Tightening Pip benefit eligibility could save £9bn a year, says Reform
Reform UK has set out plans for changes to personal independence payments (Pip) that the party says could save up to £9bn a year, with Lee Anderson, one of its MPs, saying he used to “game the system” to help people become eligible for the benefit.In Reform’s third consecutive Westminster press conference of the week, Anderson and the head of policy, Zia Yusuf, said the party would bar people with less serious psychological conditions such as anxiety from claiming Pip and would ensure anyone getting the payments would first receive a face-to-face assessment.“We are betraying our young people,” said Yusuf, who was formerly the party chair.“Reassessments are basically not happening any more.These young people are being labelled.
They’re being basically tossed on to a scrap heap for the rest of their lives.There’s nothing about that that we are remotely willing to accept.”Anderson said that the system for applying for Pip was often manipulated, citing what he said were online videos tutoring people on how to fill in eligibility questionnaires.He said this was a particular issue when people were assessed remotely.“If you do this remotely, it’s kind of like doing a driving theory test and having the answers online for you,” he said.
“This is not to say, of course, that everybody is gaming the system,That’s obviously not what’s happening,”But Anderson, who worked at Citizens Advice for a period before entering politics, said that in this role he had tutored benefit claimants on how they could ensure they would be declared eligible for payments,“We were the first point of contact for people who wanted to claim Pip at the time and we used to fill the forms out for clients before that application form went in,And I can tell you now, we were gaming the system,” the Ashfield MP said.
“I know people who work with the CAB [Citizens Advice Bureau], they’ve got a 100% hit rate on benefit forms.I can take the fittest man in Ashfield, and we can get 100% claim on DLA [disability living allowance] – that’s our skill.”While Anderson and Yusuf repeatedly stressed that many people did genuinely need such benefits, Anderson also condemned what he called “a generation of young people that have forgotten about getting up in the morning and going to work”.He also mocked some of the symptoms for anxiety and depression, such as persistent sadness, saying: “I’ve had persistent sadness since July last year, this awful Labour government.”Asked whether the cited savings included the cost of reinstating full face-to-face appointments and of helping people back into work, Yusuf said this would be about £100m annually, saying that in the context of the possible savings, this was minimal.
The government and the Conservatives have promised to cut the total amount spent on Pip and other benefits.Government plans to do this have been held up by a major rebellion on initial plans to tighten up eligibility for Pip.
Alan Turing institute launches new mission to protect UK from cyber-attacks
Britain’s leading AI institute has announced a new mission to help protect the nation from cyber-attacks on infrastructure, including energy, transport and utilities, after it was embroiled in allegations of toxic work culture and the chief executive resigned amid ministerial pressure.The Alan Turing Institute will “carry out a programme of science and innovation designed to protect the UK from hostile threats”, it announced on Tuesday as part of changes following the resignation last month of Jean Innes, its chief executive, after a staff revolt and government calls for a strategic overhaul of the state-funded body.The mission comes amid growing concern over Britain’s vulnerability to internet outages and cyber-attacks after this month’s incident affecting Amazon’s cloud computing globally and recent cyber-attacks crippling production at Jaguar Land Rover factories, and supply chains at Marks & Spencer and the Co-op.Blythe Crawford, the former commander of the UK’s air and space warfare centre , will report back next month on how the government-funded institute “can best support the scale of government AI ambitions in defence, national security and intelligence”.The chair, former Amazon UK boss Doug Gurr, said 78 different research projects at the 440-staff institute have been closed, spun out or completed because they do not align with the new direction
Tech chiefs tell Trump to call off troops – will Firefox go ‘full AI’?
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, confounded by the ending of Bugonia and looking forward to seeing Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.In this week’s newsletter: the head of Firefox talks AI-integrated browsers; the tech billionaires’ support of Trump and their successful request to defer national guard deployment to San Francisco; and the growing prevalence of face-scanning in online dating. Thank you for reading.Do you need an assistant for your online activities?Multiple major players in artificial intelligence are moving on from chatbots like ChatGPT and are now focusing their efforts on new browsers with deep AI integrations
Amazon confirms plans to lay off 14,000 corporate workers as part of wave of cuts
Amazon has confirmed plans to lay off 14,000 corporate workers, as part of a wave of cuts expected to hit tens of thousands of jobs.The Seattle-based retail giant, which is vying to reverse a pandemic hiring spree, is attempting to cut costs and slim down its huge operation. This summer, its CEO warned white-collar employees their jobs could be taken by artificial intelligence.Beth Galetti, a senior vice-president at Amazon, wrote in a memo to employees on Tuesday: “The reductions we’re sharing today are a continuation of … work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs.”On Monday, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon was poised to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, as it tries to undo the vast recruitment drive it embarked on at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, which unleashed an extraordinary – but fleeting – surge in demand for online shopping
Elon Musk launches encyclopedia ‘fact-checked’ by AI and aligning with rightwing views
Elon Musk has launched an online encyclopedia named Grokipedia that he said relied on artificial intelligence and would align more with his rightwing views than Wikipedia, though many of its articles say they are based on Wikipedia itself.Calling an AI encyclopedia “super important for civilization”, Musk had been planning the Wikipedia rival for at least a month. Grokipedia does not have human authors, unlike Wikipedia, which is written and edited by volunteers in a transparent process. Grokipedia said it is “fact-checked” by Grok, Musk’s AI chatbot.Musk said the idea was suggested by the Trump administration’s AI and cryptocurrency czar, David Sacks
‘A good moment in time for us’: Firefox head on AI browsers and what’s next for the web
Do you need an assistant for your online activities?Multiple major players in artificial intelligence are moving on from chatbots like ChatGPT and are now focusing their efforts on new browsers with deep AI integrations. Those could take the form of an agent that shops for you or an omnipresent chatbot that follows you around and summarizes what you’re seeing, looks up related stuff, or answers related questions.Last week alone, OpenAI released the ChatGPT Atlas browser, and Microsoft showed off Edge’s new Copilot Mode, both of which heavily feature chatbots. At the start of October, Perplexity made its Comet browser free. In mid-September, Google rolled out Chrome With Gemini, integrating its AI assistant with the most popular browser in the world
More than a million people every week show suicidal intent when chatting with ChatGPT, OpenAI estimates
More than a million ChatGPT users each week send messages that include “explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent”, according to a blogpost published by OpenAI on Monday. The finding, part of an update on how the chatbot handles sensitive conversations, is one of the most direct statements from the artificial intelligence giant on the scale of how AI can exacerbate mental health issues.In addition to its estimates on suicidal ideations and related interactions, OpenAI also said that about 0.07% of users active in a given week – about 560,000 of its touted 800m weekly users – show “possible signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania”. The post cautioned that these conversations were difficult to detect or measure, and that this was an initial analysis
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