AI could lead to more job cuts at BT, says chief executive

The chief executive of BT has said that advances in artificial intelligence could presage deeper jobs cuts at the FTSE 100 telecoms company, which has already outlined plans to shed up to 55,000 workers.Two years ago, the company said that between 40,000 and 55,000 jobs would be axed as it set out to become a “leaner” business by the end of the decade.However, in a weekend interview, its chief executive, Allison Kirkby, said the plan, which includes stripping out £3bn of costs, “did not reflect the full potential of AI”.“Depending on what we learn from AI … there may be an opportunity for BT to be even smaller by the end of the decade,” Kirkby said in an interview with the Financial Times.BT, which is the biggest broadband provider in the country, laid out plans in 2023 to cut the size of its workforce, including contractors, by 2030

Policymakers who think AI can help rescue flagging UK economy should take heed | Heather Stewart

From helping consultants diagnose cancer, to aiding teachers in drawing up lesson plans – and flooding social media with derivative slop – generative artificial intelligence is being adopted across the economy at breakneck speed.Yet a growing number of voices are starting to ask how much of an asset the technology can be to the UK’s sluggish economy. Not least because there is no escaping a persistent flaw: large language models (LLMs) remain prone to casually making things up.It’s a phenomenon known as “hallucination”. In a recent blogpost, the barrister Tahir Khan cited three cases in which lawyers had used large language models to formulate legal filings or arguments – only to find they slipped in fictitious supreme court cases, and made up regulations, or nonexistent laws

UK government rollout of Humphrey AI tool raises fears about reliance on big tech

The government’s artificial intelligence (AI) tool known as Humphrey is based on models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, it can be revealed, raising questions about Whitehall’s increasing reliance on big tech.Ministers have staked the future of civil service reform on rolling out AI across the public sector to improve efficiency, with all officials in England and Wales to receive training in the toolkit.However, it is understood the government does not have overarching commercial agreements with the big tech companies on AI and uses a pay-as-you-go model through its existing cloud contracts, allowing it to swap through tools as they improve and become competitive.Critics are concerned about the speed and scale of embedding AI from big tech into the heart of government, especially when there is huge public debate about the technology’s use of copyrighted material.Ministers have been locked in a battle with critics in the House of Lords over whether AI is unfairly being trained on creative material without credit of compensation

Hey AI! Can ChatGPT help you to manage your money?

Artificial intelligence seems to have touched every part of our lives. But can it help us manage our money? We put some common personal finance questions to the free version of ChatGPT, one of the most well-known AI chatbots, and asked for its help.Then we gave the answers to some – human – experts and asked them what they thought.We asked: I am 35 years old and want to ensure I have a comfortable retirement. I earn about £35,000 a year and have a workplace pension, in which I have saved £20,000

Bailey Smith hits the right note at Geelong but he is no showstopper | Jonathan Horn

Bailey Smith could easily have coasted along against Essendon on the weekend. He could have racked up a few dozen disposals for Geelong and saved his hamstrings for the far more onerous challenge of Brisbane this Friday. But that’s not how he’s wired. Everything is at full throttle. There is not a lot of craft or guile to how he plays

Tatjana Maria shocks Amanda Anisimova to win Queen’s Club women’s singles final – as it happened

Righto, that is us. Check back here and on sight for Tumaini Carayol’s match report which’ll be live shortly, but otherwise, thanks for your company – peace out.Maria tells BBC that her daughter liked the look of the trophy so she said “Let’s try to win it”.“Everything is possible if you believe in it,”she says, and that she’s trying to show that to the kids, who she knows are proud of her anyway. She was meant to be going to Nottingham tonight, but these things don’t happen often so they need to celebrate; doubtless her kids will want to “eat some crap with Nutella”