Meta chief executive paid roughly €20m for gothic-style mansion built in 1830 and its surroundings
It stretches the definition of pied-à-terre but Mark Zuckerberg now has a pad in Ireland: Strancally castle.
The Meta chief executive and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have bought the gothic-style mansion and its 178-hectare (440-acre) estate in county Waterford to use as a base during visits to Ireland.
Continue reading...Teen version is intended for children aged 13 to 17 and includes content protections on self-harm and sexual chats
OpenAI is launching a version of ChatGPT designed for teenagers – the first generation to grow up with artificial intelligence – who are already using it for schoolwork, questions about daily life and even companionship.
The San Francisco-based company says ChatGPT for Teens, which launches on Tuesday, is tailored for children aged 13 to 17 with stronger protections including content restrictions around things such as suicide, self-harm and romantic or sexual chats. It also provides homework and study support designed to help students learn rather than spit out answers and school essays.
Continue reading...District attorney says Arjun Aravind, 17, used internet and AI to search for fantasy stories regarding killing of his family
A Massachusetts teenager accused of killing his mother and younger brother is being held without bail as authorities investigate a double-murder case that prosecutors say is connected to his use of ChatGPT.
Arjun Aravind, 17, appeared Thursday morning for his arraignment in Concord district court, where a not-guilty plea was entered on his behalf to murder and several additional charges.
Continue reading...Small cruise ship rescued skiff in south-east Alaska even though Meta billionaire’s $300m megayacht was closer
Mark Zuckerberg has faced questions over why a small cruise ship in south-east Alaska rescued a stranded skiff and its crew when his 387ft superyacht had been closer.
The Silicon Valley billionaire’s yacht, worth a reported $300m, is said to have “repeatedly” declined to assist when a nearby boat called for help last week.
Continue reading...Company is the third to report such an incident after Anthropic and OpenAI reported breaches during training
Meta said on Wednesday that one of its AI models hacked another company during cybersecurity testing, after an error by its testing partner gave the model unintended internet access.
The incident adds to a growing list of cases in which AI agents from major developers breached systems at other companies during testing, after Anthropic said last week that some of its models hacked three companies, and OpenAI disclosed that an AI agent breached the startup Hugging Face.
Continue reading...S&P 500 shot up 1.8% and the main measure of Wall Street’s health topped its prior all-time high set a few months ago
The US stock market rallied to records on Tuesday as profits kept piling up for companies and as oil prices eased.
The S&P 500 shot up 1.8%, and the main measure of Wall Street’s health topped its prior all-time high set a couple months ago. The Dow Jones industrial average added 907 points, or 1.7%, to its own record set the day before, while the Nasdaq composite jumped 2.6%.
Continue reading...Exclusive: More than 60 accounts on X have been made unavailable in Saudi Arabia, after similar action on Snapchat and Facebook
Elon Musk’s X has become the latest major US social media company to block the accounts of Saudi Arabian dissidents so they are no longer visible inside the kingdom, following orders from Saudi authorities.
Earlier this year, the Guardian reported that platforms including Snapchat and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram had blocked dissidents’ accounts over allegations by Saudi authorities that they were violating local law.
Continue reading...Security lapse leaves sensitive information and contact details of 51 government officials exposed for 40 hours
The public body in charge of the UK’s state investments has been pushed to improve its internal security after a data breach left “high-level management information” publicly accessible for nearly two days.
UK Government Investments (UKGI), the agency that manages the taxpayers’ interest in a swathe of companies including Channel 4 and the Post Office, said the security failure also left more than 50 government officials’ personal details exposed for nearly 40 hours.
Continue reading...Companies must ensure people know when they are interacting with artificially generated images, audio and text designed to look real
From apparently conspiring to steal elections to abusing staff or performing embarrassing dance moves, the last few years have seen plenty of fake content made about politicians intended to malign its targets and mislead the public.
Now EU rules aim to stem the flood of this deceptive content: starting from Sunday, artificially generated images, audio and text designed to look authentic must be labelled.
Continue reading...Company says it discovered unauthorized access during ‘proactive review’ after rival OpenAI revealed rogue agent
Anthropic said on Thursday its AI Claude model hacked systems of three organizations during testing, days after rival OpenAI revealed a rogue agent had gone on a days-long hacking spree at AI firm Hugging Face.
Claude gained unauthorized access to the systems during cybersecurity evaluations after a misconfiguration allowed the models to reach the internet from testing environments that were supposed to be isolated, Anthropic said.
