If you find yourself perplexed by our heady new age of artificial intelligence, then you’re in good company. There’s a moment in our riveting new podcast series Black Box when host Michael Safi explains: “Some of the smartest computer scientists in the world have no idea what these things are thinking.”

We launched the first two episodes of Black Box this week. The first tells the story of Geoffrey Hinton, the AI expert who left Google last year with a very public warning about the possible dangers of programmes such as ChatGPT. Episode two sees Michael and producers Alex Atack and Joshua Kelly hunting the creators of ClothOff, a disturbing app which has been used to generate deepfaked naked images of young girls.

We are in, Michael says, a unique moment in time as this technology collides with humanity. The threats – and, of course, the possibilities – of AI are becoming increasingly central to Guardian reporting. Just in the last week or so we’ve reported on the spread of fake pictures of a grinning Donald Trump alongside enthusiastic black voters, and continued to track the role of AI in the spread of disinformation ahead of the US election.

Alex Hern’s weekly TechScape newsletter (sign up here) is often a good starting point for understanding this sometimes baffling new revolution. Last week Alex explained how demand for AI has quietly made chipmaker Nvidia a multi-trillion-dollar company.

What we do with generative AI at the Guardian (and what AI does with our own journalism) is something we’re currently grappling with. AI tools could well make our website more accessible, or help us with investigative reporting, but their use can never be at the expense of rigorous journalism done by humans, for humans. That’s something our three guiding principles for how we will and won’t use genAI make clear.
We’re alive to the potential benefits of AI but, as Black Box explores, very aware that it may fundamentally alter almost everything about the world and how we relate to it and each other. And that it may not.

See you next week.

Every three days, a woman in Britain is killed at the hands of a man: her partner, her son, a stranger, even a serving police officer. So normalised are these cases that many victims’ stories go untold. Since the beginning of 2024, we have committed to running a story each time a man is charged with killing a woman. Yesterday, on International Women’s Day, we marked the lives of the 12 women allegedly killed by a man this year.

The history of UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia is steeped in scandal and corruption – much of it exposed by the Guardian. Now, an investigation by David Pegg and Rob Evans raises questions about why the Ministry of Defence paid millions to a company later alleged to have been a conduit for secret payments to high-ranking Saudi Arabian officials, as recently as 2017. The investigation comes at a time when two men were acquitted of bribing high-ranking Saudis after their lawyers successfully argued that the payments were authorised at the highest levels of the British government.

Despite Super Tuesday’s predictable outcome, our US team didn’t take the stakes for granted, and brought energy and urgency to our coverage. Osita Nwanevu provided sobering analysis of how the US could be sleepwalking into another Trump term. David Smith covered a State of the Union address in which Joe Biden came out swinging.

As Israel’s war on Gaza entered a sixth month, international pressure continued to build on Israel to facilitate humanitarian aid delivery amid soaring hunger. Aseel Mousa and Emma Graham-Harrison told the story of Bilal el-Essi, one of 100 people killed trying to get food aid in Gaza City. Shukri Fleifel, a 21-year-old photographer and film-maker, who was also in the crowd described the scenes as “worse than anything depicted in a horror movie”.

After a February ruling by Alabama’s supreme court that frozen embryos are “children”, IVF services in the state were quickly halted. This week the state passed a law protecting IVF providers from lawsuits. Meanwhile, in France, parliament made abortion a constitutional right, a move that columnist Agnès Poirier described as a rare moment of unity for the country and one which could help push forward abortion rights around the world.

In the final budget in the UK before the election, our team kept the focus on the impact on people outside Westminster. The disillusionment and anger of voters (and non-voters) in many different parts of the country was visceral.

With an increase in cost of living pressures, and supermarket giants facing accusations of price gouging, readers in Australia loved this constructive and informative piece by Daisy Dumas and Mostafa Rachwani on the food co-ops and families saving a fortune by buying in bulk at a Sydney fruit and veg market.

Europe environment correspondent Ajit Niranjan visited a church in Spain that should be under water, having been flooded in the 1960s during the creation of a reservoir. Now, due to severe drought, it has resurfaced. Ajit spoke to local farmers, politicians and scientists about the devastating impact of the drought. By contrast environment correspondent Damien Gayle published an uplifting story about the “pay-what-you-can” Long Table restaurant in south-west England which rescues food waste, sources local produce and pays the real living wage.

South Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Aakash Hassan told the shocking stories of the Indian and Nepali men who signed up for jobs in Russia, Germany or Dubai and then found themselves on the Russian frontlines in Ukraine against their will. Meanwhile, Rachel Hall met academics from the destroyed Ukrainian city of Mariupol who are taking inspiration from Hull, in northern England, which was successfully regenerated after brutal bombing during the second world war.

Marina Hyde amusingly summed up the scandal surrounding Red Bull’s Formula One boss Christian Horner as a “Keeping Up With the Carkrashians” soap opera, while Jonathan Liew explored F1’s other ethical and moral dilemmas as the scandal coincided with this weekend’s racing in Saudi Arabia.

John Harris had a lively interview with legendary tech journalist Kara Swisher, who pulled no punches about Elon Musk (“[He] needs to be adored. That’ll kill you”) and Mark Zuckerberg (“the most damaging man in tech”). The piece featured brilliant portraits by Shuran Huang.

Cook this | Chinese takeaway-style tofu and vegetable curry

This nostalgic, fragrant pot of vegan curry from Meera Sodha smells and tastes as authentically Saturday night as a favourite TV show.

Listen to this | Ten years on: the disappearance of MH370 – Full Story

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 departed Kuala Lumpur on 8 March 2014, bound for Beijing with 12 crew and 227 passengers on board. About 40 minutes later it disappeared from the radar and its fate remains unknown. Now, 10 years on, there are hopes for a new search.

Watch this | How cruise ships became a catastrophe for the planet

Cruising is booming. In 2023 ticket sales surpassed historic levels and 2024 has seen the launch of the largest cruise ship ever built. But, as cruise tourism’s popularity has increased, so have the pollution problems it brings. Josh Toussaint-Strauss interrogates what impact the world’s biggest ships are having on the planet.

Come to this | Off the Record with Aditya Chakrabortty

How do you write a weekly column about the biggest inequalities of our time? What is it like to regularly report from all corners of the country on key societal issues? And how do you manage your own frustrations in the face of political failure?
Join the Guardian’s award-winning senior economics commentator Aditya Chakrabortty, in conversation with fellow columnist Zoe Williams, for a special livestreamed and interactive event. Don’t miss the opportunity to hear from one of the Guardian’s most respected writers, and to ask him your own questions.
Thursday 21 March 2024, 8pm-9pm GMT. Book tickets now.