MacBook Air M5 review: Apple’s best consumer laptop speeds up

Apple’s latest MacBook Air is its most powerful yet, comes with double the starting storage and is better than ever for getting work done and as the benchmark for a consumer laptop. But this year the new lower-cost MacBook Neo has muddied the waters.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more

China now the ‘good guy’ on AI as Trump takes ‘wild west’ approach, MPs told

China is now the “good guy” on AI rather than Donald Trump’s US, where the technology is being pursued in a dangerous “wild west” manner, a former UN and UK government adviser has told MPs.Prof Dame Wendy Hall, who was a member of the UN’s AI advisory board and co-wrote a review of AI for Theresa May’s government, told the House of Commons business and trade committee that China was backing multinational attempts to introduce global governance of AI, in contrast to America, which had set up a race between profit-hungry companies that relied on hype.“China is doing some amazing work in AI, and in fact, at the moment they’re acting as the good guys because the US is totally against any regulation and talk about global governance,” said Hall, who is director of the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton. “It’s all Maga. It’s all: we’re going to win at all costs

Bosses say AI boosts productivity – workers say they’re drowning in ‘workslop’

Ken, a copywriter for a large, Miami-based cybersecurity firm, used to enjoy his job. But then the “workslop” started piling up.Workslop is an unintended consequence of the AI boom. It’s what happens when employees use AI to quickly generate work that seems polished – at least superficially – but is in fact so flawed or inaccurate that it needs to be heavily corrected, cleaned up or even completely redone after it’s passed on to colleagues.For Ken, the problem started after his company’s CEO laid off several of his colleagues and mandated that remaining workers use AI chatbots, saying it would boost their productivity

AI companies make powerful tech – but they’re also savvy marketers

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, the Guardian’s US tech editor, writing to you from my happy village in Pokopia.Artificial intelligence companies make powerful products. They also make outlandish claims.Last week, Anthropic released Claude Mythos, an AI model focused on cybersecurity, which has inspired widespread thrill and panic over how capable it is said to be

Don’t make Marshal Foch’s mistake on AI | Letters

Emma Brockes’ article struck a chord (It’s finally happened: I’m now worried about AI. And consulting ChatGPT did nothing to allay my fears, 8 April). I am reading Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat, in which the eminent French historian and soon-to-be-executed resistance worker gives a first-hand account of the collapse of the French army in 1940. He attributes the debacle at least in part to a failure of imagination on the part of the French general staff, who were incapable of grasping that technology, and war, had fundamentally changed since 1918.Brockes’ article suggests that we, and our leaders, are suffering from the same inability to understand that a technology which is currently amusingly alarming will develop in less amusing ways – the future Marshal Ferdinand Foch had, according to Bloch, earlier dismissed aircraft as being a toy for hobbyists and not of any military interest

Meta creating AI version of Mark Zuckerberg so staff can talk to the boss

If you are one of Meta’s almost 79,000 employees and cannot get hold of the boss, do not worry. The owner of Facebook and Instagram is reportedly working on an AI version of Mark Zuckerberg who can answer all your queries.The AI clone of Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and chief executive, is being trained on his mannerisms and tone as well as his public statements and thoughts on company strategy.The rationale behind the project, according to the Financial Times, is that employees could feel more connected to one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley.The Meta chief has a history of creating and experimenting with digitalised versions of himself