Small business owners have watched large companies fumble – and sometimes succeed – with AI, and then use what works

One thing I’ve learned about corporate America is that what it succeeds at ultimately trickles down to benefit small businesses. Bleeding-edge technologies such as the internet, mobile transactions and the cloud were first perfected by large organizations – government and corporations – and now they’re available to the masses at a much lower cost and with better reliability.

The good news is that it’s also the same for what they fail at.

The movement against datacenters is uniting Americans because they perfectly illustrate how a few individuals hold all the power to control decisions that affect our lives

Bryce Gustafson has been knocking on doors in Indiana for more than a decade. The lead organizer with Citizens Action Coalition (CAC), a consumer and environmental organization, he usually encounters a mix of reactions when he’s out canvassing; whatever issue he’s talking about, there’s always at least a few people on the other side. But at a recent festival in the rural town of Monrovia, Indiana, he was struck by an unusual spirit of unity.

He was there about a proposed datacenter, a 550-acre (222-hectare) Google project in this small town of 1,600 people. “I had 50 people I talked to,” Gustafson told me. “Nobody wanted that datacenter in their community. And at least a half a dozen people came up to me to say, ‘Hey, I voted for Trump. What the heck’s he doing, supporting these things?’”

Exclusive: Research says sector is fixated with young talent, with most women experiencing unconscious bias or sexism

Women working in the arts believe they do not have equal opportunities for roles, especially as they get older, according to a report saying that the industry is fixated with “young and emerging” talent.

Nearly all (95%) women working in the arts thought gender inequality persisted, while three-quarters (75%) reported experiencing unconscious bias or sexism, according to a survey of 76 arts professionals. More than two-thirds (69%) felt that age negatively affected their career success – a figure that rose to 100% among those working in artistic rather than managerial roles.

Exclusive: Research says sector is fixated with young talent, with most women experiencing unconscious bias or sexism

Women working in the arts believe they do not have equal opportunities for roles, especially as they get older, according to a report saying that the industry is fixated with “young and emerging” talent.

Nearly all (95%) women working in the arts thought gender inequality persisted, while three-quarters (75%) reported experiencing unconscious bias or sexism, according to a survey of 76 arts professionals. More than two-thirds (69%) felt that age negatively affected their career success – a figure that rose to 100% among those working in artistic rather than managerial roles.

Exclusive: Number of times AI lies, ignores instructions and pursues goals in harmful ways almost doubles in July

Incidents of AIs escaping users’ control to lie, ignore instructions and pursue goals in harmful ways have hit a new high, according to research that also suggests the severity of deception and misalignment is worsening.

Analysis of real-world loss of control incidents involving AI models flagged by businesses and individuals almost doubled in July compared with June, with more than 300 cases in the month, according to the Loss of Control Observatory, which monitors reports made by AI users on the social media platform X.

Planning delays and slow 5G upgrades could leave the UK unable to cope with a surge in AI-related traffic

The UK risks becoming a laggard in the global AI race as crucial telecoms upgrades to harness the technology fall behind rival nations, according to senior industry executives.

The infrastructure AI race has centred on the need to build datacentres, and to ensure they have access to the huge water and energy supplies required to cool and supply the computational power to train and run AI models.

In this week’s newsletter: Anti-datacentre sentiment is growing across the political spectrum in the US – and the public is only just finding out about the potential effects on their energy bills

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Anti-datacentre sentiment is growing from across the political spectrum in the US.

More than a dozen states have considered moratoria on datacentres. New York became the first US state to enact a temporary ban last month. Progressive stalwarts Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have proposed a national moratorium. And even Greg Abbott, the far-right governor of Texas, called for a ban on datacentre development in rural swaths of his state.

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Iraq’s ghost villages: Islamic State drove people away – now a new enemy is preventing their return

Destroyed crops, riverbed cyclists and a ‘Rock of Starvation’: how drought has devastated the Danube

As people grow used to AI chatbots, we’d like to hear your views about Google’s search engine

Google has put artificial intelligence at the front and center of its search bar. The most-visited site on the internet still shows the same list of links to users, but they have to scroll past a summarized response from an AI chatbot, a feature Google calls AI Overviews. The change to what was once the gateway to the rest of the internet has been profound, and the browsing habits of billions of people are shifting.

“AI is driving the most significant upgrade of the Google Search experience ever,” Liz Reid, Google’s vice-president of search, wrote last August. In May, the company said more AI is coming.