According to the Environment Ministry, elderly people accounted for about 85% of heatstroke fatalities in 2024, with most deaths occurring at home. The Environment Ministry has launched a pilot project to help protect elderly people from heatstroke by utilizing artificial intelligence and sensors to encourage them to use air conditioners properly. The initiative aims to identify heatstroke risks proactively as extreme heat continues to claim the lives of many elderly people indoors. The project features three programs -- an AI-based system that estimates core body temperatures and notifies users of the risk of heatstroke via a smartwatch, a monitoring system that notifies registered family members through an app when indoor temperatures exceed certain levels, and a system that automatically activates air conditioners based on room temperatures. The test uses commercially available products developed by medical device manufacturers.

Neighborhood safety, street noise and greenery may affect sleep quality and insomnia symptoms, according to a study analyzing urban environments with AI and Google Street View images.

From branding irons to iris scans, the ancient business of proving who you are has never been stranger--or more lucrative. There are now more bots online than people. The challenge used to be telling who was a person from who was a bot; today, the challenge is telling good bots and bad bots apart--with humanity in the lurch. Three summers ago, Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, posted on X a fifteen-second video of dozens of people--mostly young, veiled in face masks, and wearing super-hip, white-soled sneakers--waiting in a long, snaky line in the traffic-light-lit but otherwise dusky dark of an unnamed city that appears to have been Nagoya, Japan. "Crazy lines around the world," Altman wrote. "One person getting verified every 8 seconds now." In the video, the camera pans to the front of the line, where a woman is kneeling on the sidewalk as if in prayer, staring into a gleaming silver orb about the size of a volleyball that has been propped up on a stand about the height of an end table. It looks like the eyeball of a giant robot Cyclops. She is bowing before an artificially intelligent machine, seeking a certification that she is human. That eyeball, which is known as the Orb, was developed by Tools for Humanity, a San Francisco-and Munich-based tech company that Altman founded in 2019 with a twenty-five-year-old German physicist named Alex Blania, who is now its C.E.O.

U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping while leaving after a visit to the Zhongnanhai Garden in Beijing, China, May 15, 2026. China's latest barrage of countermeasures against the U.S. drew on an expanding legal arsenal, demonstrating Beijing's growing capacity to retaliate while warning Washington against further tech curbs before Chinese President Xi Jinping's expected visit to the U.S. next month. The package announced Wednesday featured the first national security investigation under China's recently revised Foreign Trade Law and tighter scrutiny of drone-related exports. It also included sanctions on seven American entities and a suspension of cooperation with the U.S. over the inspection of products destined for China. The speed and breadth of the action, revealed in a volley of five statements released one week after the U.S. moved to ban new foreign robots, shows China's willingness and ability to turn up the pressure even as it preserved room for de-escalation.

OpenAI's new device will be hockey puck-size and cost over $300 OpenAI is looking to break new ground with its upcoming device, which is slated for release in 2027. A highly anticipated new device from OpenAI will have a unique look, complete with moving parts that help give it personality, and likely cost more than $300, according to people familiar with the matter. The product -- essentially a smart speaker without a display -- will be shaped like a doughnut that's roughly the size of a hockey puck, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the work is confidential. The idea is to make the device easy to carry around the home with one hand. OpenAI is looking to break new ground with the product, which is slated for release in 2027.

For the three months to June, SoftBank booked gains from its bets on Intel, whose shares more than tripled during the quarter. SoftBank Group has reported a smaller-than-expected decline in quarterly net income, helped by a rally in its chip-stock holdings while it awaits further gains from its bets on OpenAI. The Tokyo-based technology investor's net income fell 18% to ¥347.3 billion ($2.2 billion) in its fiscal first quarter after unrealized gains on its bets on chipmakers countered startup valuation declines. That compares with a market estimate of about ¥166 billion, based on the average of four analysts polled. OpenAI's Japanese backer is in the spotlight alongside concerns about the climbing debt levels artificial intelligence service providers are taking on so they can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers and other infrastructure.

More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Tourist feedings have sustained more rabbits than the island's natural environment could otherwise support. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy . Okunoshima Island in Japan's Hiroshima Prefecture is famous for its huge population of free-range rabbits .

The release of Moonshot's Kimi K3 model upended assumptions that Chinese AI capabilities were meaningfully behind U.S. leaders such as OpenAI and Anthropic. A White House official accused China's Moonshot of improperly using U.S. AI models and Nvidia chips to create the Kimi K3 system that stunned the tech industry last week with its advanced capabilities. The company "acquired GB300-equipped servers and has accessed GB300s in Thailand, likely to train its AI models," White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios said in a social media post Wednesday, making the case that Moonshot violated U.S. export control rules and companies' terms of service to build its product. The semiconductor servers Kratsios referenced are part of the Blackwell generation of Nvidia products, which the U.S. forbids from sale to Chinese companies. Though the Trump administration has allowed some sales of Nvidia's H200 chips, it continues to prevent sales of the more advanced Blackwells. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

U.S. and China to hold AI talks in September, sources say Talks between the United States and China on artificial intelligence are set to take place in September and be led on the U.S. side by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, sources have said. BEIJING - The United States and China will hold talks over artificial intelligence in September, five people familiar with the matter said, as the rival superpowers grapple with how to mitigate the risks posed by each other's increasingly powerful frontier models. The AI talks, a significant outcome of the summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in May, will likely take place before Xi's planned Sept. 24 visit to the U.S., said the sources, who asked not to be named as the information is not public. The dates, however, have not been finalized, they said. As economic, political and military rivals, China and the U.S. have grown increasingly anxious over each other's AI capabilities amid an accelerating global AI race. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

Japan's AI gamble: Can technology offset the cost of an ageing society? Beneath the business towers of Tokyo's Otemachi district, a test is taking place to see whether artificial intelligence can help solve one of Japan's biggest economic challenges: a shrinking workforce. Deep underground, Marunouchi Heat Supply Company operates a 30km (18.6-mile) network of heating and cooling pipelines serving offices, commercial buildings and transport facilities in one of Japan's most important business areas. The company is now using AI to manage this complex infrastructure with the goal of moving towards more automated operations by 2027. Developed with the Tokyo-based AI company Preferred Networks, the project uses PlantPilot, an AI system trained on historical operating data and the expertise of experienced engineers.