Rhys, right, was sent this photo of himself taken at a Melbourne cafe by a stranger wearing Meta's Ray-Ban glasses Photograph: Supplied Rhys, right, was sent this photo of himself taken at a Melbourne cafe by a stranger wearing Meta's Ray-Ban glasses Photograph: Supplied This man was secretly snapped by someone with smartglasses. The backlash to what some dub'pervert glasses' is growing - but people living with disabilities point out the new tech can also be life-changing Fri 7 Aug 2026 11.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 8 Aug 2026 01.47 EDT One summer day earlier this year, Rhys left a cafe in Melbourne where he had been working remotely, when his phone pinged with a message on the dating app Grindr. The message was a photo of him sitting at a table outside the cafe on his laptop, with his dog seated on the ground next to him. In the foreground, in a man's hand was an iPhone unlocked. The photo had been taken moments before with Meta's Ray-Ban glasses, unbeknown to Rhys.

'Implementing these laws on AI would be difficult, but the stakes are existential and therefore the effort is worthwhile,' writes Alan Finkel Photograph: Alexey Kotelnikov/Alamy'Implementing these laws on AI would be difficult, but the stakes are existential and therefore the effort is worthwhile,' writes Alan Finkel Photograph: Alexey Kotelnikov/Alamy One of science fiction's greatest writers warned us about AI. Could his ideas help us avoid a dystopian future? What might a modern day equivalent of Isaac Asimov's laws of robotics look like? Fri 7 Aug 2026 00.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 7 Aug 2026 11.29 EDT Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk predicted in July that legions of AI-powered robots would dominate the physical world and that AI might not take orders from people any more. He also offered an alternative vision in which there would be agreement for a collective objective to make AI benign by imbuing it with a love of the truth and a desire for humanity to prosper, and that governments might have to enforce this objective.

Use of AI is a valuable tool for weather prediction but only when it's trained with ample data, experts say Mon 18 May 2026 08.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 18 May 2026 08.01 EDT As the US prepares for hurricane season and a summer of record-breaking heat, experts fear the Trump administration's cuts to climate and weather data programming could make the federal government's weather forecasts less reliable when they are needed most. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) late last year launched a suite of artificial intelligence-powered global weather forecast models which it said would improve "speed, efficiency, and accuracy". In March, an agency official said those models are being trained with centuries of weather data. Artificial intelligence is a valuable tool for weather prediction, but only when it is well-trained with ample data, said Monica Medina, who served as Noaa's principal deputy undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere from 2009 to 2012. Under Trump, climate and weather data collection has declined, said Medina.

Petitioners react as the Box Elder county commission announces approval of a large datacenter on 4 May 2026 in Tremonton, Utah. Petitioners react as the Box Elder county commission announces approval of a large datacenter on 4 May 2026 in Tremonton, Utah. 'Irresponsible': backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan A plan to create one of the world's largest datacenters, a gargantuan project spanning an area more than twice the size of Manhattan, has provoked a furious public backlash in Utah amid concerns over its vast energy use and impact upon the state's stressed water supplies. The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes, and suck up a significant amount of water in an area that has been hit by severe drought in recent years.