Stephen Joseph theatre, Scarborough
The playwright explores our relationship with technology, asks if robots have souls and even questions the value of art in this sci-fi courtroom drama

For play number 92, Alan Ayckbourn returns to his preoccupation of exploring where we as a species are heading through a science-fiction lens. He goes back to the future. In The Trial of Romeo Oscar, the playwright famed for his domestic comedies looks to the year 2194 when humans have spread about the galaxy and androids live alongside us. One of them, RSDO83, is on trial for the murder of a teenage girl in his charge.

This is Ayckbourn philosophising about the future of humanity as we sit at an obvious inflection point, asking what this moment in our relationship with technology means and where it will lead us. The questions running through the play are manifold, complex and echo those asked by sci-fi writers for decades: can robots hurt humans? Do they have souls? He is also questioning the value of art and even its purpose.

We have a first play of the forthcoming Tomb Raider remake and speak with its developers. Can they improve on the gameplay without losing what made the 1996 original such a classic?

We join Lara Croft in St Francis’ Folly – inspired by the Unesco-listed monasteries of Meteora in Greece – as the light shines through the cracked ceiling and a flock of bats glide across the vast ruins below. When Lara leaps down to the monastery’s crumbling pillared courtyard, it becomes clear that these screeching, leathery creatures aren’t just set dressing. As they lurch towards her with unpredictable movements, she dispatches the swarm with a flurry of gun fire and panicked punches.

It’s a suitably cinematic reintroduction to our heroine and her very first adventure. Co-developed by longtime Lara custodians Crystal Dynamics and Polish studio Flying Wild Hog, Legacy of Atlantis is a reimagining of the classic 1996 game Tomb Raider, and this familiar cliffside location is now brimming with new life and believable detail. Yet while our reunion gets off to an auspicious start, I have my concerns. It feels like reconnecting with an old friend at the pub, only for them to begin spouting conspiracy theories two pints in.

Welcome boost for chancellor with unexpected rise put down to rapid growth of AI in services sector outweighing Iran war fallout

The UK economy grew in July as the rapid expansion of AI appeared to outweigh the economic damage from the Iran war, in a welcome boost for John Healey.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed a surprise 0.4% increase in gross domestic product (GDP), compared with 0.3% growth in June. City economists had forecast zero growth.

Report comes two days after former employee quit claiming company’s models could cause human extinction by 2030

Criminals, state-sponsored groups, spyware vendors, scientists and propagandists have attempted to use Anthropic’s powerful artificial intelligence models to design missiles and bombs, create deadly pathogens and surveil dissidents, according to a threat intelligence report the company published on Thursday.

“The cases we share here aren’t typical misuse, but rather examples of the most notable and novel threat activity we’ve identified to date,” Anthropic wrote in its 154-page report. “We’re publishing this work because we believe we have a responsibility to disclose malicious misuse of our services.”

Insiders at the firm fear tech’s advancement could cause human extinction, while others are calling their declarations of concern a ‘setup’

A day after a former researcher at Anthropic made an apocalyptic declaration about artificial intelligence, more researchers and staff members at the AI startup publicly agreed with him and posted their own dire warnings.

In response, Elon Musk and other conservative figures on X, formerly Twitter, called the chorus of concerns a “setup” and a “psyop”.

The defense says: ‘It’s about competition, not conspiracy’

A US prosecutor described China’s Huawei as a criminal enterprise that stole from US companies to build its telecommunications empire, as ⁠the trial against the tech company kicked off in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday.

“Theft, lies, cover-up,” Taylor Stout, a trial attorney from the US Department of Justice, said in the government’s opening statement. “For 20 years, that’s how Huawei, a massive Chinese telecommunications company, victimized American companies ⁠and abused the American financial system, all ⁠in an effort to dominate the telecommunications ​industry around the world.”

Thanks to a little-known feature in Instagram, I try to travel back to 2012 – before everything on the internet was an ad

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I have a confession. I love my social media algorithm. It is a perfectly curated window into my insane and inquiring mind. It knows precisely which videos will tickle me and which memes will gently distract me from the slow collapse of humankind.

On Tuesday the Australian government announced “world-leading” reforms that would force social media platforms to allow users to opt-out of algorithms, dubbed “my feed, my way”. On the same day, I was delighted to be confronted with a video on Instagram of a woman accidentally spilling a bucket of eels on a Chinese train. Dozens of eels slithered among the passengers, who appeared not as surprised as I would have expected.

PlayStation 5; Insomniac Games
Logan is well realised by Liam McIntyre and some exquisite character art, but there are lapses in narrative and emotional arcs and some of the combat feels like a chore

It was always going to be difficult to follow Spider-Man. Insomniac’s three games based around the web-slinger are masterpieces of superhero wish fulfilment, allowing you to swoop above a depiction of Manhattan alive with graffiti artists, roving journalists and gun-toting gangsters. If anyone should be up to the task, it’s Wolverine. A beloved Marvel stalwart, his life much darker and bloodier than Peter Parker’s, he seems the ideal protagonist for a moody action adventure. Yet somehow this well-made game falls short of its potential.

