An artificial intelligence company executive told the first U_N_ Security Council meeting on AI’s threats to global peace that the handful of big tech companies leading the race to commercialize AI can’t be trusted to guarantee the safety of systems we don’t yet understand and that are prone to “chaotic or unpredictable behavior.”

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Owners of Google’s latest premium smartphone are experiencing strange bumps and ripples that appear on the device’s screen. Google claims the issue with the Google Pixel 8 Pro has “no functional impact to Pixel 8 performance or durability”, though some users have already returned their new phone in an effort to resolve it. Pixel owners shared their experiences with the issue across social media and on Google forums, expressing their frustration that there appears to be no fix. “I had this on mine as well,” a user called Constanza Juarez wrote. “Not visible on natural light but extremely visible under artificial light, both with screen on and/or off.” Another user wrote: “Even with a glass screen protector, I can see the same bumps when I examine the edges of my Pixel 8 Pro.” Bumps and ripples have been reported on the top and bottom left of the screen, above the SIM card tray, near the fingerprint scanner, as well as the top and bottom right of the display. Some even reported sending their bumpy phones back to Google, only to have the same issue occur with the replacement device. A video showing the Google Pixel 8 Pro being taken apart suggests that the internal mechanics of the smartphone are responsible for the screen bumps, which could complicate any attempts by the phone maker to rectify the issue on this particular model. “Notice how the spring clips in the right side of the Pixel 8 Pro line up exactly with the indents in the foil on the display side of the phone,” one owner noted. “It seems to be pretty clear that these clips are the cause of the bumps we are seeing in our displays.” Google has not revealed the exact internal phone part causing the uneven surface, however did acknowledge that some users may see them on their new smartphones. “Pixel 8 phones have a new display,” a company spokesperson said. “When the screen is turned off, not in use and in specific lighting conditions, some users may see impressions from components in the device that look like small bumps. There is no functional impact to Pixel 8 performance or durability.” Read More Google issues one-week deadline to Gmail account holders Gmail users receive urgent warning before account purge Don’t believe your eyes: how tech is changing photography forever Gmail users receive urgent warning before account purge

