Tag Archives: World news

US allies lack resources to keep pace on AI, top Pentagon official says | US military | The Guardian

News, News around the world, , , , ,

Keyword – US news
Trefwoorden – US military, AI (artificial intelligence), US news, World news, Technology, Computing
Title – US allies lack resources to keep pace on AI, top Pentagon official says | US military | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/joseph-gedeon
Link – US allies lack resources to keep pace on AI, top Pentagon official says | US military | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-09T10:00:05.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/09/us-military-pentagon-allies-ai

The Pentagon’s top artificial intelligence official said on Tuesday that America’s closest allies lack the resources to keep pace with the US military’s adoption of AI, and that Washington is working to steer them away from mistakes it made along the way.

“They don’t have the resources that we do, they don’t have the experience that we do, they don’t have the scale that we do,” Cameron Stanley, chief digital and artificial intelligence officer at the Department of War, said at an event at the Billington Cybersecurity summit. Of Nato and the Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing partnership of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Stanley said Washington was “actively working with a number of our partners” so “they don’t make the same mistakes that we make”.

The comments come less than a year into Stanley’s tenure, during which the Pentagon’s AI office has rolled out several new tools while losing a number of senior staff. Since January, Stanley has overseen the launch of GenAI.mil, an internal chatbot platform he says has reached 1.7 million users, and Agent Network, a system designed to shorten the time between intelligence-gathering and a commander’s decision. Pentagon secretary Pete Hegseth has directed Stanley’s office to report AI deployment speed as a monthly metric, part of a wider push to expand military computing power.

Much of Stanley’s appearance focused on speed. He described watching a commander halt a scheduled briefing to take a 30-second phone call and issue an order on the spot, without a formal decision brief or a review of the room’s security clearance level. He called the moment “revolutionary”.

“I know it sounds simplistic,” Stanley explained. “It’s only simplistic because we’re good at it now.”

It’s a term he has used before. Project Maven, the Pentagon’s original AI targeting program launched in 2017, became the Palantir-built Maven Smart System, which the US leaned on heavily during its 2026 air campaign against Iran, helping strike more than 13,000 targets over the first 38 days , according to Stanley at conference in May. Speaking at Palantir’s AIPCon 9 conference in March , Stanley called Maven “revolutionary” too, saying it let commanders go from identifying a target to launching a strike within a single platform.

But the campaign has drawn scrutiny . More than 120 members of the US Congress signed a letter demanding answers from the Pentagon regarding civilian casualties and the use of artificial intelligence, following a 28 February strike on an elementary school in Minab, which Iranian officials say killed at least 168 people, many of them children.

Stanley ended by telling the audience that the department’s old habits were now its biggest liability.

“The way we’ve always done it is the most risky course of action,” he said, adding that the department needs to “think differently” if it wants AI tools in the hands of warfighters faster.

Yuja review – portrait of star pianist who is intellectually curious and deeply musically attuned | Film | The Guardian

Culture, , , , , , , , ,

Keyword – Film
Trefwoorden – Film, Documentary films, Music documentary, Yuja Wang, Classical music, Culture, Music, China, Asia Pacific, World news
Title – Yuja review – portrait of star pianist who is intellectually curious and deeply musically attuned | Film | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/lesliefelperin
Link – Yuja review – portrait of star pianist who is intellectually curious and deeply musically attuned | Film | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-09T08:00:04.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/sep/09/yuja-review-portrait-of-star-pianist-who-is-intellectually-curious-and-deeply-musically-attuned

A s well as her film about her own difficult teenage years , British director Lorna Tucker is probably best known for her documentaries on famous women with big personalities: Vivienne Westwood ( Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist ), Katharine Hepburn (Call Me Kate) and Greta Garbo ( Garbo: Where Did You Go? ). Her latest subject, pianist Yuja Wang, is another high-achiever – but not someone with quite the same name recognition unless you’re a devotee of classical music, a field in which she is ranked among the very best alive. Wang certainly has a flamboyant side, expressed in her highly expressive, virtuoso performances and her sartorial style on stage. In fact some shocking pull quotes illustrate how her dress sense has been bizarrely over-examined in the press; she has been likened to a stripper for her outfits, and the New Yorker, of all publications, once described her as “fat” , which hardly seems germane to any discussion of her ability to play Tchaikovsky or Ligeti.