Set years before the founding of the X-Men, Marvel’s Wolverine sees a disenfranchised Logan falling back in with Sabretooth and Mystique when their mentor Nathaniel Essex is kidnapped by mutant-hating billionaire Bolivar Trask. This archetypal tech bro has a disturbing plan for world domination and the X Team are out to stop him – but there is a secret buried in Wolverine’s past that’s about to cause an eruption. It’s a decent setup, filled with the sort of intrigue, violence and Freudian tension we expect from the X-Men.

Tech mogul calls director Alex Gibney a ‘bitter old man’ who has ‘zero integrity’ in series of posts on X

Elon Musk has issued an angry tirade at the film-maker behind a four-hour documentary about his life and influence, labelling the director, Alex Gibney, a “bitter old man” who has “zero integrity”.

Gibney, who has previously made films about the collapse of Enron, WikiLeaks and Vladimir Putin, premiered his Musk documentary at the Venice film festival this week. He said he believed the world’s richest man was “extremely dangerous”.

US government adviser Paul Christiano warns of risks to AI industry as he joins OpenAI’s non-profit foundation

OpenAI is not on track to reduce the risk of “catastrophic” loss of control to an acceptable level, a member of its non-profit board has said, amid spreading public and political concern that super-advanced AIs could one day wipe out humanity.

Paul Christiano, a US government technology adviser, said: “There is a meaningful risk that rapid acceleration in AI capabilities leads to catastrophic and irreversible loss of control in the very near term.”

Solid battery life, snappy performance and quality software make for a great smaller phone with a killer camera

Google’s latest Pro phone is out to prove it has the best camera on a smartphone while embracing customisation, allowing you to change the look and feel of your photos far beyond simple filters even if that means making them technically worse.

The Pixel 11 Pro packs the best of Google’s hardware and software into a still-pocketable and easy to handle frame, instantly making it a contender for best smaller phone of the year.

Screen: 6.3in 120Hz QHD+ OLED (495ppi)

Processor: Google Tensor G6

RAM: 12 or 16GB

Storage: 256, 512GB or 1TB

Operating system: Android 17

Camera: 50MP + 48MP UW + 48MP 5x tele; 42MP selfie

Connectivity: 5G, eSIM, wifi 7, UWB, NFC, Bluetooth 6, Thread and GNSS

Water resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 minutes)

Dimensions: 152.7 x 71.9 x 8.4mm

Weight: 204g

Adam Mosseri says platform’s algorithm ‘feels like a black box’ but company trying to give users more control after Labor announces opt-out plan

Instagram’s chief executive has said users will have a worse experience in an algorithm-free world, seeing more brand-related content, and spend less time on the app.

The comments come as the Australian government plans to give users the option to opt out of algorithms, with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, announcing plans on Tuesday to require social media platforms to prompt users to choose between a feed of algorithm-recommended content or a reverse chronological feed of the pages users follow. Labor also plans to introduce a range of measures designed to address online harm on the sites.

Former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon said AI will become ‘superhuman systems’ that can cause human extinction by the end of the decade

Just a day after three Anthropic researchers warned that artificial intelligence could kill off humanity within the decade, lawmakers have begun lashing out about the risks of the burgeoning technology.

Ted Cruz, a republican senator from Texas, said in an interview on ABC’s The View, that AI posed a “catastrophic risk” and that he “read that whole tweet thread that that developer put out. It was highly concerning.

Alex Gibney’s marathon documentary delivers numerous eye-raising insights into the broligarch’s business deals, early idealism and apocalyptic appetite for fathering children

Veteran documentarian Alex Gibney’s film about the richest broligarch on the planet has been one of the most eagerly anticipated films at the Venice film festival this year. The Oscar-winning 72-year-old, who has in previous films taken on the US military, the Catholic church, Vladimir Putin and Scientology, has been investigating the tech tycoon’s ascent and speaking to people in his orbit since late 2022, before his Maga turn and Trump 2.0.

The result clocks in at just under four hours and presents a comprehensive answer to how on earth one man managed to amass so much money and political influence. It is shocking less for any individual new pieces of information Gibney has unearthed than for its totality. Here are six things the film tells us:

Want every day to be a good hair day? We tested 22 hair dryers to find the best, from gentle diffusers to high-speed and travel-ready models

• The best hot brushes, tried and tested by our expert

In my years of reviewing beauty tech, it was upgrading my hair dryer that made the biggest difference to my routine. I used to dread hair-wash days: the chore of shampooing, conditioning and rinsing my hair, plus the time – and aching arms – spent getting it dry again.

My clunky, bargain-bucket hair dryer of seven years was weighty, deafeningly loud, and took a painstaking 20 minutes to dry my hair. So happier days really did arrive when I switched to a new model.