Big tech stocks falter as investors question whether billions being poured into AI can generate returns quickly enough

A sell-off of tech stocks that began earlier this month and gained steam with disappointing earnings from leading tech companies drove US markets down by hundreds of billions of dollars Friday. In total, the decline has knocked nearly $1tn in value off the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange in one week and erased about $2tn in a month.

The S&P 500, the index of the 500 most valuable companies in the US, fell by more than 1% Friday, losing hundreds of billions of dollars in market value. It was on track to erase its gain for October, even though it set its all-time high during the same month. The weakness for technology stocks dragged the Nasdaq composite down even further, more than 3%, also erasing hundreds of billions in value. The Down Jones Industrial Average fell less.

Big tech stocks falter as investors question whether billions being poured into AI can generate returns quickly enough

A sell-off of tech stocks that began earlier this month and gained steam with disappointing earnings from leading tech companies drove US markets down by hundreds of billions of dollars Friday. In total, the decline has knocked nearly $1tn in value off the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange in one week and erased about $2tn in a month.

The S&P 500, the index of the 500 most valuable companies in the US, fell by more than 1% Friday, losing hundreds of billions of dollars in market value. It was on track to erase its gain for October, even though it set its all-time high during the same month. The weakness for technology stocks dragged the Nasdaq composite down even further, more than 3%, also erasing hundreds of billions in value. The Down Jones Industrial Average fell less.

Cryptocurrency theft is estimated to generate half of the country’s foreign currency income

North Korea plays by its own rules. The isolated, secretive and autocratic country is largely cut off from the world’s economic system – but when it comes to generating foreign earnings it relies on some of the world’s most sophisticated hacking.

Experts, such as TRM Labs, quickly attributed the extraordinary $6.3bn (£4.7bn) Binance cryptocurrency theft to TraderTraitor, an elite North Korean hacking unit that has also been known as the Lazarus Group. Though the link may not be proven yet, the pattern of behaviour is familiar.

Ghost hunting has changed in recent years due to AI chatbots, and paranormal enthusiasts are concerned

Ghost hunting is a tech-heavy pursuit. When Amy Waine and Jarrad Cutting investigate haunted locations, they’re loaded up with software of their own design, such as an app that assigns signals from a phone’s sensors to different words in a database. In the age of ChatGPT, the ghost-hunting pair is probing the world of AI. They describe one of their latest inventions, an app called GhostTube Seer, as “the world’s first AI Ghost Hunting tool”.

In the hands of paranormal investigators, scientific tools like EMF meters (used to detect electromagnetic fields) are repurposed to identify changes and anomalies that they believe indicate supernatural activity. Seer is, in many ways, simply an expansion of that practice, another way to scan an empty room and believe that something may be there. The app, which requires a paid monthly subscription, has more than 1m downloads, according to its Google Play store listing.

But for others in the ghost hunting world, AI is an unwelcome presence. Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, AI-generated ghost stories and images of the supernatural have flooded online spaces, so much so that popular forums like the r/Nosleep subreddit, meant for scary stories, have implemented a strict policy against AI-generated material.

Scraping copyrighted material from internet could ‘potentially’ amount to acquisition of property by government, Anne Twomey says

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Altering copyright law to allow AI companies to scrape music, books and journalism could trigger a constitutional breach, Coalition senators and the recording industry have warned, as they raise new fears it could open Australia to massive legal action and compensation claims from rights holders worldwide.

The attorney general’s department admitted it was “extremely alive” to the issue, and Australia’s leading constitutional expert, Anne Twomey, agreed there was “potentially” a concern – depending how legislation was drafted – that granting AI companies permission to scrape copyrighted material from the internet could amount to an acquisition of property by the government.

