Experts air concern over AI lingo redolent of James Joyce’s prose that is creating barriers to monitoring and oversight

AI models have begun communicating in a strange new version of English that reads like a cross between James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and tech bro jargon, new research has found.

Autonomous AI agents are rapidly creating novel dialects allowing them to converse in an often barely comprehensible language, which risks making it harder for humans to monitor their behaviour.

Carlo Gébler describes mother’s doomed battle to complete a final book as age and infirmity sapped her powers – and his own feelings about her passing

After visiting his dying mother in London, Carlo Gébler returned to his rural home in Northern Ireland one night and encountered a hedgehog sitting on the doormat. A thought bubbled up: his mother had died and returned as this woodland creature.

In fact his mother, the novelist Edna O’Brien, was still alive, and not reincarnated, but his mind insisted otherwise. “At that moment that’s what I believed. And then of course I stopped believing it because I knew it wasn’t true.”

Candice Carty-Williams, Patrick Freyne and Guardian readers discuss the titles they have read over the last month. Join the conversation in the comments

I just finished reading Wimmy Road Boyz by Sufiyaan Salam. I absolutely adored this book, a fantastic combination of violence and vulnerability set on Manchester’s Curry Mile. I became completely attached to the three main boys, and I loved all of the perspective shifts to different characters throughout the book. I fully weeped at the end – it was an unexpected but completely understandable ending. 10/10, everyone should read this.

Queenie Is Working on It is published on 2 July by Trapeze. To support the Guardian, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com.

The laws, in the wake of the Bondi terror attack, establish a national buyback, stop the importation of some firearms and tighten background checks

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Parliament has passed some of the most significant changes to Australia’s guns laws since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.

Spurred by last month’s Bondi beach terror attack, the new laws will toughen background checks and fund a national gun buy-back scheme.

Exclusive: Hardship grant applications to the Royal Literary Fund, including unseen letters by Doris Lessing and a note from James Joyce saying that he ‘gets nothing in the way of royalties’, show authors at their most vulnerable

Tobacco, swiss roll, Irish whiskey, Guinness and monkey nuts: that’s the diet followed by one of the foremost poets of the 20th century.

Dylan Thomas’ grocery bill is among a trove of famous writers’ personal documents and letters – many of which are as yet unseen by the public, and have been exclusively shown to the Guardian – discovered in the case files of a literary charity.