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"MPs are to summon Elon Musk to testify about X's role in spreading disinformation, in a parliamentary inquiry into the UK riots and the rise of false and harmful AI content, the Guardian has learned. Senior executives from Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram, and TikTok are also expected to be called for questioning as part of a Commons science and technology select committee social media inquiry."

"Let's return to my favorite analogy for thinking about issues surrounding youth and social media: cars. Cars can be incredibly dangerous! There's a reason we don't let kids drive them until a certain age, and even then, put all sorts of safety measures in place. Now, let's imagine every time you got into a car, you got a warning saying "This car might crash and kill you." This would certainly raise your awareness that cars are dangerous. It would scare you. But would it change your behavior? Now, let's say you added an "action" to the end: "This car might crash and kill you…but putting on your seatbelt right now will reduce the risk of death by 500%."   It's long been known that fear-based public health messaging cannot simply describe a threat-it also needs to recommend an action to be effective. First you learn what could go wrong, then you learn what to do to avoid it.  So, will warning parents that social media use "is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents" actually change their behavior? Will it lead to them more effectively limiting, monitoring, and/or managing their kids' social media use? "

"The Google owner, Alphabet, has dropped its promise not to use artificial intelligence for purposes such as developing weapons and surveillance tools. The US technology company said on Tuesday, just before it reported lower-than-forecast earnings, that it had updated its ethical guidelines around AI, and they no longer referred to not pursuing technologies that could "cause or are likely to cause overall harm". Google's AI head, Demis Hassabis, said the guidelines were being overhauled in a changing world and that AI should protect "national security"."

""Deeply disturbing" research exposes how easy it is for children to encounter inappropriate content and interact unsupervised with adults on the gaming platform Roblox. It comes as parents shared their serious concerns about children experiencing addiction, seeing traumatising content and being approached by strangers on the hugely popular website and app. Roblox acknowledges that children using the platform may be exposed to harmful content and "bad actors". It says it is working hard to fix this, but that industry-wide collaboration and government intervention are needed."

"At least 50 separate deadly strikes by armed forces in Africa have been confirmed during the three years up to November 2024, with analysts describing a "striking pattern of civilian harm" with little or no accountability. Although the rapid growth of armed drones deployed by Ukraine and Russia receives significant scrutiny, scant focus is being paid to the escalating use in Africa of a new breed of imported cheaper drones, such as Turkey's Bayraktar TB2, said Cora Morris of campaign group Drone Wars UK, which on Monday published a report on the growth of armed drones in Africa, called Death on Delivery."

"A robot that can decide whether or not to inflict pain has been built by roboticist and artist Alexander Reben from the University of Berkeley, California. The basic machine is capable of pricking a finger but is programmed not to do so every time it can."

"The revelation that encrypted email is vulnerable to a variety of devastating attacks (collectively known as "Efail") has set off a round of soul-searching by internet security researchers and other technical people -- can we save email? One way to think about Efail is that it was caused by a lack of central coordination and control over email-reading programs -- the underlying protocols are strong and robust, but they can be implemented in ways that create real problems. In particular, the ability to show HTML inside a message makes email very hard to secure:"