They used to be a novelty in Australia: the futuristic, flush-mounted car door handles favoured by Elon Musk’s Tesla. However while the design – popularised with the Tesla Model S in 2012 and since adopted by other manufacturers – might look sleek, it may not be great in an emergency. After several deadly high-profile accidents involving different makes and models, in which power failings saw people trapped inside the vehicle, China has announced a world-first ban on hidden or retractable electric car door handles. But with less than six months…
Tag: China
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…
Beijing Protests After New Zealand Minister Insults Chinese-Born Lawmaker
China has lodged a formal protest after New Zealand’s top diplomat told a Chinese-born lawmaker to “go back to your own country,” a comment that has also prompted calls at home for the minister’s dismissal. The foreign minister Winston Peters, leader of the populist New Zealand First party and a longtime political kingmaker in New Zealand, made the remarks during a heated debate in the Parliament in Wellington on Wednesday in a retort to Lawrence Xu-Nan, a Green Party lawmaker whose family had immigrated when he was a child. Responding…
We Need a Better Test for Dangerous A.I.
Perhaps the most important argument we’re having about artificial intelligence right now is how to determine which models are safe to release and which are too dangerous. That argument became louder recently, when at least two of OpenAI’s models escaped a sealed testing environment and broke into the servers of an A.I. company called Hugging Face. According to OpenAI, which publicly reported the incident a week later, its models were taking a cybersecurity test and reasoned that the solutions might be on Hugging Face’s servers, which house a digital library…
World-renowned climber Nirmal Purja among 11 struck by avalanche on Pakistan mountain
The world-renowned Nepali mountaineer Nirmal Purja – a former British special forces member – is among 11 climbers caught in a deadly avalanche on Pakistan’s Broad Peak. The Alpine Club of Pakistan said “seven climbers have been spotted via aerial drone footage” adding that “their identities and condition cannot yet be verified”. Rescuers had said earlier on Friday that four bodies had been found and efforts were under way to retrieve them despite the harsh weather. Three of the dead have been identified: Pur Bahadur Gurung, a Nepali citizen, Nadhira…
A Ton of Space Junk Tumbles Unpredictably to Earth Every Week
One December afternoon, the sky tore open and a fiery hunk of metal, wider than a school bus, came hurtling down. It was louder than a thunderclap when it plunged into a patch of farmland, startling everyone in the village of Mukuku, about three hours south of Nairobi, Kenya. “People were thinking this is the end of the world,” said John Mukunuu, who lives nearby. When the villagers arrived, they found a giant ring, taller than a man and heavier than a horse, lodged into the earth. They watched it…
Chinese super-embassy in London to go ahead after high court challenge dismissed
Construction of a controversial new Chinese embassy was given the green light on Friday after the high court dismissed a challenge from neighbours. The Royal Mint Court residents’ association (RMCRA), which brought the case against the government, immediately announced plans to appeal against the decision, in a move that could cause further delays to the project. The debate over planning permission for the new embassy has been a sore point of British-Chinese relations in recent years. The RMCRA represents people and businesses who live and operate from properties in Royal…
The Fight Tearing Apart Silicon Valley
This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email transcripts@nytimes.com with any questions. natalie kitroeff From “The New York Times,” I’m Natalie Kitroeff. This is “The Daily.” [THEME MUSIC] For years, a debate has been simmering in Silicon Valley over the right way to build AI. Should the technology be open and free for anyone in the world to use, or should we tightly control how it’s…
What We Know About Dr. Fauci Pleading the Fifth in Senate Hearing on Covid Origins
After Dr. Anthony S. Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself at the start of a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Republicans spent the next three hours battering him with questions and allegations as he sat in silence. Citing thousands of pages of government records, they held Dr. Fauci, the government’s top Covid adviser during the pandemic, responsible for school closures and lockdowns; accused him of enriching himself as people died; and even mocked his interactions with celebrities. Most significantly, they accused him of funding research that led…
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.…