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…
Tag: Computing
Chinese court awards compensation to sacked worker replaced by AI
A court in China has ruled in favour of a worker whose company replaced him with artificial intelligence (AI), awarding him more than £28,000 in compensation. The worker, whose surname is Zhou, joined a tech company in the eastern city of Hangzhou in 2022 as a quality assurance supervisor overseeing large language models used in AI products. The company, which has not been named publicly, later said AI could do his job and offered him a demotion and a 40% pay cut. When he refused, the company fired him. Zhou…
Siri, where does Apple go next? – podcast
Where does Apple – perhaps the most iconic tech company on Earth – go next? Last week its CEO, Tim Cook, stood down after 15 years. As US Guardian tech editor Blake Montgomery explains, when Cook took over after the death of the charismatic Steve Jobs, there were doubts he could build on his predecessor’s success. In fact, he has overseen extraordinary growth. After a decade of building global supply chains – and charming presidents from Xi Jinping to Donald Trump – he now presides over a company worth $4tn.…
China blocks $2bn Meta takeover of AI agent developer Manus
China has blocked Meta’s $2bn (£1.5bn) acquisition of an AI startup as it cracks down on US investments in domestic tech companies. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, announced the acquisition of Manus, a developer of autonomous AI agents, in December. However, the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Monday it had cancelled the takeover. In a statement, China’s top economic planning body said that it will “prohibit the foreign investment in the acquisition of the Manus project” and “requires the parties involved…
China now the ‘good guy’ on AI as Trump takes ‘wild west’ approach, MPs told
China is now the “good guy” on AI rather than Donald Trump’s US, where the technology is being pursued in a dangerous “wild west” manner, a former UN and UK government adviser has told MPs. Prof Dame Wendy Hall, who was a member of the UN’s AI advisory board and co-wrote a review of AI for Theresa May’s government, told the House of Commons business and trade committee that China was backing multinational attempts to introduce global governance of AI, in contrast to America, which had set up a race…
Inside China’s robotics revolution
Chen Liang, the founder of Guchi Robotics, an automation company headquartered in Shanghai, is a tall, heavy-set man in his mid-40s with square-rimmed glasses. His everyday manner is calm and understated, but when he is in his element – up close with the technology he builds, or in business meetings discussing the imminent replacement of human workers by robots – he wears an exuberant smile that brings to mind an intern on his first day at his dream job. Guchi makes the machines that install wheels, dashboards and windows for…
US AI giant accuses Chinese rivals of mass data theft
US artificial intelligence company Anthropic said on Monday it had uncovered campaigns by three Chinese AI firms to illicitly extract capabilities from its Claude chatbot, in what it described as industrial-scale intellectual property theft. OpenAI leveled similar charges last month. Anthropic said DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and MiniMax used a technique known as “distillation” – using outputs from a more powerful AI system to rapidly boost the performance of a less capable one. “These campaigns are growing in intensity and sophistication,” the company said in a statement. “The window to act…
China lags behind US at AI frontier but could quickly catch up, say experts
Beijing’s AI policy is focused on real-life applications but Chinese companies are beginning to articulate their own grand visions Standing on stage in the eastern China tech hub of Hangzhou, Alibaba’s normally media-shy CEO made an attention-grabbing announcement. “The world today is witnessing the dawn of an AI-driven intelligent revolution,” Eddie Wu told a developer conference in September. “Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will not only amplify human intelligence but also unlock human potential, paving the way for the arrival of artificial superintelligence (ASI).” ASI, Wu said, “could produce a generation…
The best of the long read in 2025
Victor Pelevin made his name in 90s Russia with scathing satires of authoritarianism. But while his literary peers have faced censorship and fled the country, he still sells millions. Has he become a Kremlin apologist? At 18, Mustafa was told his only way out of prison was to join the regime forces. After 14 years, his past as one of Assad’s fighters could get him killed When fossilised remains were discovered in the Djurab desert in 2001, they were hailed as radically rewriting the history of our species. But not…
‘DeepSeek is humane. Doctors are more like machines’: my mother’s worrying reliance on AI for health advice – podcast
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