Category Archives: Computing

Slow recovery from IT outage begins as experts warn of future risks

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Fault in CrowdStrike caused airports, businesses and healthcare services to languish in ‘largest outage in history’

Services began to come back online on Friday evening after an IT failure that wreaked havoc worldwide. But full recovery could take weeks, experts have said, after airports, healthcare services and businesses were hit by the “largest outage in history”.

Flights and hospital appointments were cancelled, payroll systems seized up and TV channels went off air after a botched software upgrade hit Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

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Microsoft outage: how Australian airports, banks and supermarkets are affected by a major IT meltdown

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Home affairs minister Clare O’Neil says outage will take “some time to resolve” following problems caused by a CrowdStrike cybersecurity software update

The Australian government has warned a global IT outage that threw major businesses including airports, banks, supermarkets and media outlets into chaos on Friday could still take “some time to resolve”.

The government activated a National Coordination Mechanism meeting of emergency authorities as well as representatives from the major supermarkets, banks, airlines and other key industries on Friday night to respond after Windows workstations were hit by the “blue screen of death”.

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British chipmaker Graphcore bought by Japan’s SoftBank

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Deal for undisclosed sum secures Bristol-based company’s future after ‘material uncertainty’ in 2023

Graphcore, a British chipmaker once seen as a potential competitor to Nvidia, has been bought by Japan’s SoftBank in a deal that secures the company’s future.

The Bristol-based startup’s products are focused on artificial intelligence and it has been acquired by the powerful Japanese tech investor for an undisclosed sum. Last year, Graphcore warned that there was a “material uncertainty” over its survival and that it needed fresh funding by May 2024.

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Chinese developers scramble as OpenAI blocks access in China

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US firm’s move, amid Beijing-Washington tensions, sparks rush to lure users to homegrown models

At the World AI Conference in Shanghai last week, one of China’s leading artificial intelligence companies, SenseTime, unveiled its latest model, SenseNova 5.5.

The model showed off its ability to identify and describe a stuffed toy puppy (wearing a SenseTime cap), offered feedback on a drawing of a rabbit, and instantly read and summarised a page of text. According to SenseTime, SenseNova 5.5 is comparable with GPT-4o, the flagship artificial intelligence model of the Microsoft-backed US company OpenAI.

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UK needs system for recording AI misuse and malfunctions, thinktank says

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Centre for Long-Term Resilience calls on next government to log incidents to mitigate risks

The UK needs a system for recording misuse and malfunctions in artificial intelligence or ministers risk being unaware of alarming incidents involving the technology, according to a report.

The next government should create a system for logging incidents involving AI in public services and should consider building a central hub for collating AI-related episodes across the UK, said the Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR), a thinktank.

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Geologists raise concerns over possible censorship and bias in Chinese chatbot

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GeoGPT developed as part of Chinese-funded earth sciences programme aimed at researchers in global south

Geologists have raised concerns about potential Chinese censorship and bias in a chatbot being developed with the backing of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), one of the world’s largest scientific organisations and a Unesco partner.

The GeoGPT chatbot is aimed at geoscientists and researchers, particularly in the global south, to help them develop their understanding of earth sciences by drawing on swaths of data and research on billions of years of the planet’s history.

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US bank Wells Fargo fires employees for ‘simulating’ being at their keyboards

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Workers were sacked after review found they were ‘creating impression of active work’, says filing

The US bank Wells Fargo has fired more than a dozen workers for alleged “simulation of keyboard activity”, in an apparent attempt to fool their employer into thinking they were working.

The employees were “discharged after review of allegations involving simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work”, according to a filing with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

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First NHS physiotherapy clinic run by AI to start this year

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Exclusive: New platform to provide same-day appointments with digital physiotherapist in effort to cut waiting times

The first NHS AI-run physiotherapy clinic is to be rolled out this year in an effort to cut waiting times amid growing demand and staff shortages.

The new platform will provide same-day automated video appointments with a digital physiotherapist via an app that responds to information provided by a patient in real time.

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Deepfakes of Australian politicians including Penny Wong and Katy Gallagher used in investment scams

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Exclusive: AI-generated footage of former PM Scott Morrison also used in more than a dozen Facebook ads that reached thousands of Australians

Images of the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, and the foreign minister, Penny Wong, have been used in deepfake investment scam videos in the latest examples of a concerning trend of politicians being used in online fraud.

The Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie and the former prime minister Scott Morrison have also had their faces used in scams through Facebook videos that appear to be generated by AI, with more than a dozen examples this week of paid ads reaching thousands of Australians before being removed.

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Nvidia hits $3tn and surpasses Apple as world’s second most valuable company

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AI chipmaker’s stock has surged 147% so far in 2024, underscoring shift in tech world as demand for its processors far outstrip supply

Shares of Nvidia rallied to record highs on Wednesday, with the artificial-intelligence chipmaker’s stock market valuation hitting the $3tn mark and overtaking Apple to become the world’s second most valuable company.

The chipmaker’s stock was up 5.16% at $1,224.40, giving Nvidia a market value of $3.01tn at market close. Apple’s market capitalization was at $3.00tn at market close as its stock climbed 0.78%.

