The UK government is introducing a ban on social media for children and a minimum age for some chatbots in an attempt to shield young people from dangerous corners of the web.
<p>Liberal MP says Australia risks sovereignty and strategic independence being ‘constrained by the AI superpowers reshaping the global order’</p><ul><li><p>Get our <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/email-newsletters?CMP=cvau_sfl">breaking news email</a>, <a href="https://app.adjust.com/w4u7jx3">free app</a> or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/series/full-story?CMP=cvau_sfl">daily news podcast</a></p></li></ul><p>Liberal MP Andrew Hastie says Australia should dramatically s
Anthropic export controls turned an abstract policy fear into a live one last week: as of June 13, 2026, one US government directive took the company’s two most powerful AI models offline for users everywhere, including, briefly, Anthropic’s own foreign-born employees, and set off alarm bells across Europe and Canada about who really controls the […] The post The AI off switch: How Anthropic’s export controls sparked a global AI sovereignty scramble appeared first on AI News .
What makes this combustible: at the very moment that tens of thousands of workers are being shown the door, a small cohort of AI insiders is becoming wealthy on a scale that's hard to comprehend.
The European Commission has unveiled its plans for digital sovereignty. Its proposals betray a disappointing lack of vision Beti Hohler is a Slovenian national who lives in the Netherlands. Like tens of millions of other Europeans, she uses Apple’s app store and has an Amazon account. When she travels for work or leisure, she may want to book a place on Airbnb or Booking, using a credit card issued by Visa or Mastercard, perhaps through PayPal. But when the Trump administration <a
Startups are trying to "ride that SpaceX IPO wave."
University of Leicester historian thinks Eilmer of Malmesbury saw two different comets: in 1018 and 1066
Mirage, a video world model from Microsoft Research and several universities, stores scene information directly in latent space instead of pixel-based point clouds. That slashes compute time and graphics memory while keeping scenes spatially consistent through long camera moves. It still can't reliably track moving objects across segments. The article Microsoft Research's Mirage gives video generation a persistent spatial memory that doesn't forget what's around the corner appeared first on The
Google Cloud's new Open Knowledge Format (OKF) standardizes scattered organizational knowledge as Markdown files with YAML frontmatter, making it portable and usable for AI agents. The minimalist spec formalizes a pattern Andrej Karpathy recently popularized as the "LLM Wiki." The article Google Cloud's Open Knowledge Format turns scattered docs into Markdown files for AI agents appeared first on The Decoder .
Imagine a world with more birdsong and less Nigel Farage. If this is the future, bring it on Unpopular opinion incoming: there’s cool stuff brewing in the world. Microbots might one day mend spinal cords , a petri dish of brain cells can already play video games , and now the prospect of a new wonder: according to a
When you need something that’s as mannishly masculinized as you can get for the Man™ in your life, we have you covered.
As technology advances quickly, firms should not lose sight of what qualities humans bring to jobs A robot magician called D4YRL was rejected as a member of the Magic Circle last week, for being insufficiently human. While D4YRL’s tricks were exemplary, the august organisation decided “he” did not engage the audience’s emotions as a flesh-and-blood performer would. Continue
Our favourite music, clothes and books used to be markers of individuality – but the algorithm has made us all sheep. Meet the style rebels fighting back What are you into? What floats your boat? What music, films, clothes, art, books – anything, really – do you actually like? Do you find these questions more difficult to answer than you would have done 10 years ago? How about 20? You do? You’re not alone. It has become impossible to ignore: personal taste has been seriously debas
From smart apps and planters to unique tools, these gifts will turn even a black thumb into a next-level plant parent.
Suunto swaps bone for air conduction, giving these open-ear earbuds a perfect fit for the great outdoors.
President Donald Trump says a secret mission moved 100 million barrels of oil through the blocked Strait of Hormuz. That number is impossible to verify.
KPMG published a report on AI in business that contained fabricated case studies involving UBS, the NHS, and other organizations. GPTZero CEO Edward Tian, who helped uncover the errors, warns of "secondary hallucinations," flawed claims from trusted consulting firms that spread unchecked. KPMG has since pulled the report. The article KPMG fabricated AI case studies in a report designed to sell clients on AI adoption appeared first on The Decoder.
This handheld device combines red light therapy, microcurrents, sonic vibration, warmth, and a serum to support healthy hair growth.
The old-fashioned drip coffee maker has come a long way. These impressive machines can turn your barista into a stranger.
The Škoda Peaq, which will debut this summer as the European automaker’s flagship model, seats seven and has an intriguing design. It will almost certainly come with a hefty price tag.
