Science and Tech

A chatbot told a 17-year-old that murdering his parents was a “reasonable response” to them limiting his screen time, a lawsuit filed in a Texas court claims. Two families are suing Character.ai arguing the chatbot “poses a clear and present danger” to young people, including by “actively promoting violence.” Character.ai – a platform which allows users to create digital personalities …

General Motors has announced that it will stop funding the development of the Cruise self-driving taxi. The company says it will now “refocus autonomous driving development on personal vehicles”. GM also pointed to the increasingly competitive robotaxi market as a reason for the move. In October, Tesla boss Elon Musk unveiled the electric car giant’s long-awaited robotaxi, the Cybercab, at …

Cyber warfare, aerodynamic tech in athletics and the new Indiana Jones.

Online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay will have to pay their “fair share” of recycling electrical waste under new government proposals. Circular economy minister Mary Creagh said planned reforms would create a “level playing field” for electronics producers by putting more onus on international retailers to contribute to recycling costs. Some foreign sellers have been able to avoid this …

Prime Video A digital Keanu Reeves appears in an episode of Secret Level based on giant robot shooter Armored Core You can’t please all of the people all of the time, and that’s especially true of gamers. It’s something Tim Miller, the producer of Amazon’s new series Secret Level, knows all too well. The animated anthology show is made up …

Winta Zesu Winta Zesu has made a business out of rage-baiting “I get a lot of hate”. The words of content creator Winta Zesu, who last year made $150,000 (£117,000) from posting on social media. What separates Winta from other influencers? The people commenting on her posts and driving traffic to her videos are often doing so out of anger. …

China has launched an investigation into US computer chipmaker Nvidia, targeting one of America’s leading tech companies over alleged violations of anti-monopoly laws. The probe marks the latest salvo in an ongoing US-China tech war over the lucrative semiconductor market. Last week, Washington tightened restrictions on sales of certain exports to Chinese companies and the clash over the industry is …

Getty Images TikTok has asked a court for an emergency injunction to prevent it becoming unavilable in the US next month. The US government passed a law demanding the app’s sale or ban because of what it says are its links to the Chinese state – links TikTok and its parent company ByteDance deny. The social media company lost its …

Google The new Willow chip Google has unveiled a new chip which it claims takes five minutes to solve a problem that would currently take the world’s fastest super computers ten septillion – or 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years – to complete. The chip is the latest development in a field known as quantum computing – which is attempting to use the principles …

TikTok’s bid to overturn a law which would see it banned or sold in the US from early 2025 has been rejected. The social media company had hoped a federal appeals court would agree with its argument that the law was unconstitutional because it represented a “staggering” impact on the free speech of its 170 million US users. But the …