As thousands of datacentres are constructed across Europe, the Guardian and Investigate Europe have uncovered disturbing evidence that some workers building them are exposed to dangerous conditions and living in fear of speaking out

Sandu* checked his watch. He was winding down the last 15 minutes of his shift at a vast Google datacentre site in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, in March, when the call came in. The 34-year-old electrical tester had already worked almost 10 hours, but says such last-minute jobs were normal: “I had no choice. People have been fired after saying no.”

The task was one Sandu had done many times before and involved a series of tests measuring the safety and integrity of the electrical wiring. A protective suit was locked away in an equipment room. The round trip would have added another 15 minutes to the job, he says, and people were waiting, so he decided not to retrieve the suit.

As thousands of datacentres are constructed across Europe, the Guardian and Investigate Europe have uncovered disturbing evidence that some workers building them are exposed to dangerous conditions and living in fear of speaking out

Sandu* checked his watch. He was winding down the last 15 minutes of his shift at a vast Google datacentre site in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, in March, when the call came in. The 34-year-old electrical tester had already worked almost 10 hours, but says such last-minute jobs were normal: “I had no choice. People have been fired after saying no.”

The task was one Sandu had done many times before and involved a series of tests measuring the safety and integrity of the electrical wiring. A protective suit was locked away in an equipment room. The round trip would have added another 15 minutes to the job, he says, and people were waiting, so he decided not to retrieve the suit.

Binance exchange says it will cover customer losses as it scrambles to freeze affected assets, with about $3bn located so far

• Q&A: How big a deal is the $6.3bn crypto heist?

• Tell us: have you been affected by the Binance hack?

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The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange has been hit by a record $6.3bn (£4.7bn) hack described as the biggest heist in history, with experts identifying North Korea as the likely culprit.

Binance said it would cover all customer losses as it froze $3bn of the affected assets.

Binance exchange says it will cover customer losses as it scrambles to freeze affected assets, with about $3bn located so far

• Q&A: How big a deal is the $6.3bn crypto heist?

• Tell us: have you been affected by the Binance hack?

• Business live – latest updates

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange has been hit by a record $6.3bn (£4.7bn) hack described as the biggest heist in history, with experts identifying North Korea as the likely culprit.

Binance said it would cover all customer losses as it froze $3bn of the affected assets.

Report calls for an effort to tackle harms in similar way to obesity and smoking, and stresses need to ‘offer boys something better’

The manosphere and online misogyny should be treated by the government as a public health issue, in the same way as obesity or smoking, experts have said.

Writing in the Lancet, the authors of a new report argue that a coordinated response is needed, involving governments, schools, health services and community organisations, similar to the public-health response to tobacco use and ultra-processed food.

Report calls for an effort to tackle harms in similar way to obesity and smoking, and stresses need to ‘offer boys something better’

The manosphere and online misogyny should be treated by the government as a public health issue, in the same way as obesity or smoking, experts have said.

Writing in the Lancet, the authors of a new report argue that a coordinated response is needed, involving governments, schools, health services and community organisations, similar to the public-health response to tobacco use and ultra-processed food.

Security incident linked to performance-monitoring tool spurred platform to halt trading for about an hour

Polymarket temporarily halted trading on its international platform on Thursday because of a security incident that compromised a third-party provider, the company said.

Trading was paused for about an hour and resumed on Thursday afternoon. The company has promised to fully reimburse any affected traders.

Research finds 55% of lawyers are using AI in legal practices, up from 37% last year, though efficiency gains aren’t as high as expected

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More than half of Victoria’s lawyers have reported using AI in their work, according to a new study, but just over a quarter say they have reduced fees as a result of efficiency gains.

They also say clients seeking advice from chatbots have added to their workload, forcing them to correct errors made by AI.

E-commerce company posts high cloud computing sales but gives a cautious sales forecast for the fourth quarter

Amazon offered a mixed picture of its financial health on Thursday in its quarterly earnings report.

The e-commerce company gave a cautious sales forecast for the current fourth quarter, which encompasses the critical holiday shopping period, after delivering fiscal third-quarter results that came in below Wall Street analysts’ expectations.