‘The biggest decision yet’: Jared Kaplan on allowing AI to train itself

Anthropic’s chief scientist says AI autonomy could spark a beneficial ‘intelligence explosion’ – or be the moment humans lose control

Humanity will have to decide by 2030 whether to take the “ultimate risk” of letting artificial intelligence systems train themselves to become more powerful, one of the world’s leading AI scientists has said.

Jared Kaplan, the chief scientist and co-owner of the $180bn (£135bn) US startup Anthropic, said a choice was looming about how much autonomy the systems should be given to evolve.

Published: December 2, 2025, 12:37 pm

Charlie Kirk tops Wikipedia’s list of most-read articles in 2025

Zohran Mamdani, Ozzy Osbourne and Sinners also feature in encyclopedia’s top 20 most-read English-language pages

Wikipedia’s article on Charlie Kirk was the most read on the online encyclopedia this year, as users sought out information on the conservative activist.

People viewed the entry on Kirk nearly 45m times, many after he was shot at a university campus debate on 10 September.

Charlie Kirk, 44.9m page views

Deaths in 2025, 42.5m

Ed Gein, 31.2m

Donald Trump, 25.1m

Pope Leo XIV, 22.1m

Elon Musk, 20.2m

Zohran Mamdani, 20.1m

Sinners (2025 film), 18.2m

Ozzy Osbourne, 17.8m

Superman (2025 film), 17m

Pope Francis, 15.3m

Severance (TV series), 13.9m

United States, 13m

Thunderbolts*, 12.9m

Weapons (2025 film), 11.8m

JD Vance, 11.6m

Adolescence (TV series), 11.6m

MrBeast, 11.5m

Cristiano Ronaldo, 10.8m

The Fantastic Four: First Steps, 10.8m

Published: December 2, 2025, 12:00 pm

The rise of deepfake pornography in schools: ‘One girl was so horrified she vomited’

The use of ‘nudify’ apps is becoming more and more prevalent, with hundreds of teachers having seen images created by pupils, often of their peers. The fallout is huge – and growing fast

‘It worries me that it’s so normalised. He obviously wasn’t hiding it. He didn’t feel this was something he shouldn’t be doing. It was in the open and people saw it. That’s what was quite shocking.”

A headteacher is describing how a teenage boy, sitting on a bus on his way home from school, casually pulled out his phone, selected a picture from social media of a girl at a neighbouring school and used a “nudifying” app to doctor her image.

Published: December 2, 2025, 10:00 am

The fight to see clearly through big tech’s echo chambers

As Silicon Valley tightens its grip on the narrative, insiders and regulators push back, consumers rethink upgrades, and states experiment with AI in the public sector

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery. Today, I’m mulling over whether to upgrade my iPhone 11 Pro. In tech news, there’s a narrative battle afoot in Silicon Valley, tips on avoiding the yearly smartphone upgrade cycle and new devices altogether, and artificial intelligence’s use in government, for better and for worse.

ChatGPT firm blames boy’s suicide on ‘misuse’ of its technology

ChatGPT-5 offers dangerous advice to mentally ill people, psychologists warn

AI’s safety features can be circumvented with poetry, research finds

Published: December 2, 2025, 2:21 pm

India orders phone makers to preload devices with state-owned cyber safety app

Critics voice concern as government says its Sanchar Saathi app combats cybersecurity threats for 1.2bn telecom users

India’s telecoms ministry has privately asked smartphone makers to preload all new devices with a state-owned cybersecurity app that cannot be deleted, a government order showed, a move likely to antagonise Apple and privacy advocates.

In tackling a recent surge of cybercrime and hacking, India is joining authorities worldwide, most recently in Russia, to frame rules blocking the use of stolen phones for fraud or promoting state-backed government service apps.

Published: December 1, 2025, 6:41 pm

Instagram’s age-verification identified a moustachioed adult as over 16 – but how did it go with a 13-year-old?

Meta platform allows users under 16 in Australia to change their date of birth – but only after clearing a ‘video selfie’ or providing government ID

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Instagram’s process for determining whether a user is over 16 is relatively quick and painless if you’re clearly an adult – but how does it work if a 13-year-old tries to change their account’s date of birth to make them appear grown up?

Meta in November began notifying Instagram and Facebook users whose date of birth is set as under 16 – or who the platform understands to be under 16 – that their accounts will be deactivated as part of Australia’s social media ban for children. The ban takes effect on 10 December, but Meta has said it will start removing access to users under 16 from 4 December.

