English-speaking countries more nervous about rise of AI, polls suggest
People in English-speaking countries including the UK, US, Australia and Canada are more nervous about the rise of artificial intelligence than those in the largest EU economies, where excitement over its spread is higher, new research suggests,A global split over what has been dubbed “the wonder and worry” of AI appears to correlate with widely divergent levels of trust in governments to regulate the fast-developing technology,The polling of 23,000 adults in 30 countries, shared exclusively with the Guardian by Ipsos Mori, also showed a quarter of people globally still do not have a good understanding of what AI is, despite it being widely described as the most transformative technology in decades,On Wednesday, Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus revealed he was writing a musical with the assistance of AI, describing it as “like having another songwriter in the room with a huge reference frame”,Britons appear to be among the world’s most worried people about the rise of AI, with two-thirds of people in Great Britain saying they are nervous about the technology being deployed in products and services, and less than half trusting the UK government to regulate AI responsibly.
By contrast half or less than half of people in France, Germany and Italy said products and services using AI made them nervous.“In the Anglosphere (US, Great Britain, Canada and Ireland and Australia) there is much more nervousness than excitement,” said Matt Carmichael, a senior vice-president at Ipsos Mori.“In European markets we see less nervousness, but also just a mid-range of excitement.Some markets are much more positive than nervous, especially in south-east Asia.”Only Americans, Japanese people and Hungarians trust their governments less to regulate AI than Britons.
The UK government recently delayed a bill intended to regulate AI companies in order to align itself with the stance of Donald Trump’s administration in the US.Trust in government regulation is lowest in the US, where the president’s election campaign was bankrolled by Silicon Valley technology oligarchs including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and he recently proposed a bill preventing new state-led regulations of AI.By contrast last June, the European Union passed the bloc-wide EU AI Act, which bans AI that poses an “unacceptable risk”, for example, systems used for social scoring, and requires systems to declare when AI has been used to manipulate or generate content.People in India, where the use of misleading AI-generated deepfake videos marked last year’s general election campaign, are also among the most nervous about AI being used in products and services.The polling also revealed widespread opposition to AI’s use in creating news articles, films and adverts but an equal acceptance that AI will become the primary producer of these things anyway.
The highest levels of excitement about AI were found in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand where levels of trust in government regulation were also highest.Polling in those countries was only representative of the more “connected” urban and educated populations but it showed almost double the levels of excitement as in the whole populations of the US and Great Britain.People in Great Britain were among the most pessimistic about how AI will worsen the job market, with nearly a third fearing AI will replace them entirely at work.Globally, just 31% of people think the job market in their country will improve because of AI and 35% think it will get worse.But perception of its impact varied widely.
Nearly three-quarters of people in Thailand believe it is very or somewhat likely that AI will replace their current job in the next five years, compared with only 14% who believe their job will go in Sweden and one in four in the US, Great Britain and Australia.Across all 30 countries, the polling showed very few people want AI created-online news articles, films or adverts, but most people think it is likely AI will become the primary producer of all of these things as well as making television programmes, screening job adverts and even creating realistic sports content such as tennis matches between AI-generated players.Carmichael said this could play out either with increasing public acceptance as AI-generated content becomes more widespread or alternatively a “backlash”.Some of that resistance is currently being seen with the campaign by musicians in the UK, including Kate Bush and Elton John, for greater protections against copyright infringement by technology companies building large language models (LLMs).There have also been lawsuits in the US where novelists from John Grisham to Ta-Nehisi Coates have been suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement.
