Reform UK leader strengthens ties with crypto sector with stake in former Tory chancellor’s company Stack BTC

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Nigel Farage has invested in Kwasi Kwarteng’s bitcoin reserves company, as the leader of Reform UK aligns himself closer with the cryptocurrency industry.

The MP has invested £215,000 in Stack BTC, the crypto business that is chaired by the former Conservative chancellor.

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AI feature generated offensive posts about Diogo Jota and the Hillsborough and Munich disasters

Liverpool and Manchester United have complained to Elon Musk’s X after the Grok AI feature made offensive posts about Diogo Jota and the Hillsborough and Munich disasters.

The posts were generated when users asked the AI tool to make hateful posts about the two football teams.

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Standoff with DoD over Claude chatbot reignites debate over how AI will be used in war – and who will be held accountable

Until recently, Anthropic was one of the quieter names in the artificial intelligence boom. Despite being valued at about $350bn, it rarely generated the flashy headlines or public backlash associated with Sam Altman’s OpenAI or Elon Musk’s xAI. Its CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei was an industry fixture but hardly a household name outside of Silicon Valley, and its chatbot Claude lagged in popularity behind ChatGPT.

That perception has shifted as Anthropic has become the central actor in a high-profile fight with the Department of Defense over the company’s refusal to allow Claude to be used for domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons systems that can kill people without human input. Amid tense negotiations, the AI firm rejected a Pentagon deadline for a deal last week, in a move that led Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, to accuse Anthropic of “arrogance and betrayal” of its home country while demanding that any companies that work with the US government cease all business with the AI firm.

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The company’s clash with the Pentagon is a fight over the future of American privacy

The US military wants to use its state-of-the-art AI tools to supercharge surveillance against Americans, making it easier than ever to monitor our movements, our search history, and our private associations. That’s one of the major takeaways from a dramatic dispute between the Department of Defense and some of the leading AI companies in America. What this clash highlights most of all, however, is just how easily AI surveillance systems can be turned against the people in this country, and the urgent need for Congress to intervene.

Last week, the Pentagon and Donald Trump announced that the government would cease using Anthropic’s AI products , asserting that the safety guardrails proposed by the company – no mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons – were unacceptable. The Trump administration went even further, claiming that these positions render Anthropic a “ supply chain risk ”, and prohibited anyone doing business with the US military from conducting commercial activity with Anthropic in their military work.

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Proton VPN moves from 174th to 19th place as NordVPN goes from 189th to 13th, as porn websites in Australia start requiring age verification for users

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Virtual private network apps have skyrocketed up the app charts in Australia after a number of adult sites began blocking Australian users in compliance with new online safety codes in effect from Monday.

VPN Super Unlimited Proxy moved from 40th in free iPhone apps in Australia on 2 March to 7th place as of Sunday, according to the most recent data from Sensor Tower. Proton VPN moved from 174th to 19th, and NordVPN went from 189th to 13th.

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New research suggests tech behind AI platforms such as ChatGPT makes it easier to perform sophisticated privacy attacks

AI has made it vastly easier for malicious hackers to identify anonymous social media accounts, a new study has warned.

In most test scenarios, large language models (LLMs) – the technology behind platforms such as ChatGPT – successfully matched anonymous online users with their actual identities on other platforms, based on the information they posted.

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The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions ponders the hypothetical reactions of eminent historical personages to today’s Trafalgar Square

This week’s question: which are more like life, novels or films?

If William Shakespeare – or Florence Nightingale, or Attila the Hun, or Julius Caesar, or Jane Austen, or Pocahontas – was dropped in Trafalgar Square, London, what would they find most unusual? And how would we explain it to them? Giles, Suffolk

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com .

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Exclusive: ‘Witchcraft, spirit possession and spiritual abuse’ offending typified by sexual abuse, violence and neglect

ChatGPT is driving a rise in reports of organised ritual abuse, UK experts have said, as survivors of “satanic” sexual violence use the AI tool for therapy.

Police say organised ritual abuse and “witchcraft, spirit possession and spiritual abuse” (WSPRA) against children is under-reported in the UK. There is no modern-day charge that covers it specifically, but such offending is typified by sexual abuse, violence and neglect involving ritualistic elements – sometimes inspired by satanism, fascism or esoteric religious beliefs – to control victims.

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The CEO said he cut the company’s workforce by 4,000 people – almost in half – because of gains in AI productivity

Mark remembers the first time he wondered whether he was teaching Block’s AI tools how to do his job – and maybe even replace him. He was at his fintech company’s extravagant anniversary party last September. As executives led a presentation on the productivity benefits of a new internal AI tool, Mark, who worked in the product department, discussed his worries with colleagues. While he wasn’t sure what would happen in a few years, he told a co-worker sitting next to him that for now, there was no way the technology was so advanced that it could move the business forward without employees like him to help drive vision and strategy.

These AI tools were not proactive. He had to tell them what to do. Block still needed him, he thought.

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