Published: December 1, 2025, 11:57 pm

The 15 best tech gifts in the US for moms, as requested by moms

From TheraGuns to koala breathing lights, here are good gizmos for mom, whether your budget is $20 or $220

• The 163 best holiday gift ideas for 2025, vetted by the Guardian US staff

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The best gift you can give a mom this holiday season is some time to herself. A day with no responsibilities where everyone else handles the cooking, cleaning and household chores. She can sit back and relax, go for brunch with friends, maybe treat herself to some shopping. But that doesn’t mean you should forget to wrap something under the tree for her, too.

As a tech reviewer for more than a decade and a mom myself, I’m particularly fond of unwrapping gadgets, but you don’t have to be a techie to appreciate the utility, convenience and luxury of a thoughtful gizmo. I spoke to several moms to get their thoughts on what they want this holiday season when it comes to tech, with ideas in every price range.

Published: December 2, 2025, 3:52 pm

Datacentres demand huge amounts of electricity. Could they derail Australia’s net zero ambitions?

Banks of servers operating 24/7 generate massive amounts of heat, requiring power to run and cool them

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Datacentre power demand in Australia could triple in five years and is forecast to exceed by 2030 the energy used by electric vehicles.

Datacentres now draw about 2% of electricity from the National Grid, about 4 terawatt hours of power. The Australian Energy Market Operator (Aemo) expects that share to rise rapidly – growing 25% year-on-year – to reach 12TWh, or 6% of grid demand, by 2030, and 12% by 2050.

Published: December 2, 2025, 2:00 pm

‘The Chinese will not pause’: Volvo and Polestar bosses urge EU to stick to 2035 petrol car ban

Exclusive: Swedish carmakers push to retain target as Germany lobbies to help its own industry by softening cutoff date

As the battle lines harden amid Germany’s intensifying pressure on the European Commission to scrap the 2035 ban on production of new petrol and diesel cars, two Swedish car companies, Volvo and Polestar, are leading the campaign to persuade Brussels to stick to the date.

They argue such a move is a desperate attempt to paper over the cracks in the German car industry, adding that it will not just prolong take up of electric vehicles but inadvertently hand the advantage to China.

Published: December 2, 2025, 6:00 am

The 110 very best Cyber Monday deals in the US, curated and vetted

Our experts found the best deals and sales that are actually worth your money. Here are our picks for pillows, bath towels, suitcases and more

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We all have holiday traditions we look forward to each year: cooking your grandmother’s classic stuffing recipe. Opening your favorite Advent calendar. Or, if you’re a retailer, pushing deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

JUST ADDED: The best Cyber Monday streaming deal:
Disney+ and Hulu bundle for 12 months

Published: December 1, 2025, 9:39 pm

The question isn’t whether the AI bubble will burst – but what the fallout will be

Will the bubble ravage the economy when it bursts? What will it leave of value once it pops?

The California Gold Rush left an outsized imprint on America. Some 300,000 people flocked there from 1848 to 1855, from as far away as the Ottoman Empire. Prospectors massacred Indigenous people to take the gold from their lands in the Sierra Nevada mountains. And they boosted the economies of nearby states and faraway countries from whence they bought their supplies.

Gold provided the motivation for California – a former Mexican territory then controlled by the US military – to become a state with laws of its own. And yet, few “49ers” as prospectors were known, struck it rich. It was the merchants selling prospectors food and shovels who made the money. One, a Bavarian immigrant named Levi Strauss who sold denim overalls to the gold bugs passing through San Francisco, may be the most remembered figure of his day.

Published: December 1, 2025, 11:00 am

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond review – Samus Aran is suited up for action again. Was it worth the 18-year wait?

Nintendo Switch/Switch 2 (version tested); Retro Studios/Nintendo
The bounty hunter – Nintendo’s most badass and most neglected hero – returns in an atmospheric throwback sci-fi adventure that’s entirely untroubled by the conventions of modern game design

In a frozen laboratory full of cryogenically suspended experimental life forms, metal boots disturb the frost. A lone bounty hunter in a familiar orange exosuit points her blaster ahead. Making my way towards the facility’s power generator, scanning doors and hunting for secret entrances, broken hatches and hidden keys, I suspect that I know exactly what’s going to happen when this place begins to thaw; every clank and creak sounds sounds as if it could be a long-dormant beast busting out of one of those pods. And yet Samus Aran delves deeper, because she has never been afraid of anything.

