’ve bought an electric vehicle. But your conscience isn’t clean | John Naughton

I’m glad you’ve bought an electric vehicle. But your conscience isn’t clean | John Naughton

First, you’ve got to drive a long way before you overcome your EV’s embedded carbon debt. And then there’s the trouble with the minerals in its battery…

So you’ve finally taken the plunge and bought an electric vehicle (EV)? Me too. You’re basking in the warm glow that comes from doing one’s bit to save the planet, right? And now you know that smug feeling when you are stuck in a motorway tailback behind a hideous diesel SUV that’s pumping out particulates and noxious gases, but you’re sitting there in peace and quiet and emitting none of the above. And when the traffic finally starts to move again you notice that the fast lane is clear and you want to get ahead of that dratted SUV. So you put your foot down and – whoosh! – you get that pressure in the small of your back that only owners of Porsche 911s used to get. Life’s good, n’est-ce pas?

Er, up to a point. True, there’s nothing noxious coming out of your exhaust pipe, because you don’t have one; and the electric motors that power your wheels certainly don’t burn any fossil fuel. But that doesn’t mean that your carbon footprint is zero. First of all, where did the electricity that charged that big battery of yours come from? If it came from renewable sources, then that’s definitely good for the planet. But in most countries, at least some of that electricity came from non-renewable sources, maybe even – shock, horror! – coal-burning generating stations.

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Twitter admits to ‘security incident’ involving Circles tweets

Twitter admits to ‘security incident’ involving Circles tweets

Feature allows users to set a list of friends and post tweets that only they are supposed to be able to read

A privacy breach at Twitter published tweets that were never supposed to be seen by anyone but the poster’s closest friends to the site at large, the company has admitted after weeks of stonewalling reports.

The site’s Circles feature allows users to set an exclusive list of friends and post tweets that only they can read. Similar to Instagram’s Close Friends setting, it allows users to share private thoughts, explicit images or unprofessional statements without risking sharing them with their wider network.

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Google engineer warns it could lose out to open-source technology in AI race

Google engineer warns it could lose out to open-source technology in AI race

Commonly available software poses threat to tech company and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, leaked document says

Google has been warned by one of its engineers that the company is not in a position to win the artificial intelligence race and could lose out to commonly available AI technology.

A document from a Google engineer leaked online said the company had done “a lot of looking over our shoulders at OpenAI”, referring to the developer of the ChatGPT chatbot.

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