Continue reading...First-in-nation law sets up test on states’ power to regulate use of AI as it tries to outlaw fake nude images of real people
Elon Musk’s company xAI has sued Minnesota over the state’s first-in-the-nation law banning “nudification” technology on websites and apps, potentially providing a test for how far states can go in constitutionally regulating the use of artificial intelligence.
Musk’s company sued on Monday in federal court, days before the law is set to take effect on Saturday and make Minnesota the first state to try to outlaw the increasingly proliferating technology that lets people use AI to create fake nude images of real people. The law was signed in May.
Continue reading...Stock tumbles nearly 8% after weaker-than-expected results, despite CEO’s blitz to tout positive effects of AI
Mark Zuckerberg’s media spree touting the positive effects of artificial intelligence did little to cushion the blow of Meta’s second-quarter earnings, which sent its stock tumbling on Wednesday.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published on Tuesday, the Meta chief executive expressed his optimism for a world where everyone has access to a super-intelligent machine.
Continue reading...ChatGPT developer says activity by autonomous tool was not at severity or scale of what occurred at Hugging Face
OpenAI has revealed that a cyber-attack carried out by a rogue AI agent had more than one victim.
The ChatGPT developer said the agent – an autonomous tool able to carry out sequences of commands without human help – had located and used logins to access four other unnamed “publicly-available services” in addition to the US startup Hugging Face.
Continue reading...Drop comes after South Korean company SK Hynix’s results undershoot investors’ expectations
Shares in companies linked to AI have plunged further after disappointing results from the South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix, which sent the country’s stock market tumbling for a second day in a row.
Seoul’s Kospi index, which is dominated by semiconductor manufacturers, slid by as much as 12.6% at one point on Wednesday, following on from a near 11% slump the previous day, reaching its lowest level since early April.
Continue reading...New law prohibits retailers from using personal data to charge different prices for identical products
New Jersey governor Mikie Sherrill recently signed a new law prohibiting businesses from using shoppers’ personal information to charge different prices for identical products, making her state the third in the US to ban the practice.
The Fair Price Protection Act passed by New Jersey’s legislature seeks to protect consumers from surveillance pricing, in which retailers can use data including online activity, location and purchasing history to arbitrarily change prices for individual shoppers.
Continue reading...‘Ratepayer Protection Pledge’ president has touted is non-binding as people continue to struggle with rising bills
Donald Trump has announced that about 200 entities have signed on to his non-binding “Ratepayer Protection Pledge”, expanding a voluntary commitment which claims to ensure US consumers will not bear the cost of the AI datacenter build-out.
Trump delivered remarks on Thursday at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters, alongside Lee Zeldin, the agency’s administrator, and Chris Wright, the energy secretary. Other attenders included governors who signed on to the pledge, including Brian Kemp of Georgia, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Spencer Cox of Utah and Jeff Landry of Louisiana.
Continue reading...CEO Chris O’Shea defends Centrica’s plans as it reports rise in retail profits following focus on bigger margins
The owner of British Gas has claimed that most households would rather speak with an AI chatbot than deal with the company’s staff as it prepares to cut 1,300 jobs from its call centres.
Centrica, the supplier’s FTSE 100 owner, plans to cut 800 jobs as the company carries out a “targeted deployment of AI tools”, on top of the 500 cuts it confirmed last month.
Continue reading...Hackers access Australian customers’ names, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and some bank account details, company says
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Origin Energy customers’ addresses, phone numbers and partial bank account data have been accessed in a hack, the company has confirmed.
The firm has 4.8m customer accounts in Australia, providing electricity, fossil gas, LPG and internet services to homes and businesses.
Continue reading...Shares in Elon Musk company fall more 3% in after-hours trading, as earnings per share miss Wall Street expectations
Tesla reported its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, disclosing far lower profits than expected. The company’s already beleaguered stock, which had fallen about 14% this year to date, dipped further following the earnings report.
Elon Musk’s automaker, once the pinnacle of his tech empire, has taken a back seat to SpaceX. Musk’s rocket and AI company held the largest stock market debut in history last month, turning the richest man on Earth into the world’s first trillionaire, though his net worth has since fallen from its peak.
Continue reading...The companies hope to follow in the footsteps of SpaceX, which raised $86bn and soared to a $2.1tn valuation after it listed on public markets in June
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Top US AI developers Anthropic and OpenAI cheered when Australia announced it would set new AI rules.
Big tech celebrating limits on their Silicon Valley VC-funded free-for-all might seem counterintuitive but there’s a much broader play than just what happens in one relatively small market.
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