Since 2017, Iason Gabriel has worked at the tech giant, trying to anticipate – and think through – the impact of AI. But as commercial and geopolitical pressures escalate, can ethicists make any difference?

In 2017, a 33-year-old political philosopher named Iason Gabriel was told by a friend that he ought to apply for a job at DeepMind, the London-based subsidiary of Google where much of its AI research was concentrated. The suggestion was not an obvious one.

Gabriel was a cheerful but intense junior academic with a passion for Vipassana meditation and what his brother calls “enthusiastic” rock climbing. The eldest son of a Greek management professor and a British documentary maker, Gabriel split his time between teaching and international development work. At the University of Oxford, where he was a fellow at St John’s College, Gabriel taught courses on political theory and wrote papers on the moral contortions of “yuppie ethics” and the ethical blind spots of effective altruism. When he wasn’t there, he did crisis work for the United Nations Development Programme in Sudan and Lebanon.

With bosses at the BBC prioritising social media platforms over radio, things feel apocalyptic at the broadcaster’s flagship news show – especially given the lack of diversity. Is this it?

For Radio 4’s Today programme, last week’s biggest story was off-air: a BBC News edict that the corporation’s correspondents should in future prioritise platforms such as TikTok and Instagram over traditional TV and radio franchises, including Today.

This policy serves to “chip away the relevance of Today to the life of the nation. This is an act of vandalism pure and simple,” foamed a show insider to the Guardian anonymously. (Although there is a lively media parlour game in guessing which presenter the quote most sounds like.)

Want to see some old wonders but don’t fancy forking out £33 for 40 minutes with a tapestry? Our critic celebrates the British treasures you can see all year round – from monstrous crypt carvings to the vaulting glory of our cathedrals

There’s a carved stone character grimacing furiously in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral and you can see why – a man is sitting on his head, legs apart, holding a fish and bowl in outstretched arms. Other figures perched atop slender stone columns include a creature with a serpent’s tail wrestling a dog-like monstrosity, a gryphon eating a siren, and a (now-detached) carving of a horned devil. All this nefariousness in the depths of England’s holiest shrine.

But then medieval British art is full of wonder, mystery and humour. It is also so abundant that it gets taken for granted. But now, after almost 1,000 years, it is about to have a moment. This week, the rush will begin to get £33 tickets to spend 40 minutes in the company of a medieval British artwork. The Bayeux Tapestry, a 70-metre embroidery depicting the Norman conquest of England in 1066, was almost certainly embroidered by Kent women to a commission by Bishop Odo of Bayeux in the 1070s.

Trusted by millions, the finance expert has seen his name and face used to mis-sell a string of fake investments. And yet, he says, it would be ‘very simple’ for the government to stop them

This month, an email from a consumer landed in Martin Lewis’s inbox. It was from an elderly woman with a disability who had been scammed when she invested in a scheme purportedly endorsed by Lewis – and lost her life savings. “THEY ARE BASTARDS!” Lewis wrote at the top of his social media post about it. Even though the personal finance expert is a veteran campaigner against fraud, he says he had “tears running down my face”. He still sounds upset. “I felt a mixture of frustration, anger and sadness.” Not only for the plight of the woman, but for the “constant, ongoing deluge of shit from the scammers”.

Lewis never advertises anything. To hammer home the point, his social media profile picture has the words “I don’t do ads” tattooed on his forehead. But still, people fall victim to deepfake videos and frauds that appear to show him offering investments. The scale of harm is great enough that MoneySavingExpert (MSE), the company Lewis founded in 2003 and sold in 2012 for up to £87m – he is now its executive chair – has someone full-time handling these cases.

In the second of a series on nationalisation, we look at the lessons from Clement Attlee’s administration

• Will Andy Burnham ‘go big’ in expanding the role of the state?

A prime minister with ambitious plans for state ownership. Private companies that put profits before investment. A country struggling with onerous debts.

