Since 2017, Iason Gabriel has worked at the tech giant, trying to anticipate – and think through – the impact of AI. But as commercial and geopolitical pressures escalate, can ethicists make any difference?

In 2017, a 33-year-old political philosopher named Iason Gabriel was told by a friend that he ought to apply for a job at DeepMind, the London-based subsidiary of Google where much of its AI research was concentrated. The suggestion was not an obvious one.

Gabriel was a cheerful but intense junior academic with a passion for Vipassana meditation and what his brother calls “enthusiastic” rock climbing. The eldest son of a Greek management professor and a British documentary maker, Gabriel split his time between teaching and international development work. At the University of Oxford, where he was a fellow at St John’s College, Gabriel taught courses on political theory and wrote papers on the moral contortions of “yuppie ethics” and the ethical blind spots of effective altruism. When he wasn’t there, he did crisis work for the United Nations Development Programme in Sudan and Lebanon.

Want to see some old wonders but don’t fancy forking out £33 for 40 minutes with a tapestry? Our critic celebrates the British treasures you can see all year round – from monstrous crypt carvings to the vaulting glory of our cathedrals

There’s a carved stone character grimacing furiously in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral and you can see why – a man is sitting on his head, legs apart, holding a fish and bowl in outstretched arms. Other figures perched atop slender stone columns include a creature with a serpent’s tail wrestling a dog-like monstrosity, a gryphon eating a siren, and a (now-detached) carving of a horned devil. All this nefariousness in the depths of England’s holiest shrine.

But then medieval British art is full of wonder, mystery and humour. It is also so abundant that it gets taken for granted. But now, after almost 1,000 years, it is about to have a moment. This week, the rush will begin to get £33 tickets to spend 40 minutes in the company of a medieval British artwork. The Bayeux Tapestry, a 70-metre embroidery depicting the Norman conquest of England in 1066, was almost certainly embroidered by Kent women to a commission by Bishop Odo of Bayeux in the 1070s.

Trusted by millions, the finance expert has seen his name and face used to mis-sell a string of fake investments. And yet, he says, it would be ‘very simple’ for the government to stop them

This month, an email from a consumer landed in Martin Lewis’s inbox. It was from an elderly woman with a disability who had been scammed when she invested in a scheme purportedly endorsed by Lewis – and lost her life savings. “THEY ARE BASTARDS!” Lewis wrote at the top of his social media post about it. Even though the personal finance expert is a veteran campaigner against fraud, he says he had “tears running down my face”. He still sounds upset. “I felt a mixture of frustration, anger and sadness.” Not only for the plight of the woman, but for the “constant, ongoing deluge of shit from the scammers”.

Lewis never advertises anything. To hammer home the point, his social media profile picture has the words “I don’t do ads” tattooed on his forehead. But still, people fall victim to deepfake videos and frauds that appear to show him offering investments. The scale of harm is great enough that MoneySavingExpert (MSE), the company Lewis founded in 2003 and sold in 2012 for up to £87m – he is now its executive chair – has someone full-time handling these cases.

After being arrested, beaten and targeted for conscription, Amal Sahel realised he needed to leave his country. But his journey to Europe was fraught with danger

When Amal Sahel* was 15, he and his friends found a long length of metal lying abandoned in the street. The boys thought immediately of its best use: a sword. Over the past year, they had grown used to seeing strange debris – what Sahel calls “interesting pieces of metal” – in their neighbourhood.

The debris had been left behind by repeated air raids on Sahel’s home city in Yemen: a previously quiet location in a country gradually collapsing into civil war.

The home crowd swooned to Andy’s mood music, even if some of it could have been a Keir cover version

• UK politics live – latest updates

There’s no pleasing some people. For most of last week, all the opposition parties were moaning that Andy Burnham had taken a vow of silence ever since the Makerfield byelection. That no one had a clue just what the prime minister designate had in mind.

