Steve Rose goes for a spin. Steve Rose goes for a spin. 'We don't tell the car what it should do': my ride in a self-driving taxi Driverless'robotaxis' will be accepting fares in Britain's biggest city by the end of next year. Can they deal with London's medieval roads, hordes of pedestrians and errant ebikers? 'I'm really excited to show you this," says Alex Kendall, the CEO of Wayve, as he gets behind the wheel of one of the company's electric Ford Mustangs. The car pulls up to a junction at a busy road in King's Cross, London, all by itself. "You can see that it's going to control the speed, steering, brake, indicators," he says to me - I'm in the passenger seat. "It's making decisions as it goes.

'I've applied for 500 jobs in two months since graduating' You have to work 10 times harder to work for a role that 10 years ago you could have got very easily straight out of university, says 22-year-old business management graduate Charlotte Briggs. Within two months she had applied for 500 roles. It's quite upsetting because I've worked really hard for the last three years to achieve a 2:1 just to be rejected for not having experience. Although her job search sounds extreme, it may not be that unusual. According to latest ONS figures, 22.5% of people aged 16 to 24 cannot find work, putting London as the UK region with the second highest rate of youth unemployment.

He Did PR for Zuckerberg, Musk, and Google. Now He Says He'Only Told Half the Story' Thirty thousand feet in the air, Mark Zuckerberg turned to his speechwriter. The duo were flying in Zuckerberg's jet to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where the Facebook boss was scheduled to address world leaders. Zuckerberg had a question for his companion. "Wait, what exactly is the UN?" Dex Hunter-Torricke had to hide his surprise. Zuckerberg was, by this point in 2015, the head of a company that was reshaping politics and societies around the world, with 1.5 billion users and counting.

Reddit's human content wins amid the AI flood For Ines Tan there's one particular site she turns to again and again for advice - and that's Reddit. Tan, who works in communications, regularly jumps on the site for skincare advice, to view reactions to shows she watches, such as The Traitors, and for help planning her upcoming wedding in May. It's a very empathetic place, she says of Reddit. For my wedding, I've found help emotionally, logistically and inspiration-wise. Tan believes people are consulting the online discussion platform more as they're craving human interaction in the world of increasing AI slop.

Parents in north London have been told their children could be excluded from school if they are not fully vaccinated against measles amid an outbreak of the highly-contagious disease. Unvaccinated pupils identified as close contacts of people with measles could be excluded for 21 days in accordance with national guidelines, Enfield Council said in a letter to all parents in the borough in late January. At least 34 children have contracted measles in Enfield so far this year, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has said, and a number sent to hospital. A local health chief meanwhile told the BBC: We are worried because actually, this is a significantly increased number than what we're used to. Asking unvaccinated, close contacts of measles cases to stay off school is fairly standard practice when there are local outbreaks.

ALS stole this musician's voice. AI let him sing again. Patrick Darling used a music tool from ElevenLabs to perform a song with his former bandmates. There are tears in the audience as Patrick Darling's song begins to play. It's a heartfelt song written for his great-grandfather, whom he never got the chance to meet. But this performance is emotional for another reason: It's Darling's first time on stage with his bandmates since he lost the ability to sing two years ago.

A Waymo vehicle pictured on January 15, 2026 in Austin, Texas. A Waymo vehicle pictured on January 15, 2026 in Austin, Texas. Welcome back to, TIME's new twice-weekly newsletter about AI. If you're reading this in your browser, why not subscribe to have the next one delivered straight to your inbox? On Wednesday night, I went to a press event in London hosted by the Google-owned robotaxi firm Waymo, which announced it was aiming to make driverless taxis available to Londoners by the fourth quarter of 2026. Even though Waymos have been driving autonomously in a handful of U.S. cities for years now, it's worth paying attention to what's going on in London.

The number of planning applications for new homes in England is at its highest level for four years, new data shared with BBC Verify suggests. Applications for 335,000 homes outside London were lodged in 2025, up by 60% on 2024, according to Planning Portal, the service people use to request permission. But there are warnings that more needs to be done to meet Labour's target of building 1.5 million homes by 2029, as separate government data released on Thursday suggests there has been a decrease in house building. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said it had overhauled the planning system and removed long-standing barriers that have held back housebuilding. The increase in planning applications for new homes in England follows controversial reforms introduced by Labour, which allow development on some lower-quality green belt land, known as grey belt .

No Phone, No Social Safety Net: Welcome to the'Offline Club' Across Europe's largest cities, people are gathering for semi-silent, offline hangouts, in search of an experience that isn't mediated through their smartphones. On cue, the room fell silent. A man seated to my left at a long wooden table began to scratch at a piece of paper with a coloring pencil. To my right, another guy picked up a book. Across the way, someone buried themselves in a puzzle.

Technology AI This AI thinks it's the 1800s What happens when you train an LLM only on limited historical data? Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. An interesting thing about contemporary artificial intelligence models, specifically large language models (LLMs): They can only output text based on what's in their training dataset. Models, including ChatGPT and Claude, are "trained" on large databases of text. The models, when asked a question, statistically create a response by calculating, one word at a time, what the most likely next word should be.