TechScape: Betting markets come for everything – and the FBI comes for a betting market

Gambling on the outcome of the presidential election became legal in the US at the start of October after decades of prohibition, becoming a new type of pre-election poll. Online prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket accepted billions of dollars in wagers on the outcome, with their users favoring Donald Trump with a 70% chance of beating Kamala Harris, out of sync with mainstream polls. Trump’s camp trumpeted the predictions.In the UK, election gambling is legal and takes a very different form. Traditional bookmakers and betting firms take players’ wagers and set prices and odds

Meta pushes AI bid for UK public sector forward with technology aimed at NHS

Meta’s push to deploy its artificial intelligence system inside Britain’s public sector has taken a step forward after the tech giant awarded development funding to technology aimed at shortening NHS A&E waiting times.Amid rival efforts by Silicon Valley tech companies to work with national and local government, Meta ran its first “hackathon” in Europe asking more than 200 programmers to devise ways to use its Llama AI system in UK public services and, one senior Meta executive said, “focused on the priorities of the Labour party”.The event came after it emerged that Palantir, another US tech company, has been lobbying the Ministry of Justice and government ministers including the chancellor, Rachel Reeves. Microsoft also recently agreed a five-year deal with Whitehall departments to supply its AI Copilot technology to civil servants.Meta’s hackathon was addressed by Nick Clegg, the former deputy prime minister and now Meta’s president of global affairs based in California

AI cloning of celebrity voices outpacing the law, experts warn

It’s the new badge of celebrity status that nobody wants. Jennifer Aniston, Oprah Winfrey and Kylie Jenner have all had their voices cloned by fraudsters. Online blaggers used artificial intelligence to fake the Tiggerish tones of Martin Lewis, the TV financial adviser. And this weekend David Attenborough described himself as “profoundly disturbed” to have discovered that his cloned voice had been used to deliver partisan US news bulletins.Now experts have warned that voice-cloning is outpacing the law as technologists hone previously clunky voice generators into models capable of emulating the subtlest pauses and breathing of human intonation

Roblox to give parents more control over children’s activity after warnings over grooming

The fast-growing children’s gaming platform Roblox is to hand parents greater oversight of their children’s activity and restrict the youngest users from the more violent, crude and scary content after warnings about child grooming, exploitation and sharing of indecent images.From Monday, Roblox will grant parents access to a dashboard on their own phone showing who their child is interacting with, how long they are spending on Roblox each day and to make sure they are accurately recording their age.It will also restrict users under nine to games rated “mild”, with access to “moderate” content allowed only with parental approval. Mild content might involve “unrealistic blood or unrealistic violence” whereas the blood would look realistic for moderate violence.Preteens will also be blocked from chat functions outside of games as part of a worldwide tightening of the rules on the most visited online destination among British eight- to 12-year-olds after Google, Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, and TikTok

AI could cause ‘social ruptures’ between people who disagree on its sentience

Significant “social ruptures” between people who think artificial intelligence systems are conscious and those who insist the technology feels nothing are looming, a leading philosopher has said.The comments, from Jonathan Birch, a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics, come as governments prepare to gather this week in San Francisco to accelerate the creation of guardrails to tackle the most severe risks of AI.Last week, a transatlantic group of academics predicted that the dawn of consciousness in AI systems is likely by 2035 and one has now said this could result in “subcultures that view each other as making huge mistakes” about whether computer programmes are owed similar welfare rights as humans or animals.Birch said he was “worried about major societal splits”, as people differ over whether AI systems are actually capable of feelings such as pain and joy.The debate about the consequence of sentience in AI has echoes of science fiction films, such as Steven Spielberg’s AI (2001) and Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), in which humans grapple with the feeling of AIs

Is this (finally) the end for X? Delicate Musk-Trump relationship and growing rivals spell trouble for platform

The former Twitter could fade away, or help shape a dark future hosting voices of a new authoritarian worldWas that the week that marked the death of X? The platform formerly regarded as a utopian market square for exchanging information has suffered its largest exodus to date.Bluesky, emerging as X’s newest rival, has amassed 16 million users, including 1 million in the course of 24 hours last week. Hundreds of thousands of people have quit the former Twitter since Donald Trump’s election victory on 6 November.The catalyst is X’s owner, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who transformed the social media site and used it as a megaphone to blast Trump into the White House.The US president-elect said Musk would head the new Department of Government Efficiency, the acronym for which, Doge, is a pun on the dog internet meme and the Dogecoin cryptocurrency, started as a joke by its creators, which jumped in value after Musk dubbed it “the people’s crypto” in 2021