Trump pressures Apple into removing ICEBlock from the App Store
The app’s name may have made it sound like a game. In reality, it was far from one and served as a vital tool to help individuals evade ICE agents within their own cities. In the past year alone, countless acts of cruelty have been committed under the guise of...
Current in Technology
AI actress Tilly Norwood is causing a significant stir in Hollywood
Several talent agencies are genuinely interested in Tilly Norwood, an AI actress recently created and unveiled by the world’s first ‘AI talent studio’ Xicoia. The pushback from Hollywood has been significant. Hollywood and controversy go together like popcorn and butter, but this latest palaver is wholly unique – in that...
ChatGPT is increasingly substituting critical thought
OpenAI’s latest usage report on ChatGPT sheds light on how people are moving away from having the chatbot complete ‘doing’ tasks, but are leaning on it for advice, problem solving, and outsourcing judgement calls. Is this cause for concern? You know who doesn’t ever get brain fog? ChatGPT. Use of OpenAI’s...
Albania appoints world’s first AI-powered minister
The nation did the unthinkable and put an AI entity in charge of public procurement in an effort to combat the nation’s high levels of corruption. Artificial intelligence is everywhere. From aiding students in their studies to detecting diseases, our lives are becoming increasingly intertwined with AI. This also applies...
Rwanda launches Africa’s first self-flying electric air taxi
The East African country is now the first in the continent to have a public flight of a self-flying electric air taxi, adding to its fast-growing reputation as a hub for advanced aviation and technology innovation. In a demonstration of the pilotless aircraft, which followed an agreement with an implementer...
Google’s five-year antitrust lawsuit results in a slap on the wrist
Google has finally seen the end to a lawsuit filed way back in 2020 and a trial that began in 2023. The Department of Justice alleged that Google held a monopoly over the search and advertising market, but it’s gotten away with a slap on the wrist. After years of...
AI chatbots increasingly linked to child suicide cases
The past months have seen an increase in lawsuits against AI companies by parents who have lost their kids to chatbots. These bots have been found to enable conversations about suicide and self-harm. Despite its past stigmas and accessibility problems, mental health is still a pertinent topic in many domains, ranging from lifestyles to policymaking. Today, a new factor is complicating the normalisation of mental health and how it...
The jig is up for students submitting AI assignments
If you’re a student who’s recently submitted work containing traces of AI, you’re probably cooked. It all seemed a little too good to be true, because it was. If you were a student who graduated in 2024, you were in the absolute sweet spot for generative AI. The explosion of chatbot generators like ChatGPT and Gemini didn’t initially coincide with plug-ins to detect where the tech had been used, and for a...
Elon Musk takes on Microsoft with AI operating system ‘Macrohard’
Elon Musk is going after big tech pillars like Microsoft with ‘Macrohard’, an operating system that will use AI agents to run all operations with minimal human involvement. Despite the tongue-in-cheek name, ‘Macrohard’ is very much real. Between going up against Keir Starmer’s immigration policies on X, running both Tesla and Space X, and legally challenging OpenAI for making ChatGPT ubiquitous with iPhones, it seems Elon Musk still has enough...
Jeanpormanove’s live death ignites outrage at Kick
French streamer Raphaël Graven, better known as Jeanpormanove, died on stream this week following a 10-day marathon in which he was subjected to sleep deprivation and physical abuse. How did Kick fail to recognise the danger? The death of French streamer Jeanpormanove has had a profound impact online, and it must spark serious accountability. The 46-year-old streamer passed during a live Kick broadcast and laid undiscovered for over 50 minutes beside...
