The Interface

<p>This week on The Interface: is World Cup tech taking the human magic out of football?</p><p>For our season finale before the summer break, Karen, Thomas and Nicky start with the World Cup - and ask what happens when football becomes a showcase for ever more technology. This year’s tournament has brought referee body cameras, faster semi-automated offside decisions, and more AI-powered match analysis for teams and broadcasters, all in the name of accuracy, transparency and engagement. But as

<p>This week on The Interface: the UK’s under-16s social media ban - is America next?</p><p>The UK is preparing to go further than almost any other country on children and social media: under-16s will be blocked from platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook and X, while messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal are expected to be excluded. Ministers are also considering overnight curfews and limits on infinite scroll for under-18s, with implementation targeted for spring

<p>This week on The Interface: is AI quietly sending your CV to the graveyard?</p><p>Karen starts with the growing role of AI in hiring and why it may be far more powerful, and more worrying, than most jobseekers realise. Automated hiring systems are now used across large parts of the labour market, and Stanford researchers say a handful of dominant models are creating an “algorithmic monoculture”, where the same software can shape outcomes across multiple employers. Their recent study of more t

<p>This week on The Interface: the horrifying world of the TikTok Farlands.</p><p>Tom and Nicky head deep into the TikTok Farlands - the semi‑mythical place you supposedly reach if you scroll too far, too late, until your feed stops looking normal and starts serving up surreal, eerie and deeply unhinged videos. The name comes from Minecraft’s Far Lands, the glitched edge of the map where the world used to break apart, and TikTok users have borrowed it to describe the “end of the algorithm”: a st

<p>Google is changing up its search engine. At its recent developer conference, among a host of new AI tools, it announced the biggest changes to Google Search in its history. What will we see now? An intelligent search box. Longer text predictions. More answers to search queries instead of a list of websites. But if Google keeps us inside the answer box, with fewer clicks and fewer website visits, this could potentially break the economic model of the modern web. How will this change the Intern

<p>Karen Hao’s away this week — but it’s a special episode: Thomas and Nicky welcome their first ever guest, senior reporter at MS NOW, Brandy Zadrozny, to decode the tech stories rewiring your week and your world.</p><p>First: are we heading for a world without screens? Bloomberg reports Apple is in late‑stage testing of AirPods with tiny cameras - not for selfies, but to give Siri “eyes” so it can understand what you’re looking at and respond in real time. We explore what that signals: less ph

<p>AI is coming for your job — but not in the way you think.</p><p>Karen says the real shock isn’t mass replacement (yet). It’s that AI is already reshaping work into something more precarious, more fragmented, and easier to squeeze. Data annotation and “AI training” are booming - but now the growth is in skilled labour. AI firms are hoovering up graduates and specialists to teach models the expertise they still can’t reliably produce. That’s the uncomfortable irony of “PhD‑capable” AI: to get t

<p>Who is paying for the influencer campaign making you fear Chinese AI? A new report alleges a coordinated influencer marketing campaign urging audiences to back “American AI” while quietly stoking fear about Chinese AI. Marketing agencies are reportedly offering creators thousands of dollars per post to weave in “Team USA” talking points as lifestyle content - with limited transparency about who is funding the message, and why. We dig into what this means for AI policy, public trust, and the i