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.…
Tag: AI (artificial intelligence)
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…
Debate over AI’s future divides Silicon Valley as China gains ground
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. This week we’ll be looking at a debate over the future of artificial intelligence that’s dividing the tech industry, as well as how the European Union gave Google a slap on the wrist for anti-competitive behavior. And we’ll also catch you up on the avalanche of lawsuits accusing social media companies of getting young people addicted to their products. Silicon Valley’s divide over the future of AI Over the past week some of the biggest names in tech have weighed in on a debate about…
Headaches for Silicon Valley as China chips away at the US’s lead in the AI race
Hello, I’m Blake Montgomery, writing to you after a double-header feature of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and the World Cup final. What a great Sunday. Today in tech, we’re discussing how China is chipping away at the US’s lead in the AI race and how Silicon Valley’s workers are taking action to protect their jobs from AI. As Google falters on AI, China eats into the US’s lead Google is struggling with the latest version of its Gemini model A Chinese company, Moonshot, put out a free, surprisingly capable model…
China’s massive AI rollout – podcast
While the spread of AI has been met perhaps with a lot of scepticism in the west, China has fully embraced the technology, explains Amy Hawkins, from millions of users talking to AI doctors, to the use of intelligent robots in factories, and drones delivering food on the Great Wall of China. AI has also been eagerly taken up by the state, not least in the opportunities it provides for further surveillance, the Guardian’s senior China correspondent says. Amy talks to Annie Kelly about the prospects and pitfalls provided by…
AI surveillance is being supercharged – and it will chill social progress | Bruce Schneier and Jon Penney
In the near future, AI-powered surveillance systems will be able to track everything we do in public, and much of what we do in private. And if we do something wrong – shoplift, litter, jaywalk, you name it – the system will notice, retain it, tie it to your official government record, communicate that fact to you, and provide real-time alerts to any relevant authorities … and maybe also to the general public. Think of these systems as automated speed cameras, but on steroids. Only they’ll enforce not just speed…
China wants to solve the hardest problem in robotics – making hands
Human hands – nimble, nerve-filled appendages that are the most flexible part of the human skeleton – are exceptionally complex. Many tasks that most people can do largely without thinking, from tying a pair of shoelaces to buttoning up a shirt, in fact require a complex set of neurological instructions and precise choreography. In thousands of years of human history, no machine has been able to truly replicate human’s greatest tool. But now, as artificial intelligence (AI) races forwards, some companies think they are close to surpassing this final but…
Chinese supercomputer leapfrogs best US machines to be ranked world’s fastest
A supercomputer in China now outranks its US counterparts as the world’s most powerful. It is the first time since 2017 that a Chinese computer has topped a list sometimes viewed as a measure of a nation’s technological prowess. The LineShine computer in Shenzhen displaced top-ranked US computer El Capitan in the Top500 rankings released on Tuesday. It was LineShine’s debut on the list. China’s LineShine differs from other high-performance computers in that it runs entirely on conventional computer chips (CPUs), instead of the graphics processors (GPUs), commonly used for…
Chinese activist in UK told by X that abusive deepfakes do not breach rules
A high-profile Chinese activist in the UK who was inundated with deepfake posts on X portraying her as a sexually promiscuous drug addict was told that the abuse did not breach the rules of Elon Musk’s platform. Apple Peiqing Ni, the 27-year-old founder of the UK-based China Dissent Network, had been advised by UK police to complain to the US-headquartered platform after she was targeted by what she believes is a pro-regime bot. The abuse included 12 posts tagging Ni and containing fake photographs and videos of her. The captions…
World’s first wind-powered underwater datacentre starts operating in China
The world’s first wind-powered underwater datacentre has started operations off the coast of Shanghai, as China presses forwards with solutions for energy challenges created by the country’s artificial intelligence boom. The Shanghai Lingang undersea datacentre demonstration project, which launched in May, has a capacity of 24 megawatts. It is a joint effort between HiCloud Technology and China Communications Construction, a state-owned company. Located more than 6 miles (10km) off the coast of Shanghai, the datacentre is submerged 10 metres below the surface of the water and is powered by a…