AI threat ‘greater than climate change’, new Tesla Roadster to launch October 1st

A scientist has warned that artificial intelligence could “any day now create a catastrophe” and “needs to be tackled more urgently” than climate change. Prominent industry researchers have warned that AI could threaten humanity by the end of the decade On Sunday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman backed a call from Anthropic’s chief executive Dario Amodei to install permanent third-party reviewers in “frontier” AI companies. And Elon Musk, whose SpaceXAI company developed the “Grok” AI, replied to Mr Amodei’s post, saying: “Dario is right.” Sky News 

US President Donald Trump has downplayed risks posed by artificial intelligence following days of dire warnings by experts. “You have a lot of very negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen,” Trump said during a visit to Ireland. One of the warnings came from a former Anthropic researcher who said “there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future” if the current pace of development continued. BBC 

The new second-generation Tesla Roadster is, supposedly, finally ready to launch. It will be revealed on 1 October – nine years after the unfathomably-fast electric supercar was announced and six years after it was meant to arrive.  Here’s what we know so far: Over the weekend, Tesla shared the message ‘Go ⁠for launch’ on social media along with a reveal date, a mysterious teaser image and a link to its website, which features a new sci-fi-inspired Roadster logo. That’s it.  All we’ve heard from Tesla’s famously bombastic CEO Elon Musk so far is a simple reply to his company’s original social media post, confirming, “New Tesla Roadster Unveil 10.01″. AutoExpress 

Apple’s iPhone Duo appears to have stolen the spotlight. Or so one might think, as pre-orders for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max appear to have gotten off to a considerably weaker start than in previous years. Roughly one hour after the US pre-order window opened on September 12, every color and configuration of the standard iPhone 18 Pro was still showing on-time delivery for September 18. In contrast to the historically rapid sellouts and delivery-date slippage associated with new iPhone launches, the lack of delays suggests demand has been less intense than expected. At the time of writing, only the 512 GB iPhone Pro in Silver has a significant delay, namely 2-3 weeks. NotebookCheck

The UK government is giving more than 23 million people the chance to ditch passwords for passkeys – and could save itself a tidy sum on authentication texts in the process. Passkeys are being rolled out more widely across GOV.UK One Login following a trial involving more than 300,000 users, allowing people to sign in using a fingerprint, Face ID, or device PIN instead of entering a password and waiting for a two-factor authentication (2FA) code. The government says nearly one in ten daily One Login sign-ins are already being made using passkeys, which it claims are up to eight times faster than logging in with a username, password and 2FA code. The Register 

It took four years to secure permission for a £1bn data centre on the border of the M25. British property developer Greystoke Land and French construction group Altrad applied for permission for the “hyperscale” site back in 2021 but were repeatedly thwarted by local authorities and the Conservative government. They finally received a breakthrough last year when Angela Rayner overruled Buckinghamshire council to approve the project. The Housing Secretary said that given Britain’s need for data centres and a lack of alternatives, the site should go ahead despite sitting in the green belt. Telegraph