Joe Rigby obituary
My father, Joe Rigby, who has died aged 87, was a working-class Catholic boy from Birmingham,He left school at 15, but rose to be a television executive at Granada Television in Manchester,For 20 years from 1973, he was Granada’s head of programme planning, where he hired, inspired and nurtured the team of scriptwriters who wrote the on-air promotions for programmes,Many of them, including Andy Harries, David Liddiment and Dearbhla Walsh, went on to great success as television producers and directors,Joe was born in Erdington, north of the city centre, to Theresa (nee Byrne) and Charles Rigby, who worked in the family engineering company and as a barman.
He had two sisters and two brothers, one of whom, Terence, became a successful actor.The family were evacuated to Upton-upon-Severn in Worcestershire during the second world war.Back in Birmingham Joe’s early life revolved around worship at Erdington Abbey, lessons at the adjoining school and helping to run the youth club.His interest in the media was fired by his national service in the army, spent with Forces Radio in Cologne, Germany.That led to a job at Tyne-Tees TV in Newcastle as a transmission controller.
Joe joined Granada in 1964, initially as a transmission controller, moving on to head of presentation, then head of programme planning.One of his early hires was a young man called Jim Grant, now better known as the bestselling author Lee Child, who says Joe was known as the “Fifth Beatle” because of his trendy haircut.In those days, ITV was organised on a regional franchise basis, and Joe loved playing his part in Granada’s role as a defiantly northern company, challenging the “big boys” of Thames and London Weekend TV.His main job as head of planning was to lobby for Granada’s programmes to be given greater prominence on the ITV schedule.He was also an ambassador for the company abroad, meeting the rich and famous at the TV festivals in Cannes and Monte Carlo.
He left Granada in 1994 when the company changed direction.Like many others he was saddened by what he saw as a prioritisation of profits before programming.After retiring, Joe lived in Spain for 10 years before coming home to the UK, first to Somerset and finally to Dorchester, in Dorset, where the richness of his voice graced the choir of Holy Trinity RC church.Joe is survived by his wife, Josie (nee Carrick), whom he married in 1965, his three children, Alison, Kate and me, four grandchildren, and by his brother, Patrick, and sister Catherine.Terence and another sister, Caroline, predeceased him.
AI firm claims it stopped Chinese state-sponsored cyber-attack campaign
A leading artificial intelligence company claims to have stopped a China-backed “cyber espionage” campaign that was able to infiltrate financial firms and government agencies with almost no human oversight.The US-based Anthropic said its coding tool, Claude Code, was “manipulated” by a Chinese state-sponsored group to attack 30 entities around the world in September, achieving a “handful of successful intrusions”.This was a “significant escalation” from previous AI-enabled attacks it monitored, it wrote in a blogpost on Thursday, because Claude acted largely independently: 80 to 90% of the operations involved in the attack were performed without a human in the loop.“The actor achieved what we believe is the first documented case of a cyber-attack largely executed without human intervention at scale,” it wrote.Anthropic did not clarify which financial institutions and government agencies had been targeted, or what exactly the hackers had achieved – although it did say they were able to access their targets’ internal data
People in the UK: have you received good or bad financial advice from an AI chatbot?
Tech companies are pumping billions into the growth of artificial intelligence, with OpenAI this month signing a $38bn (£29bn) cloud computing deal with Amazon as part of a $3tn datacentre spending spree.But as people increasingly use AI chatbots – such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot, Meta AI and Perplexity – for advice and task completion, some observers have concerns about misinformation, hullicinations and irresponsible advice.A survey this year from KPMG and the University of Melbourne found that 80 percent of people in the UK believe AI regulation is required.We want to hear from people who have asked chatbots for financial advice. Have you asked AI tools for help with money, debt or personal finance? Were you recommended anything unexpected, or unsuitable? What was the financial result? Do you have concerns?You can tell us about askng AI tools for financial advice herePlease include as much detail as possible
AI slop tops Billboard and Spotify charts as synthetic music spreads
Three songs generated by artificial intelligence topped music charts this week, reaching the highest spots on Spotify and Billboard charts.Walk My Walk and Livin’ on Borrowed Time by the outfit Breaking Rust topped Spotify’s “Viral 50” songs in the US, which documents the “most viral tracks right now” on a daily basis, according to the streaming service. A Dutch song, We Say No, No, No to an Asylum Center, an anti-migrant anthem by JW “Broken Veteran” that protests against the creation of new asylum centers, took the top position in Spotify’s global version of the viral chart around the same time. Breaking Rust also appeared in the top five on the global chart.“You can kick rocks if you don’t like how I talk,” reads a lyric from Walk My Walk, a seeming double entendre challenging those opposed to AI-generated music
UK firms can win a significant chunk of the AI chip market | John Browne
The UK is in a uniquely promising position, far too little understood, to play a lucrative role in the coming era of artificial intelligence – but only if it also grabs the opportunity to start making millions of computer chips.AI requires vast numbers of chips and we could supply up to 5% of world demand if we get our national act together.Our legacy in chip design is world-class, starting with the first general-purpose electronic computer, the first electronic memory and the first parallel computer. Today we have Cambridge-based Arm, a quiet titan designing more than 90% of the chips powering phones and tablets globally.With such a pedigree, it is not idle daydreaming for British companies to win a significant chunk of the AI chip market; 5% is a conservative, achievable ambition
EU investigates Google over ‘demotion’ of commercial content from news media
The EU has opened an investigation into Google Search over concerns the US tech company has been “demoting” commercial content from news media sites.The bloc’s executive arm announced the move after monitoring found that certain content created with advertisers and sponsors was being given such a low priority by Google that it was in effect no longer visible in search results.European Commission officials said this potentially unfair “loss of visibility and of revenue” to media owners could be a result of an anti-spam policy Google operates.Under the rules of the Digital Market Act (DMA), which governs competition in the tech sectors, Google must apply “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory conditions of access to publishers’ websites on Google Search”.Commission officials said the investigation was not into the overall indexing of newspapers or their reporting on Google Search, just into commercial content provided by third parties
Anthropic announces $50bn plan for datacenter construction in US
Artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced a $50bn investment in computing infrastructure on Wednesday that will include new datacenters in Texas and New York.“We’re getting closer to AI that can accelerate scientific discovery and help solve complex problems in ways that weren’t possible before,” Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, said in a press release.Building the massive information warehouses takes an average of two years in the US and requires copious amounts of energy to fuel the facilities. The company, maker of the AI chatbot Claude, popular with businesses adopting AI, said in a statement that the “scale of this investment is necessary to meet the growing demand for Claude from hundreds of thousands of businesses while keeping our research at the frontier”. Anthropic said its projects will create about 800 permanent jobs and 2,400 construction jobs
Call for inquiry after families stripped of child benefit due to flawed travel data
‘I was scared’: parents reveal stress of HMRC’s child benefit errors
‘It was the last time Mum smiled at me’: the choirs singing to the dying in three-part harmony
‘There is a gap where Alex should be’: the young woman who lost her life in a neglectful prison system
AI, Covid and taxes: what is behind steep rise in youth unemployment?
‘It’s so demoralising’: UK graduates exasperated by high unemployment