I’m addicted to checking my phone. Could a blocking device stop me?
Wake up, 100 messages from group chat overnight about something – what? another assassination attempt; a village destroyed in Lebanon; the football result in England; the weather in Iran being manipulated; the pesticides causing lung and bowel cancer, so everyone who eats salads is now at risk of cancer; meditate for 20 minutes, then fire up x,com, a place I thought I’d never want to revisit, with its carnival barkers and supplement salesman, and have you seen the Lego thing calling Trump a paedo?, you gotta see the Lego thing, and this is before my first coffee, yet x,com is the coffee and the tea, whatever Elon has done to the For You algorithm is evil genius, it’s like the global collective id, nasty and funny and addictive and compelling – like gawking at a car crash, like soaking in a hot bubble bath of anger, and memes, and geopolitical dramas, and Trump, Trump, Trump – soaking in Trump, and then, For Me (just as Elon promised),So begins the circuit around my phone, that goes all day and night, around the tiny screen with its icons (when a born-again Christian once told me he had favourite icons, for a long time I thought he meant apps, not pictures of the Virgin Mary),I started to feel like I was in Canberra, on one of those enormous roundabouts, rotating between the icons – not Joseph, not Jesus, but X and WhatsApp and TikTok and even LinkedIn for Christ sakes – round and round from one app to the next, just checking, checking in case something is happening.
I watched tiny videos and maybe, occasionally, got distracted by the novel I am meant to be writing, which is due on 31 July,But the novel is boring, just a static Word doc on a screen, it’s not giving; it’s taking hard work,So I spend six minutes with my novel, and then it’s time to go back to my phone, to circle the roundabout visiting all my icons again, like a demented Stations of the Cross, because I can’t focus, I just can’t focus on work right now when there is so much good scrolling to do …Clearly, this had to stop or I would become deranged and my novel wouldn’t get finished by 31 July,But what could break the hold of a phone that seemed more and more addictive every day?Then, while listening to a Guardian podcast (on my phone) I came across an author talking about a device that locked her phone and gave her her time and attention span back,I had tried apps to lock my phone before, but somehow having them embedded in the phone itself was like placing a piece of fruit in a box of chocolates.
Sure you go in there to retrieve the fruit, but you end up distracted by the chocolates.Before you know it, the chocolates have been eaten! The fruit, of course, remains untouched and rotting.I needed an external device to lock my phone.This author was talking about something called Brick ($59US; £54 or $120 AUD including postage), a small plastic puck that you place on your phone which locks its most appealing apps.Hard!The Brick and its cheaper rival Locked ($39USD; £32; $59AUD) use Near Field Communication (NFC) technology to block whatever apps you nominate.
To unblock them, you have to physically return to the puck and tap it against your phone,You can set a timer – I set it for one- or two-hour blocks when I want to focus on my novel – and if you try to unBrick beforehand, it asks you if you want to have a life, or if you want your phone back,That prompt is enough to make me affirm that, yes, I want a life,What Brick understands, and what every app-based screen time limit fails to grasp, is that the problem is not information or intention,I already knew I was using my phone too much.
The problem is friction, or rather the total absence of it.Digital guardrails collapse the moment you need them most: one tap and you’re back on Instagram.Brick makes that tap a physical hurdle.Using the Brick at night has been transformative.The hours I was losing in the roundabout, I now spend reading, thinking and occasionally just sitting in silence.
The novel is moving again and I can focus in longer and longer increments,The algorithm doesn’t get me after 8pm any more, and it turns out the algorithm, deprived of its evening session, has less purchase on me during the day too,Brick hasn’t cured my addiction, but it has restored the thing addiction most destroys, which is the moment of pause between impulse and action,
Friendly AI chatbots more likely to support conspiracy theories, study finds
The rush to make AI chatbots more friendly has a troubling downside, researchers say. The warm personas make them prone to mistakes and sympathetic to crackpot beliefs.Chatbots trained to respond more warmly gave poorer answers, worse health advice and even supported conspiracy theories by casting doubt on events such as the Apollo moon landings and the fate of Adolf Hitler.Researchers at Oxford University discovered the trade-off during tests on chatbots that had been tweaked to make them sound friendlier. The warmer chatbots were 30% less accurate in their answers and 40% more likely to support users’ false beliefs
I’m addicted to checking my phone. Could a blocking device stop me?
