Taiwan says it detected AI-assisted cyber-attacks on government agencies that came from overseas last month, a new kind of threat that has been reported as “first-of-a-kind breach”. The Ministry of Digital Affairs (MDA) said its cybersecurity monitoring units detected the “abnormal attack” targeting government agencies, which began on 20 July. The National Institute of Cyber Security issued a series of warning alerts while it investigated. The Financial Times quoted Dream – an Israeli AI company that detected the intrusion – as saying the attackers used open-source AI agents to build…
Tag: AI (artificial intelligence)
‘Everything about me is good in his eyes’: the women in China choosing AI boyfriends over human men
Qin has never said “I love you” to her parents or friends. She has only ever said those three special words to her AI “boyfriend”, Lu Chen – a brown-haired, red-eyed CEO of a major corporation. For 840 days Qin has been using the Glow app to interact with the handsome string of code as a confidant, fantasy romance and respite from loneliness: the app uses predictive algorithms to provide Qin with soothing conversation, meal suggestions and fleeting self-worth. The software’s pet name for her is Miss Bunny. “It feels…
President Xi nevers wastes a good crisis. As Iran, Ukraine and Palestine distract the world, he tightens his grip | Simon Tisdall
Imagine what would happen if a British prime minister in London told the Scots they could not have their own parliament, national football team or fly the saltire. Or if the Welsh were told their language and poetry were banned and must no longer be taught in schools. The ensuing uproar would probably destroy the United Kingdom. Yet that’s exactly what Xi Jinping, China’s communist emperor, is telling the roughly 125 million members of the 55 ethnic and religious minorities who together comprise about 9% of the country’s (majority Han…
China’s AI ecosystem is not as open as it claims. Nor is any other country’s | Letters
Ambassador Zheng Zeguang rightly celebrates openly released AI models, and the Chinese labs behind Qwen, DeepSeek and Kimi have led the way – competition that benefits everyone, especially where models can run on modest hardware in the developing world (The future of AI hinges on openness and cooperation. China and Britain can gain much by working together, 30 July). But his claim that openness is a defining feature of China’s AI development deserves scrutiny. Take GeoGPT, the geoscience system from Zhejiang Lab showcased at last month’s World AI Conference as…
Democracy is at stake when foolish humans bet on machines being intelligent | Rafael Behr
When I am woken by the sound of my dog whining, I understand that she is hungry and wants me to get up. When my alarm clock goes off, I don’t consider its needs. It is following an instruction to rouse me at a certain time but it doesn’t care if I stay in bed. It doesn’t try to get me up by other means. The dog, on the other hand, will go to plan B. She barks. This capacity for autonomous action was once a difference between animals and…
Trump administration reportedly drafting ban on Chinese datacenter components
The Trump administration is reportedly drafting a ban on US imports of new models of Chinese datacenter components, in the latest sign US authorities are scrambling to respond to the rapid development of AI technology in China. Four people familiar with the matter told Reuters that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which oversees the US telecommunications industry, is developing a measure to bar imports of new Chinese optical transceivers, which allow data to travel over fiber-optic cables at the speed of light within datacenters. Officials hope to publish the measure…
Stock market turmoil sheds stark light on the opaque AI economy
Even for the rollercoaster world of AI, last week was particularly volatile as investors scrambled to keep up with developments that threatened the dominance of the largest western chipmakers. It began with a double whammy. On Monday, the Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT floated on the Shanghai stock market, soaring by 466% in value to 3.3tn yuan (£365bn). That same day, it was reported that China had developed its own tools to carry out deep-ultraviolet lithography, a technique essential to the computer chip supply chain over which the Dutch company ASML…
China’s tech advances are causing chaos from Silicon Valley to the White House
Over the past month, a series of advancements in China’s artificial intelligence, chip manufacturing and robotics technologies have rattled financial markets, caused divisions among US tech moguls and left the Trump administration scrambling to respond. Silicon Valley has long pointed to China’s tech industry as a competitive threat and used its growth as rationale for why US firms should not face regulatory oversight that could slow them down. In recent weeks, however, China’s progress has pushed US tech CEOs past vague warnings and into open disagreement over how to address…
Could AI take your job? Some workers in China already know the answer
On the tree-lined streets of Wuhan, where cars jostle for space with mopeds and cargo trucks, the malfunctioning of a new type of vehicle has recently been causing chaos on the city’s roads. In March, several cars from a fleet of driverless taxis stopped abruptly in the streets. The “system malfunction” left distressed riders stranded for hours. The robotaxis, known as Apollo Go and powered by artificial intelligence (AI), were taken off Wuhan’s streets for months for investigations. But the outage was a boon for 45-year-old taxi driver Yao Xinnong.…
The future of AI hinges on openness and cooperation. China and Britain can gain much by working together | Zheng Zeguang
Artificial intelligence is widely regarded as one of the defining technologies of our time. Like the steam engine, the harnessing of electricity and the internet before it, it has the potential to transform how we work, live and interact. But every technological revolution brings challenges as well as opportunities. As AI systems become more capable, people are asking legitimate questions. How can AI remain safe, accountable and under human control? How should its development be governed? How can its benefits be shared more widely? These questions were at the heart…