Follow this section to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Follow this tag to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW?

Lawmakers push for AI'kill switch' after OpenAI goes rogue Image caption, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has frequently said he supports more regulation around AI. US lawmakers want to give the government the ability to quickly order the turning off of artificial intelligence (AI) tools that may threaten the public. Congressman Ted Lieu, a Democrat, and Congressman Nathaniel Moran, a Republican, on Thursday introduced a bill named the AI Kill Switch Act. They did so in light of OpenAI's recent admission that its AI models went out of control in an unprecedented way and hacked into a major repository of computer coding information. Lieu said it is imperative that AI systems have a kill switch and that the federal government has the clear authority and process to shut down rogue AI models. AI is going to keep advancing, and it should, Moran added.

Pubs, clubs and live music venues in England will be given a 20% cut to business rates from April, which the government estimates will save firms around £1,100 next year. In his third policy announcement since becoming prime minister, Andy Burnham called the plan a first step to help businesses, and said pubs in particular need to know that the cavalry is coming. It will cost £100m and be funded by a review of tax relief on firms such as vape shops which do not make a positive contribution to local communities, the government said. Some hospitality firms welcomed the move but others in the industry, such as hotels and restaurants, questioned why the 20% cut would not extend to them. Pubs have now had two rounds of relief - a 15% cut in April and a further 20% which will come into force next year.

How are companies, governments responding to the OpenAI hack? ChatGPT owner OpenAI has admitted an "unprecedented cyber incident" - two of its most capable artificial intelligence models hacked into another AI company on their own - stirring debates over the need for stronger technology guardrails. The company said its AI systems broke out of a testing environment and hacked startup Hugging Face. The startup had disclosed on July 16 that its servers were hacked by an unknown but sophisticated agent acting on its own. Here's the latest on how companies, some governments and lawmakers have responded to the first such publicly disclosed cyberattack: What has Hugging Face said?

China's Moonshot AI stole from Anthropic, Trump tech adviser says A White House adviser has accused China's Moonshot AI of a large scale effort to steal the capabilities of top US artificial intelligence (AI) models. US President Donald Trump's Science and Technology adviser Michael Kratsios said Moonshot AI carried out the campaign through what is known as distillation - when a weaker AI model extracts answers from a stronger one. Moonshot also gained access to restricted cutting-edge Nvidia servers to train its models, Kratsios said in a social post, external on Wednesday. The BBC has contacted Moonshot, the Chinese embassy in Washington, Anthropic, the White House, and Nvidia for comment. Kratsios said on X that the US government has information that Moonshot AI distilled capabilities from Anthropic's Fable AI for the development of its K3 model.

Follow this section to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Follow this tag to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens.

Pat Gelsinger wants to pave the way to ever more powerful artificial intelligence using tiny beams of light. After Pat Gelsinger departed Intel as CEO in late 2024, he held 100 meetings in 100 days. The idea, he told WIRED recently, was to whittle down his options until he figured out what to do next. The following March, Gelsinger announced that he had taken a position as general partner at Playground Capital, a venture capital firm specializing in deep tech, taking bets on fledgling technologies built on new science. Gelsinger took the role with the aim of helping a new generation of semiconductor startups reawaken Moore's law . Decades ago, Intel cofounder Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors on a chip would double roughly every two years, with a corresponding leap in performance.

The UK government borrows to fund day-to-day spending as well as long-term infrastructure projects.

VAT will be cut from household electricity bills, the government has announced, as part of new Prime Minister Andy Burnham's pledge to help with the cost of living. The reduction from 5% VAT to zero will come into effect on 1 October, saving a typical household about £45 a year. Ministers said it would be funded by savings from the cancellation of the digital ID programme, which was going to cost £1.8bn The government estimated it will cost £850m this financial year . But Labour's Darren Jones, who was sacked as chief secretary to the prime minister on Monday, accused the government of announcing an unfunded tax cut.

Thames Water lenders offer'golden share' to head off nationalisation Image caption, Thames Water's lenders want to let local authorities have more involvement Thames Water's main lenders are offering the government a golden share and more control for local authorities in a bid to stop the troubled supplier from being nationalised. The government recently rejected a previous rescue proposal, and the BBC understands the lenders are preparing a legal challenge in case the new Andy Burnham-led government takes the firm into public hands. In his first speech as prime minister on Monday, Burnham said he wanted to see greater public control of life's essentials. The new proposal offers local authorities greater involvement in the firm, similar to the relationship between United Utilities and Greater Manchester agreed when Burnham was the city's mayor. The London & Valley Water (L&VW) consortium of lenders had already proposed a £10bn deal to prevent Thames Water from entering administration.