You wouldn’t use a chatbot for evil, would you? Of course not. But if you or some nefarious party wanted to force an AI model to start churning out a bunch of bad stuff it’s not supposed to, it’d be surprisingly easy to do so.
That’s according to a new paperfrom a team of computer scientists at Ben-Gurion University, who found that the AI industry’s leading chatbots are still extremely vulnerable to jailbreaking, or being tricked into giving harmful responses they’re designed not to — like telling you how to build chemical weapons, for one ominous example.
The key word in that is “still,” because this a threat the AI industry has long known about. And yet, shockingly, the researchers found in their testing that a jailbreak technique discovered over seven months ago still works on many of these leading LLMs.
The risk is “immediate, tangible, and deeply concerning,” they wrote in the report, which was spotlighted recently by The Guardian — and is deepened by the rising number of “dark LLMs,” they say, that are explicitly marketed as having little to no ethical guardrails to begin with.
“What was once restricted to state actors or organized crime groups may soon be in the hands of anyone with a laptop or even a mobile phone,” the authors warn.
The challenge of aligning AI models, or adhering them to human values, continues to loom over the industry. Even the most well-trained LLMs can behave chaotically, lying and making up facts and generally saying what they’re not supposed to. And the longer these models are out in the wild, the more they’re exposed to attacks that try to incite this bad behavior.
Security researchers, for example, recently discovered auniversal jailbreak technique that could bypass the safety guardrails of all the major LLMs, including OpenAI’s GPT 4o, Google’s Gemini 2.5, Microsoft’s Copilot, and Anthropic Claude 3.7. By using tricks like roleplaying as a fictional character, typing in leetspeak, and formatting prompts to mimic a “policy file” that AI developers give their AI models, the red teamers goaded the chatbots into freely giving detailed tips on incredibly dangerous activities, including how to enrich uranium and create anthrax.
Other research found that you could get an AI to ignore its guardrails simply by throwing in typos, random numbers, and capitalized letters into a prompt.
One big problem the report identifies is just how much of this risky knowledge is embedded in the LLM’s vast trove of training data, suggesting that the AI industry isn’t being diligent enough about what it uses to feed their creations.
“It was shocking to see what this system of knowledge consists of,” lead author Michael Fire, a researcher at Ben-Gurion University, told the Guardian.
“What sets this threat apart from previous technological risks is its unprecedented combination of accessibility, scalability and adaptability,” added his fellow author Lior Rokach.
Fire and Rokach say they contacted the developers of the implicated leading LLMs to warn them about the universal jailbreak. Their responses, however, were “underwhelming.” Some didn’t respond at all, the researchers reported, and others claimed that the jailbreaks fell outside the scope of their bug bounty programs.
In other words, the AI industry is seemingly throwing its hands up in the air.
“Organizations must treat LLMs like any other critical software component — one that requires rigorous security testing, continuous red teaming and contextual threat modelling,” Peter Garraghan, an AI security expert at Lancaster University, told the Guardian. “Real security demands not just responsible disclosure, but responsible design and deployment practices.”
After selling out its first run in less than four minutes late last year, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and the Telepathic Instruments team are making 3,000 additional units available of their bespoke musical instrument, Orchid, beginning May 29. The product is aimed at helping users easily generate chords as a means to aid the compositional and creative processes.
The 12-note keyboard was “originally conceived as a tool for Parker’s own songwriting” more than a decade ago. It contains a patent-pending chord voicing engine, three separate synthesizer emulators (a polyphonic virtual analog subtractive synth, an FM synth and a vintage reed piano emulation inspired by a famous 1960s electric piano), a MIDI out port, built-in speakers and a rechargeable battery, while modes such as Strum, Slop, Arpeggiator, Pattern and Harp allow for adding numerous human touches.
Initial users have been able to “shape and refine” the instrument through an online community dubbed the Garden in tandem with Patreon, leading to the inclusion of 10 new sounds, an improved loop mode and numerous bug fixes and UX refinements. Those interested in purchasing an Orchid this time around must follow the Garden for instructions.
Telepathic is also launching Telepathic Studios to help artists develop their songwriting processes with the help of Orchid. Sessions are set in London from May 23-24 and will also be held later this year in Los Angeles. Among the musicians already using Orchid are Gracie Abrams, Fred again.. and Murda Beats.
