Google has set out its next steps in developing artificial intelligence, which could lead to AI completing real-world tasks at the same level as humans.

The tech giant's DeepMind AI division is working towards artificial general intelligence (AGI), a theoretical level of AI at which it can carry out tasks autonomously. DeepMind is already using a new "world model", Genie 3 – a simulated environment that can help train AI agents like robots with realistic replicas of situations and environments.

AGI is often seen as "potentially eliminating white-collar jobs", said The Guardian, and changing the workforce as we know it.

How far away is AGI?
In the increasingly competitive AI market, tech companies are in a race to achieve AGI. OpenAI and Meta are among the biggest companies openly pushing its development – the latter assembling a taskforce for "personal superintelligence", which CEO Mark Zuckerberg said is "now in sight".

When AGI will actually be achieved is unclear, however. Google has suggested it could arrive at the start of the 2030s, while other experts predict it's more likely to be the second half of this century. Predictions vary because different firms have different benchmarks, and different definitions of what AGI means.

What kind of jobs are most at risk?
"Knowledge work" – jobs in computing, maths and administrative support – will be the main ones under threat, according to a report from Microsoft. This includes sales work, where the key part of the role is "providing and communicating information".

The report lists 40 roles that are most likely to be affected, including interpreters and translators, historians, passenger attendants, sales representatives and writers. 

And which jobs are safe?
Roles thought to be least at risk include more manual jobs, such as dredge operators, bridge and lock tenders, water treatment plant and system operators, and foundry mould and coremakers.

The rise of AI will also create new jobs, such as engineers to manage the AI and the data it uses to function.

"In case more evidence was needed of the death of civilisation," said Ed Cumming in The Telegraph, "a boom in 'early dining' is reported."

According to online reservation platform OpenTable, 6pm bookings are up 11% year on year in London. "Worse still", 5pm bookings are up 10%  – "presumably for diners eating with their nursery-aged children". While some find the trend hard to swallow, the new appetite for early dinner is clear.

'Cultural shift'
The average dinner time in the UK is now 6.12pm, according to hospitality tech service Zonal. And restaurants are "adapting to meet demand", introducing early set menus in response to the "cultural shift", said The Times. There's a rising awareness that late-night dining isn't as healthy as an earlier meal. "Wellness-focused" and "sober-curious" diners are swapping "late-night indulgence for early evening sobriety".

But it's the post-pandemic world of work that's been pivotal. Working from home means finishing earlier, which "naturally leads to earlier dining", Lucia Reisch, professor of behavioural economics from the University of Cambridge, told the paper.

'Unarguably sexy'
"In an era of hyperoptimisation, we've become accustomed to prioritising efficiency and speed over the process and pleasure of minutiae," said Arielle Domb in London's The Standard. Eating early means going to bed early, and "feeling rested". But there is "something unarguably sexy about a late-night dinner". It means "resisting toxic ideas" about "efficiency and 'healthy' consumption", and "tuning into the life-affirming joy of dining slowly" with those you love.

Yes, "a fightback is afoot", said The Telegraph's Cumming. Some restaurants are "following the example set by Chinatown or the Middle Eastern spots on the Edgware Road which have always understood" the later meal, and offering cheaper drinks or a discounted menu to late-night diners. "There is a kind of magic" in "making friends at a party and scurrying off to find somewhere to eat" afterwards. After all, "nobody has ever fallen in love over a salad at 5.30pm".

Smoke billows over the Mediterranean coast in southwestern France as wildfires rage in the Aude region. The blaze, which started on Tuesday afternoon, has killed one person and burned more than 11,000 hectares.

Olivier Chassignole / AFP / Getty Images

If you grumble that your kids are "never off their phone" or leave "mouldy cups festering in their bedroom", watch "Parenthood" and be grateful "that you are not an African social spider", said Carol Midgley in The Times. "At least your children (fingers crossed) won't eat you alive."

The scenes of spiderlings "devouring their poor mother like she was a Deliveroo pizza" feel like something out of a horror film. "And there was me assuming from the title that this might be a sweeter, cutesier David Attenborough offering. How naïve!"

Thankfully, the series features "plenty of non-arachnid wildlife", too, said Neil Armstrong in The i Paper. Over five episodes, we meet endangered Iberian Lynx kittens playing together in a derelict barn in Andalucía, and watch a pair of burrowing owls "work together to raise a clutch of chicks". There's also an "extraordinary" sequence, shot at night in the Tanzanian bush, in which infra-red cameras reveal a hippo and her calf being "menaced by a pride of lions in thickets of dark, dense grass".

Filmed in 23 countries over three years, the show combines Attenborough's "exquisite" narration with the usual "sublime" visuals, as the seasoned broadcaster charts the trials and tribulations of animal parenthood, said Helen Coffey in The Independent.

As ever, there is "spectacular" camerawork and, when we're introduced to a mother gorilla "tenderly cradling her baby", it's "hard to resist anthropomorphising", said Midgley in The Times. "Apart from the spiders, obviously. Blimey: talk about ingrate offspring."

EU reset takes us headfirst into jaws of defeat
Catherine McBride in The Times
The European Commission's "demands for a 'reset' would effectively return" us to the customs union and single market "but without any ability to make the rules", writes economist Catherine McBride. There would be no "level playing field": "the EU has a massive trade advantage" in "agricultural and industrial goods", and the agreement would "impact" our trade deals elsewhere. "I doubt the government will push back against it, but hopefully the British public will."

Taxing private healthcare is populist nonsense
Ian Birrell in The i Paper 
The government is "floundering" and "beleaguered", writes Ian Birrell, and, "to make matters worse, Lord Kinnock has popped up" with the "unhelpful" suggestion that it should remove the VAT exemption on private healthcare. This "populist nonsense" would increase the cost of private dentists, osteopaths and doctors, when many patients are turning to them "in their despair or pain". All it would do is "drive more people" back to the "overloaded" NHS.

Ultra processed foods: A new front in the baby weaning battle
Phoebe Arslanagić-Little in City A.M.
Researchers say parents "are setting children up" for obesity "by feeding babies ultra processed food", writes Phoebe Arslanagić-Little. This isn't "useful". Weaning a baby is "complicated" enough, without "prodding" us into "panicking" that we're putting our "adorably plump" child "on the path to a much less adorable adult plumpness". My baby eats everything from cauliflower to porridge but, "if she's peckish" when we're out, "I won't shy from giving her a delicious UPF puff".