'In the Gaza Strip, we know that this massive trove of intercepted phone calls was used in airstrikes that killed civilians.' 'Data is control': what we learned from a year investigating the Israeli military's ties to big tech'In the Gaza Strip, we know that this massive trove of intercepted phone calls was used in airstrikes that killed civilians.' I n January this year, Harry Davies and Yuval Abraham first reported that Microsoft had deepened its ties to Israel alongside other major tech firms. Since then, the Guardian has published an award-winning series of investigations - in partnership with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call - that has revealed a symbiotic relationship between Silicon Valley and the Israeli military. One investigation exposed an Israeli mass surveillance program scooping up virtually all Palestinian phone calls and storing them on Microsoft's cloud services - setting off an inquiry that ultimately prompted the company to cut off Israel's access to some of its technology.

The accelerated development, deployment and adoption of artificial intelligence systems has been fuelled by the increasing involvement of big tech. This has been accompanied by increasing ethical concerns and intensified societal and environmental impacts. In this article, we review and discuss how these phenomena are deeply entangled. First, we examine the growing and disproportionate influence of big tech in AI research and argue that its drive for scaling and general-purpose systems is fundamentally at odds with the responsible, ethical, and sustainable development of AI. Second, we review key current environmental and societal negative impacts of AI and trace their connections to big tech and its underlying economic incentives. Finally, we argue that while it is important to develop technical and regulatory approaches to these challenges, these alone are insufficient to counter the distortion introduced by big tech's influence. We thus review and propose alternative strategies that build on the responsibility of implicated actors and collective action.

From a theoretical computer science point of view, many aspects of distance preservation of emed-dings are well understood.

From a theoretical computer science point of view, many aspects of distance preservation of emed-dings are well understood.

DeepSeek, a little-known Chinese startup, has sent shockwaves through the global tech sector with the release of an artificial intelligence (AI) model whose capabilities rival the creations of Google and OpenAI. DeepSeek-R1's creator says its model was developed using less advanced, and fewer, computer chips than those employed by tech giants in the United States. In a research paper released last week, the model's development team said they had spent less than 6m on computing power to train the model – a fraction of the multibillion-dollar AI budgets enjoyed by US tech giants such as OpenAI, Alphabet and Meta. Marc Andreessen, one of the most influential tech venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, hailed the release of the model as "AI's Sputnik moment". The sudden emergence of a small Chinese startup capable of rivalling Silicon Valley's top players has challenged assumptions about US dominance in AI and raised fears that the sky-high market valuations of companies such as Nvidia, Alphabet and Meta may be detached from reality. On Monday, Nvidia, which holds a near-monopoly on producing the semiconductors that power generative AI, lost nearly 600bn in market capitalisation after its shares plummeted 17 percent.

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems capable of generating creative outputs are reshaping our understanding of creativity. This shift presents an opportunity for creativity researchers to reevaluate the key components of the creative process. In particular, the advanced capabilities of AI underscore the importance of studying the internal processes of creativity. This paper explores the neurobiological machinery that underlies these internal processes and describes the experiential component of creativity. It is concluded that although the products of artificial and human creativity can be similar, the internal processes are different. The paper also discusses how AI may negatively affect the internal processes of human creativity, such as the development of skills, the integration of knowledge, and the diversity of ideas.

I don't know what Werner Herzog is up to these days, but if he's between projects, I humbly suggest that he make a documentary about Luna Luna, the Hamburg amusement park that took more than ten years to put together, included attractions designed by Dalí and Basquiat and Haring and Hockney, and spent thirty-five years in shipping containers. It's now been partly reassembled at the Shed, for the exhibition "Luna Luna, Forgotten Fantasy," through Jan. 5. The park's Fitzcarraldo, a poet-songwriter-pop star named André Heller, was born in Vienna in 1947 and spent much of his thirties persuading artists to decorate rides. Haring slathered a merry-go-round in melty cartoons; Basquiat dressed a Ferris wheel in his customary graffiti. The park opened to the public in 1987, largely funded by a gossip rag, and stayed that way for a summer.

Since the war began in Gaza, more than six months ago, the Israeli magazine 972 has published some of the most penetrating reporting on the Israel Defense Forces' conduct. In November, 972, along with the Hebrew publication Local Call, found that the I.D.F. had expanded the number of "legitimate" military targets, leading to a huge increase in civilian casualties. Then earlier this month, 972 and Local Call released a long feature called "Lavender: The AI Machine Directing Israel's Bombing Spree in Gaza." The story revealed how the Israeli military had used the program to identify suspected militants, which in practice meant that tens of thousands of Palestinians had their homes marked as legitimate targets for bombing, with minimal human oversight. The I.D.F. also said that, according to its rules, "analysts must conduct independent examinations" to verify the identification of targets.

In his spare time, Tony Eastin likes to dabble in the stock market. One day last year, he Googled a pharmaceutical company that seemed like a promising investment. One of the first search results Google served up on its news tab was listed as coming from the Clayton County Register, a newspaper in northeastern Iowa. The story was garbled and devoid of useful information--and so were all the other finance-themed posts filling the site, which had absolutely nothing to do with northeastern Iowa. "I knew right away there was something off," he says.

The Hollywood writers' union has said its members can begin to return to work, ending a five-month strike that drove production in the United States entertainment industry to a grinding halt. The work stoppage officially ended just after midnight on Wednesday (07:01 GMT), the Writers Guild of America (WGA) said, with writers permitted to return to work. However, the 11,500 members of the union still need to vote on a deal reached between their leadership and production heads. That vote is set to take place between October 2 and 9. Still, the preliminary deal largely showed major gains for writers, who sought commitments to respond to an industry that has been transformed by streaming platforms and that faces the prospect of further upheaval amid the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). Comedian Adam Conover, who became a leading figure in the strike, hailed the deal as a victory.