Asia
The Download: India's smart glasses menace and AI's trillion-dollar gamble
Plus: hackers claim they've stolen data on almost all FBI employees. When Shubnam saw an Instagram video of a Delhi protest they had attended, they realized a content creator wearing Meta smart glasses had recorded them surreptitiously. The mocking reel drew millions of views, along with transphobic abuse and AI-generated memes. Experts warn that many others will experience similar ordeals as smart glasses go mainstream. The risks are particularly acute in India, where covert recording and the circulation of images without consent are already pervasive. The bigger issue is that the smart glasses aren't just being used to turn ordinary people into targets of viral "pranks."
What's at stake when Trump and Xi meet in the US?
What's at stake when Trump and Xi meet in the US? To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. What's at stake when Trump and Xi meet in the US? Close US President Donald Trump will host Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week in Washington. The BBC's China correspondent Laura Bicker and US editor Sarah Smith explain what's at stake for the two global superpowers. Updates from your News topics will appear in My News and in a collection on the News homepage .
As AI leaders warn of catastrophe, US and China shun slowdown calls
As industry leaders urge a global slowdown in artificial intelligence development for the sake of humanity, the two superpowers driving the technology's rapid advancement have given no indication they intend to hit the brakes. The United States and China, which are locked in a fierce strategic rivalry, have each rebutted calls to slow the pace of AI development, even as industry executives and researchers stress the need for international cooperation to avoid exposing humans to catastrophic - or even existential - risks. Observers anticipated measures that, at best, would fall far short of the coordinated slowdown that many experts said is needed. "The two countries host nearly all frontier labs and most of the models people download," said Alvin Wang Graylin, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute's Center for China Analysis, describing agreed guardrails between the US and China as "close to a precondition" for safe AI. "A safety regime covering one side's models covers half the problem," Wang Graylin said. Hampering the prospects for US-China cooperation, analysts said, are mutual mistrust and divergent perceptions of the primary risks involved.
She's 28, Loves God and Her Family, and Might Be the Reason You Can't Have Kids
She's 28, Loves God and Her Family, and Might Be the Reason You Can't Have Kids Emma Waters is leading a national fight against fertility tech--with her hot husband's permission, of course. By 5 am every morning, Emma Waters is on the sofa with a blanket, plotting America's baby-making future. For two hours, she stays off her phone, inspired by, the self-help bestseller. At 7:30, she does emails. Waters, 28 years old, is a monk of productivity who makes motherhood look like all-natural Adderall. At 8 am, it's time for breakfast and the Bible. Waters tries to live her life according to the mantra "Love God, get married, have babies." She asks that I not use the real names of her two daughters for their safety, even though they've been printed elsewhere. I'll call them Gertie and Ophelia, which are close enough. Ophelia, the baby, runs around in white tights, shirtless, clutching a pink purse; Gertie's doll won't stop crying. There isn't much to say about Jack, other than that he's hot, is studying to be a preacher, and has a big desk at home, much bigger than Waters', featuring a bust of Nietzsche. In the same room, Waters has a pull-out secretary where she takes meetings, not far from a portrait of a glowering President Trump . The only thing Waters doesn't really do is exercise; she hasn't found the time. Not many people outside of DC have heard of Waters, who mostly works from home in a dreary Pennsylvania suburb named after a long-offshored manufacturer. Yet Waters is a factory for policy papers and op-eds extolling the harms of unregulated reproductive technology, probing the moral issues that liberals don't want to touch with a 10-foot turkey baster.