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Business

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Finance

1-0 to humankind? US midterms vote puts AI, datacentres and the broligarchy back in their box | Heather Stewart

Election results appear to have turbo-charged an already growing social, political and financial market rethink about AI ‘AI clog’: UK battles onslaught of chatbot-generated complaints Editorial: the AI backlash – Silicon Valley’s political power is cracking Last week’s midterms may not have cowed Donald Trump, but they should be a wake-up call for the grinning tech broligarchs who lined up at his inauguration two chaotic years ago. Clearly, the cost of living squeeze unleashed by Trump’s war in Iran was a big driver of the Democrat wave. But AI was also on the ballot – in many places, literal

The Guardian
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Finance

‘AI clog’: UK public bodies battle onslaught of chatbot-generated complaints

MPs, local authorities, lawyers, schools and more are receiving floods of grievances, requests and legal challenges, often complex to read and respond to ‘It started as a trickle in 2024 and now it’s an onslaught.” Hollie Wickens, a senior caseworker in a Labour MP’s office, is explaining the daily reality of dealing with surging volumes of artificial intelligence-generated correspondence. “Half the emails we receive are some form of AI,” she says, adding that this has made requests and complaints much more complex and time-consuming to read and deal with, despite her decade of experience in t

The Guardian
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Finance

‘Free grand piano’: the scam playing on music lovers’ heartstrings

Emails claim to come from a woman whose husband has died – but the offer isn’t what it seems An email pops up in your inbox: a woman whose husband has died is giving away his grand piano for free. She says she would love it to go to someone “who will truly appreciate and care for it”. The piano “is in excellent condition and has brought joy to our home”. The email ends: “If you know of a dedicated student, teacher, family or church that would cherish this piano, please feel free to forward this message to them.” Continue reading...

The Guardian
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Finance

Hot fridges, a fake nuclear alert and a $6bn heist: are we in the foothills of a hacking epidemic?

As AI exposes flaws in IT systems and geopolitics plays out on the cyber frontline, some experts say the events of recent weeks could soon be a common occurrence Alex Pearce was doing the morning rounds at his fruit and vegetable wholesale business in London on Monday last week when he noticed something odd. The defrost light on refrigeration unit 2 was on, and the panel reading was 150C. Unit 4 was the same. Continue reading...

The Guardian
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Finance

‘Very strange, very sad’: Paraguay bank collapse fells a presidency and leaves millions broke

Santiago Peña charged over alleged role in crisis as prosecutors request he be placed in preventive custody Pedro Volpe had just woken up last Tuesday when he saw a message from a friend asking whether his bank account was down too. It was a day after payday, and Volpe, 50, a writer and lawyer, opened his banking app and panicked: he could not even see his balance. Continue reading...

The Guardian
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Finance

National Trust votes to seek banking partner more in tune with its environmental policies

Charity’s AGM decides overwhelmingly to begin tendering process amid criticism of Barclays’ fossil fuel investments The National Trust has voted overwhelmingly to seek a new banking partner in a significant victory for members who have long argued that its relationship with Barclays was at odds with its commitment to protecting the natural world. The resolution, passed at the charity’s annual general meeting on Saturday with the backing of its board of trustees, instructs the organisation to begin a competitive tendering process for its banking arrangements. Continue reading...

The Guardian
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Finance

A ‘customer success story’: leaked documents show Cisco doubled down on Israeli military deals during Gaza war

Tech giant leaped to shore up relationship even as company was roiled by worker protest over its role in the war A year into the war in Gaza, the networks of Israel’s military intelligence community were plagued with technical problems. There were major, multi-hour outages to their systems, and repeated crashes. Built-in debugging mechanisms failed. The problems, which started as intelligence operations were undergoing updates to digital infrastructure, became so persistent as to undermine the “confidence” of Israeli intelligence agencies in one of their top network providers: the multinationa

The Guardian
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