McIlroy thanks PGA chief for Ryder Cup apology and questions LIV changes
Rory McIlroy says the PGA of America chief executive, Derek Sprague, apologized personally for the abuse directed at the world No 2 and his wife during Europe’s Ryder Cup triumph at Bethpage Black, and that the gesture helped to close the book on what had been a bruising week.“I got a lovely email from Derek Sprague apologizing,” McIlroy told BBC Sport ahead of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship.“Erica worked with Derek at the PGA of America back in the day, so we know Derek and his wife pretty well.He couldn’t have been more gracious or apologetic and he wrote us a lovely letter, which we really appreciated.”A beer hurled from the stands struck Erica’s hat during the fiery three-day contest, in which McIlroy became a lightning rod for a raucous home crowd.
“I take it as a compliment that they targeted me, but then at the same time it was a tough week,” he said,“That made us better as a team,It galvanised us and it really put our arms around each other,”While the USA captain, Keegan Bradley, declined to condemn the “passionate” New York fans, McIlroy said the experience ultimately strengthened the European team’s resolve en route to their narrow victory,Preparing now for the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, the five-time major winner reflected on what he called a career‑defining campaign.
“I think back to the start in January of 2025 when I was last here and everything that’s happened since,” McIlroy said.“Honestly, in my wildest dreams, I didn’t know.I mean, I knew a year like this was possible, but it has just been an amazing 10 months.”McIlroy also weighed in on LIV Golf’s decision to expand to 72-hole events beginning in 2026, a change widely seen as a bid for official world ranking points.“I think it’s a peculiar move because I think they could have got ranking points with three rounds.
I don’t think three rounds versus four rounds is what was holding them back.“It certainly puts them more in line with traditional golf tournaments … but if that’s what they felt they needed to do to get the ranking points, I guess that’s what they had to do.”Yet McIlroy doubts the switch will significantly boost LIV players’ standings.“Say potentially they get world rankings points, but because their strength of fields are going to be so weak because a lot of the guys have fallen already in the rankings … I don’t know if the ranking points are really going to benefit them.It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
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Apple Watch SE 3 review: the bargain smartwatch for iPhone
Apple’s entry level Watch SE has been updated with almost everything from its excellent mid-range Series 11 but costs about 40% less, making it the bargain of iPhone smartwatches.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.The new Watch SE 3 costs from £219 (€269/$249/A$399), making it one of the cheapest brand-new fully fledged smartwatches available for the iPhone and undercutting the £369 Series 11 and the top-of-the-line £749 Apple Watch Ultra 3
Experts find flaws in hundreds of tests that check AI safety and effectiveness
Experts have found weaknesses, some serious, in hundreds of tests used to check the safety and effectiveness of new artificial intelligence models being released into the world.Computer scientists from the British government’s AI Security Institute, and experts at universities including Stanford, Berkeley and Oxford, examined more than 440 benchmarks that provide an important safety net.They found flaws that “undermine the validity of the resulting claims”, that “almost all … have weaknesses in at least one area”, and resulting scores might be “irrelevant or even misleading”.Many of the benchmarks are used to evaluate the latest AI models released by the big technology companies, said the study’s lead author, Andrew Bean, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute.In the absence of nationwide AI regulation in the UK and US, benchmarks are used to check if new AIs are safe, align to human interests and achieve their claimed capabilities in reasoning, maths and coding
OpenAI signs $38bn cloud computing deal with Amazon
OpenAI has signed a $38bn (£29bn) deal to use Amazon infrastructure to operate its artificial intelligence products, as part of a more than $1tn spending spree on computing power.The agreement with Amazon Web Services means OpenAI will be able to use AWS datacentres, and the Nvidia chips inside them, immediately.Last week, OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, said his company had committed to spending $1.4tn on AI infrastructure, amid concerns over the sustainability of the boom in using and building datacentres. These are the central nervous systems of AI tools such as ChatGPT
Oakley Meta Vanguard review: fantastic AI running glasses linked to Garmin
The Oakley Meta Vanguard are new displayless AI glasses designed for running, cycling and action sports with deep Garmin and Strava integration, which may make them the first smart glasses for sport that actually work.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.They are a replacement for running glasses, open-ear headphones and a head-mounted action cam all in one, and are the latest product of Meta’s partnership with the sunglasses conglomerate EssilorLuxottica, the owner of Ray-Ban, Oakley and many other top brands
‘History won’t forgive us’ if UK falls behind in quantum computing race, says Tony Blair
Tony Blair has said “history won’t forgive us” if the UK falls behind in the race to harness quantum computing, a frontier technology predicted to trigger the next wave of breakthroughs in everything from drug design to climate modelling.The former British Labour prime minister, whose thinktank and consultancy, the Tony Blair Institute, is backed by tech industry leaders including the Oracle founder, Larry Ellison, warned: “The country risks failing to convert its leadership in quantum research.”In a report calling for a national strategy for quantum computing, Blair and William Hague, a former Conservative party leader, compared the situation to the recent history of artificial intelligence, where the UK was responsible for important research breakthroughs but then ceded power to other countries, including the US, leading to a scramble to build “sovereign” AI capacity.“As we have seen with AI, a strong research and development base is not enough: it is the countries that have the infrastructure and capital for scale that capture technology’s economic and strategic benefits,” they said. “While the UK is home to the second highest number of quantum startups in the world, it lacks the necessary high-risk capital and infrastructure to scale those startups
In Grok we don’t trust: academics assess Elon Musk’s AI-powered encyclopedia
The eminent British historian Sir Richard Evans produced three expert witness reports for the libel trial involving the Holocaust denier David Irving, studied for a doctorate under the supervision of Theodore Zeldin, succeeded David Cannadine as Regius professor of history at Cambridge (a post endowed by Henry VIII) and supervised theses on Bismarck’s social policy.That was some of what you could learn from Grokipedia, the AI-powered encyclopedia launched last week by the world’s richest person, Elon Musk. The problem was, as Prof Evans discovered when he logged on to check his own entry, all these facts were false.It was part of a choppy start for humanity’s latest attempt to corral the sum of human knowledge or, as Musk put it, create a compendium of “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” – all revealed through the magic of his Grok artificial intelligence model.When the multibillionaire switched on Grokipedia on Tuesday, he said it was “better than Wikipedia”, or “Wokepedia” as his supporters call it, reflecting a view that the dominant online encyclopedia often reflects leftwing talking points
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