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Europe

The latest published reporting from this region.

Politics

Houses of Parliament at risk of ‘Notre Dame-style fire’ as renovation costs rise

Report says cost of maintenance could soon reach £2m a week, including 24-hour patrols to avert fire risk The Palace of Westminster will be at risk of a Notre Dame-style fire or a similar catastrophic event if MPs do not tackle the issue of funding refurbishments, a parliamentary committee has said. Decisions about how and when to begin a full restoration of the building, which is Grade I-listed and a Unesco world heritage site, have been repeatedly delayed amid disagreement over how it should be done and spiralling costs. Continue reading...

The Guardian
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Military

AI ‘godfather’ Geoffrey Hinton: it might turn out we were better off without AI

Nobel winner warns the tech could be near to triggering major incident such as power or banking shutdown One of the “godfathers of AI”, Geoffrey Hinton, has said it could turn out that humans would have been better off never developing the technology as he warned it could trigger a large-scale incident this year or next, such as a temporary blackout of financial or power systems. The Nobel prize-winning computer scientist told the Guardian he is not a “doomer” about the technology that is underpinned by his groundbreaking research into artificial neural networks and believes AI has the potenti

The Guardian
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