Tech investor led £800m funding round into UK self-driving car software company Wayve

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The Japanese tech investor SoftBank made a profit for the second consecutive quarter as it tries to turn its performance around before big planned investments in artificial intelligence.

SoftBank reported net income of 231bn yen (£1.18bn) in the first three months of 2024, compared with a 57.6bn yen loss in the same period last year, according to financial results published on Monday.

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Firm has data from ‘when criminals try to attack’ and its Eagle-i technology suggests what action is needed

BT has said it is increasingly using artificial intelligence to help it detect and neutralise threats from hackers targeting business customers amid repeated attacks on companies.

The £10.5bn group is aiming to build up its business protecting customers from online criminals and has patented technology that uses AI to analyse attack data to allow companies to protect their tech infrastructure.

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Almost all children have them by the time they are 11 years old – and some get them at four. But are they ruining childhoods? Blake Montgomery reports

Conversations around if and when children should be given mobile phones have being going on for years. But recently the question has been catapulted to the forefront of national debate.

From campaigning parents to bestselling books, a movement has emerged that believes smartphones are ruining childhoods and that young people should be banned from having them. It’s not hard to come up with reasons why: they are addictive, keep children glued to screens instead of playing, can be used for online bullying and are one reason why so many children have seen pornography.

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Researcher cautions against ‘one-size-fits-all solutions’ amid growing debate over impact, particularly on young people

Spending time online is often portrayed as something to avoid, but research suggests internet use is associated with greater wellbeing in people around the world.

The potential impact on wellbeing of the internet, and social media in particular, has become a matter of intense debate. “Our analysis is the first to test whether or not internet access, mobile internet access and regular use of the internet relates to wellbeing on a global level,” said Prof Andrew Przybylski, of the University of Oxford, who co-authored the work.

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Demonstrators opposed to expansion of factory near Berlin claim it would damage environment

Hundreds of protesters opposed to the expansion of a Tesla plant in Grünheide, near Berlin, clashed with police on Friday as some of them attempted to storm the electric vehicle manufacturing facility.

About 800 people took part in the protest, according to the organizing group Disrupt Tesla, which claims the expansion would damage the environment. Tesla has attracted intense backlash since the company opened the factory in March 2022, and later announced plans to expand into a nearby forest to increase its production capability.

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Exclusive: Defence ministry was told in recent days that staff details accessed but sources say SSCL knew in February

The IT company targeted in a Chinese hack that accessed the data of hundreds of thousands of Ministry of Defence staff failed to report the breach for months, the Guardian can reveal.

The UK defence secretary, Grant Shapps, told MPs on Tuesday that Shared Services Connected Ltd (SSCL) had been breached by a malign actor and “state involvement” could not be ruled out.

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The perverse principles of the 1970s that powered the tech titans have left us with a world where the richest 1% own nearly two-thirds of its wealth

In the early 1980s hand-written chalk signs started appearing on the sidewalks of my grungy Manhattan neighbourhood: Whoever has the most toys when he dies, wins . At that time New York City was still recovering from near bankruptcy and those who could were leaving in record numbers. Crime and homelessness were rife, crack cocaine was offered on every corner.

The sidewalk message was clear: consumerism is a con, resist it, stuff won’t matter when you’re dead.

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Fraudsters impersonated WPP’s CEO using a fake Whatsapp account, a voice clone and YouTube footage used in a virtual meet

The head of the world’s biggest advertising group was the target of an elaborate deepfake scam that involved an artificial intelligence voice clone. The CEO of WPP, Mark Read, detailed the attempted fraud in a recent email to leadership, warning others at the company to look out for calls claiming to be from top executives.

Fraudsters created a WhatsApp account with a publicly available image of Read and used it to set up a Microsoft Teams meeting that appeared to be with him and another senior WPP executive, according to the email obtained by the Guardian. During the meeting, the imposters deployed a voice clone of the executive as well as YouTube footage of them. The scammers impersonated Read off-camera using the meeting’s chat window. The scam, which was unsuccessful, targeted an “agency leader”, asking them to set up a new business in an attempt to solicit money and personal details.

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Harvard researchers teamed up with Google to analyse the makeup of the brain, much of which is not yet understood

Scientists have reconstructed a wiring diagram for a piece of human brain in unprecedented detail, revealing fresh quirks and complexities in what many regard as the most sophisticated object in the known universe.

Harvard researchers teamed up with experts in machine learning at Google to map out the neural circuitry, connections, supporting cells and blood supply in a speck of healthy tissue removed from the cortex of a 45-year-old woman who had had surgery for epilepsy.

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