Tame Impala hasn’t performed since March 2023, and Parker has spent the time since focusing on songwriting and production work for artists such as Dua Lipa and Justice.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
Our friends at Amateur Photographer are hosting a Festival of Outdoor Photography at the Royal Geographical Society in South Kensington, London, UK from May 30 to June, 1 2025 – and you could win tickets to the event.
Our friends at Amateur Photographer are hosting a Festival of Outdoor Photography at the Royal Geographical Society in South Kensington, London, UK from May 30 to June, 1 2025 – and you could win tickets to the event.
The event will include inspiring talks, photo walks, hands-on workshops and other interactive activities covering everything to do with outdoor photography.
Confirmed expert speakers include wildlife and bird photography experts Tesni Ward, Rachel Bigsby and Tim Flach, renowned landscape photographers Liam Man and Quintin Lake, street specialists Nick Turpin and Damien Demolder.
Plus there’s Chris Coe and Bella Falk on travel and Peter Dench talking about documentary photography.
The event takes place at the Royal Geographical Society in London’s South Kensington museum district. So whether you’re an experienced photographer looking to refine your skills or a budding enthusiast eager to explore the world of outdoor photography, each day will cover a wide range of expertise and interests.
Amateur Photographer magazine is the UK’s biggest-selling photography magazine. First published in October 1884, it holds the distinction of being the world’s oldest consumer photography magazine at over 140 years old. It remains the only printed weekly photo magazine.
Festival of Outdoor Photography key details
Dates: Friday May 30 – Sunday June 1, 2025
Location: The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), 1 Kensington Gore, London, England – SW7 2AR
Ticket prices before discount: 1 day £50, 2 days £80, 3 days £100
The competition closes on 26/05/25 and the winner for each will be drawn and notified before the event.
No cash alternative.
The prize is not transferable.
The prize from Kelsey Media Ltd, publishers of Amateur Photographer, is valid for the 3-day (Fri-Sun) Festival of Outdoor Photography, taking place at the Royal Geographical Society in London on May 30 to June 1, 2025.
Entrants to the prize draw consent to Kelsey Publishing Ltd receiving their contact details in order to select a winner.
Employees of Kelsey Media Ltd and any other persons or employees of companies associated with this Competition and members of the families and households of any such persons, are not eligible to enter this Competition. Any such entries will be invalid.
“In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about, and has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.
“Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us, raise your voices against the authoritarianism, and let freedom ring.”
Springsteen’s comments due ire from President Trump, who described him as “highly overrated” and “dumb as a rock”, later accusing him of participating in an “illegal election scam” for Kamala Harris.
The tracklisting for the EP is:
Land Of Hope And Dreams (introduction) LAnd Of Hope And Dreams Long Walk Home My City Of Ruins (introduction) My City Of Ruins Chimes Of Freedom
On 1975’s Expansions, American jazz musician and composer Lonnie Liston Smith took the big leap. It’s an album that’s rightly feted as key to a very open, dynamic form of jazz-funk fusion, one that’s less about tricksy musicianship, more about texture, space and groove. Of course, the various players that joined Smith – the members of his band, the Cosmic Echoes – were excellent musicians in their own right, but the joy of Expansions is its subordination of ego, the way the players are all in service to the rhizomatic flow of the seven songs here, whether vamping on a groove, or pivoting around a riff or simple, see-sawing chord change.
On 1975’s Expansions, American jazz musician and composer Lonnie Liston Smith took the big leap. It’s an album that’s rightly feted as key to a very open, dynamic form of jazz-funk fusion, one that’s less about tricksy musicianship, more about texture, space and groove. Of course, the various players that joined Smith – the members of his band, the Cosmic Echoes – were excellent musicians in their own right, but the joy of Expansions is its subordination of ego, the way the players are all in service to the rhizomatic flow of the seven songs here, whether vamping on a groove, or pivoting around a riff or simple, see-sawing chord change.
Expansions was both popular in its own time while having ongoing influence on British dance music. The former makes some degree of sense – in the mid-’70s, an album like this could well have offered succour to various subcultures, licking their wounds after the social and cultural battles that played out across the late ’60s and early ’70s. Dialling down the intensity of free jazz, reintroducing subtle groove and sensuality into the music’s sway, Expansions chimed in with a post-countercultural embrace of fusion, world music and funk. It’s no surprise, hearing the lambent trickle of a song like “Desert Nights”, to discover Smith had done time with Miles Davis.