The UK in 2026 with a new prime minister weighing up how and what price public utilities can be nationalised? No, this was Clement Attlee’s government in 1945, committed to taking over the commanding heights of the economy at a time when the country was on its uppers.

The country is dependent on the global giants that call Dublin home. Irish ministers can’t be trusted to chair vital European digital sovereignty talks

On the face of it, Ireland behaves like a good European by being a staunch advocate of human rights and a beacon of progressivism on the western edge of the continent. But there is one vital area in which its record is less than perfect – one that should cause concern when the Irish government takes over the rotating six-month presidency of the EU on 1 July. The EU’s tech and AI rulebook will be renegotiated during the same period, but the Irish state and economy have been captured by big tech. Ireland is so compromised that as president of the Council of the EU, it should recuse itself from all tech and digital sovereignty negotiations.

The last time Ireland held the EU presidency was in 2013, during negotiations on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). A leaked Facebook memo describes a 2013 meeting where the company’s executives met Ireland’s then prime minister to complain about the proposed data privacy rules. They left understanding they had Enda Kenny’s assurance that Ireland would use its “significant influence” as EU Council president to deliver what Facebook called a “positive outcome”. The executives also attended “a dinner hosted by senior Irish politicians to work through the various ways that the Irish could be helpful”.

Johnny Ryan is director of Enforce, a unit of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties

Starmer defence spending cannot be ‘bottomless pit and MoD has to ‘spend better’

Keir Starmer is speaking now.

They are at Malloy Aeronautics, a firm that designs heavy-lift drones, and Starmer says this morning they showed him one of the heaviest drones he had ever seen.

Last year, I made the decision in the national interest to reprioritise aid spending towards defence and achieve the biggest uplift in defence spending since the end of the cold war.

That was the right choice because the world has changed. National security is economic security.

Expected next prime minister focuses on restoring faith in politics, cost of living and devolution in major speech

• What is Andy Burnham’s economic and political blueprint for Britain?

Andy Burnham has set out his blueprint to transform the UK with a promise to improve living standards and restore faith in politics through the “biggest rebalancing of power our country has ever seen”.

The person widely expected to be the next prime minister said the current system was “broken” and that “more of the same” would not be enough to tackle the significant challenges faced by the country.

A long-term ambition of greater public control of essential services such as water, housing, energy and transport to help curb the cost of living.

A No 10 North hub to oversee the distribution of power and resources from Whitehall across the country, which the Guardian revealed would be run by his former chief executive in Manchester.

The biggest council housing building programme since the postwar period, and a high street “renaissance” through reform of business rates.

Rebalancing an education system that he said had been too focused on the university route and putting academic and technical courses on an equal footing.

Emily Barley, founder of Maternity Safety Alliance, says recommendation in Amos report will not solve wider cultural problems

The appointment of a national maternity commissioner would be “fundamentally dangerous”, a bereaved mother who founded a maternity safety campaign group has warned.

Emily Barley, whose daughter Beatrice died because of failings at Barnsley hospital in 2022, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the recommendation for a maternity commissioner in England in the Amos review was “not going to do what we need to move maternity safety forwards”.

Maternity triage services – the childbirth equivalent of A&E – need an urgent overhaul, including more staff on duty, so that women’s concerns are acted on more quickly.

Families should get the right to seek a fresh, independent investigation when things go wrong if they are not happy with the hospital’s own inquiry.

The NHS’s “brutal” and “cruel” system of agreeing compensation with harmed and bereaved families should be replaced by a new process in which hospitals admit errors immediately.

The NHS must root out racism and discrimination that is “embedded throughout the maternity and neonatal system”.

Energy system operator says sum needed to deliver clean power targets while meeting rising demand is up by 50%

The cost of rewiring Great Britain’s electricity networks through the 2030s is now 50% higher than before the Labour government came to power, and could reach almost £90bn in the next decade, according to the energy system operator.

Building new high-voltage transmission lines and infrastructure to connect low-carbon energy to the grid in the 2030s was initially forecast by the energy system operator to cost £58bn.