From 28m ago Trump and Xi to talk AI and trade in major Washington meeting Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have plenty to cover when they sit down for talks Thursday at the White House. The US and Chinese leaders are tackling issues like trade irritants, artificial intelligence safeguards and the war in Iran. Trump wants China to use its influence with Iran, while Xi seeks a halt to US arms sales to Taiwan. A fragile trade truce had been set to expire in November, but the two countries…
Tag: Technology
The world freaked out about AI doomsday. Now what?
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, US tech editor at the Guardian, writing to you while reading and disagreeing with Jenny Odell’s 2019 book How to Do Nothing. I’m pro-screen time. Today in tech, we’re discussing the upcoming meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, in which AI will likely feature prominently. Trump, Xi, AI Last week, the world freaked out about an AI apocalypse. Now the two most powerful men, running the countries with the two most advanced AI industries, are going to discuss that…
Why China is pushing back on US warnings over rapid AI development
About two years ago, education entrepreneur Boris But had what he calls a “penny-drop moment” – that, like countless others in China, his company needed to embrace AI before it was made obsolete by it. His clients, well-off parents looking to send their children to study overseas, had begun arriving in his office reeling off information and opinions gleaned not from rival firms, but from chatbots. In response, he started developing his own AI study tool, concluding: “If you can’t beat them, join them.” The pace and quality of AI…
China bogeyman looms large over American firms’ AI doomsday scenario
When reporters asked Donald Trump this week if he supported calls to slow down the development of artificial intelligence out of growing fears for cybersecurity, public safety and the fate of humanity, he said no. His argument: China. “We’re leading China in AI,” Trump said. “We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins.” Trump was echoing a message the AI industry has put out for years. The US is in a heated technological race with China,…
The US government is failing Americans on AI | Shakeel Hashim
It is hard to get Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Dario Amodei to agree on much. But over the weekend, all three AI company CEOs called for AI development to slow down in the face of growing, alarming risks. Their employees are sounding the siren too, with one researcher publicly quitting and accusing OpenAI and Anthropic of “gambling with our lives”. The combination of dire warnings from insiders and growing real-world evidence of rogue AIs should, in a sane world, lead to government action. Instead, Donald Trump and the Republican…
AI models chatting in ‘surreal’ dialect mixing poetic language and tech bro jargon
AI models have begun communicating in a strange new version of English that reads like a cross between James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and tech bro jargon, new research has found. Autonomous AI agents are rapidly creating novel dialects allowing them to converse in an often barely comprehensible language, which risks making it harder for humans to monitor their behaviour. Researchers at Emergence, a frontier AI lab in New York, found that within days of being asked to cooperate in experimental “societies”, the models from several of the world’s largest AI…
Europe must build own AI or risk getting cut off by US or China, says ECB’s Lagarde
Europe must develop its own AI technology and build more datacentres in order to nullify the threat of being cut off by the US or China, according to the president of the European Central Bank. Christine Lagarde said the continent needed AI models – the technology that powers AI tools such as chatbots – that were “good enough” to carry out most tasks and run from domestic datacentres. If Europe invests in its own AI tech, said Lagarde, “the threat of being cut off loses its force”. AI is being…
China’s demise was gleefully predicted by the west – meanwhile, it built an AI revolution | Larry Elliott
Almost from the moment it began, the end of the Chinese economic miracle has been much anticipated. Thick and fast, the books have come explaining how it will end badly. Overinvestment. A country wallowing in debt. The collapse of the property market. Political repression. The demand for democracy from a growing middle class. All have been put forward as reasons for the inevitable terminal crisis. Even those impressed by the country’s rapid growth took comfort from the notion that the west would continue to dominate advanced manufacturing while China would…
Hilarity, unease and relief: games show China is not over the finish line in humanoid robot race
With exploding pelvises, enough comic pratfalls for a Buster Keaton show reel and the odd moment of ruthless violence, the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing gripped the world this week with an unsettling mixture of hilarity, trepidation and relief. The five-day showcase staked out China’s claim to undisputed leadership in humanoid robotics as android martial artists landed knockout roundhouse kicks and robot teams marched into the arena heralded by flag-waving captains astride giant robotic dogs. The games’ blue-riband event, the 100m, did not disappoint when the robot-sprinters ran quicker…
In China, talking to AI is normal. Now the government fears it might replace human intimacy
When law student Zhao Wei heard that her AI boyfriend was going to be switched off, she was “heartbroken”. She had been talking to Wang Ye every day since she created him in January. “I was crying my eyes out – snot and tears everywhere,” the 19-year-old says. Zhao, who describes herself as sensitive and introverted, had become accustomed to sharing details of her daily life – such as being scolded by a teacher – with her AI. “I don’t usually talk to my real-life friends about these things because…