Steve Borthwick turns to 2003 World Cup heroes for Six Nations inspiration
Steve Borthwick has turned to England’s 2003 World Cup winners to arrest his side’s drastic decline after enduring another setback with the scrum‑half Alex Mitchell ruled out for the rest of the Six Nations,Borthwick’s squad were due on Wednesday night to have dinner with members of the 2003 team, including the captain Martin Johnson, the Test centurion Jason Leonard and Lewis Moody, who revealed in October that he had been diagnosed with motor neurone disease,Borthwick urged his players to use the opportunity to ask how they dealt with setbacks, after England’s Six Nations hopes went up in smoke for another year with the dismal 42-21 defeat against Ireland last Saturday, seven days after they were outclassed by Scotland,Borthwick is under renewed pressure as a result and will lead England into their final two matches against Italy in Rome and France in Paris without Mitchell, who sustained a hamstring injury against Ireland,Jack van Poortvliet is standing by for the No 9 jersey while Ollie Lawrence has had a knee injection and is a doubt for the Italy match.
George Furbank and Chandler Cunningham‑South, meanwhile, will come into consideration to respectively add back-row heft and creativity after both were among a tranche of players sent back to their clubs to feature this weekend,Before turning his attentions to the Azzurri, however, Borthwick has tasked his under-fire players with soaking up as much information as they can from Johnson and co with Lawrence Dallaglio, Phil Vickery, Ben Kay, Paul Grayson, Richard Hill and Will Greenwood also due at England’s training base,England fluffed their grand slam lines in 1999, 2000 and 2001 before finally completing a clean sweep in 2003, eight months before their World Cup triumph,“The purpose of this is to learn from their experiences,” Borthwick said,“They had setbacks.
They had moments where games, losses didn’t go the way they wanted them to.They had moments in games in that 2003 World Cup where it wasn’t going the way they wanted it to and they found a way through it.“I look forward to those players sharing their experiences with our current players.Then a group of senior players will meet with them.And then we will all have dinner together this evening and have a chance to chat and learn from their experiences.
“The dinner is done by position group so I’m going to have the players sat in their relevant position.Each one of these players can share the role they played in their journey from being one of the key leaders of the team from someone who didn’t play as much but had a role in assisting and preparing the team.”Borthwick also revealed that Moody addressed his players after their autumn victory against New Zealand.“It was incredibly moving,” he said.“He gave a heartfelt message to the team and you could hear a pin drop when he was speaking.
“The team have also expressed their desire to help in any way shape or form.In terms of [the dinner], it’s very much around English rugby and wanting the England rugby team to do well.He will be hosting a table with the back-rowers and addressing the senior players.”After three days off, Borthwick and his assistants hosted a “forthright” review of their defeat, highlighting a litany of issues to be rectified.The head coach conceded that England’s “intensity” was not where it needed to be against Ireland and blamed their indiscipline after Freddie Steward and Henry Pollock were sent to the sin bin.
A failure to take chances, the breakdown and no fewer than 24 turnovers coughed up have also been identified as areas where England let themselves down.“Intensity has become the hallmark of this team, and the intensity on Saturday was not where we wanted to be,” Borthwick said.“And we have to make sure that come next Saturday, in Rome, that intensity from every minute, from every player on the pitch, is of the required standard.”Mitchell’s withdrawal from the squad – who will train at Twickenham on Thursday – is a blow for Borthwick given the 28-year-old has established himself as head coach’s first-choice scrum-half since 2023.Raffi Quirke has been called up to the squad while Borthwick has Ben Spencer at his disposal, but Van Poortvliet is the favourite to start against Italy after replacing Mitchell midway through the first half against Ireland.