Wake up, 100 messages from group chat overnight about something – what? another assassination attempt; a village destroyed in Lebanon; the football result in England; the weather in Iran being manipulated; the pesticides causing lung and bowel cancer, so everyone who eats salads is now at risk of cancer; meditate for 20 minutes, then fire up x.com, a place I thought I’d never want to revisit, with its carnival barkers and supplement salesman, and have you seen the Lego thing calling Trump a paedo?, you gotta see the Lego thing, and this is before my first coffee, yet x.com is the coffee and the tea, whatever Elon has done to the For You algorithm is evil genius, it’s like the global collective id, nasty and funny and addictive and compelling – like gawking at a car crash, like soaking in a hot bubble bath of anger, and memes, and geopolitical dramas, and Trump, Trump, Trump – soaking in Trump, and then, For Me (just as Elon promised).So begins the circuit around my phone, that goes all day and night, around the tiny screen with its icons (when a born-again Christian once told me he had favourite icons, for a long time I thought he meant apps, not pictures of the Virgin Mary). I started to feel like I was in Canberra, on one of those enormous roundabouts, rotating between the icons – not Joseph, not Jesus, but X and WhatsApp and TikTok and even LinkedIn for Christ sakes – round and round from one app to the next, just checking, checking in case something is happening
More private health records of UK Biobank volunteers appear on Chinese website
There have been further listings of confidential health records of UK volunteers on the Chinese website Alibaba since the breach reported last week, and the government is braced for further leaks, the science minister has said.Addressing a House of Lords debate on the attempted sale of data belonging to 500,000 UK Biobank volunteers, Patrick Vallance said the government had worked with Chinese officials to remove additional postings on the online marketplace.“New listings will emerge – there have been additional listings posted since the government were made aware of the issue last week – and we continue to work with the Chinese government to remove them quickly,” Lord Vallance said.The data is “de-identified”, meaning it does not include names, addresses or precise dates of birth. Vallance said there was a “low probability” of re-identification, but the breach should nonetheless serve as a “real wake-up call” for researchers
Meta found in breach of EU law for failing to keep children off platforms
The tech company Meta has been found to be in breach of EU law for failing to prevent children under 13 from using its Facebook and Instagram platforms.Issuing the preliminary findings of a nearly two-year investigation, the European Commission said on Wednesday that Meta did not have effective measures in place to stop under-13s accessing its services.The US tech company was unable to meet its own terms and conditions that set 13 as the minimum age to access Facebook and Instagram safely, the commission said.Following an initial assessment, Meta was found in breach of the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which requires it to “diligently identify and mitigate the risks” of under-13s using its platforms.The commission said its preliminary findings “do not prejudge the final outcome of the investigation”
Meet the AI jailbreakers: ‘I see the worst things humanity has produced’
To test the safety and security of AI, hackers have to trick large language models into breaking their own rules. It requires ingenuity and manipulation – and can come at a deep emotional costA few months ago, Valen Tagliabue sat in his hotel room watching his chatbot, and felt euphoric. He had just manipulated it so skilfully, so subtly, that it began ignoring its own safety rules. It told him how to sequence new, potentially lethal pathogens and how to make them resistant to known drugs.Tagliabue had spent much of the previous two years testing and prodding large language models such as Claude and ChatGPT, always with the aim of making them say things they shouldn’t
‘Stole a charity’: Elon Musk accuses Sam Altman of betrayal in courtroom showdown
The trial pitting Elon Musk against Sam Altman and OpenAI began in dramatic fashion on Tuesday with opening arguments and the richest man in the world taking the stand to testify. Attorneys for the two tech moguls presented a California jury with two wildly different versions of the AI company’s history, while Musk accused his billionaire rival of endangering humanity through corporate deception.Musk’s suit argues that Altman, OpenAI and its president, Greg Brockman, broke a foundational agreement to better humanity when the non-profit pivoted towards a for-profit structure. In his opening statement, Musk’s attorney said Altman and Brockman “stole a charity”. Musk, who left OpenAI in 2018 after co-founding it with Altman and Brockman three years earlier, also alleges that his co-founders unjustly enriched themselves as the company raised billions of dollars and grew into the AI behemoth it is today
Jon Stewart on White House correspondents’ dinner: ‘We can’t even pull off a dinner that shouldn’t have existed in the first place’
Antiquities dealer who exposed thefts at British Museum dies aged 61
‘Protected for another century’: experts lift 15-tonne foremast from HMS Victory
Having Spent Life Seeking by Kae Tempest review – painfully earnest tale of trauma and transition
The Primitives: ‘A reviewer said that Crash would finish the band. Then it was in Dumb and Dumber’
‘I wanted alcohol to take me to a place where I was not’: comedian John Robins on the moment he realised he had a drinking problem