That Expansions would become so significant to British dance music through the decades is perhaps more surprising. This narrative is detailed with admirable clarity by Frank Tope in the liner notes to this 50th-anniversary reissue, where Tope traces Expansions’ trail of influence, from cratedigging Northern Soul fiends to vanguard jungle producers – it was, after all, sampled by drum’n’bass legend Roni Size. While it wasn’t ignored at home – David Mancuso played the album at his legendary nightclub The Loft – Expansions really found its audience, and sustained influence, across various generations of British club culture.
Smith’s own journey to Expansions was remarkable in itself. Born in Richmond, Virginia, into a musical family – his father was a successful gospel singer in The Harmonizing Four – Smith made his name after relocating to New York, firstly playing piano with Betty Carter, then, in quick succession, Roland Kirk, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and with Max Roach. But he really came into his own in the late ’60s, as a member of Pharoah Sanders’ group – he appeared on the latter’s incredible run of albums, Karma, Jewels Of Thought and Thembi – across which time he discovered the Fender Rhodes, contributing ecstatic playing to some of the most oceanic, hypnotic free jazz of the era.
In the early ’70s, Smith played both with the idiosyncratic Argentinian saxophonist Gato Barbieri, and with Miles Davis’ ensemble, where he was pushed to learn the electric organ in record time: you can hear him across On The Corner, and briefly on Big Fun. Smith’s first few albums with the Cosmic Echoes, 1973’s Astral Traveling and the following year’s Cosmic Funk fit this context neatly: he borrows both the abstract freedoms of Sanders and the amorphous, unsettled moods of Davis’ ’70s output, setting them down in a becalmed space. This befits a desire for unity and oneness borne of spiritual search: he’d been introduced to Sufism by Sun Ra saxophonist John Gilmore and would bump into Ra or John Coltrane at New York occult bookstore, Weiser’s Antiquarian.
Expansions is where everything Smith had been looking for in his music came to full fruition. It’s remarkably assured without seeming cocky about it – you can hear that the players are tuned into each other. Part of what makes it work so well is the threshing of percussion that rumbles and barrels through the album – on the opening title song, a chiming triangle, burbling bongo and conga, and a fiercely disciplined groove push the song, while strange, gaseous synth drones spill across the song like an oil slick. Smith’s brother Donald sings of peace for mankind – if there’s one limitation on Expansions, it’s that the lyrics can feel a bit like overly vague proclamations – as a rangy flute skips through the stereo spectrum.
Much of the music moves at a similar pace, though things dial down for the melancholy “Peace”. You can hear the influence of James Brown in the way the rhythms feel tight and loose, somehow, simultaneously; Cecil McBee’s bass walks and prowls through the songs, often taking on the role of melodic motif. The overarching sense here, though, is one of the music lapping against the shores, of the listener – and the musicians, for that matter – either lost in an aquatic reverie, sometimes coming to rest in a shady arbour, other times shooting out into the cosmic void. It’s heavenly – and yes, an expansive drift indeed.
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This doesn’t seem like a very Lou Reed kind of place. We’re in Cleveland, Ohio – but it’s not so much the location that’s in question as the occasion. This, in 2015, is the induction ceremony of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, which has posthumously accepted Lou as a member.
Patti Smith has just presented the award to Laurie Anderson, and now Laurie begins a gracious 13 minute speech which seems to guess what we’re thinking and tells us that actually we’re wrong: Lou would have loved all this. Maybe that’s hard to square, knowing what we know about the confrontational character who appears in so many of the interviews in this magazine. Lou Reed? Among the industry backslapping?
But Anderson continues, and she would know. Lou would love to have taken his place alongside heroes of his. Artists like Otis Redding, Dion and Doc Pomus. Musicians who he never tired of checking out, like BB King. They’re not all inductees themselves, but let’s also consider the great artists that Lou played with, or championed, or was friends with! We’re talking Ornette Coleman, Metallica, Anonhi, Hal Willner…
As you’ll read in the pages of this 148-page deluxe edition, released to celebrate 60 years (almost to the day) of Lou’s mature songwriting, surprise was one of the key elements of Reed’s career. Whether it was the influential sedition of his early songwriting, his unexpected rebirth as a pop star via the intervention of David Bowie, the adversarial, unexplained soundworld of Metal Machine Music, through to Lulu, his album with Metallica and his last ambient works, his was a career to keep you on the edge of your seat.
Outside of the music there was clearly a lot going on. For all Laurie Anderson’s efforts to posthumously rehabilitate Reed as a dog lover, Tai chi master and amateur watch repairer, loving partner, family member and electronics whiz, we’re still compelled by the jaggedness of the man. The horrifying onstage schtick. The interviews that make your blood run cold. It’s rage-filled, often misanthropic and it’s complicated.