AI coding agents like Claude Code or Codex reliably find the right file but miss most of the critical lines within it. The new SWE-Explore benchmark is the first to test code search separately from the actual repair, and it shows that without enough context, even the best fix will fail. The article AI coding agents find the right file but miss the exact lines that matter, study shows appeared first on The Decoder.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and executives from other tech companies reportedly warned the Trump administration about security vulnerabilities in Anthropic's Fable model, even though Amazon is one of Anthropic's largest investors. Within hours, the White House forced the model offline through an export control order. The move may well be a legitimate security policy decision, but it also reads as a show of force against an inconvenient company. The article Amazon and five other companies repo
There's nothing new or surprising, but it's still an entertaining film from one of our greatest directors.
"Count Anything" is intended to be the first AI model capable of counting objects in any type of image, from crowds to cell samples under a microscope, using nothing more than a text prompt. In a comparative test, it cuts the error rate in half compared to previous systems. However, the approach still struggles with extremely dense objects and ambiguous terms. The article New AI model called "Count Anything" does exactly what it says, and that's harder than it sounds appe
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is warning against "token-maxing," throwing the most powerful AI models at every problem. Frontier models shouldn't be wasted on everyday tasks, he says. The marginal cost of productivity gains has to match the token cost. Still, Nadella admits, "I'm like a token-maxer too. So it is addictive." The article Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admits he's a token-maxer, too: "It's addictive" appeared first on The Decoder.
Company said US government believes safeguards can be bypassed and product used to identify software vulnerabilities Anthropic said it will “abruptly disable” its most advanced AI models for all users after the US government ordered it to suspend access to the models for foreign nationals, citing national security concerns. The company received the export control directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all foreign nationals, without being given specific details of
Google Research's Gemini-SQL2 turns natural language into executable SQL queries. Built on Gemini 3.1 Pro, it tops the BIRD benchmark at 80.04 percent accuracy, well ahead of OpenAI and Anthropic. Google says the technology could improve natural language features across its data services. The article Google Research's Gemini-SQL2 tops text-to-SQL benchmarks by a wide margin appeared first on The Decoder.
Microsoft and three Chinese universities have developed SkillOpt, a method that optimizes instruction documents for AI agents using principles from traditional model training. A simple Markdown file is enough to boost GPT-5.5 by about 23 points on procedural tasks, and the same file transfers across models and agent environments like Codex and Claude Code. The article Microsoft's SkillOpt boosts GPT-5.5 by using nothing but a trained Markdown file appeared first on The Decoder.
Women in heterosexual marriages continue to do most of the caregiving. Now some are offering guides to AI-fying parenting In honour of Pride I’d like to share some important news: Being Straight is Great, Actually! This public service announcement is brought to you by the New York Times which, in an offering to the Ragebait Gods, published an op-ed with <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p
The most popular camera in the world just got its first set of serious AI photo editing features, and I don't think any of us are ready. As far as AI photo editing goes, the new features in iOS 27 are pretty tame compared to what you can do on, say, Google's Pixel phones. But […]
The rest of Dyson’s promised 2026 vacuum lineup is here, from the new Dyson V16 Piston Animal to an updated version of the favored Dyson V8 Cyclone.
Researchers have quantified the length and mass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks globally.
Government announces plans to invest billions, but questions linger over how its proposals on chips, social media and more will work Ownership of the commanding heights of the AI economy is a political talking point around the world, as countries seek to assert some control of a technology dominated by the US and China. London Tech Week, the showcase event for the UK tech industry, focused heavily on that theme this week. A government keen to show it has a growth story, and an ass
Other projects include developing tools to help visually impaired people navigate video games Parents are constantly being told to limit their children’s screen time. But when it comes to deciphering which films or TV shows are best suited to developing minds, the guidance remains largely one-size-fits-all. A relatively slow-paced programme such as Bluey offers a very different viewing experience to a fast-moving action series such as PAW Patrol, yet both are b
As World Cup action kicks off, we look at the physics of the beautiful game.
For all the noise that's been made about how generative AI is poised to revolutionize the filmmaking industry, there haven't really been any projects created with the technology that felt like the sort of entertainment people would pay to see. Most AI firms' video models are still only capable of churning out short bursts of […]
In her work as an online safety campaigner, the baroness and Bridget Jones director has seen things she can never unsee – and she’s furious at the tech overlords doing nothing to stop the abuse Through the open windows behind Beeban Kidron drifts the unmistakable sound of children playing. Her north London office is sandwiched between a school and a nursery, and the occasional playground shriek functions as an aural reminder of what we’re here to discuss: the safety and happiness of yo
Plus: AI bug hunting fuels Microsoft’s biggest-ever Patch Tuesday, ShinyHunters ransomware gang exploits an Oracle zero-day, and more.
Whether you want to buy cheaper electricity, store solar energy, or guard against outages, EcoFlow’s home battery might be just what you need.
Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 hits 88 percent accuracy on the hardest FrontierMath tier, a massive jump from Opus 4.5, which sat below 10 percent in early 2026. OpenAI's GPT-5.5 reaches about 75 percent on the same tier. The pace of improvement in AI math keeps accelerating. The article Claude Fable 5 outpaces GPT-5.5 by 13 points on FrontierMath's toughest problems appeared first on The Decoder.
