Digital censorship analysts argue current outage is mostly about survival and control for the country’s rulers

Roughly four hours after the first strikes hit Iran, the country was again plunged into a full internet blackout – severely curtailing both the information that has left the country and the ability of Iranians to communicate with each other.

A small fraction of this blackout appears to be a result of infrastructure damage caused by US or Israeli strikes, possibly to a fibre optic cable, according to Doug Madory, at the internet analytics firm Kentik. There appear to be several small outages affecting multiple networks, which could be caused by technical failures such as a fibre cut or power outage, he said.

AI is transforming our world. Accepting independent oversight is the least companies can do to protect our rights

The speed with which AI is transforming our lives is head-spinning. Unlike previous technological revolutions – radio, nuclear fission or the internet – governments are not leading the way. We know that AI can be dangerous; chatbots advise teens on suicide and may soon be capable of instructing on how to create biological weapons . Yet there is no equivalent to the Federal Drug Administration, testing new models for safety before public release. Unlike in the nuclear industry, companies often don’t have to disclose dangerous breaches or accidents. The tech industry’s lobbying muscle, Washington’s paralyzing polarization, and the sheer complexity of such a potent, fast-moving technology have kept federal regulation at bay. European officials are facing pushback against rules that some claim hobble the continent’s competitiveness. Although several US states are piloting AI laws, they operate in a tentative patchwork and Donald Trump has attempted to render them invalid.

Heads of AI platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini say they care about safety. But owning the future of AI means pouring billions into models that not even their creators fully understand, and making choices like adding ads – and the capabilities that the Pentagon is now seeking from Anthropic – that raise risk. Anthropic, which styles itself as the most conscientious frontier AI company, says its model is trained to “imagine how a thoughtful senior Anthropic employee” would weigh helpfulness against possible harm. The directive echoes criticisms levied years ago over Silicon Valley companies that shaped the lives of users worldwide from insular boardrooms. Consumers don’t believe they are in good hands. Fully 77% of Americans surveyed last year think AI could pose a threat to humanity.

Age-verification systems require collecting sensitive data to support the biometric information. In no time, the internet will become a fully surveilled digital panopticon

Over the past year, more than two dozen countries around the world have proposed bans on social media use for vast swathes of their public. These laws, often proposed under the guise of “child safety”, are ushering in an era of mass surveillance and widespread censorship, contributing to what scholars have called a “global free speech recession”.

Last year, Australia became the first country to ban anyone under the age of 16 from accessing social media. The move emboldened other countries around the world to quickly follow suit. Germany’s ruling party announced it was backing a social media ban . The French president, Emmanuel Macron, called for a ban on social media for under-15s . In the UK, Keir Starmer has sought to enact sweeping social media bans . Greece, the Philippines , Indonesia , Malaysia , Singapore and Japan have also pursued similar online identity verification laws.

Taylor Lorenz is a technology journalist who writes the newsletter User Mag and is the author of the bestselling book Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

Trials to form part of three-month consultation on Keir Starmer’s plans to tackle negative effects of smartphone use

Hundreds of teenagers will be enlisted to trial social media bans in the coming months with overnight digital curfews and daily screen time limits also tested as part of Keir Starmer’s plan to crack down on the negative effects of smartphone use .

The trials will be part of a three-month consultation launched this week that could lead to an outright ban on social media for under-16s similar to that introduced in Australia. Ministers have said they are ready to toughen laws just six months after the introduction of child protection measures in the Online Safety Act.

Campaign groups write to technology secretary amid concerns that sites could double overall electricity demand

Datacentre developers are facing pressure to reveal whether their projects will increase the UK’s net greenhouse gas emissions, amid concerns the sites could double national electricity demand .

Campaign groups have written to the UK technology secretary, Liz Kendall, warning that the energy required by new AI infrastructure poses a “serious threat to efforts to decarbonise the electricity grid”.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions asks whether we could cope with a world where computer gave up saying no …

This week’s question: what if Shakespeare were dropped in modern-day London?

After years of computer saying no, and giving us all migraines and premature grey hair, I’m starting to worry that computer – or rather AI large language models like ChatGPT and Gemini – are taking too much of a fancy to playing nice and saying yes. I confess to using both of these programs, but I’ve noticed that, well, it’s as if they’re trying to please, with statements such as, “You’re absolutely right, Jeff,” and “That’s pretty much right.” Often, when I ask, “Would you mind thinking for a bit longer on that?”, I then get another response saying: “Jeff, you’re absolutely right, again, to query that result. It turns out I was a bit hasty in my reply …”

If the world runs even more on information filleted out from the sump of the internet by LLMs, what are the consequences? Can we look forward to a future in which AI is more concerned with appearing sympathetic (getting good reviews?) than being factual? Er, a bit too human? Jeff Collett, Edinburgh

Tech equity campaigners compare move to ‘inviting in foxes to consult on the future of the henhouse’

Ministers have called in Tony Blair’s thinktank and private tech companies to guide them on deploying AI across the UK government in a move campaigners compared to “inviting in foxes to consult on the future of the henhouse”.

James Murray, chief secretary to the Treasury, chaired a meeting on Wednesday with the director of AI at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), the chair of IBM and senior executives at AI companies including Faculty AI, now part of Accenture, and Dex Hunter-Torricke, a former communications adviser at Google, Facebook and Elon Musk’s Space X.

My new oven has a touchscreen – and demanded to be connected to my broadband. Now it won’t give me a moment’s peace

I bought an oven. I wish I hadn’t. Ovens are like homes, cars, pets and partners, in that you can like the look of them but can’t know what it’s like to live with them until you’re living with them. And by then, it’s too late; you’re stuck with them. All I wanted was an oven that gets hot, to a temperature of my choosing, until the cooking is done, at which point I can switch it off. That’s it. But functionality this simple exists only in the good old days. In ovens, as in all things, manufacturers seek to excite our feeble minds with ever more fantastical features. One knob is all I want, all I need. But, as Feargal Sharkey might sing to himself, a single knob these days is hard to find.

My new oven actually has no knob at all, which is worse. This curates the vibe of simplicity but is only a mask for unconscionable complexity. It’s like the cleverdickery of a Tesla car’s cabin. Look how simple it is, how clean, how clever! Nothing but a steering wheel and a giant touchscreen, but thereon and therein – as with my wretched oven – lies a world of pain, confusion and entirely unnecessary nonsense.

Exclusive: Alvi Choudhury claiming damages against Thames Valley police after biased technology confused him with man looking ‘10 years younger’

Police arrested a man for a burglary in a city he had never visited after face scanning software deployed across the UK confused him with another person of south Asian heritage.

Alvi Choudhury, 26, a software engineer, was working at the home he shares with his parents in Southampton in January when police knocked on his door, handcuffed him and held him in custody for nearly 10 hours before releasing him at 2am.