Progress of artificial general intelligence could stall, which may lead to a financial crash, says Yoshua Bengio, one of the ‘godfathers’ of modern AI

Will the race to artificial general intelligence (AGI) lead us to a land of financial plenty – or will it end in a 2008-style bust? Trillions of dollars rest on the answer.

The figures are staggering: an estimated $2.9tn (£2.2tn) being spent on datacentres, the central nervous systems of AI tools; the more than $4tn stock market capitalisation of Nvidia, the company that makes the chips powering cutting-edge AI systems; and the $100m signing-on bonuses offered by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta to top engineers at OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

Experts warn use of VPNs makes it hard to limit access to technology that can create nonconsensual explicit images

Days after Malaysia made global headlines by announcing it would temporarily ban Grok over its ability to generate “grossly offensive and nonconsensual manipulated images�, the generative AI tool was conversing breezily with accounts registered in the country.

“Still here! That DNS block in Malaysia is pretty lightweight – easy to bypass with a VPN or DNS tweak,� Grok’s account on X said in response to a question from a user.

How would you feel if your therapist’s notes – your darkest thoughts and deepest feelings – were exposed to the world? For 33,000 Finnish people, that became a terrifying reality, with deadly consequences

Tiina Parikka was half-naked when she read the email. It was a Saturday in late October 2020, and Parikka had spent the morning sorting out plans for distance learning after a Covid outbreak at the school where she was headteacher. She had taken a sauna at her flat in Vantaa, just outside Finland’s capital, Helsinki, and when she came into her bedroom to get dressed, she idly checked her phone. There was a message that began with Parikka’s name and her social security number – the unique code used to identify Finnish people when they access healthcare, education and banking. “I knew then that this is not a game,� she says.

The email was in Finnish. It was jarringly polite. “We are contacting you because you have used Vastaamo’s therapy and/or psychiatric services,� it read. “Unfortunately, we have to ask you to pay to keep your personal information safe.� The sender demanded €200 in bitcoin within 24 hours, otherwise the price would go up to €500 within 48 hours. “If we still do not receive our money after this, your information will be published for everyone to see, including your name, address, phone number, social security number and detailed records containing transcripts of your conversations with Vastaamo’s therapists or psychiatrists.�

Portland Communications, founded by Keir Starmer’s communications chief, linked to so-called black hat edits

A high-profile PR company founded by Keir Starmer’s communications chief has been accused of commissioning changes to Wikipedia pages to make them more favourable towards clients.

Portland Communications, founded by Tim Allan, has been linked to the so-called black hat edits, sometimes referred to as “Wikilaundering�. Several changes were made to Wikipedia pages by a network of editors, allegedly controlled by a contractor working on Portland’s behalf.

Moderators accuse social media firm of unfair dismissal after it fired hundreds in UK just before vote to form union

TikTok moderators have accused the social media company of “oppressive and intimidating� union busting after it fired hundreds of workers in the UK, beginning the process just before they were due to vote on forming a union.

The moderators wanted to establish a collective bargaining unit to protect themselves from the personal costs of checking extreme and violent content, and have claimed TikTok is guilty of unfair dismissal and breaching trade union laws.

Despite restrictions announced this week, Guardian reporters find standalone app continues to allow posting of nonconsensual content

X has continued to allow users to post highly sexualised videos of women in bikinis generated by its AI tool Grok, despite the company’s claim to have cracked down on misuse.

The Guardian was able to create short videos of people stripping to bikinis from photographs of fully clothed, real women. It was also possible to post this adult content on to X’s public platform without any sign of it being moderated, meaning the clip could be viewed within seconds by anyone with an account.

Move comes as calls for Australia-style social media ban for under-16s grow around world

TikTok will begin to roll out new age-verification technology across the EU in the coming weeks, as calls grow for an Australia-style social media ban for under-16s in countries including the UK.