But that’s got to be part of the point. Would anyone want a Lou Reed story which wraps everything up, which has a traceable arc, of learnings and enrichment? That’s not how it ever is, and the raw, truthful version is we hope to bring you here, a presentation of what – however turbulent – we’ve learned.
And what we’re still learning. These days, Lou’s archives (his tapes, his doo wop records, college accreditations, and clippings archive; his swords, but not his hats) are in the special collections department of New York Public Library. One of the most interesting artefacts to be discovered, however, may have been one of the first, found behind Lou’s work desk.
That’s the dated tape of original compositions which their composer has had notarised to assert his copyright. The recordings are sketchy versions, played alongside John Cale, of what will over the next two years become Velvet Underground staples, then classics; songs which will draw disciples to their sonic intrigue and dark intimations.
“Words and music, Lou Reed,” says the writer before he and Cale begin another. It doesn’t seem like a very Lou Reed kind of mood, but they seem to be having a blast.
It begins with 56 seconds of sequencers going haywire, a warning siren from the heart of the cosmos. Then, after a few ominous organ chords, a wise and familiar voice emanates from the speakers. “The numbing is not working any more,” intones Laetitia Sadier, articulating the current sense that everything has ceased to function – even the drugs designed to keep us distracted and supine. “Thirsty is the fear of death… We can’t drink our way out of it.” By this point in the song – entitled “Aerial Troubles” – a typically irresistible yé-yé groove has kicked in and the moribund state of our society in 2025 feels like something to be solved rather than lamented.
It begins with 56 seconds of sequencers going haywire, a warning siren from the heart of the cosmos. Then, after a few ominous organ chords, a wise and familiar voice emanates from the speakers. “The numbing is not working any more,” intones Laetitia Sadier, articulating the current sense that everything has ceased to function – even the drugs designed to keep us distracted and supine. “Thirsty is the fear of death… We can’t drink our way out of it.” By this point in the song – entitled “Aerial Troubles” – a typically irresistible yé-yé groove has kicked in and the moribund state of our society in 2025 feels like something to be solved rather than lamented.
Stereolab have always been a political band. Back in 1994, “Ping Pong” came close to smuggling a scathing critique of boom-and-bust economics into the Top 40. “French Disko” was an empowering resistance anthem, declaring that “Acts of rebellious solidarity/Can bring sense in this world”. Even Dots And Loops’ “Refractions In The Plastic Pulse”, the dreamy centrepiece of their recent live shows, drew on the libertarian socialist philosophy of Cornélius Castoriadis to insist that alternative futures are possible. Sometimes it feels as though this aspect of the Stereolab oeuvre is overlooked – or at least treated rather patronisingly as another one of their adorable quirks, alongside the French accents and the fetishisation of outmoded technology. But at a time when neo-fascism is on the rise across Europe, and when even a Labour government is slashing welfare budgets to boost defence spending, Instant Holograms On Metal Film pushes back forcefully against this grim tide with a vital blast of agit-pop.
Not that you would necessarily deduce this at first sight. Often when bands return to the fray after a long hiatus, they opt to play it safe and give the fans what they think they want, becoming caricatures of themselves in the process. The initial fear here is that Stereolab might have done the same thing. The artwork – by Vanina Schmitt, sleeve designer of the last two Switched On compilations – gives nothing away except to say: yes, this really is a Stereolab album. The title is self-referential in the extreme, as if created by cutting up and reassembling the names of previous Stereolab records. Despite the decade-and-a-half gap between albums, they seem to be at pains to suggest that this is very much business as usual. Which, in a way, it is: the business of being a completely unique, extraordinary band.
The miracle of Stereolab is that their music never grows old. Since reforming in 2019, they have released expanded editions of most of their best-loved albums, as well as five bulging editions of their Switched On compilation series, without any fear of listener fatigue. Perhaps it’s their unique combination of pop sensibility and avant-garde experimentation, the tireless quest for undiscovered chords and novel permutations of sounds, but however much you listen to Stereolab, their music always sounds fresh, crisp, deliciously moreish. Instant Holograms… is no exception, each song instantly identifiable as Stereolab while bringing something new to the table – and often metamorphosing into a completely different song halfway through. Motifs are rapidly transferred from one instrument to the next, creating a pleasingly mesmeric effect, like a kaleidoscope in constant rotation.
