Tesla’s UK sales rise despite threat of backlash over Musk’s political role

Sales of Teslas in the UK rose by more than a fifth last month as demand for battery-powered cars increased, despite the prospect of a buyer backlash over Elon Musk’s controversial and divisive behaviour since becoming a key figure in Donald Trump’s administration.Almost 4,000 Teslas were sold in the UK in February, with the Model 3 and Model Y proving the second and third most popular after the Mini Cooper, according to the latest new car registration figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).Tesla sales were up 20.7% year on year, lifting the company’s market share from 3.75% in February 2024 to 4

Some British firms ‘stuck in neutral’ over AI, says Microsoft UK boss

Some companies are “stuck in neutral” in their approach to artificial intelligence, according to Microsoft’s UK boss, who said a significant number of private and public sector organisations lack any formal AI strategy.A Microsoft survey of nearly 1,500 UK senior leaders across public and private sectors, as well as 1,440 employees, found that more than half of executives feel their organisation has no official AI plan. Roughly the same proportion report a growing gap in productivity – a measure of economic efficiency – between employees who use AI and those who do not.“Some organisations appear to be stuck in neutral, caught in the experimentation phase, rather than in the deployment [of AI],” said Darren Hardman, the tech company’s UK chief executive.Microsoft, the biggest financial backer of the ChatGPT developer, OpenAI, has been pushing AI’s deployment in the workplace through autonomous AI agents – tools that can carry out tasks without human intervention

Humanities teaching will have to adapt to AI | Letter

I agree with Prof Andrew Moran and Dr Ben Wilkinson (Letters, 2 March) that cheap and easy‑to‑use AI tools create problems for universities, but the reactions of many academics to these new developments remind me of the way some people responded to the arrival of cheap pocket calculators in the 1970s.Reports of the imminent death of maths teaching in schools proved exaggerated. Maths teachers had to adapt, not least to teach students the longstanding rule “garbage in, garbage out”; if students had no idea of the fundamental principles and ideas behind maths, they would not realise their answer was meaningless. Today’s humanities teachers are going to have to adapt in similar ways.Our students need to recognise, for example, when AI has harvested such poor-quality information that its responses are inaccurate

Why Elon Musk is targeting a free tax-filing software package

Hello, and welcome back. In this week’s Techscape: the cost of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting, the emotional shutdown of Skype, and a new documentary on immigration and surveillance.On Saturday, Elon Musk took aim at his next target in the federal government: the technology division of the General Services Administration (GSA), which the Guardian was among the first to report.The GSA, according to its website, “manages federal property and provides contracting options for government agencies”. Its tech division was known as 18F – and was made up of some 90 employees, many of them software engineers dedicated to streamlining the federal bureaucracy (a task that doesn’t sound too far off what Musk has claimed he’s trying to do with Doge)

Share your memories of Skype

After two decades, the internet calling service Skype will be shut down by Microsoft in May. The tech giant says it will focus on its homegrown Teams service by simplifying its communication offerings.With the service being synonymous with video calling when it launched, we would like to hear your memories of Skype. What did you think of it when it first started in 2003? What do you remember most about using Skype? For example, was it an invaluable communication tool in your long-distance relationship?You can tell us about your memories of the internet calling service by filling in the form below.Please include as much detail as possible

Elon Musk survives as fellow of Royal Society despite anger among scientists

Elon Musk’s fellowship of the Royal Society remains intact after a meeting of the scientific body, the Guardian has learned, but questions remain about whether further action will be taken.Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO who also owns the social media platform X, was elected a fellow of the UK’s national academy of sciences in 2018, apparently in recognition of his work in the space and electric vehicle industries.Calls for the honour to be revoked have grown in recent months, as fellows of the Royal Society and the wider scientific community become increasingly alarmed by Musk’s conduct in relation to the academy’s code.Two eminent scientists have resigned their fellowships in protest against the lack of action by the Royal Society, while more than 3,400 members of the wider scientific community have signed an open letter organised by Stephen Curry, an emeritus professor of structural biology at Imperial College London, expressing similar dismay.Earlier on Monday, the Nobel laureate and AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton – a fellow of the Royal Society – posted on X that he supported Musk’s removal