‘Stress crisis’ in UK as 5m struggle with financial, health and housing insecurity
More than 5 million UK adults are experiencing a triple whammy of financial, health and housing insecurity as British households hit levels of “multi-stress” not seen since the global economic crash well over a decade ago, research shows.One in 10 working-age adults are juggling low income and debt, insecure tenancies and high rents, and problems accessing NHS care. They are at least twice as likely as the rest of the population to report mental stress, sleeplessness and isolation.Researchers said the explosion in multiple insecurity amounted to a “national stress crisis”, with those affected experiencing heightened volatility and uncertainty in their lives and profound feelings of powerlessness and lack of control.The analysis highlights the rise in the number of people experiencing a combination of three separate categories of insecurity to map the extent to which people have the capacity to enjoy a good quality of life, materially and psychologically
Less than 4% of exploited care workers helped by UK government scheme
Less than 4% of exploited care workers have reported finding new work in a multimillion-pound government scheme designed to rematch them with new employers.Analysis by the Work Rights Centre found just 3.4% of the 28,000 exploited migrant care workers signposted to a service to find them new jobs had reported being rematched with a new employer, while 131,000 social care vacancies remain unfilled.Dr Dora-Olivia Vicol, chief executive of the charity, said: “After Covid, England desperately needed more care workers, and thousands of people from around the world answered that call in good faith.“But instead of jobs they got scams, and instead of justice they got a referral to a programme that simply doesn’t work as intended
Weight loss drugs linked to higher risk of eye damage in diabetic patients
Weight loss drugs could at least double the risk of diabetic patients developing age-related macular degeneration, a large-scale study has found.Originally developed for diabetes patients, glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1 RA) medicines have transformed how obesity is treated and there is growing evidence of wider health benefits. They help reduce blood sugar levels, slow digestion and reduce appetite.But a study by Canadian scientists published in Jama Ophthalmology has found that after six months of use GLP-1 RAs are associated with double the risk of older people with diabetes developing neovascular age-related macular degeneration compared with similar patients not taking the drugs.Academics at the University of Toronto examined medical data for more than 1 million Ontario residents with a diagnosis of diabetes and identified 46,334 patients with an average age of 66 who were prescribed GLP-1 RAs
Housing bosses press Rachel Reeves to unlock more funds for affordable homes
Housing bosses representing 1.5m social homes across England will press Rachel Reeves to reclassify affordable housing as critical infrastructure spending, amid a battle between the chancellor and Angela Rayner.There is deep dissatisfaction with the level of funding for social homes in the spending review due next week. Rayner, the housing secretary, is one of the last remaining holdouts in negotiations with the Treasury over departmental spending settlements.The Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government has been battling for more funding for the affordable homes programme as well as trying to preserve cash for local councils, homelessness and regional growth initiatives
Millions in west do not know they have aggressive fatty liver disease, study says
More than 15 million people in the US, UK, Germany and France do not know they have the most aggressive form of fatty liver disease, according to research.Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) – the formal name for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease – occurs in people who drink no or minimal amounts of alcohol whose liver contains more than 5% fat.About two-thirds of patients with type 2 diabetes are thought to have the condition, which is also associated with obesity, heart and circulatory disease.Approximately 5% of adults globally have the most aggressive form of MASLD. Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) causes fibrosis (scarring) and can lead to cirrhosis and is linked to greater risk of cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease and liver cancer
I thought it was being gay that made my life so difficult. Then, at 50, I got an eye-opening diagnosis …
I spent far too many years lonely and angry, thanks to schoolmates who called me ‘weird’ and bosses who dismissed me as ‘hysterical’. But was it my sexuality that put their backs up – or the autism I am still coming to terms with?My earliest memory is of feeling different. I’m gay, and grew up in the 1980s, in a tough, working-class town in the north of England at the height of the Aids crisis. My gayness was obvious in the way I walked and talked. I was bullied at school, called a “poof”, “pansy” and “fairy”; other children did impressions of me with their wrists limp
How to turn mango pit and skin into fruit coulis – recipe | Waste not
Australian supermarket garlic bread taste test: ‘A vampire would burst into flames just smelling it’
Which dips are OK to buy, and which should I make? | Kitchen aide
Georgina Hayden’s recipe for spring meatballs with pasta and peas
Sweet, seedless citrus: Australia’s best-value fruit and veg for June
Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy recipe for smoked trout and crisp potato cakes with capers, caraway and dill | Quick and easy