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A leading privacy watchdog files a complaint with US regulators urging them to investigate Google's Buzz social network.

"Artificial intelligence researchers have developed a mosquito early warning system that raises the alarm when the insects are near by detecting the whine of their wingbeats. The system uses an app that can run on a £20 mobile phone to analyse sounds in the environment and issue a warning if it hears the telltale buzz as a mosquito swoops past."

"While Google has played down the notion of rolling out anything soon (it will take years until Glass builds up enough users to make it worthwhile), marketers can't stop buzzing about the possibility of paying for ads in the physical world based on user engagement and reactions. The patent even details how a device like Google Glass could infer a user's emotional response to an ad - whether they were happy, sad or indifferent - and adjust pricing accordingly."

"Second Life, Thinking Worlds, Unity3D and others were all making inroads into the realm of corporate learning and there was a buzz about it in the L&D market, which, at the time, had a reputation for churning out spectacularly boring and poorly designed compliance-based eLearning. One major mobile phone network with whom I worked back in 2008 had a vision of enlivening their learner experience by providing a 3D avatar-based portal into their learning management system, which at the time hosted solidly 2D page-turner eLearning of a very pedestrian nature."

"The internet and its progeny, like smart car dashboards and buzzing smartphones, are built to make it seem like they can help us multitask, but our brains just aren't cut out for it. "It leads us to try to engage in multiple information-demanding activities simultaneously, and that is what our brains just do not do very well. They weren't evolved for that very type of demand," said Gazzaley, who also wrote The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World."

"Cave wrote in his response: "Since its launch in November last year many people, most buzzing with a kind of algorithmic awe, have sent me songs 'in the style of Nick Cave' created by ChatGPT. There have been dozens of them. Suffice to say, I do not feel the same enthusiasm around this technology. I understand that ChatGPT is in its infancy but perhaps that is the emerging horror of AI - that it will forever be in its infancy, as it will always have further to go, and the direction is always forward, always faster.""

"Some might scoff at this, and point out that news organisations make their own mistakes all the time - more consequential than my physicist/physician howler, if less humiliating. But cases of bad journalism are almost always warped representations of the real world, rather than missives from an imaginary one. Crucially, if an outlet gets big things wrong a lot, its reputation will suffer, and its audience are likely to vote with their feet, or other people will publish stories that air the mistake. And all of it will be out in the open. You may also note that journalists are increasingly likely to use AI in the production of stories - and there is no doubt that it is a phenomenally powerful tool, allowing investigative reporters to find patterns in vast financial datasets that reveal corruption, or analyse satellite imagery for evidence of bombing attacks in areas designated safe for civilians. There is a legitimate debate over the extent of disclosure required in such cases: on the one hand, if the inputs and outputs are being properly vetted, it might be a bit like flagging the use of Excel; on the other, AI is still new enough that readers may expect you to err on the side of caution. Still, the fundamental difference is not in what you're telling your audience, but what degree of supervision you're exercising over the machine."