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AI hardware firm Nvidia unveils next-gen products at Taiwan tech expo

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CEO Jensen Huang tells packed stadium in Taipei ‘next Industrial Revolution has begun’

Nvidia has unveiled new products and plans to accelerate the advance of artificial intelligence, with the AI hardware company’s chief executive telling a packed stadium in Taipei on Sunday that “the next Industrial Revolution has begun”.

Jensen Huang is in Taiwan for the island’s leading tech expo, Computex, along with the CEOs of some of the world’s biggest semiconductor companies – including AMD, Intel and Qualcomm – and their plans for a tech industry dominated by AI are top of the agenda.

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$10m prize launched for team that can truly talk to the animals

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AI expected to help researchers unlock two-way communication, say team that includes Tel Aviv University

In the Dr Dolittle books and films, the ability to “talk to the animals” captured the imagination. Now scientists are being offered a $10m prize to create real conversations.

The Coller Dolittle Challenge for Interspecies Two-Way Communication has been launched by the Jeremy Coller Foundation and Tel Aviv University. While the use of AI is not obligatory, the team say the technology can boost almost all proposals.

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First companies sign up to AI safety standards on eve of Seoul summit

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Rishi Sunak says 16 international firms have committed, but standards have been criticised for lacking teeth

The first 16 companies have signed up to voluntary artificial intelligence safety standards introduced at the Bletchley Park summit, Rishi Sunak has said on the eve of the follow-up event in Seoul.

The standards, however, have been criticised for lacking teeth, with signatories committing only to work toward information sharing, invest in cybersecurity and prioritise research into societal risks.

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Inflection AI

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Microsoft

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Google remains focused on its long quest for your eyeballs

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AI Overviews, announced this week, are the culmination of a long line of products dedicated to keeping you on Google.com

Google announced this week that it would begin the international rollout of its new artificial intelligence-powered search feature, called AI Overviews. When billions of people search a range of topics from news to recipes to general knowledge questions, what they see first will now be an AI-generated summary.

Google touted AI Overviews at its annual I/O developer conference as a way of delivering customers quick answers and simplifying the online search experience, but it also has another effect on the way that people engage with the internet: keeping users, and advertisers, on Google.com. It’s a new era in Google’s years-long quest for your attention.

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‘They thought I was a child’: US airline repeatedly registers 101-year-old as baby

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Airport staff surprised by arrival of centenarian instead of infant after American Airlines booking system errors

A 101-year-old woman has been regularly mistaken for an infant because an airline’s booking system was unable to compute her date of birth.

The woman, named only as Patricia, was born in 1922, but the American Airlines system apparently does not recognise that year, defaulting instead to 2022, the BBC reported.

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Scott Farquhar to resign as joint CEO of Atlassian

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Co-founder leaving ‘to spend more time with his young family, improve the world via philanthropy, and help further the technology industry globally’

Scott Farquhar, the Australian tech billionaire and joint chief executive of software company Atlassian, will step down from his role at the end of August to spend time with his young family and focus on philanthropy, the company says.

Farquhar’s co-CEO, Mike Cannon-Brookes, will lead the Sydney-headquartered company, which has found huge success developing software that allows teams to coordinate resources on complex projects.

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Queensland’s state library launched an AI war veteran chatbot. Pranksters immediately tried to break it

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Less than 24 hours after the bot was launched, internet users were already attempting to ‘jailbreak’ the program

Charlie, the AI war veteran chatbot, was programmed to educate people about the first world war, mateship and life in the trenches in time for Anzac Day.

But less than 24 hours after the bot was launched, internet users were already attempting to “jailbreak” it.

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Soiled nappies and karate: AI-rendered Putin biopic to be released

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Polish director Besaleel’s film will feature an AI-rendered Russian president and footage shot by Ukrainian film-makers during the Russian invasion

The “world premiere” of a new biopic of Russian president Vladimir Putin featuring an AI-rendered central character, has been announced for 26 September. In a statement released via PR Leap, Polish studio AIO said the film, titled Putin, will be released in 35 countries, and describes itself as “up close and personal with the Kremlin leader’s story”.

First announced in May 2022, Putin is the English-language debut of Polish director Besaleel, also known as Patryk Vega, who was responsible for a string of homegrown box-office hits characterised by grisly violence and glossy production values including Pitbull, Mafia Women and Botoks.

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Can AI image generators be policed to prevent explicit deepfakes of children?

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As one of the largest ‘training’ datasets has been found to contain child sexual abuse material, can bans on creating such imagery be feasible?

Child abusers are creating AI-generated “deepfakes” of their targets in order to blackmail them into filming their own abuse, beginning a cycle of sextortion that can last for years.

Creating simulated child abuse imagery is illegal in the UK, and Labour and the Conservatives have aligned on the desire to ban all explicit AI-generated images of real people.

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Clustering of AI firms in south and east of England will foil levelling up – report

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Hi-tech ‘golden triangle’ of Oxford, Cambridge and London risks deeper regional inequalities, says thinktank

Investments in new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) are “profoundly skewed” towards the “golden triangle” of Oxford, Cambridge and London, and risk deepening existing regional inequalities in England, according to research.

Ministers have promised to level up the country, narrowing the gap between the best- and worst-performing areas, but the rapid rollout of generative AI and automation could cut against that aspiration, according to the Institute for the Future of Work (IFOW).

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