How a fiery attack on Sam Altman’s home unfolded

In the early hours of 10 April, a man approached the gate of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s house in San Francisco and hurled a molotov cocktail at the building before fleeing. The suspect, 20-year-old Daniel Moreno-Gama, was arrested less than two hours later while allegedly attempting to break into the headquarters of OpenAI with a jug of kerosene, a lighter and an anti-AI manifesto.Federal and California state authorities have charged Moreno-Gama with a range of crimes including attempted arson and attempted murder. His parents issued a statement this week saying that their son had recently suffered a mental health crisis. Moreno-Gama, who has not yet entered a plea, faces up to life in prison if convicted

Kenyan firm sacks more than 1,000 workers after losing Meta contract

More than 1,000 low-paid workers in Kenya have been abruptly sacked by an outsourcing company contracted by Meta, in what activists said was a shocking move exposing the precariousness of tech jobs in the global south.Sama, a company based in Nairobi to which Meta outsourced content moderation and AI training work, announced on Thursday that the workers were being laid off after Meta terminated a contract.Last month reports said some Kenyan workers involved in data annotation were asked to view content filmed using Meta’s AI smart glasses showing wearers using the toilet or having sex.The sacked workers, many involved in AI training, have been given six days’ notice, according to the Oversight Lab, an organisation that advocates for fair regulation and deployment of technology across Africa. It said it was advising the workers on legal options

UK’s OnlyFans tops $3bn valuation amid talks to sell stake to US investor

OnlyFans, the UK adult video platform, is in talks to sell a minority stake to a US investor that will value the business at more than $3bn (£2.2bn).The London-based company is in advanced talks to sell a stake of less than 20% to the San Francisco-based investment firm Architect Capital, according to the Financial Times. Sources familiar with the process confirmed the talks to the Guardian.OnlyFans has decided that offloading a minority stake is the best guarantee of stability for a business dealing with the death of its owner, Leonid Radvinsky

Finance leaders warn over Mythos as UK banks prepare to use powerful Anthropic AI tool

British banks will be given access in the next week to a powerful AI tool that was deemed too dangerous to be released to the public, as a series of senior finance figures warned over its impact.Anthropic, which has so far limited the release of the new model to a small clutch of primarily US businesses, including Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, said it would expand that to UK financial institutions.“That is in the very near term, in the next week,” Pip White, Anthropic’s head of UK, Ireland and northern Europe operations, said in a Bloomberg TV interview. “As you would expect, the engagement I have had from UK CEOs in the last week has been significant.”Anthropic, which is the company behind the Claude family of AI tools, has said that its latest model, Mythos, poses an unprecedented risk because of its ability to expose flaws in IT systems

US tech firms successfully lobbied EU to keep datacentre emissions secret

Microsoft and other US tech companies successfully lobbied the EU to hide the environmental toll of their datacentres, an investigation has found, with demands to block a database of green metrics from public view written almost word for word into EU rules.The secrecy provision, which the European Commission added to its proposal almost verbatim after industry lobbying in 2024, hinders scrutiny of the pollution that individual datacentres emit. It leaves researchers with just national-level summaries of their energy footprints.The rise of AI chatbots has spurred a boom in the construction of chip-filled warehouses with a hunger for power that is being met, in part, by burning fossil gas. Legal scholars warn the blanket confidentiality clause may fall foul of EU transparency rules and the Aarhus convention on public access to environmental information

Liz Kendall urges UK public to embrace AI as government makes first £500m fund investment

The UK technology secretary has urged the country to “make AI work for Britain”, brushing off fears about its impact on jobs and cybersecurity as the government announced its first investment under a £500m sovereign AI fund. Liz Kendall said the UK had to “seize” the opportunity offered by AI despite concerns underlined this month when US startup Anthropic revealed it had developed an AI model that posed a potentially significant cyber threat. Asked how the government makes the case for embracing a technology that could disrupt jobs and now cybersecurity, Kendall said: “We have to seize this to make it work, for Britain, for our jobs, for solving the biggest challenges we face as a world.”Speaking on Thursday as the government unveiled its first investment in a UK company as part of a £500m sovereign AI fund, Kendall acknowledged “people are worried about the risks and what it means for their jobs”, but AI entrepreneurs also believed they can “make it work … they can create jobs”.In January Kendall admitted “some jobs will go” as AI automates certain tasks and roles, but it would also create new employment opportunities