In your briefing today:

📣 A cargo ship is ablaze in the Strait of Hormuz and is being evacuated after it was hit by a projectile, according to the British military. The news comes amid another flurry of Iranian missile attacks across the Middle East, and claims from the US that it “eliminated” 16 mine-laying ships. (AP)

📣 Glasgow Central’s high-level station will remain closed this week after the devastating fire that destroyed a listed building next door, and apparently came very close to doing for the station itself and neighbouring hotel, too. (BBC)

📣 Scotland’s largest teaching union is expected to declare strikes across six local authorities later this month.

Dundee, Perth and Kinross, East Renfrewshire, Moray and Glasgow could all see schools close as staff walk out, although further details are scant and a resolution on the dispute - which is around teacher workloads - could still be found. (The Scotsman has the exclusive)

Why does business news feel like it’s written for people who already get it?

Morning Brew changes that.

It’s a free newsletter that breaks down what’s going on in business, finance, and tech — clearly, quickly, and with enough personality to keep things interesting. The result? You don’t just skim headlines. You actually understand what’s going on.

Try it yourself and join over 4 million professionals reading daily.

Check it out

📣 MSPs have backed a time limit for assisted death, which would mean only those likely to die within six months would be allowed to end their lives. (BBC)

📣 SNP Health Secretary Neil Grey has been accused of “shameful” NHS failings in his own constituency: NHS Lanarkshire is either bottom of the league or under-performing on various measures. (Daily Record)

📣 Suspended Labour MP Joani Reid was given a £2,400 donation from her husband’s company just three weeks before his arrest on suspicion of spying for China. (Mail)

📣 A pro-Iran march, planned for London on Sunday, has been banned by the Home Secretary after the Metropolitan Police warned of the threat of “serious public disorder”. (BBC)

📣 Remember when Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor said he was visiting Jeffrey Epstein to end his friendship in 2010? He was actually partying with the paedophile’s young victims. (The Mirror has the exclusive)

📣 Watch out for the Mandelson files, emerging at lunchtime today: they’ll tell us more about how Lord Mandelson was appointed ambassador to the US. (BBC)

📣 Hereditary peerages will be abolished before the next King’s Speech after a deal was struck in the House of Lords. (Guardian)

📣 Sam Kiley poses an interesting question: why would Donald Trump lift oil sanctions against Moscow, in a move that would suit only one man - Vladimir Putin? “Whose side is he on,” asks Kiley - “and not for the first time”. (Independent)

📣 A UK ticket holder has won the £181 million Euromillions jackpot. (BBC)

⚽️ Barry Ferguson is one of many who reckon away fans will become a thing of the past at Old Firm matches, with Rangers fans facing a lock-out at the next clash, due at Celtic Park towards the end of the season. (Daily Record)

🏉 A trio of Scotland players have been passed fit for Scotland’s Six Nations decider in Dublin on Saturday. (Scotsman)

⚽️ Billy Gilmour won some rare praise from Napoli boss Antonio Conte after his display against Torino: he was described as “masterful” in midfield. (Herald)

📣 That Spurs would have a disaster against Atletico Madrid in the Champions League was a racing certainty: that their flailing manager, Igor Tudor, would hook his goalkeeper after only 17 minutes, albeit after two terrible mistakes, wasn’t in the script. Spurs eventually lost 5-2. Tudor’s only four games in, but his time must surely now be measured in days, not weeks. (BBC)

📣 Thankyou for all the feedback on the AI special we ran yesterday: it was positive, people finding the Q&A with AI author Ronee Hulk helpful as we attempt to figure out what impact this awesome technology will have on our world.

🗣️A hello to reader Dr Eve Poole OBE, who has written (among other books) Robot Souls: Programming in Humanity, which looks at how to stop AI-powered robots going rogue, by building them to behave in line with human values.

She points us to her terrific TEDx talk at the University of St Andrews, which I’ve been entirely absorbed with this morning.

Using the story of an experiment with an AI robot which learnt to walk by surprising means, she delves into how free will is tempered - or enhanced? - by emotion and intuition: the sort of stuff that might be regarded as uncertainty, or “junk code”, by AI developers… but which has been essential to human survival as a species, and our evolution.

Dr Poole argues - and I paraphrase massively, here - that it’s time to build that into AI.

I hope I’ve done it justice: it’s worth 15 minutes of your time, for sure. (YouTube)

🗣️I’m also indebted to a reader, Anne, who sent me a link to an article by Tom Slater, Manager of Scottish Mortgage: a wise essay on AI’s implications for human intelligence.

It struck a few chords - not least this passage on recommendation algorithms, changes to which are currently causing the news industry - my world - no end of trouble:

“Today, recommendation algorithms have become the dominant selection mechanism for cultural content,” writes Slater. “They determine which news stories reach millions and which disappear, which musical artists find audiences and which languish in obscurity, which political arguments gain traction and which are suppressed.

“These algorithms do not select for truth, usefulness or cultural richness. They select for engagement. The result is a selection environment that favours certain kinds of cultural traits over others, not because those traits are adaptive in any meaningful sense, but because they happen to align with the metrics that drive advertising revenue.

“Algorithmic selection has almost entirely decoupled cultural fitness from human judgement. As an investor, I struggled to understand why Elon Musk paid $44bn for Twitter. Through the lens of cultural evolution, the logic becomes clearer. He wasn’t buying a social media company. He was buying a selection mechanism – the power to shape which ideas, narratives and values get amplified to hundreds of millions of people and which get buried.

“The critical near-term risk is not that AI makes people less intelligent in any simple sense. It is that it creates what researchers call ‘illusions of understanding’. (Scottish Mortgage)

🗣️My thanks, also, to reader Tom, who sent a link to a more sceptical (and brief) take from another author, Derek Thompson.

“I feel lucky to be able to have conversations about the frontier of AI with executives and builders at frontier labs; economists at AI conferences; investors in AI; and other AI folks at off-the-record dinners where important truths can theoretically be shared without risk,” writes Thompson.

“I can't emphasize enough that "nobody knows anything" is about as close to the reality here as three words are going to get you.”

I’m not sure I completely buy Thompson’s take - or, at least, its implications - but it’s interesting, nonetheless. (Derek Thompson on X)

📣 [A footnote: when I started The Early Line, this was exactly the sort of exchange I hoped it might host.

Traditional journalism tends to shy away from the complex, messy and lengthy.

But it’s a notable feature of the digital world that complexity finds - at the very least - its niche, and can also be hugely popular (see: TED talks). And who knew what riches were tucked away on investment company websites?

So do, please, feel free to keep on sending me links to this harder-to-find stuff, by you or others: I’d love the Early Line to tap the great brains among us more often.]

Sent this by a friend?