The father of 14-year-old Molly Russell – who took her own life after viewing suicide content online – has called on Ofcom to be “bold and act fast” once the Online Safety Bill becomes law. Ian Russell said he believed the Bill, which has been years in the drafting and imposes new legal duties on big tech companies and service providers, would “make the online world safer”. He said the regulator would need to take action immediately to ensure the Bill, which is expected to be made law soon by Parliament, was enforced. I hope Molly would be proud and we hope that this step, the new Online Safety Bill, will mean there are fewer of those families with stories like Molly's in the future Ian Russell Speaking on BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, he said: “It’s not perfect but it’s an important step, and it’s a step that has been needed for years to to counter this new technology, to counter these changes that are happening so fast that society doesn’t quite know what to do with.” Last September, a coroner ruled schoolgirl Molly, from Harrow, north-west London, died from “an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the negative effects of online content” in November 2017. Calling on Ofcom to take immediate action once the Bill is passed, Mr Russell said: “There are many other families, too many tragic stories to tell, some like Molly’s and some quite different, but if the Bill fails to stop online harms that all our children saw, then it will have failed. “Once this becomes law, we’re in a new phase where Ofcom as the regulator appointed by the Government to police the internet, to regulate the tech industry, has to get out of the blocks really fast. “It can’t waste time, it has to move fast and be bold and enact the clauses set out in the Bill in order to make the online world safer for children.” Mr Russell said he was “confident” the Bill would be effective as it was designed to be “future-proof” by not being “technology specific”. He said: “Ofcom have got a really tough job. They’re going up against some of the biggest, most well-funded corporations on the planet. “But they have already been staffing up, they’ve got hundreds of people working on online safety already, I’m sure they will be recruiting more people.” Mr Russell said he believed possible sanctions including jail terms for those in charge of technology firms would be an important part of the new law. He said: “Jail terms for tech bosses are important, not because I think tech bosses will ever end up going to jail, but I think it focuses their minds. “What is really needed is a change of corporate culture at these big institutions. In two decades of social media, nothing’s really changed.” Describing his personal motivation for campaigning on the issue, he said: “I hope Molly would be proud and we hope that this step, the new Online Safety Bill, will mean there are fewer of those families with stories like Molly’s in the future.” An Ofcom spokesman said: “We’re ready to start and very soon after the Bill receives royal assent we’ll set out the first set of standards that we’ll expect tech firms to meet in tackling illegal online harms.” Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Warning over criminals using digital switchover to scam vulnerable people Stadiums and tourism hotspots to test new 5G networks in £88 million scheme Chatbots ‘able to outperform most humans at creative thinking task’

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OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, have formed a new group to prepare for the “catastrophic risks” of artificial intelligence. The “Preparedness” team will aim to “track, evaluate, forecast and protect against catastrophic risks”, the company said. Those risks include artificial intelligence being used to craft powerful persuasive messages, to endanger cybersecurity and to be used in nuclear and other kinds of weapons. The team will also work against “autonomous replication and adaptation”, or ARA – the danger that an AI would gain the power to be able to copy and change itself. “We believe that frontier AI models, which will exceed the capabilities currently present in the most advanced existing models, have the potential to benefit all of humanity,” OpenAI said. “But they also pose increasingly severe risks.” Avoiding those dangerous situations will mean building frameworks to predict and then protect people against the dangerous capabilities of new artificial intelligence systems, OpenAI said. That will be one of the tasks of the new team. At the same time, OpenAI launched a new “Preparedness Challenge”. That encourages people to think about “the most unique, while still being probable, potentially catastrophic misuse of the model” such as using it to shut down power grids, for instance. Particularly good submissions of ideas for the malicious uses of artificial intelligence will win credits to use on OpenAI’s tools, and the company suggested that some of those people could be hired to the team. It will be led by Aleksander Madry, an AI expert from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, OpenAI said. OpenAI revealed the new team as part of its contribution to the UK’s AI Safety Summit, which will happen next week. OpenAI was one of a range of companies that have made commitments on how it will ensure the safe use of artificial intelligence. Read More WhatsApp update will change how you log in forever ChatGPT creator quietly changes core values from ‘thoughtful’ to ‘scrappy’

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The Earth is home to truly stunning natural features, but sometimes you need a new perspective to appreciate it all over again. Thankfully, the experts at NASA are on hand to remind us just how incredible our planet is with the release of new photos showing the “blood of Earth”. The incredible images seem to show it bleeding, with dramatic red liquid appearing to cascade over the surface. However, it’s nothing at all to do with blood – which is probably just as well. Instead, the first picture shows the Laguna Colorada in the Bolivian Andes in South America from space. Remarkably, the image was taken by an astronaut onboard the International Space Station (ISS) using just a Nikon digital camera. The fact that it was taken more than 400 kilometres away from Earth on a handheld device is pretty staggering, and it offers a look at a natural phenomenon which we’d never otherwise get to see. The first picture shows the impact of red algae flourishing in the shallow water of the laguna, while the second shows the Betsiboka River Delta in Madagascar. This time, the red colour comes as a result of the iron-rich sediment. It’s pretty awe-inspiring stuff, and it’s not the first time that red “blood” has been seen running from our planet, either. Antarctica’s Blood Falls is a bizarre geographical feature in the McMurdo Dry Valleys region of the continent, and it’s one of the strangest natural phenomena you're likely to see. It features a flow of water the colour of blood that can be seen seeping out from a glacier into the ocean. The mystery behind it has fascinated members of the scientific community for decades, but a solution has now been found. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel 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