‘Very dangerous’: a Mind mental health expert on Google’s AI Overviews

A year-long commission has been launched by Mind to examine AI and mental health after a Guardian investigation exposed how Google’s AI Overviews, which are shown to 2 billion people each month, gave people “very dangerous” mental health advice.Here, Rosie Weatherley, information content manager at the largest mental health charity in England and Wales, describes the risks posed to people by the AI-generated summaries, which appear above search results on the world’s most visited website.“Over three decades, Google designed and delivered a search engine where credible and accessible health content could rise to the top of the results.“Searching online for information wasn’t perfect, but it usually worked well. Users had a good chance of clicking through to a credible health website that answered their query

Martyn Webster obituary

My twin brother, Martyn Webster, who has died aged 86, was influential in the development of microsurgery both in the UK and internationally.In 1971 he joined the Canniesburn regional plastic surgery unit at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, one of the UK’s most respected centres for reconstructive surgery, with an international reputation as a centre of excellence, and in 1976 he became a consultant and senior lecturer there. His clinical experience covered a wide range of reconstructive procedures, especially microsurgery, head and neck surgery, hand surgery and breast reconstruction.He was a founding member of the early microsurgical societies – including the Microsurgery Travelling Club (1977) and the British Microsurgical Society (1981). He developed and directed training courses in microsurgery, and in 1986 published Free Tissue Transfer, one of the earliest books on the subject

Tech firms must remove ‘revenge porn’ in 48 hours or risk being blocked, says Starmer

Deepfake nudes and “revenge porn” must be removed from the internet within 48 hours or technology firms risk being blocked in the UK, Keir Starmer has said, calling it a “national emergency” that the government must confront.Companies could be fined millions or even blocked altogether if they allow the images to spread or be reposted after victims give notice.Amendments will be made to the crime and policing bill to also regulate AI chatbots such as X’s Grok, which generated nonconsensual images of women in bikinis or in compromising positions until the government threatened action against Elon Musk’s company.Writing for the Guardian, Starmer said: “The burden of tackling abuse must no longer fall on victims. It must fall on perpetrators and on the companies that enable harm

Ketamine addiction making teenagers wet the bed, says UK’s first specialist clinic

Children are using incontinence pads and urinating in buckets next to their bed at night due to bladder problems caused by ketamine addiction, according to the first specialist NHS clinic dealing with the issue.Medics at Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool have opened the first ketamine clinic for young people in the UK in response to a surge in urology problems linked to addiction of the drug.“Some of our patients start wetting the bed or find going to the bathroom at night is actually too hard, so they’ll either choose incontinence products or a bucket by the bed,” said Harriet Corbett, a consultant paediatric urologist at the clinic.“I hate to say it, but a lot of them get to the point where they’re not fussed about where they go, because the need to go overrides their desire to find somewhere private. And I suspect more of them are incontinent than are willing to tell us

Death tax? Property tax? Four ideas that could offset inheritance inequality in Australia

The $5.4tn intergenerational wealth transfer predicted to occur within the next two decades is a major challenge for Australian governments. Economists have warned it could entrench and exacerbate inequality, and make the economy less productive. So what can be done about it?“In the end, that comes down to tax,” says the former deputy reserve bank governor Guy Debelle. “Taxation is how you redistribute

The disturbing rise of Clavicular: how a looksmaxxer turned his ‘horror story’ into fame

His gonzo argot of ‘mogging’ and ‘jestermaxxing’ masks a malign chauvinist philosophy, and his audience keeps growingHow’s your “jestermaxxing” game? Have you been “brutally frame-mogged” lately? If you’ve been finding this kind of online discourse even more impenetrable than usual, a 20-year-old content creator calling himself Clavicular is probably to blame.Born Braden Peters, Clavicular is a manosphere-adjacent influencer who has recently broken containment for a string of high-profile controversies, including livestreaming himself apparently running over a pedestrian with his Tesla Cybertruck and being filmed chanting the lyrics to Kanye West’s Heil Hitler in a nightclub with the self-styled “misogynist influencer” Andrew Tate and the white nationalist commentator Nick Fuentes.Before taking up with what some feel are among the worst men alive, Clavicular was known only as a “looksmaxxer”, a young man intent on optimising his physical attractiveness by frequently extreme measures (such as steroids, surgery and, er, taking a hammer to his jaw).Yet Clavicular’s gonzo live streams and absurd lingo have seen him escape his subcultural silo, landing him a modelling gig at New York fashion week and a profile in the New York Times.So where has he come from? And what does his rise mean for humanity?Peters came to prominence last year on the streaming platform Kick (like Twitch, but more laissez-faire with content moderation), where he now has nearly 180,000 followers