An options trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on 7 January 2026. An options trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on 7 January 2026. The latest shudder for stocks in the AI industry pulled markets lower worldwide on Thursday, while oil prices hit their highest levels since May on worries about the war with Iran . The S&P 500 fell 1.2% for its worst day since July, while the Nasdaq composite tumbled 2.6%. The weakness for tech stocks was so overwhelming that it masked strength for the rest of the US market, in which the majority of stocks actually rose.

'The tech bro fight club is real!' The titans of AI get the Succession treatment in a wild new TV show The Audacity is a fearless satire taking on Silicon Valley's'egomaniac weirdos'. S howrunner Jonathan Glatzer wanted the tagline of his latest TV creation to be: "We're so fucked." "Sadly it got rejected by the network. Hey, maybe I can use it for season two!" The show in question is The Audacity, his darkly comic drama about AI tech titans. Instead, it went with the more PG tagline "Move fast and break people" - a twist on "Move fast and break things", the Facebook motto coined by Mark Zuckerberg. The Audacity promises to do for tech bros what Succession did for legacy media. Considering Glatzer is a former writer on Succession, that is no empty threat.

'The public distaste for the AI industry extends to its leaders.' 'The public distaste for the AI industry extends to its leaders.' The campaign ad begins with a clear, idyllic stream that suddenly turns sludge-brown as two concrete datacenters slam onto its banks. Our farmland," a deep-voiced narrator says. "Because Brent Taylor wrote the law allowing datacenters to take over Tennessee." The attack ad, paid for by the Democrat-aligned Three Star Pac and targeting a Tennessee Republican congressional candidate, is one of more than 150 midterm election campaign commercials across the US focused on datacenters or the artificial intelligence industry. At debates and at rallies, in mailers and online ads, the burgeoning AI industry has taken center stage, as both Republican and Democratic candidates try to convince voters that their opponents will put the unpopular facilities in voters' backyards.

Barclays' strong performance included a 6% rise in net interest income at its UK retail banking operations, to £2bn. Barclays' strong performance included a 6% rise in net interest income at its UK retail banking operations, to £2bn. Barclays to cut 5,000 jobs as bank's bosses hail AI productivity advances Barclays is cutting 5,000 jobs as part of wider cost-cutting plans that its bosses say are being driven by advances in AI. The job cuts will mean losing about 5% of the bank's 93,000 global staff, with executives confirming they had already cut 1,000 workers since the start of the year. The bank's chief financial officer, Anna Cross, told reporters on Thursday that the job cuts were part of plans to save more than £1.1bn in 2027.

AI companies have told ministers they have 12 months to head off public opposition to datacentres in the UK or risk US-style protests that could threaten their construction. Successive dry summers and rising energy bills are increasing public scrutiny of plans for the huge computer warehouses that are used to train and run AI models, says a submission to the Labour government from a group including the AI infrastructure companies Nvidia, Microsoft and Cisco. Amid increasing anti-datacentre activism in the US and Europe, they are calling on ministers to create a "compact" that would show how communities can benefit from hosting datacentres, including allowing councils that host them to retain more tax revenues. The move by the Sovereign AI Leadership (SAIL) taskforce reflects rising concern among tech companies that arguments that have blocked datacentre developments in parts of the US are taking hold in Britain. Microsoft has promised to invest $30bn (£22bn) in UK AI infrastructure.

Author withdrawn from France's Prix Goncourt last month has repeatedly denied using artificial intelligence to write novel The publisher of top-selling Haitian Canadian writer Thélyson Orélien, who was removed from France's most prestigious literary prize list last month, has confirmed the author used artificial intelligence to help write his novel C'était ça ou mourir (It Was Either That or Die). Orélien has denied allegations that he used AI on his breakthrough novel and, last week, Canadian publisher Les Éditions du Boréal said it was standing by the 38-year-old writer. But on Wednesday, Boréal said it had conducted a further investigation into the allegations. "New information, confirmed over the past few days, indicates that artificial intelligence was used in the writing process" of the novel, a statement from Boréal said. The publisher announced it was "ending its professional relationship" with Orélien.

The PHP Foundation has released a patch for the flaw but it may take time for vulnerable sites to use it to shore up their defences. The PHP Foundation has released a patch for the flaw but it may take time for vulnerable sites to use it to shore up their defences. Websites around the globe have gone dark after a serious vulnerability was found in a computer language used to build much of the world wide web. Belgian, Dutch, Finnish, French and German sites were among those that governments took down temporarily as they scrambled to patch the critical weakness in PHP, a language used by almost 70% of websites . The vulnerability in the programming language, which became public on Tuesday, sparked warnings from national security agencies in Washington and London.

Wall Street has projected Tesla to report $27.9bn in revenues. Wall Street has projected Tesla to report $27.9bn in revenues. Musk says'there's a lot of merit' to potential merger that would require approval of 50% of all Tesla shareholders, but he declined to elaborate Investors were paying close attention to Tesla's third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday afternoon, after chief executive Elon Musk floated the idea of merging the car company with his rocket and AI company, SpaceX. But they didn't glean further information after the company announced there would be no questions on the matter. "With regard to a potential merger with SpaceX, I think I said everything that should be said yesterday," Musk, the CEO of both companies, said on Tesla's earnings call.

Once upon a time the prize was founded by tech entrepreneurs. Once upon a time the prize was founded by tech entrepreneurs. A prize for AI-written books has launched this week. The Prix Pascal de Littérature IA invites submissions of manuscripts co-written with AI tools, with the winner promised publication. Entrants are asked to submit an unpublished manuscript of between 10,000 and 50,000 words, along with information about which AI model and prompt were used to generate the text.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 combines large-scale battles with a story centred on the people caught up in the conflict. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 combines large-scale battles with a story centred on the people caught up in the conflict. 'The audience gets to be in on it': How narrative-led gameplay is Call of Duty's greatest weapon Don't get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? I n these strange, subdued weeks before the much-anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto VI, there have still been some welcome surprises. Onimusha: Way of the Sword revived a half-forgotten samurai action series with much aplomb, while Silent Hill: Townfall transported all of the franchise's bloody, dread-filled psychological horror to the picturesque Scottish coast.