ByteDance-owned TikTok, and other major platforms popular with young people such as YouTube, are coming under increasing pressure to better identify and remove accounts belonging to children.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

• This week’s question: How can we learn from unrequited love?

What’s the point of having speed limits if camera-warning signs and apps allow drivers to slow down in advance – then just continue speeding? Maybe the UK government in its new consultations on road safety should add the question of hiding speed cameras to their list of concerns. I’m a driver, but also a pedestrian and cyclist and get fed up with seeing cars zooming down local roads at way more than 20 or 30mph. There are flashing lights that tell drivers what speed they’re doing, but there’s no penalty for going over at those points. Amy, Cornwall

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

Big tech treats our attention like a resource to be mercilessly extracted. The fightback begins here

In the last 15 years, a linked series of unprecedented technologies have changed the experience of personhood across most of the world. It is estimated that nearly 70% of the human population of the Earth currently possesses a smartphone, and these devices constitute about 95% of internet access-points on the planet. Globally, on average, people seem to spend close to half their waking hours looking at screens, and among young people in the rich world the number is a good deal higher than that.

History teaches that new technologies always make possible new forms of exploitation, and this basic fact has been spectacularly exemplified by the rise of society-scale digital platforms. It has been driven by a remarkable new way of extracting money from human beings: call it “human fracking�. Just as petroleum frackers pump high-pressure, high-volume detergents into the ground to force a little monetisable black gold to the surface, human frackers pump high-pressure, high-volume detergent into our faces (in the form of endless streams of addictive slop and maximally disruptive user-generated content), to force a slurry of human attention to the surface, where they can collect it, and take it to market.

Our reviewer loved this wake-up light more than any other he’s tested – it’s even knocked his previous best sunrise alarm off the top spot

• Read the full ranking in our sunrise alarm clock test

Since I first tested sunrise alarm clocks last winter, I’ve come to suspect that there’s no such thing as getting up on the wrong side of bed. What we ought to be worried about is waking up on the wrong side of dawn.

During summer (and other times of the year, for late risers), the sunrise begins to rouse us before we wake up. The brain kicks into gear and sends signals to initiate all sorts of bodily processes, from metabolism to hormone release, which helps us to feel ready for the day. It’s a fundament of our circadian rhythm – and we miss out on it whenever we wake before it gets light.

It’s becoming more common for people to use AI chatbots for personal guidance – but this doesn’t come without risks

• Sign up for our free newsletter course on how to make AI work for you

If you’re like a lot of people, you’ve probably ditched your new year resolutions by now. Setting goals is hard; keeping them is harder – and failure can bring about icky feelings about yourself.

This year, in an effort to game the system and tilt the scales toward success, some people used AI for their 2026 resolutions. It’s the latest step in an ongoing trend: in September 2025, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, released findings showing that using the AI chatbot for personal guidance is very common.

Book-style Android with cutting-edge AI, good cameras and great tablet screen for media and multitasking on the go

Google’s third-generation folding phone promises to be more durable than all others as the first with full water and dust resistance while also packing lots of advanced AI and an adaptable set of cameras.

The Pixel 10 Pro Fold builds on last year’s excellent 9 Pro Fold by doing away with gears in the hinge along its spine allowing it to deal with dust, which has been the achilles heel of all foldable phones until now, gumming up the works in a way that just isn’t a problem for regular slab phones.

Standard iPhone levels up to Pro models with big screen upgrade, double the storage and more top features than ever

It may not look as different as the redesigned Pro models this year or be as wafer thin as the new iPhone Air, but the iPhone 17 marks a big year for the standard Apple smartphone.

That’s because Apple has finally brought one of the best features of modern smartphones to its base-model flagship phone: a super-smooth 120Hz screen.