On Monday, Andy sought to answer some of those questions, but before he had opened his mouth, Kemi Badenoch accused him of trying to avoid the scrutiny of MPs. He should be doing this from the dispatch box, she said. Um … except he’s not a minister. Maybe she plans to give him a guest slot from the opposition benches. There again, she was also saying that all his plans were bound to fail long before he had even told us what they were. Never change, Kemi. Just keep saying the first thing that comes into your head.

In The Good Life, To the Manor Born and beyond, the star played domineering snobs with pinpoint comic timing – yet she still made them feel like old friends. No one will do it better

At their broadest, and most audience-friendly, sitcoms thrive on stock characters: chancers, jobsworths, slobs and snobs. No actor has ever been more suited to the last than Penelope Keith. Others have played funny snobs, but she was a walking colour chart of snobbery. Her greatest strength was her ability to always locate a new variation on the same theme, picking out any number of tones and nuances to give each of her characters more life than their writers probably anticipated.

The big one, of course, was Margo Leadbetter in The Good Life, which ran from 1975 to 1978. On paper, her role was simply to provide contrast. Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal played the leads, Tom and Barbara, two self-sufficient dreamers in frayed clothes who were never happier than when they had dirt under their fingernails. By design, Keith was meant to represent the opposite; stiffer and more materialistic and appalled by anyone who didn’t follow social convention to the letter.

Expected next prime minister focuses on restoring faith in politics, cost of living and devolution in major speech

• What is Andy Burnham’s economic and political blueprint for Britain?

Andy Burnham has set out his blueprint to transform the UK with a promise to improve living standards and restore faith in politics through the “biggest rebalancing of power our country has ever seen”.

The person widely expected to be the next prime minister said the current system was “broken” and that “more of the same” would not be enough to tackle the significant challenges faced by the country.

A long-term ambition of greater public control of essential services such as water, housing, energy and transport to help curb the cost of living.

A No 10 North hub to oversee the distribution of power and resources from Whitehall across the country, which the Guardian revealed would be run by his former chief executive in Manchester.

The biggest council housing building programme since the postwar period, and a high street “renaissance” through reform of business rates.

Rebalancing an education system that he said had been too focused on the university route and putting academic and technical courses on an equal footing.

Health secretary announces move after Amos review finds childbirth and neonatal care in need of ‘urgent reform’

• Analysis: Transparency, standards and a new commissioner – but does maternity review go far enough?

A powerful maternity commissioner will be appointed to push through an urgent transformation of childbirth care in England after a major review concluded that it had multiple failings.

Ministers have bowed to growing pressure by agreeing to recruit the UK’s first commissioner for maternity and neonatal care. Whoever takes on the role will pursue hospitals over persistent failures in care, ensure wide-ranging improvements are made and try to restore the faith of families in a maternity system in England that has been rocked by a series of scandals.

Maternity triage services – the childbirth equivalent of A&E – need an urgent overhaul, including more staff on duty, so that women’s concerns are acted on more quickly.

Families should get the right to seek a fresh, independent investigation when things go wrong if they are not happy with the hospital’s own inquiry.

The NHS’s “brutal” and “cruel” system of agreeing compensation with harmed and bereaved families should be replaced by a new process in which hospitals admit errors immediately.

The NHS must root out racism and discrimination that is “embedded throughout the maternity and neonatal system”.

Outright bans may have unintended negative consequences for young people, University College London report warns

School smartphone bans are “overly simplistic” and are not supported by young people who regard them as “punitive” rather than helpful, according to research by University College London.

The UCL report was published on Tuesday, the day after a statutory ban on smartphones in schools in England came into force, making individual schools and trusts legally responsible for being phone-free throughout the day.

British bike maker says cycling market is recovering from sales slump and investments will add new expertise

The French sports gear retailer Decathlon and a Chinese investment group that was an early backer of Labubu soft toys have bought stakes in the British folding bike maker Brompton, as its boss said the cycling market was recovering from a slump in sales.

Decathlon has acquired a 10% stake in the manufacturer while BA Capital has bought 5% in a deal understood to collectively be worth about £18m.