Wednesday newspaper round-up: Shoplifting, EnQuest, Klarna

(Sharecast News) - The government is investing more than £55m in expanding facial recognition systems - including vans that will scan crowded high streets - as part of a renewed crackdown on shoplifting. The scheme was announced alongside plans for tougher punishments for serial or abusive shoplifters in England and Wales, including being forced to wear a tag to ensure they do not revisit the scene of their crime, under a new standalone criminal offence of assaulting a retail worker. - Guardian More than 7.4 million people in the UK struggled to pay a bill or a credit repayment in January, according to a financial regulator. The figure is less than last year but is still significantly higher than before the cost of living crisis began. According to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which tracks the number of households in financial difficulties, 5.8 million people reported that they were struggling to pay a large bill in February 2020. - Guardian

A UK energy company is to start drilling at the biggest oil field discovered in the North Sea in at least 20 years in spite of a net zero crackdown on the industry. EnQuest plans to bring two fields onstream which have the potential to produce 500 million barrels of crude oil over coming decades. The sites, which neighbour Kraken oil and gas field, 80 miles east of Shetland, will reignite the political battle over the North Sea's future in which Labour has threatened to block new production citing environmental concerns. - Telegraph

Klarna intends to grow its business by deploying generative artificial intelligence instead of hiring new staff. The "buy now, pay later" credit business believes that it will continue to expand its operations and revenue despite a hiring freeze that was announced in December, because AI is making work more efficient. - The Times

Elon Musk is wrong to say that artificial intelligence will overtake human intelligence next year, according to one of the world's leading AI scientists. Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist and one of the so-called godfathers of the technology, said that while artificial general intelligence was achievable, it could take decades to arrive. - The Times