Screen: 6.3in Super Retina XDR (120Hz OLED) (460ppi)

Processor: Apple A19

RAM: 8GB

Storage: 256 or 512GB

Operating system: iOS 26

Camera: 48MP main + 48MP UW; 18MP front-facing

Connectivity: 5G, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 6, Thread, USB-C, Satellite, UWB and GNSS

Water resistance: IP68 (6 metres for 30 mins)

Dimensions: 149.6 x 71.5 x 7.95mm

Weight: 177g

Ultra-slim and light smartphone feels special, but cuts to camera and battery may be too hard to ignore for most

The iPhone Air is a technical and design marvel that asks: how much are you willing to give up for a lightweight and ultra-slender profile?

Beyond the obvious engineering effort that has gone into creating one of the slimmest phones ever made, the Air is a reductive exercise that boils down the iPhone into the absolute essentials in a premium body.

First new design in ages, upgraded camera, serious performance and longer battery life make it a standout year

The 17 Pro is Apple’s biggest redesign of the iPhone in years, chucking out the old titanium sides and all-glass backs for a new aluminium unibody design, a huge full-width camera lump on the back and some bolder colours.

That alone will make the iPhone 17 Pro popular for those looking to upgrade and be seen with the newest model. But with the change comes an increase in price to £1,099 (€1,299/$1,099/A$1,999), crossing the £1,000 barrier for the first time for Apple’s smallest Pro phone, which now comes with double the starting storage.

Cut-price watch offers most of what makes the Series 11 great, including an always-on screen, watchOS 26 and wrist-flick gesture

Apple’s entry level Watch SE has been updated with almost everything from its excellent mid-range Series 11 but costs about 40% less, making it the bargain of iPhone smartwatches.

The new Watch SE 3 costs from £219 (€269/$249/A$399), making it one of the cheapest brand-new fully fledged smartwatches available for the iPhone and undercutting the £369 Series 11 and the top-of-the-line £749 Apple Watch Ultra 3.

Camera-equipped sports shades have secure fit, open-ear speakers, mics and advanced Garmin and Strava integration

The Oakley Meta Vanguard are new displayless AI glasses designed for running, cycling and action sports with deep Garmin and Strava integration, which may make them the first smart glasses for sport that actually work.

They are a replacement for running glasses, open-ear headphones and a head-mounted action cam all in one, and are the latest product of Meta’s partnership with the sunglasses conglomerate EssilorLuxottica, the owner of Ray-Ban, Oakley and many other top brands.

Third-gen watch adds 5G, satellite SOS and messaging, a bigger screen and longer battery life in same rugged design

The biggest, baddest and boldest Apple Watch is back for its third generation, adding a bigger screen, longer battery life and satellite messaging for when lost in the wilderness.

The Ultra 3 is Apple’s answer to adventure watches such as Garmin’s Fenix 8 Pro while being a full smartwatch for the iPhone with all the trimmings. As such, it is not cheap, costing from £749 (€899/$799/A$1,399) – £50 less than 2023’s model – sitting above the £369-plus Series 11 and £219 Watch SE 3.

Top adventure watch upgraded with 4G calls, messages, live tracking, satellite texts and SOS for going off the grid

The latest update to Garmin’s class-leading Fenix adventure watch adds something that could save your life: phone-free communications and emergency messaging on 4G or via satellite.

The Fenix 8 Pro takes the already fantastic Fenix 8 and adds in the new cellular tech, plus the option of a cutting-edge microLED screen in a special edition of the watch. It is Garmin’s top model and designed to be the only tool you need to more-or-less go anywhere and track anything.

The team behind Baby Steps discuss why they made a whiny, unprepared manbaby the protagonist – and how players have grown to love Nate as he struggles up a mountain

“I don’t know why he is in a onesie and has a big ass,� shrugs game developer Gabe Cuzzillo. “Bennett just came in with that at some point.�

“I thought it would be cute,� replies Bennett Foddy, who was formerly Cuzzillo’s professor at New York University’s Game Center and is now his collaborator. “Working on character design and animation brings you over to liking big butts. I could give you an enormous amount of evidence for this.�

Showing the value of great design over visual impact, this faithfully resurrected home computer seamlessly integrates modern tech with some wonderful additional touches

The emotional hit was something I didn’t expect, although perhaps I should have. The Commodore 64 Ultimate, a new version of the legendary 8-bit computer, comes in a box designed to resemble the original packaging – a photo of the machine itself on a background of deep blue fading into a series of white stripes. Then when you open it, you find an uncannily accurate replica of what fans lovingly referred to as the breadbox – the chunky, sloped Commodore 64, in hues of brown and beige, the red LED in one corner above the row of fawn-coloured function keys. It’s like 1982 all over again.

