Reddit community banned after spat with Musk, Google scraps ‘AI weapons’ promise
Reddit has temporarily banned one of its communities – and removed another – after X owner Elon Musk claimed comments made by the site’s users about his employees were breaking the law. The r/WhitePeopleTwitter subreddit, which typically invites people to share funny posts from X, has been banned for 72 hours after some users posted comments calling for violence against members of the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). They were responding to reports which suggested some Doge staff have been granted access to sensitive personal information of millions of Americans. BBC
Google updated its artificial intelligence principles on Tuesday to remove commitments around not using the technology in ways “that cause or are likely to cause overall harm.” A scrubbed section of the revised AI ethics guidelines previously committed Google to not designing or deploying AI for use in surveillance, weapons, and technology intended to injure people. The change was first spotted by The Washington Post and captured here by the Internet Archive. Coinciding with these changes, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, and Google’s senior exec for technology and society James Manyika published a blog post detailing new “core tenets” that its AI principles would focus on. The Verge
An arms race for artificial intelligence (AI) supremacy, triggered by recent panic over Chinese chatbot DeepSeek, risks amplifying the existential dangers of superintelligence, according to one of the “godfathers” of AI. Canadian machine learning pioneer Yoshua Bengio, author of the first International AI Safety Report to be presented at an international AI summit in Paris next week, warns unchecked investment in computational power for AI without oversight is dangerous. “The effort is going into who’s going to win the race, rather than how do we make sure we are not going to build something that blows up in our face,” says Mr Bengio. Sky News
Nissan looks set to step back from merger talks with rival Honda, two sources said on Wednesday, calling into question a $60 billion tie-up to create the world’s no.3 automaker and potentially leaving Nissan to drive its turnaround alone. Talks between the two Japanese automakers have been complicated by growing differences, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, all of whom declined to be named because they were not authorised to speak to the media. Reuters
The new Apple Invites app has officially been announced. The main iCloud.com page has seemingly confirmed Apple’s rumored invites tool, which has yet to be officially announced by the company.
The page says “Apple Invites” will be an iCloud+ feature: :”Upgrade to iCloud+ to get more storage, plan events with Apple Invites, and have peace of mind with privacy features like iCloud Private Relay, Hide My Email, and HomeKit Secure Video.” Mac Rumors
Amazon isn’t a stranger to quietly removing Fire TV features or breaking their functionality with software updates – and it’s just struck again in the latest firmware push for its popular streaming gadgets. A new Fire TV update, which has rolled out to first-gen and second-gen Fire TV Sticks among other devices, has removed the option of hiding apps on your homescreen (as spotted by AFTVNews). That means you’re now stuck with a cluttered grid of apps you probably don’t want, with no option to make them disappear. Tech Radar