This section of Prime 4 is classic Metroid: atmospheric, eerie, lonely, dangerous and cryptic. Samus, Nintendo’s coolest hero, is impeccably awesome, equipped here with new psychic powers that accent her suit with pulsing purple light. (I have taken many screenshots of her looking identically badass all over the game’s planet.) She is controlled with dual sticks, or – much better, much more intuitive – by pointing one of the Switch 2’s remotes at the screen to aim. Or even by using it as a mouse on a table or your knee, though this made my wrist hurt after a while. She transforms into a rolling ball, moves statues into place with her mind, and rides a futuristic shape-shifting motorcycle across lava and sand between this distant planet’s abandoned facilities, unlocking its dead civilisation’s lost knowledge.

Published: December 2, 2025, 3:56 pm

From Gears of War to Uno: the 15 most important Xbox 360 games

As the Xbox 360 turns 20, we celebrate its most influential and memorable games – both exclusives, and those that came to the console first

Originally featured as a minigame in Project Gotham, this 80s-style twin-stick shooter was rebuilt as a standalone digital-only release, attracting a huge new fanbase. Fast, frenetic and super stylish, with lovely vector visuals, it was the game that first showed the potential of Xbox Live Arcade.

Published: December 2, 2025, 10:00 am

Age of the ‘scam state’: how an illicit, multibillion-dollar industry has taken root in south-east Asia

Like the narco-state, a ‘scam state’ refers to countries where an illicit industry has dug its tentacles deep into institutions and transformed the economy

For days before the explosions began, the business park had been emptying out. When the bombs went off, they took down empty office blocks and demolished echoing, multi-cuisine food halls. Dynamite toppled a four-storey hospital, silent karaoke complexes, deserted gyms and dorm rooms.

So came the end of KK Park, one of south-east Asia’s most infamous “scam centres”, press releases from Myanmar’s junta declared. The facility had held tens of thousands of people, forced to relentlessly defraud people around the world. Now, it was being levelled piece by piece.

Published: December 2, 2025, 2:02 am

Shells found in Spain could be among oldest known musical instruments

Conch-shell trumpets discovered in Neolithic settlements and mines in Catalonia make tone similar to french horn, says lead researcher

As a child, Miquel López García was fascinated by the conch shell, kept in the bathroom, that his father’s family in the southern Spanish region of Almería had blown to warn their fellow villagers of rising rivers and approaching flood waters.

The hours he spent getting that “characteristically potent sound out of it” paid off last year when the archaeologist, musicologist and professional trumpet player pressed his lips to eight conch-shell trumpets. Their tones, he says, could carry insights into the lives of the people who lived in north-east Spain 6,000 years ago.

Published: December 2, 2025, 5:00 am

Age of the ‘scam state’: how an illicit, multibillion-dollar industry has taken root in south-east Asia

Like the narco-state, a ‘scam state’ refers to countries where an illicit industry has dug its tentacles deep into institutions and transformed the economy

For days before the explosions began, the business park had been emptying out. When the bombs went off, they took down empty office blocks and demolished echoing, multi-cuisine food halls. Dynamite toppled a four-storey hospital, silent karaoke complexes, deserted gyms and dorm rooms.

So came the end of KK Park, one of south-east Asia’s most infamous “scam centres”, press releases from Myanmar’s junta declared. The facility had held tens of thousands of people, forced to relentlessly defraud people around the world. Now, it was being levelled piece by piece.

Published: December 2, 2025, 2:02 am

Life Invisible: the fight against superbugs starts in the driest place on Earth

Cristina Dorador is on an urgent mission in the world’s highest desert, the Atacama in Chile. As the rise of drug-resistant superbugs kills millions per year, Cristina has made it her mission to uncover new, life-saving antibiotics in the stunning salt flats she has studied since she was 14. Against the magnificent backdrop of endless plains, microscopic discoveries lead her team of scientists to question how critically lithium mining is damaging the delicate ecosystem and impacting Indigenous communities

Published: December 2, 2025, 10:38 am

Tuesday briefing: What’s next for the resurgent space race?

In today’s newsletter: As suppliers get ready to meet policy makers and space agencies at the industry’s largest gathering, a look at the exploration and exploitation of space

Good morning. This week Glasgow hosts one of the UK’s largest ever gatherings of the space industry at Space-Comm. With representatives of Nasa, the UK and Scottish governments and the UK space agency among 2,000 space leaders gathering there, it is a chance for people in the commercial supply chain of the space exploration industry to meet policy makers and space agencies.