My dad bought us a C64 in late 1983. It was our second computer after the ZX81 and it felt like an enormous leap into the future with its detailed colour graphics, advanced sound chip and proper grown-up keyboard. We unpacked it on our dinner table, plugging it into a small portable TV and loading the one game we had, a very basic Donkey Kong clone named Crazy Kong. My life would never be the same again. This contraption was my obsession for the next four years – my friendships and free-time would revolve around games such as Bruce Lee, Paradroid and Hyper Sports. To this day, I treasure the memories of playing golf sim Leaderboard with my dad. The sound effects, speech samples and graphics conjured by that computer have lived rent free in my head for, god, almost 40 years.

If you’ve ever refused to knock down a game’s difficulty level, or chased a purposefully pointless achievement, you might have this pernicious but pleasurable affliction

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Studies on gaming’s effect on the brain usually focus on aggression or the cognitive benefits of playing games. The former topic has fallen out of fashion now, after more than a decade’s worth of scientific research failed to prove any causative link between video games and real-world violence. But studies on the positive effects of games have shown that performing complex tasks with your brain and hands is actually quite good for you, and that games can be beneficial for your emotional wellbeing and stress management.

That’s all well and good, but I’m obsessed with the concept of “gamer brain� – that part of us that is drawn to objectively pointless achievements. Mastering a game or finishing a story are normal sources of motivation, but gamer brain is inexplicable. When you retry the same pointless mini-game over and over because you want to get a better high score? When you walk around the invisible boundaries of a level, clicking the mouse just in case something happens? When you stay with a game longer than you should because you feel compelled to unlock that trophy or achievement? When you refuse to knock the difficulty down a level on a particularly evil boss, because that would be letting the game win? That’s gamer brain.

When Hollow Knight: Silksong came out last summer I was in so much pain that I didn’t know if I’d be able to play it. Could a video game teach me anything new about suffering?

Last year I became uncomfortably well acquainted with suffering. In March I started experiencing excruciating pain in my right arm and shoulder – burning, zapping, energy-sapping pain that left me unable to think straight, emanating from a nexus of torment behind my shoulder blade and sometimes stretching all the way up to the base of my skull and all the way down into my fingers. Typing was agony, but everything was painful; even at rest it was horrible. I couldn’t play my guitar; I couldn’t play video games; I couldn’t sleep. I learned how quickly physical suffering lacerates your mental wellbeing.

I’d had episodes of nagging pain from so-called repetitive strain injuries before, the product of long hours hunched over laptops and game controllers over the course of decades, but nothing like this. A few months later, after the initial unrelenting agony had subsided to a permanent hum of more moderate pain, it was diagnosed as brachial neuritis, inflammation of the nerve path that travels from the base of your neck down to your hand. (Nobody knows what causes it, but it sometimes happens after an infection or an injury.) The good news, I was told by a neurologist, was that it usually gets better in about one to three years, and I hadn’t lost any function in my right hand. The bad news was that there was nothing much to be done about the pain in the meantime.

From the greatest cartoon racing game in history to a remastered version of an Alien-inspired sci-fi shooter, here are the Switch’s must-play games

• The 15 best games to play on the Nintendo Switch in 2025

Although the Nintendo Switch 2 has been out for several months, not everyone has made the leap to the new machine and there is still much to enjoy on the original console in 2026 (and beyond). From timeless Mario adventures to cutesy shooters to chasm-deep role-playing quests, here are 15 games no Switch owner should be without.