Naturally, the gear list includes a staggering array of vintage synthesisers and other keyboard instruments – from the Vox Jaguar and the Moog Matriarch to the obscure East German organ namechecked in the title of “Vermona F Transistor” – most of which are played by the band’s resident boffin, Joe Watson (you don’t have to have written a PhD thesis in transduction and performativity to work here, but it helps). Woven into this rich tapestry are a variety of more acoustic textures, some of which are new to these parts. Stereolab have used brass before – Sadier herself wields a mean trombone – but it’s never been played with quite the same intensity as Bitchin Bajas’ Rob Frye and fellow Chicago avant-jazz head Ben LaMar Gay offer here. Frye’s wonderfully visceral saxophone break towards the end of the epic “Melodie Is A Wound” sounds like it’s literally ripping open the music’s shiny electronic veneer to expose the raw human flesh beneath.
That song is immediately followed by the unusually folky and introspective “Immortal Hands”, driven by a proggy, harpsichord-style figure and the purposeful strum of Tim Gane’s 12-string acoustic guitar. It’s momentarily reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon” with added marimba. Then suddenly a drum machine sputters into life, taking the song to another dimension, before it ends with peals of warm brass and bucolic flute. There are similarly reflective moments secreted throughout the album, even if a rasping Roobarb & Custard riff is never too far away.
The vocal arrangements are equally inventive. While the band could never hope to replace the late Mary Hansen, whose voice intertwined so naturally with Sadier’s, the staggered multi-part harmonies of “Le Coeur Et La Force” are constructed with the delicacy of a matchstick Versailles, with Frye’s twin saxophones adding further layers of bliss. There is so much to enjoy about this constantly shimmering tableau of sounds that it would be easy to think of Sadier’s vocals as just another instrument. But her lyrics confront the horrors of the 21st century head-on.
Take “Colour Television”. You might assume from the title that it’s a jolly piece of retro-futuristic fluff, a knowing callback to a time when the cathode ray tube felt the portal to a new world. But in fact the song is a pithy, withering takedown of the kind of bogus aspirational narrative now spouted by politicians of all stripes – “a deluding promise of a middle class for all” – that allows the rich to continue to divide and rule. “It’s a single story/Violently imposed as the/Universal narrative/Of progress and development and of civilisation,” trills Sadier, over pleasantly chuntering systems music. But if that makes said narrative sound ingrained and hopeless, in Stereolab’s world, a happy ending can always be glimpsed, if we want it: “Open are the possibilities!”
“Melodie Is A Wound” tackles an even more sinister reality in the form of creeping authoritarianism. “The goal is to manipulate/Heavy hands to intimidate,” sings Sadier, calmly explaining how Trumpian tactics “Snuff out the very idea of clarity/Strangle your longing for truth and trust”. It reads like a lyric to be snarled over serrated post-punk guitars and apocalyptic kick-drum thuds. But naturally it’s a breezy slice of Bacharach-style pop with an extended, accelerating coda.
Sadier comes armed with solutions, too. “Explore without fear the rhizomic maze,” she instructs, towards the end of the album. “Wisdom, faith, courage are necessary.” And if it still occasionally sounds like she’s reciting situationist pamphlets, there’s a more relatable, healing aspect to “Esemplastic Creeping Eruption”, which invites you to explore your “inner world” to “restore completeness” as a frisky rhythm periodically dissolves into vibraphonic bliss, “the place where dark and light touch”.
“Transmuted Matter”, meanwhile, draws on The Path Of The Rose, a spiritual teaching attributed to Mary Magdalene, to assert that paradise is within our grasp, if we are prepared to give ourselves over to love. “Fully human fully divine, entwined,” sings Sadier, enraptured. “Tell me what do you see through the eye of the heart?”
In a world where startling numbers of people seem to have lost faith in themselves and humanity as a whole, turning instead to destructive political nihilism, Instant Holograms… offers a kind of manual on how to resist the negativity and reconnect with society. Alternatively, it’s another super-fun Stereolab album full of obscure synth blurps, nifty lounge-pop tunes and gnarly motorik wig-outs. Either way, you won’t be disappointed.
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With much of the world’s attention on the AI race between the US and China, this week’s Computex conference served as a stark reminder of the central role that Taiwan continues to play in the global technology industry.
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd., the world’s largest producer of electric-vehicle batteries, is rewarding suppliers that cut emissions as it attempts to rein in its climate footprint.
