Google will begin deleting inactive Gmail, Photos and Drive accounts from next week, the technology giant has warned. The purge is part of a major update to the platform, impacting all personal Google accounts that have been left dormant for at least two years. Millions of accounts may be at risk of being permanently deleted, with some users warning that among those affected could be parents who have set up accounts to share memories and milestones with young children. Google has already begun warning users that might be impacted, saying in a blog post earlier this year that the policy would come into effect in December 2023. “We are updating our inactivity policy for Google Accounts to two years across our products,” Ruth Kricheli, Google’s vice president of product management, wrote in a blog post in May. “This update aligns our policy with industry standards around retention and account deletion and also limits the amount of time Google retains your unused personal information.” The move is aimed at protecting active Google users from security threats like phishing scams and account hijacking. Old accounts that have not been used for years are typically at risk from hackers as they may use the same passwords that have been compromised in other security breaches, which are easily available on the dark web. Any account at risk of deletion will receive “multiple notifications” before any action is taken, Google said, including to any associated recovery email addresses. The tech giant has already begun sending emails to those affected, telling users it is “to protect your private information and prevent any unauthorised access to your account even if you’re no longer using our services”. Losing access to a Gmail account could also potentially prevent people from using other online platforms and services that are associated with that email address, even if they are not related to Google. In order to keep an account active and avoid being deleted, Google users are advised to open or send an email, use Google Drive, download an app on the Google Play Store, or simply make a Google Search while logged in to the account. Any account that has posted a video to YouTube will also not be impacted, regardless of when it was last active. Google did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent, or offer any further information about how many accounts may be impacted. Read More WhatsApp warning over fee to keep old messages Why barcodes are about to check out forever Gmail users receive urgent warning before account purge Don’t believe your eyes: how tech is changing photography forever WhatsApp warning over fee to keep old messages

OpenAI researchers warned about a potentially dangerous artificial intelligence discovery ahead of CEO Sam Altman being ousted from the company, according to reports. Several staff members of the AI firm wrote a letter to the board of directors detailing the algorithm, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The disclosure was reportedly a key development in the build up to Mr Altman’s dismissal. Prior to his return late Tuesday, more than 700 employees had threatened to quit and join backer Microsoft in solidarity with their fired leader. The sources cited the letter as one factor among a longer list of grievances by the board leading to Altman’s firing, among which were concerns over commercialising advances before understanding the consequences. The staff who wrote the letter did not respond to requests for comment and Reuters was unable to review a copy of the letter. OpenAI declined to comment on the letter but acknowledged in an internal message to staffers a project called Q* and a letter to the board before the weekend’s events, one of the people said. An OpenAI spokesperson said that the message, sent by long-time executive Mira Murati, alerted staff to certain media stories without commenting on their accuracy. Some at OpenAI believe Q* (pronounced Q-Star) could be a breakthrough in the startup’s search for what’s known as artificial general intelligence (AGI), one of the people told Reuters. OpenAI defines AGI as autonomous systems that surpass humans in most economically valuable tasks. Given vast computing resources, the new model was able to solve certain mathematical problems, the person said on condition of anonymity because the individual was not authorised to speak on behalf of the company. Though only performing maths on the level of grade-school students, acing such tests made researchers very optimistic about Q*’s future success, the source said. Reuters could not independently verify the capabilities of Q* claimed by the researchers. Researchers consider maths to be a frontier of generative AI development. Currently, generative AI is good at writing and language translation by statistically predicting the next word, and answers to the same question can vary widely. But conquering the ability to do mathematics where there is only one right answer implies AI would have greater reasoning capabilities resembling human intelligence. This could be applied to novel scientific research, for instance, AI researchers believe. Unlike a calculator that can solve a limited number of operations, AGI can generalize, learn and comprehend. In their letter to the board, researchers flagged AI’s prowess and potential danger, the sources said without specifying the exact safety concerns noted in the letter. There has long been discussion among computer scientists about the danger posed by highly intelligent machines, for instance if they might decide that the destruction of humanity was in their interest. Researchers have also flagged work by an “AI scientist” team, the existence of which multiple sources confirmed. The group, formed by combining earlier “Code Gen” and “Math Gen” teams, was exploring how to optimise existing AI models to improve their reasoning and eventually perform scientific work, one of the people said. Altman led efforts to make ChatGPT one of the fastest growing software applications in history and drew investment – and computing resources – necessary from Microsoft to get closer to AGI. In addition to announcing a slew of new tools in a demonstration this month, Altman last week teased at a summit of world leaders in San Francisco that he believed major advances were in sight. “Four times now in the history of OpenAI, the most recent time was just in the last couple weeks, I’ve gotten to be in the room, when we sort of push the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward, and getting to do that is the professional honor of a lifetime,” he said at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, a day before he was fired by OpenAI’s board. Additional reporting from agencies. Read More 10 ways AI will change the world – from curing cancer to wiping out humanity YouTube reveals bizarre AI music experiments AI-generated faces are starting to look more real than actual ones One of the world’s most hyped tech products just launched – and made a big mistake

Sam Altman looks set to return triumphantly to OpenAI but questions still linger around why he was fired from the artificial-intelligence start-up in the first place.

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SpaceX’s Starship blew itself up in the air, Elon Musk’s private space company has said. Starship underwent its second flight test over the weekend, when the company attempted to send the rocket almost into orbit and then have it land in the ocean. It completed the first part of that mission – but disappeared around eight minutes into its flight. Now the company has confirmed that it lost data from the flight at that moment, which came near the end of the burn of the second stage of the rocket. At that point, the spacecraft used a “safe command destruct” that meant that it caused itself to explode in the air, the company said. It did not say why that had been issued, but did indicate that it had been “appropriately triggered based on available vehicle performance data”. SpaceX noted that until that moment the flight appeared to have been going as planned. The Super Heavy Booster on the bottom of the spacecraft completed a full burn for the first time, for instance, and the two pieces of Starship separated successfully. The booster also managed to flip after it had separated from the upper part of the rocket, SpaceX said. It started another burn then but then “experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly”, as SpaceX refers to explosions. That came three and a half minutes into the flight and happened around 90 kilometres above the Gulf of Mexico, SpaceX said. The company said that the explosions would prove useful in adjusting future builds of the Starship spacecraft. Before the flight it had explicitly said that the launch was intended as a test and could go wrong – and it reiterated that “while it didn’t happen in a lab or on a test stand, it was absolutely a test”. “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and this flight test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multiplanetary,” SpaceX said. “Data review is ongoing as we look for improvements to make for the next flight. The team at Starbase is already working final preparations on the vehicles slated for use in Starship’s third flight test, with Ship and Booster static fires coming up next.” Read More SpaceX launches “limitless” ‘zero fuel’ engine into space SpaceX hints next Starship launch attempt could be soon SpaceX launches world’s most powerful rocket – and then it disappears

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