The Guardian cartoonist Ella Baron on AI (artificial intelligence) and the drought

Guardian Opinion 

cartoon 

AI (artificial intelligence)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2026/aug/23/ella-baron-on-ai-and-the-drought-cartoon 

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"And whatever shape the first major AI-related disaster takes, it won’t impact all countries, companies and people equally. It therefore seems unlikely that just one disaster will be enough to bring us humans to our senses, acting together to control the superhuman power we are creating. I really hate to say this, but … an AI Hiroshima? We should be so lucky." Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian

Illustration: Yuichiro Chino/Getty Images

Would even an AI disaster on the scale of Hiroshima be enough to make humankind protect itself? I fear not

Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian 

 

It’s clear here in Silicon Valley that AI is advancing faster than humans’ ability to control it. That means even sober prophecies seem optimistic

Here in Silicon Valley, the experts think that within the next couple of years we’ll see an extraordinary takeoff for artificial intelligence. “Welcome to the foothills of the singularity,” as a Stanford University friend greeted me. More prosaically, the imminent breakthrough is described as “recursive self-improvement” – the point at which AI itself trains each successive model of AI, resulting in an exponential development to something which, in many significant respects, is more intelligent than us humans.

As Robert Wright puts it in his book The God Test: “Never before has the near-term future … held such a wide array of not-implausible paths for humankind that would be so wildly transformative.” But will this be heaven or hell?... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/22/ai-disaster-hiroshima-humankind-silicon-valley-technology

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The first anti-AI protester to be jailed has a message for OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta: ‘Regain your humanity’: “It’s absolutely frightening and appalling that these CEOs and AI experts know the dangers and they are pursuing it anyway,” Kaufmyn said before she was imprisoned. “That to me is unconscionable and reprehensible.”

A protest against AI outside OpenAI headquarters in San Francisco, California, on 11 July. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Kaufmyn in front of her home in Berkeley, California. Photograph: Winni Wintermeyer/The Guardian

Wynd Kaufman, 69, chained and locked the front doors of OpenAI’s headquarters last year with members of StopAI

Robert Booth

Sun 16 Aug 2026 04.00 EDT

An activist who blocked the entrance to one of the world’s biggest AI companies is believed to have become the first person jailed for protesting against artificial intelligence as supporters dub her the “Rosa Parks of AI risk”.

Wynd Kaufman, 69, surrendered herself on Friday to authorities in San Francisco. She was found guilty by a jury for her role in an action last year that saw members of the group StopAI chain and lock the front doors of OpenAI’s headquarters in protest against the pursuit of artificial superintelligence.

The retired teacher from Berkeley, California, refused to move from a sit-in protest in February 2025 and pleaded not guilty to multiple misdemeanor charges. She was convicted in June of interfering with a business, trespassing with intent to interfere with a business, unlawful assembly and refusal to disburse a riot. On Friday, sheriff’s officers handcuffed her as fellow campaigners sang to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic (Glory, Glory Hallelujah): “Rise up, rise up and join us/Do not let the tech bros destroy us.”

“It’s absolutely frightening and appalling that these CEOs and AI experts know the dangers and they are pursuing it anyway,” Kaufmyn said before she was imprisoned. “That to me is unconscionable and reprehensible.”

She said she was willing to go to jail not because she was a martyr but because it was an “issue of sounding the alarm, challenging the system and hopefully trying to get the message out”... READ MORE   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/16/california-openai-protester-wynd-kaufman

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*Meanwhile, more than a thousand researchers at frontier AI labs this summer signed a letter warning of “a real risk that capability development rapidly accelerates beyond our ability to understand or control the resulting systems”. 

Jordan is convening an emergency meeting of foreign ministers from the Arab and Islamic world over what it says is an “imminent” threat of an Israeli takeover of the most important Muslim site in Jerusalem, with the potential to “trigger a religious conflict”. The meeting on Wednesday – and the Jordanian warning – follow an escalating pattern of government-backed incursions by Jewish religious extremists on the compound around al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock, in violation of a status quo treaty overseen by Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy, by which only Muslims can pray at the site. On 23 July, more than 2,000 Israelis from the religious right – mostly settlers led by the national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir – stormed the area...

On 23 July, more than 2,000 Israelis from the religious right stormed the area. Photograph: Ilia Yefimovich/AFP/Getty Images

Jordan

Jerusalem’s most important Muslim religious site facing ‘imminent’ threat of Israeli takeover, says Jordan

Country convenes emergency meeting of ministers from Arab and Islamic world, fearing such a move could ‘trigger a religious conflict’

Jordan is convening an emergency meeting of foreign ministers from the Arab and Islamic world over what it says is an “imminent” threat of an Israeli takeover of the most important Muslim site in Jerusalem, with the potential to “trigger a religious conflict”.

The meeting on Wednesday – and the Jordanian warning – follow an escalating pattern of government-backed incursions by Jewish religious extremists on the compound around al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock, in violation of a status quo treaty overseen by Jordan’s Hashemite monarchy, by which only Muslims can pray at the site.

On 23 July, more than 2,000 Israelis from the religious right – mostly settlers led by the national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir – stormed the area, known to Jews as the Temple Mount. They prayed and performed rituals all around the compound in what Jordanian officials said was the worst violation in modern history.

Amman has also been alarmed at a recent recruitment drive for religious Jews for a special Temple Mount police unit, and is braced for more direct challenges to traditional Jordanian custodianship by extremist Israeli leaders in the major Jewish holidays in September. This year, those holidays will come amid an intense election campaign, in which the far-right coalition of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will be fighting for survival.

“This is a constant threat, a dangerous threat that we’re trying to counter in every tool that we have possible,” Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, told the Guardian. “We warn that tampering with the status quo … could trigger a religious conflict that will reverberate beyond Palestine and Jordan into the whole Muslim world.”

Safadi, who will host Wednesday’s emergency meeting, bringing together his counterparts from Arab League countries, as well as Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan, said it was “something that the whole international community should be aware of. Jerusalem is a tinderbox.

“We’re trying to explain the danger. We’re protesting legally. We are trying to create awareness of the imminent danger in the continuation of those Israeli measures.”

Jordan’s custodianship of al-Aqsa compound dates back to Ottoman times, and the status quo encompassing the city’s religious sites was enshrined in the 1878 Treaty of Berlin. The Hashemite kingdom’s oversight in Jerusalem was expanded to cover Christian holy sites in the 20th century, and its custodianship was reaffirmed after the 1967 war, and in the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty.

Infringement by Jewish extremists... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/04/jordan-convenes-emergency-meeting-israel-religious-conflict-jerusalem

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A network of fake academic journals masquerading as legitimate publications has published more than a hundred AI-generated papers in recent months, in some cases using the names of real professors at top universities without their knowledge- Online academic journals falsely attributed articles, likely written by AI, to several professors, who say the fiasco is a warning about the future of scientific knowledge.

NBC News

@NBCNews

A network of fake academic journals masquerading as legitimate publications has published more than a hundred AI-generated papers in recent months, in some cases using the names of real professors at top universities without their knowledge. 

Online academic journals falsely attributed articles, likely written by AI, to several professors, who say the fiasco is a warning about the future of scientific knowledge.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/fake-journals-using-real-professors-names-ai-generated-papers-rcna265479?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma&taid=6a161c9bcd9b3d000140faaa