Tired of a two-day commute to see her overworked doctor, my mother turned to tech for help with her kidney disease. She bonded with the bot so much I was scared she would refuse to see a real medic By Viola Zhou. Read by Vivian Full This essay was originally published on Rest of world The Guardian
Tag: Artificial intelligence (AI)
AI firm claims it stopped Chinese state-sponsored cyber-attack campaign
Anthropic says financial firms and government agencies were attacked ‘largely without human intervention’ A leading artificial intelligence company claims to have stopped a China-backed “cyber espionage” campaign that was able to infiltrate financial firms and government agencies with almost no human oversight. The US-based Anthropic said its coding tool, Claude Code, was “manipulated” by a Chinese state-sponsored group to attack 30 entities around the world in September, achieving a “handful of successful intrusions”. Continue reading… The Guardian
Global markets fall after tech sell-off and fears over Chinese economy
Global markets have fallen after a tech sell-off that fuelled Wall Street’s worst day in a month and weak economic data in China showing an unprecedented slump in investment. Japan’s tech-heavy Nikkei fell 1.8% on Friday, South Korea’s Kospi plunged 2.6% and there was a 1.5% fall in Australia, after a torrid day on Wall Street as Nvidia and other tech companies tumbled over valuation concerns. Nvidia, the $4.5tn (£3.4tn) tech company, led a wider sector decline, falling 3.6% as investors reassessed the value of companies involved in the AI…
The Guardian view on Trump and China: stepping back from the brink, but not solving problems | Editorial
The diverging verdicts offered by the Chinese and American leaders after their talks in South Korea on Thursday reflected more than the chasms between their personal styles and political cultures. Donald Trump gushed about an “amazing” meeting, scoring it 12 out of 10; Xi Jinping reportedly noted that a consensus had been reached, with the two sides needing to finalise follow-up steps rapidly. Mr Trump’s usual trade approach – shout loudly and wave a big stick – faltered when Beijing raised its own bludgeon. No tribute of gold crowns or…
‘DeepSeek is humane. Doctors are more like machines’: my mother’s worrying reliance on AI for health advice
Every few months, my mother, a 57-year-old kidney transplant patient who lives in a small city in eastern China, embarks on a two-day journey to see her doctor. She fills her backpack with a change of clothes, a stack of medical reports and a few boiled eggs to snack on. Then, she takes a 90-minute ride on a high-speed train and checks into a hotel in the eastern metropolis of Hangzhou. At 7am the next day, she lines up with hundreds of others to get her blood taken in a…
The IMF boss is right to say ‘buckle up’ – the global economy is facing multiple menaces
Little more than 48 hours passed last week between a warning from the IMF chief, Kristalina Georgieva, that “uncertainty is the new normal” and Donald Trump’s latest tariff onslaught – this time aimed at China. Markets plunged on Friday after Trump threatened to levy punitive additional tariffs of 100% on Chinese goods in retaliation for Beijing’s blocks on exports of rare earth minerals. The world’s finance ministers and central bankers will meet in Washington this week for the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank. In her curtain-raiser speech…
‘I have to do it’: Why one of the world’s most brilliant AI scientists left the US for China
Song-chun Zhu at Peking University, July 2025. Photograph: Sean Gallagher/The Guardian By the time Song-Chun Zhu was six years old, he had encountered death more times than he could count. Or so it felt. This was the early 1970s, the waning years of the Cultural Revolution, and his father ran a village supply store in rural China. There was little to do beyond till the fields and study Mao Zedong at home, and so the shop became a refuge where people could rest, recharge and share tales. Zhu grew up…
Billion-dollar coffins? New technology could make oceans transparent and Aukus submarines vulnerable
Military history is littered with the corpses of apex predators. The Gatling gun, the battleship, the tank. All once possessed unassailable power – then were undermined, in some cases wiped out, by the march of new technology. “Speed and stealth and firepower,” the head of the Australian Submarine Agency, Jonathan Mead, told the Guardian two years ago of Australia’s forthcoming fleet of nuclear submarines. “The apex predator of the oceans.” But for how much longer? In the first quarter of the 21st century, nuclear submarines have proven a formidable force:…
Taipei City council in the dog house over Chinese-made patrol robot
Taipei City council has come under fire after admitting that a robot dog it bought to help patrol city streets using surveillance cameras was made by a Chinese companylinked to the Chinese military. Hammer Lee, the deputy mayor of Taiwan’s capital, introduced a “new patrol partner” for the management and repair of pedestrian areas in a post on Facebook on Tuesday. “This robot, equipped with an optical panoramic survey system, can create 360-degree images, accurately locate facilities, and even automatically report missing items,” Lee said, noting its ability to “accumulate…
Nvidia sets fresh sales record amid fears of an AI bubble and Trump’s trade wars
Nvidia is set to report its second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, in a first test of investor appetite since last week’s mass AI-stock selloff. All eyes will be on the chipmaker’s latest financials as the company sets the tone for the rest of the AI industry after a turbulent week in the sector. Several tech stocks saw shares tumble last week amid growing questions over whether AI-driven companies are being overvalued, including an MIT report that said 95% of AI pilots fail to grow company’s revenues and statements from the OpenAI…