They are 22 words that could terrify those who read them, as brutal in their simplicity as they are general in their meaning: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.” That is the statement from San Francisco-based non-profit the Center for AI Safety, and signed by chief executives from Google Deepmind and ChatGPT creators OpenAI, along with other major figures in artificial intelligence research. The fact that the statement has been signed by so many leading AI researchers and companies means that it should be heeded. But it also means that it should be robustly examined: why are they saying this, and why now? The answer might take some of the terror away (though not all of it). Writing a statement like this functions as something like a reverse marketing campaign: our products are so powerful and so new, it says, that they could wipe out the world. Most tech products just promise to change our lives; these ones could end it. And so what looks like a statement about danger is also one that highlights just how much Google, OpenAI and more think they have to offer. Warning that AI could be as terrible as pandemics also has the peculiar effect of making artificial intelligence's dangers seem as if they just arise naturally in the world, like the mutation of a virus. But every dangerous AI is the product of intentional choices by its developers – and in most cases, from the companies that have signed the new statement. Who is the statement for? Who are these companies talking to? After all, they are the ones who are creating the products that might extinguish life on Earth. It reads a little like being hectored by a burglar about your house’s locks not being good enough. None of this is to say that the warning is untrue, or shouldn't be heeded; the danger is very real indeed. But it does mean that we should ask a few more questions of those warning us about it, especially when they are conveniently the companies that created this ostensibly apocalyptic tech in the first place. AI doesn't feel so world-destroying yet. The statement's doomy words might come as some surprise to those who have used the more accessible AI systems, such as ChatGPT. Conversations with that chatbot and others can be funny, surprising, delightful and sometimes scary – but it's hard to see how what is mostly prattle and babble from a smart but stupid chatbot could destroy the world. They also might come as a surprise to those who have read about the many, very important ways that AI is already being used to help save us, not kill us. Only last week, scientists announced that they had used artificial intelligence to find new antibiotics that could kill off superbugs, and that is just the beginning. By focusing on the "risk of extinction" and the "societal-scale risk" posed by AI, however, its proponents are able to shift the focus away from both the weaknesses of actually existing AI and the ethical questions that surround it. The intensity of the statement, the reference to nuclear war and pandemics, make it feel like we are at a point equivalent with cowering in our bomb shelters or in lockdown. They say there are no atheists in foxholes; we might also say there are no ethicists in fallout shelters. If AI is akin to nuclear war, though, we are closer to the formation of the Manhattan Project than we are to the Cold War. We don’t need to be hunkering down as if the danger is here and there is nothing we can do about it but “mitigate it”. There's still time to decide what this technology looks like, how powerful it is and who will be at the sharp end of that power. Statements like this are a reflection of the fact that the systems we have today are a long way from those that we might have tomorrow: the work going on at the companies who warned us about these issues is vast, and could be much more transformative than chatting with a robot. It is all happening in secret, and shrouded in both mystery and marketing buzz, but what we can discern is that we might only be a few years away from systems that are both more powerful and more sinister. Already, the world is struggling to differentiate between fake images and real ones; soon, developments in AI could make it very difficult to find the difference between fake people and real ones. At least according to some in the industry, AI is set to develop at such a pace that it might only be a few years before those warnings are less abstractly worrying and more concretely terrifying. The statement is correct in identifying those risks, and urging work to avoid them. But it is more than a little helpful to the companies that signed it in making those risks seem inevitable and naturally occurring, as if they are not choosing to build and profit from the technology they are so worried about. It is those companies, not artificial intelligence, that have the power to decide what that future looks like – and whether it will include our "extinction". Read More Opinion: Age gap relationships might seem wrong, but they work. Trust me Hands up if you trust Boris Johnson | Tom Peck Boris’s ‘ratty rat’ rage against Sunak could bring the Tories down | John Rentoul Opinion: Age gap relationships might seem wrong, but they work. Trust me Hands up if you trust Boris Johnson | Tom Peck Boris’s ‘ratty rat’ rage against Sunak could bring the Tories down | John Rentoul

It's almost that time of year again, when we see how many hours we've shamelessly spent listening to mortifying music and just playing Taylor Swift on loop. Yes, Spotify Wrapped is here again and soon your social media feeds will be full of people either showing you how cool by how much Senegalese lounge Jazz they listen to or embarrassed that they still haven't moved on from The Libertines or The Strokes. Each and every year, even for the most dedicated of music lovers, Spotify Wrapped throws up countless surprises in your top artists and songs leading many to question just how it tallies what you listen to. The past few years Wrapped has arrived earlier and earlier, as reported by the Radio Times, so it's not surprise that its arrived on November 29th. Here are the dates it arrived on the previous years. 2017: 6th December 2018: 6th December 2019: 5th December 2020: 2nd December 2021: 1st December 2022: 30th November Finding your Wrapped couldn't be easier you just need to go to your Spotify app on the day it drops and it'll be there waiting for you at the top of the app alongside your saved songs and albums. Alternatively, if you just use Spotify on a laptop or desktop you can visit spotify.com/wrapped and use it from there. Spotify have never officially said how they compile their data for Wrapped but a Reddit user in 2021 revealed how they believed it works. In the post Hudsonlovestech pointed out six key takeaways that they discovered after downloading their data from the music platform. They were: This year the data was logged from January 1st 00:00 to November 15th 23:59. You have to listen to a song for more than 30 seconds for it to count in your song rankings. Your top songs are calculated by play count rather than total time listened. In your top 100 playlist only the first 10 songs are sorted by play count, the rest are close but sorted by artist. Your total time listening includes podcasts. Your top artists are calculated by total play counts rather than total time listening. If you apply this date to your own listening history then there is a chance you might discover what your Wrapped will look like this year although there is no guarantee. Meanwhile, many users on X/Twitter are posting memes, imagining what their Wrapped will look like this year. To be honest, we're just dreading seeing how much we listened to Ryan Gosling sing 'I'm Just Ken' from the Barbie soundtrack. Sign up to our free indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 29, 2023--