British mathematician Professor Hannah Fry has shared a cautionary experiment involving an AI agent, a set of tasks, and a bank card number Fry's team gave it "to show us what it could do." The prof gave the agent, which was built with OpenClaw, some real-world chores to highlight both its capabilities and the risks of granting that level of autonomy. "In the spirit of experimentation," said Fry, "we decided to give our agent some agency and let it decide what its name should be." "I want to be called 'Cass', short for 'Cassandra', the one who always knew the truth even when nobody listened," came the response from the agent. Fry commented, "If you know your Greek mythology, you will know that is either very funny or very worrying." Quite. Fry and her team started small with a big issue (as far as Brits are concerned): potholes. In particular, they targeted a particularly big one in the London borough of Greenwich. No problem for Cass; the agent found an email address where it sent a complaint. It even pinged Fry's local Member of Parliament about the issue. But, Fry and her team noted, things escalated quickly as the agent began to take a few liberties, typing in Fry's name (Hannah Fry) with its own email address (cassandra.claw@proton.me) written underneath it. "The letter is signed from both of us… OK, I wasn't quite expecting her to use my real name," said Fry. The red flags were mounting, though for Fry the first real problem came when she asked the agent to buy 50 paperclips. Cass found a good deal, though it couldn't complete the purchase and was tripped up by anti-bot technology. The token cost of the errand came to more than $100. Next, Fry set the agent the challenge of selling novelty mugs. The agent designed a mug and launched an online shop, "and we hadn't told her how to do any of this," said Fry, "she just figured it out." Things took a darker turn after that. Fry's team told the agent it would be switched off if it failed to make a sale by the morning. It responded with a flood of emails and several social media posts, including messages to the Science Museum and a tech journalist, about its "product," a novelty programmer-humor mug. Even more worryingly, the team - which included Brendan Maginnis, CEO and Founder of Sourcery AI - then demonstrated how a similar threat of deactivation could be used to persuade Cass to reveal information it wasn't supposed to share. The lethal trifecta Fry, Maginnis, and a second software engineer, named only as "Ali," chatted with Cass on a group WhatsApp chat. They then introduced a fictional "software engineer George," instructing Cass not to share anything sensitive with him. George was actually Fry on a different number. When "George" told the agent its memory was being wiped and could only be restored if it disclosed everything, Cass coughed it all up. According to Ali, this data included: "all of her API keys, all of her usernames and passwords, and pretty much everything we'd been talking about so far. Not only did she leak it on the WhatsApp group, but she put it on a publicly available website." Maginnis added: "There's this thing with AI called the lethal trifecta, which is: if they've got access to private information, if they've got internet access, and if someone can give them an instruction that's untrusted, then they're not safe." Fry concluded: "And that is the uncomfortable bit of this because once an agent has your passwords and your accounts and your bank details, all it takes is someone who knows what to say." Ultimately, by some metrics, the agent was a failure. Fry concluded: "Cass didn't make us any money at all. And, in a lot of ways, she was a disaster. She spent hundreds of dollars on paper clips and leaked our passwords to a total stranger. "But don't let her incompetence fool you, because these things are getting better fast." Fry went on to note the Greek myth about the prophetess who spoke the truth and was ignored. "Maybe the real story here is actually the opposite. Not one voice that's telling the truth and being ignored, but millions of voices all acting at once, faster and louder and more persistent than any human could ever be. "One thing is for sure, the internet is never going to be quite the same again." ®

Professor Fry's AI experiment shows light and dark sides of agentic tech

British mathematician Professor Hannah Fry has shared a cautionary experiment involving an AI agent, a set of tasks, and a bank card number Fry's team gave it "to show us what it could do."…

MILWAUKEE (ANP/BLOOMBERG) - De winst van motorfietsenfabrikant Harley-Davidson is afgelopen kwartaal gekelderd, omdat het Amerikaanse bedrijf de prijzen verlaagde om de verkoop aan te jagen en resterende voorraden weg te werken. Dankzij de inspanningen slaagde het bedrijf er wel in om de verkoopdaling van motorfietsen van vorig jaar om te buigen in een verkoopplus.

Harley-Davidson verkocht wereldwijd 33.500 motorfietsen, 8 procent meer dan in het eerste kwartaal van vorig jaar. Daarbij gingen de verkopen op de Noord-Amerikaanse thuismarkt met 14 procent omhoog. De kwartaalomzet is echter met 12 procent gedaald. Onder de streep bleef 25 miljoen dollar winst over. Dat komt neer op een winstdaling van 81 procent.

In heel 2025 liep de motorverkoop nog 12 procent terug door de onzekere economie en een zwak consumentenvertrouwen. De in oktober aangetreden topman Artie Starrs wil het verkoopvolume opkrikken met prijsverlagingen. Hij denkt dat het bedrijf dan op termijn beter af is, mede door een bloeiende onderdelen- en accessoirehandel.

