Artificial intelligence warning over human extinction – all you need to know
Artificial intelligence could lead to the extinction of humanity and the risks should be treated with the same urgency as nuclear war, dozens of experts have warned – including the pioneers who developed it. Here, the PA news agency takes a look at the latest situation. – What is AI? Artificial intelligence (AI) is the […]
Twitter may be worth a third of what Musk paid for it last year, figures show
Twitter may now be worth one third of what Elon Musk paid for the social media platform just seven months ago, figures show. Financial services company Fidelity has reduced the market value of its equity stake in Twitter for a third time, now putting it at 6.55 billion dollars (£5.28 billion). That is down from […]
UK Competition watchdog gets ad data promises from Facebook owner Meta
Meta has promised to not use the data from adverts placed by other businesses on the Facebook platform in order to compete against them after the competition watchdog flagged concerns. Meta told the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) it would remedy a situation which would allow it to develop and improve its own products […]
Virgin Galactic completes final test flight before taking customers into space
Virgin Galactic completed what is expected to be its final test flight on Thursday before taking paying customers on brief trips to space, marking what the space tourism company described as a “fantastic achievement” in what has been a long road to commercial operations. Six of the company’s employees, including two pilots, landed at Spaceport […]
Meta Ireland to cut about 490 jobs
Facebook owner Meta is to make approximately 490 full-time employees redundant across its Irish operations. The roles are being cut from a number of teams including finance, sales, marketing, analytics, operations and engineering. Employees at Meta Ireland were notified on Wednesday they were potentially impacted by a global restructuring which was announced by CEO Mark […]
Male characters in role-playing video games ‘speak twice as much as females’
Male characters in role-playing video games have 50% more dialogue than females, highlighting a “stark gender imbalance” in the gaming genre, scientists have said. In role-playing games (RPGs), the gamer controls one or more characters undertaking quests or missions in an imaginary world. Researchers from the Universities of Glasgow and Cardiff analysed the dialogue of […]
Meta sells Giphy to Shutterstock for £46m after UK blocked GIF platform purchase
Shutterstock has said it is buying Giphy from Meta Platforms for 53 million dollars (£46 million), the final step to unwind a deal blocked by British regulators over competition concerns. The stock image service said it is paying cash for the GIF-sharing platform, which has 1.7 billion daily users and partners including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, […]
Schools ‘bewildered’ by very fast rate of change in AI – education figures
Schools are “bewildered” by the rate of change in artificial intelligence (AI) and believe it is moving “far too quickly” for government alone to provide the advice that is needed, leading head teachers have warned. Their comments come after UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said “guardrails” are to be put in place to maximise the […]
Apple to launch new accessibility features supporting users with disabilities
Apple is set to launch three new accessibility functions to enable greater usability for people with disabilities. The Assistive Access, Personal Voice and Point and Speak functions will be operational later this year, the company announced earlier this week. Other features to help deaf or hard-of-hearing users and those with low vision across Apple products […]
Facebook owner fined record 1.2bn euro for GDPR breach
Facebook owner Meta has been fined 1.2 billion euro (£1 billion) and was ordered to stop transferring user data from European users to its US servers. The record fine was levied by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) after a three-year probe into the social media giant. The DPC said that Meta had breached part of […]