But Wang’s biography and the texture of her daily life are very different from that of Tucker’s previous subjects. She was a child prodigy from an artistic Beijing family who came of age just in time to break records for views on YouTube. Sure, her life here looks glamorous in one way, with a lush New York apartment she barely ever sees because she’s constantly on the road. But her life is also one of perpetual practice and striving for perfection, the loneliness of the long-distance soloist. It’s a regimen that leaves almost no time for relationships or family, or even many friendships with peers who understand what she is going through – apart from a few mentors or collaborators such as fellow pianist Emanuel Ax or composer Teddy Abrams, with whom she recently won a Grammy. Still, she comes across as an effervescent character, intellectually curious and deeply attuned to the music she plays.

This film doesn’t necessarily rise to the same level of technical perfection, but the cinematography by Seamus McGarvey is full of unexpected reflections and lovely slanting light falling through rooms towards dusk. In the interludes where Wang plays an assortment of pieces (while those pull quotes appear onscreen) there is more abstract imagery – out of focus sunlight, dappling water, drone shots of assorted landscapes – that is a bit screensaver chic, but it’s the music that counts in the end, and that’s divine.

Yuja is in UK cinemas from 11 September.

‘Out of reach’: George Russell refuses to think about F1 title after Antonelli surge | George Russell | The Guardian

News around the world,

Keyword – Sport
Trefwoorden – George Russell, Formula One 2026, Formula One, Mercedes GP, Motor sport, Sport
Title – ‘Out of reach’: George Russell refuses to think about F1 title after Antonelli surge | George Russell | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/luke-mclaughlin
Link – ‘Out of reach’: George Russell refuses to think about F1 title after Antonelli surge | George Russell | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-11T18:37:09.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/jun/11/george-russell-kimi-antonelli-formula-one-title-race-mercedes

George Russell insists the pressure is off in the battle for the Formula One drivers’ championship. A succession of mishaps – combined with the exemplary form of his Mercedes teammate , Kimi Antonelli – has left him 68 points off the pace.

Sunday’s round seven is the newly styled Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, with the Spanish Grand Prix shifting to a new venue in Madrid in September. Mercedes are expected to excel again this weekend, but it is the 19-year-old Antonelli who has established a firm grip on the drivers’ championship after five consecutive victories .

Russell’s latest misfortune arrived in Monaco on Sunday when he was one of five drivers penalised for speeding in the pit lane. That was magnified when his initial five-second penalty was incorrectly observed and he received a further drive-through punishment. Russell finished 12th as Antonelli delivered a flawless drive to extend his championship lead, while Lewis Hamilton moved into second for Ferrari.

“The pressure feels off,” Russell said on Thursday. “I’m going to try to enjoy every race, not even think about the championship: it’s so far out of reach. It’s just going to enjoy the races and have fun, drive fast and do what I know I’m capable of doing. That’s what I’m excited for.”

Russell was more upbeat than after Sunday’s travails, when he said he was “beyond frustration”. The 28-year-old led the Canadian GP last month, but was forced to retire when his battery failed and also suffered costly bad luck in China and Japan in March.

“It has been very tough,” Russell said of dealing with Sunday’s disappointment in particular. “But when I’ve sat down and thought about this season as a whole – if it was just a neutral season, I think I’d have had three more podiums and it would have been five out of six races on the podium, maybe a couple of wins, two out of three sprint race victories.

“I’d probably be slightly behind Kimi, but the picture is totally different. Now I’m going to do every race to try to control the controllables. I can’t do anything about the engine breaking down, I can’t do anything about a bad safety car timing or this pit lane infringement situation. That is out of my control.”

Alpine were the only team to appeal against the pit lane speeding penalties after Pierre Gasly was denied a place on the podium, and on Thursday two elements of their case were ruled admissible by the FIA, with a final decision expected on Friday.

Gasly described losing third in Monaco as “the hardest day I’ve had in F1 and in my sport career”, but with new evidence suggesting the speed measurements may have been inaccurate he could yet be reinstated to third, with Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar currently occupying that place.

Meanwhile, the FIA have announced that Pirelli will remain the single tyre supplier for Formula One until 2028.