Parents must make tough choices on smartphones, says children’s commissioner for England

Parents should be prepared to make difficult decisions over their child’s smartphone usage rather than trying to be their friend, the children’s commissioner for England has said.Dame Rachel de Souza said this should include parents considering the example they are setting their children through their own phone usage.Writing in the Sunday Times, de Souza said that “if we are serious about protecting our children, we have to look at our own behaviour”.She added: “The temptation as a parent to give in to a child’s pleas is a real one. Every parent has been in that position

It’s not too late to stop Trump and the Silicon Valley broligarchy from controlling our lives, but we must act now | Carole Cadwalladr

To walk into the lion’s den once might be considered foolhardy. To do so again after being mauled by the lion? It’s what … ill-advised? Reckless? Suicidal? Six years ago I gave a talk at Ted, the world’s leading technology and ideas conference. It led to a gruelling lawsuit and a series of consequences that reverberate through my life to this day.And last week I returned. To give another talk that would incorporate some of my experience: a Ted Talk about being sued for giving a Ted Talk, and how the lessons I’d learned from surviving all that were a model for surviving “broligarchy” – a concept I first wrote about in the Observer in July last year: the alignment of Silicon Valley and autocracy, and a kind of power the world has never seen before

British firms urged to hold video or in-person interviews amid North Korea job scam

British companies are being urged to carry out job interviews for IT workers on video or in person to head off the threat of giving jobs to fake North Korean employees.The warning was made after analysts said that the UK had become a prime target for hoax IT workers deployed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. They are typically hired to work remotely, enabling them to escape detection and send their wages to Kim Jong-un’s state.Google said in a report this month that a case uncovered last year involved a single North Korean worker deploying at least 12 personae across Europe and the US. The IT worker was seeking jobs within the defence industry and government sectors

‘Don’t ask what AI can do for us, ask what it is doing to us’: are ChatGPT and co harming human intelligence?

Recent research suggests our brain power is in decline. Is offloading our cognitive work to AI driving this trend?Imagine for a moment you are a child in 1941, sitting the common entrance exam for public schools with nothing but a pencil and paper. You read the following: “Write, for no more than a quarter of an hour, about a British author.”Today, most of us wouldn’t need 15 minutes to ponder such a question. We’d get the answer instantly by turning to AI tools such as Google Gemini, ChatGPT or Siri

Italian opposition file complaint over far-right party’s use of ‘racist’ AI images

Centre-left parties slam ‘racist, Islamophobic and xenophobic’ faked images posted on social media by League partyOpposition parties in Italy have complained to the communications watchdog about a series of AI-generated images published on social media by deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini’s far-right party, calling them “racist, Islamophobic and xenophobic”, the Guardian has learned.The centre-left Democratic party (PD), with the Greens and Left Alliance, filed a complaint on Thursday with Agcom, the Italian communications regulatory authority, alleging the fake images used by the League contained “almost all categories of hate speech”.Over the past month, dozens of apparently AI‑generated photos have appeared on the League’s social channels, including on Facebook, Instagram and X. The images frequently depict men of colour, often armed with knives, attacking women or police officers.Antonio Nicita, a PD senator, said: “In the images published by Salvini’s party and generated by AI there are almost all categories of hate speech, from racism and xenophobia to Islamophobia

From Sidemen to MrBeast: how YouTube and its creator economy took over TV

From MrBeast creating the world’s most expensive reality TV show and Jake Paul’s record-breaking clash with Mike Tyson to the British supergroup Sidemen’s Netflix deal, YouTube’s superstar creators are taking over mainstream television.Last month Netflix launched the second series of Inside, the Sidemen’s reality show that was a hit when the first run of episodes premiered on YouTube.The deep-pocketed streamer has such confidence in the format from the septet – whose members include the content creator, rapper and some-time boxer KSI – that it has already commissioned a US version, which is to be broadcast later this year.The TV breakthrough comes just weeks after the Sidemen, who have more than 150 million YouTube subscribers, sold out the 90,000-seat Wembley stadium for a charity football match against a YouTube Allstars team.Attenders and players at the 18-goal extravaganza included Paul, whose Netflix boxing match against Tyson in November made history as the most-streamed sporting event ever