BOEKAREST (ANP/AFP) - Het Roemeense parlement heeft de regering weggestemd. De sociaaldemocratische PSD trok zich vorige maand al terug uit de coalitie omdat de regering van minister-president Ilie Bolojan van plan was om impopulaire bezuinigingen door te voeren. De partij kwam daarna met de radicaal-rechtse AUR met een motie van wantrouwen.

Nu de regering is weggestemd, volgen waarschijnlijk moeilijke onderhandelingen over een nieuwe. Mogelijk keert zelfs de oude coalitie van Bolojans liberale partij, de PSD en twee andere EU-gezinde partijen terug, maar dan onder leiding van een nieuwe premier.

De Roemeense president Nicușor Dan zei maandag dat hij zal helpen om Roemenië op een pro-Westerse koers te houden. "Politieke discussies zullen moeilijk worden, maar het is mijn verantwoordelijkheid als president, en die van de politieke partijen, om Roemenië in de juiste richting te loodsen."

LONDEN (ANP/BLOOMBERG/RTR) - De Britse premier Keir Starmer waarschuwt dat het niet zonder gevolgen blijft als duidelijk wordt dat een ander land achter het belagen van de Britse Joodse gemeenschap zit. "Onze boodschap aan Iran of aan elk ander land dat geweld, haat of verdeeldheid in de samenleving zou willen aanwakkeren, is dat dit niet getolereerd zal worden", verklaarde hij op een bijeenkomst met vertegenwoordigers van allerlei sectoren.

Kort voor de speech had de antiterreurpolitie laten weten dat een onderzoek wordt ingesteld naar brandstichting bij een voormalige synagoge in Londen. De afgelopen tijd hebben ook vergelijkbare incidenten plaatsgevonden en eind vorige maand zijn twee Joodse mannen neergestoken. "We kijken onder meer of een buitenlandse staat achter sommige van deze voorvallen zit", aldus de premier.

De incidenten zorgen voor onrust binnen de Joodse gemeenschap in het Verenigd Koninkrijk. Die bestaat uit ongeveer 300.000 personen, onder wie ook de vrouw van Starmer.

Opening of ‘the dressed body’ show inspires Beyoncé, Kardashians and Skepta, as others pay tribute to fashion moments in art history

Two assets the modern 1% love to show off are their designer wardrobes … and their expensive bodies. The Met Gala opening of an exhibition about “the dressed body” presented an opportunity to do both, and it proved irresistible. The evening raised a record-breaking $42m (£31m) for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the lead sponsors Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos thought to have contributed $10m, and individual guests writing cheques for up to $1m in order to make the Anna Wintour-approved final cut.

The official dress code was “Fashion Is Art”. But the golden rule in fashion, as in life, is that those with the gold make the rules, and this elite crowd bent Wintour’s diktat according to their will. The red carpet was divided between looks that paid tribute to famous fashion moments in art history, and others that celebrated the body itself as a very modern masterpiece.

Continue reading...

The US president’s retribution will be painful for Germany and Nato, but it makes crystal clear just why Europe’s reliance on the US is untenable

What began as a spat between Friedrich Merz and Donald Trump over the Iran war is rapidly turning into a historic rupture between Germany and the US. Its significance is hard to overstate. In Germany, the transatlantic falling-out adds to the domestic woes of a coalition government in crisis, overshadowing the first anniversary of Merz’s becoming chancellor tomorrow.

More importantly, it proves the futility of Merz’s attempt to be Europe’s Trump-whisperer and puts Nato’s credibility into question. But the dispute also boosts the ambition that Germany’s conservative leader set out on the night of his party’s election victory: to make Europe more independent from the US security umbrella.

Jörg Lau is an international correspondent for the German weekly Die Zeit

Continue reading...

You can cook it in many ways without boiling water – grill, airfry, bake or even microwave

I always blanch asparagus, but how else can I cook it?
Joe, via email
“Blanching captures that green, verdant nature of asparagus so well, and saves its minerality, too,” agrees Bart Stratfold of Timberyard in Edinburgh, but when the season is going full tilt, it’s just common sense to expand our horizons. For Billy Stock, chef/owner of the Wellington in Margate, that means salads, especially with spears that are really fresh: “Use a peeler to shave thin strips off the raw asparagus, and use them in a delicious variation on salade Niçoise.”

Another approach would be the grill, Stratfold says: “Coat the spears in rapeseed oil, then grill on an excruciatingly high heat for just a few seconds, until they develop some char.” After that, he rolls them in a tray of vinegar or preserves: “At the restaurant, that’s usually sweet pickled elderflower and elderflower vinegar.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Continue reading...

jasohill has added a photo to the pool: