:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/Meghan-Markle-with-family-051126-d5c784a798964bc6aead1d58e04b8d3b.jpg "<p>Meghan Markle/Instagram (2)</p>")
© <p>Meghan Markle/Instagram (2)</p>
Microsoft, Google DeepMind and xAI products to be vetted for cybersecurity, biosecurity and chemical weapons risks
The US government has struck deals with Google DeepMind, Microsoft and xAI to review early versions of their new AI models before they are released to the public.
The Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), part of the US Department of Commerce, announced the agreements on Tuesday, saying the review process would be key to understanding the capabilities of new and powerful AI models as well as to protecting US national security. These collaborations will help the federal government “scale (its) work in the public interest at a critical moment”, the agency said in a press release.
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© Photograph: J David Ake/Getty Images
© Photograph: J David Ake/Getty Images
© Photograph: J David Ake/Getty Images
Exclusive: Worker pointed to Iran war and Pentagon’s Anthropic feud as indications the department is ‘not a responsible partner’
Workers developing Google’s artificial intelligence products in the UK have voted to unionize, in part out of concerns about a deal between the company and the US military that was announced last week.
In a letter slated to go to management on Tuesday and shared exclusively with the Guardian, workers at Google DeepMind, the company’s AI research laboratory, requested recognition of the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as joint representatives of the lab’s UK-based staff.
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© Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
© Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
© Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(jpeg)/prince-louise-050623-e6175f3ed6484c8aabe8dcd22b1a228f.jpg "Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty")
© Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty
Exclusive: Varun Chandra’s talks with Google, Meta, Apple and others raise fears of ‘lobbying behind closed doors’
An influential government adviser close to Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves held 16 undisclosed meetings with top US tech executives, the Guardian can reveal.
The No 10 business aide Varun Chandra discussed regulatory changes, AI and Donald Trump’s second administration with tech corporations during confidential meetings between October 2024 and October 2025. In one meeting he offered to help a top executive meet the prime minister directly.
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© Photograph: Steve Back/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Steve Back/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Steve Back/Shutterstock
By Tenzin Woeden
Tibetans outside Chinese control vote on Sunday for a government-in-exile, an election of heightened significance as they brace for an inevitable, eventual, future without their revered spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
The India-based Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) — condemned by China as “nothing but a separatist political group” — is a key institution for the exiles, especially after the Dalai Lama handed over political power in 2011.
“Our votes matter,” said Tenzin Tsering, 19, a first-time voter waiting to cast his ballot to push for greater youth representation.
“We need voices that reflect where our community is going, not just where it has been”, he said, speaking in Bylakuppe in India’s southern state of Karnataka, one of the largest Tibetan communities outside the Himalayan plateau.
Polling is due to take place in 27 countries — but not China.
The 91,000 registered voters include Buddhist monks in the high Himalayas, political exiles in South Asia’s megacities and refugees in Australia, Europe and North America.
The 90-year-old Dalai Lama, based in India since fleeing the Tibetan capital Lhasa after Chinese troops crushed an uprising in 1959, insists he has many more years to live.
But supporters of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate are acutely aware that self-declared atheist and Communist China said last year that it must approve the Buddhist leader’s eventual successor.
The Dalai Lama says only his India-based office has that right.
Tibetan Buddhists believe he is the 14th reincarnation of a spiritual leader first born in 1391.
The five-year parliament, which sits twice a year, has 45 members from across the world: 30 representing three traditional provinces, 10 representing five religious traditions and five representing the diaspora.
Headquartered in Dharamsala in northern India, it functions as a representative body for an estimated 150,000 Tibetans living in exile worldwide.
Lines of red robed monks and nuns lined up to vote in the Indian hill town on Sunday.
The government’s “sikyong”, or leader, Penpa Tsering, was elected for a second term on February 1, after taking 61 percent in the preliminary round — a high enough threshold to win outright.
Tsering, like the government, does not seek full independence for Tibet, in line with the Dalai Lama’s long-standing “Middle Way” policy seeking autonomy.
Exiled voters represent only a fraction of ethnic Tibetans — whom the CTA estimates at six million worldwide, compared with more than seven million China counted in its 2020 census.
Beijing, which in 1950 sent troops to the vast high-altitude plateau it calls an integral part of China, has condemned the elections as a “farce”.
Its foreign ministry calls the exiled government an “illegal organisation that completely violates the Chinese constitution and laws”.
Among younger voters, some were worried at the perceived underrepresentation of Tibet’s next generation in the corridors of the exile government.
“I want to see fresh faces, leaders who represent the potential of young Tibetans,” said 25-year-old Tenzin Pema, expressing her weariness at the sometimes divisive arguments between older political leaders.
More than half of voters, about 56,000, live in India, Nepal and Bhutan.
The remaining 34,000 are scattered around the world, including roughly 12,000 in North America — including New York and Toronto — and 8,000 in Europe, including Paris, Geneva, Zurich and London.
Results are expected on May 13.
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