It comes at a crucial moment in the exploration – and exploitation – of space. For almost three decades the International Space Station (ISS) has bound the US and Russia into cooperation and shared interests. That project is nearing its end, and we can expect to see a realignment of missions and goals – which may bring states and scientists into conflict.

Politics | Britain’s budget watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, has said the early leak of its budget documents before Rachel Reeves made her speech last week, was the “worst failure” in its 15-year history, as its chair resigned and it emerged a similar leak had happened earlier this year.

Health | The World Health Organization has urged countries to make weight loss drugs more accessible and pharmaceutical companies to lower their prices, saying jabs including Mounjaro represent a “new chapter” in the fight against obesity.

Ukraine | The coming days may be “pivotal” for talks to end the war in Ukraine, the EU’s top diplomat said, as Volodymyr Zelenskyy met Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday and the US envoy Steve Witkoff flew out to meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Tuesday.

Donald Trump | Donald Trump said he “wouldn’t have wanted” a second strike that the US military reportedly conducted on a boat in the Caribbean that it believed to be ferrying drugs, killing survivors of an initial missile attack. The UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, has urged Washington to investigate, saying there was “strong evidence” of “extrajudicial” killings.

Asia-Pacific | Sri Lanka and Indonesia have deployed military personnel to help victims of the torrential floods that have killed 1,100 in four countries in Asia. Heavy cyclones and tropical monsoon rains have hit the region in recent days.

Published: December 2, 2025, 6:40 am

Is AI making us stupid? – podcast

Artificial intelligence can execute tasks in seconds that once took humans hours, if not days to complete. While this may be great for productivity, some researchers are concerned that our increasing use of AI could be impacting our ability to tackle difficult problems and think critically. To find out where the science stands, and how worried we should be about the potential of AI to change how we think, Ian Sample hears from Madeleine Finlay and Sam Gilbert, professor of neuroscience at University College London

Are we living in a golden age of stupidity?

Watch Life Invisible, the Guardian’s new documentary about the hunt for life saving antibiotics in Chile’s Atacama Desert

Published: December 2, 2025, 5:00 am

Shortage of ‘breakthrough’ weight loss drugs will slow fight against obesity, WHO warns

WHO urges countries to make drugs such as Mounjaro more accessible to people and asks drugs companies to lower prices

Weight loss drugs such as Mounjaro offer huge potential to tackle soaring obesity globally but are currently only available to one in 10 of those who need them, the World Health Organization has said.

Their proven effectiveness in helping people lose weight means the medications represent “a new chapter” in how health services can treat obesity and the killer diseases it causes, the WHO added.

Published: December 1, 2025, 1:45 pm

NHS to pay 25% more for innovative drugs after UK–US zero-tariff deal

Agreement could cost NHS an extra £3bn a year, industry sources estimate

The UK has agreed to pay 25% more for new medicines by 2035 as part of a US-UK drug pricing deal that will cost an estimated additional £3bn a year.

The transatlantic agreement will also see the health service in England, which currently spends £14.4bn a year on innovative therapies, double the percentage of GDP it allocates to buying such products, from 0.3% to 0.6% over the next decade.

Published: December 1, 2025, 6:26 pm

Hole in Antarctic ozone layer shrinks to smallest since 2019, scientists say

EU’s Copernicus monitoring service hails ‘reassuring sign’ of progress observed this year in hole’s size and duration

The hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic this year was the smallest and shortest-lived since 2019, according to European space scientists, who described the finding as a “reassuring sign” of the layer’s recovery.

The yearly gap in what scientists have called “planetary sunscreen” reached a maximum area of 21m sq km (8.1m sq miles) over the southern hemisphere in September – well below the maximum of 26m sq km reached in 2023 – and shrank in size until coming to an early close on Monday, data from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (Cams) shows.

Published: December 1, 2025, 3:53 pm

How Trump’s on-again, off-again Nasa appointee emerged from a political black hole

Trump’s renomination of billionaire astronaut Jared Isaacman is a tale of politics, ambition and vanity

It used to be that once your star had fallen in Donald Trump’s orbit, it was destined never to rise again. Any number of discarded former allies stretching back to Trump’s first term of office could testify as much.

One who has emerged from a political black hole to return to the president’s firmament is the billionaire private astronaut Jared Isaacman, who will on Wednesday tell senators – for the second time – why he is the best person to lead the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa).

Published: December 2, 2025, 11:00 am