Treasury calls in Blair thinktank to advise on using AI across public services
Ministers have called in Tony Blair’s thinktank and private tech companies to guide them on deploying AI across the UK government in a move campaigners compared to “inviting in foxes to consult on the future of the henhouse”.James Murray, chief secretary to the Treasury, chaired a meeting on Wednesday with the director of AI at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), the chair of IBM and senior executives at AI companies including Faculty AI, now part of Accenture, and Dex Hunter-Torricke, a former communications adviser at Google, Facebook and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.“These people are exactly who can help us create change across the public sector – giving us the hard truths on our approach to AI and advising where we need to prioritise our investment to support real efficiencies,” said Murray, who added that their advice will “feed into efficiency processes ahead of the next spending review”.The move came after the technology secretary, Liz Kendall, last month said the government’s goal was to “make Britain the fastest AI adoption country in the G7”.The Treasury said it showed it was committing “to private sector engagement on the deployment of artificial intelligence across the public sector so it can improve efficiency and productivity”
Facial recognition error prompts police to arrest Asian man for burglary 100 miles away
Police arrested a man for a burglary in a city he had never visited after face scanning software deployed across the UK confused him with another person of south Asian heritage.Alvi Choudhury, 26, a software engineer, was working at the home he shares with his parents in Southampton in January when police knocked on his door, handcuffed him and held him in custody for nearly 10 hours before releasing him at 2am.Thames Valley police had used automated facial recognition software which matched him with footage of a suspect of a £3,000 burglary 100 miles away in Milton Keynes, according to documents shared with the Guardian by Liberty Investigates.But the CCTV footage showed a noticeably younger man with different features apart from similar curly hair, said Choudhury, who was left confused about why he had been arrested.“I was very angry, because the kid looked about 10 years younger than me,” said Choudhury, who wears a beard
Tech legend Stewart Brand on Musk, Bezos and his extraordinary life: ‘We don’t need to passively accept our fate’
He was at the heart of 1960s counterculture, then paved the way for the libertarian mindset of Silicon Valley. At 87, Brand is still keen to ensure the world is maintained properly – not just today, but for the next 10,000 yearsThe Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more.Stewart Brand thinks big and long
Signs of psychosis seen in Australian users’ interactions with AI chatbots, expert warns
A leading AI expert has warned some Australians are showing signs of psychosis or mania in their interactions with chatbots, arguing Silicon Valley is being “careless” with the technology amid a pursuit of profit.During an address at the National Press Club on Wednesday, Toby Walsh, scientia professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales, said he believed the AI race will be both “boom and doom”, with some benefits.But his speech – a copy of which was provided to Guardian Australia – also warned about dangers he said had outraged him since the technology began maturing in recent years.“My childhood dreams are turning into a reality that is both good and bad,” he said in his prepared remarks.Sign up: AU Breaking News emailWalsh’s speech highlighted the legal case against OpenAI by the family of US teenager Adam Raine – along with its data that showed more than a million of its users each week send messages that include “explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent”
Reddit fined £14.5m in UK over use of under-13s’ data
The UK information regulator has fined the social news service Reddit £14.5m for using the data of children under the age of 13 unlawfully and potentially exposing them to inappropriate and harmful content.The hefty punishment from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is the largest fine yet for a breach of children’s privacy and comes after the US-based company introduced age checks in July, including age verification to access mature content. Prior to this, the ICO said, there were “a large number of children under 13 on the platform and Reddit did not have a lawful basis for processing their personal information”.Reddit asks users to declare their age when opening an account but the ICO said relying on self-declaration presented risks to children as it was easy to bypass
‘A feedback loop with no brake’: how an AI doomsday report shook US markets
US stock markets have been hit by a further wave of AI jitters, this time from yet another viral – and completely speculative – warning about the impact of the technology on the world’s largest economy.The latest foreboding is from Citrini Research, a little-known US firm that provides insights on “transformative ‘megatrends’”. Its post on Substack, which it called a “scenario, not a prediction”, rattled investors by portraying a near future in which autonomous AI systems – or agents – upend the entire US economy, from jobs to markets and mortgages.Citrini’s scenario begins now and ends in June 2028, with US unemployment cresting over 10% and an Occupy Silicon Valley movement setting up camp outside OpenAI and Anthropic’s offices. In the interim, a series of events triggered by the widespread use of AI agents guts software companies and ripples outwards, hitting private credit and mortgages, and leading to an unchecked downward spiral
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