The AI arms race between China and the US has researchers on both sides worried about a "Chernobyl moment." Just over a week ago, I attended a major artificial intelligence conference in Zhongguancun, Beijing's bustling high-tech district. It was packed with fascinating sessions touching on everything from recursive self-improvement--the idea that models can tweak their own code and advance indefinitely--to humanoid robots. And it featured a few legends of computing, including Whitfield Diffie, co-inventor of public-key cryptography, and Andrew Barto, who won the Turing Award with Rich Sutton for his pioneering work on reinforcement learning. But I left with one takeaway above all else: The US and China should put their fierce AI rivalry to the side.

'The CEOs are telling us, "We're on track to create superhuman intelligence, which has a good chance of causing human extinction."' 'The CEOs are telling us, "We're on track to create superhuman intelligence, which has a good chance of causing human extinction."' Will it take a'Chernobyl-scale disaster' for us to regulate cyber weapons of mass destruction? T he AI company Anthropic has been making major headlines recently. Its trillion-dollar IPO plan and its blood feud with secretary of defense Pete Hegseth have attracted much attention, but two other events may be even more consequential.

A worker checks the radiation level inside the control room of reactor No 4, where the Chornobyl disaster happened in 1986. A worker checks the radiation level inside the control room of reactor No 4, where the Chornobyl disaster happened in 1986. In February 2025, a cheap Russian drone tore through Chornobyl's confinement shelter. Workers warn the site of the world's worst nuclear accident is not safe yet The dosimeter clipped to your chest ticks faster the moment you step off the designated path inside the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. Step back, and it slows again - an invisible line between clean ground and contamination.

What are Russia's gains from the Iran war? 'We are not losers; we are winners' But the calm is deceptive. Two soldiers scour the skies, hands firmly gripping anti-aircraft guns mounted on pick-up trucks parked on a small, dilapidated bridge on a tributary of the Pripyat River. Danger is all around, both in the surrounding land, which still carries the legacy of the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster, with pockets of intense radioactive contamination, and above, where Russian drones and missiles launched from just across the border in Belarus, a short distance to the north, regularly pass overhead. The area is known as the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ), a restricted area of approximately 30km (19 miles) in diameter, comparable in size to Luxembourg, established to contain the spread of contamination. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, briefly occupying the CEZ and the surrounding area, large swaths of it have become militarised, adding another layer of restriction to an already tightly controlled and hazardous environment. Yet despite the CEZ's many dangers, four decades on from the Chornobyl disaster, small communities of scientists, elderly returnees and soldiers have carved out lives among its abandoned buildings, while wildlife thrives in the surrounding forests.

Near the Kremlin several dozen people are queuing outside the presidential administration office. They've come to submit petitions calling on President Vladimir Putin to end a crackdown on the internet. Russian authorities have been tightening control of the country's cyber space. Access to global messaging apps has been restricted and there are widespread disruptions to, even shutdowns of, mobile internet. Petitioning the president is legal.

What are Russia's gains from the Iran war? 'We are not losers; we are winners' Russia strikes Ukraine's Odesa port, kills railway worker in Zaporizhia Russian drones have attacked Ukraine's main Black Sea port in the southern city of Odesa and a railway in the region of Zaporizhia, killing a train driver, according to Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba. The overnight attacks damaged the infrastructure of the Odesa port, including berths, warehouses, railway infrastructure and port operators' facilities, Kuleba said in a statement on X on Wednesday. Kuleba said this is "another proof of terrorism, Russia is at war against peaceful people, against those who were simply doing their job and keeping the country moving". Russia also launched several drones and missiles on a flight path near the disused Chornobyl nuclear plant, elevating the risk of a significant accident, according to Ukraine's top state prosecutor. This comes as Ukraine prepares to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1986 Chornobyl disaster on Sunday.

Some seemingly simple sequences of multiplication and addition grow so quickly that they question the very foundations of mathematics. Did you hear the one about the man who invented chess and got himself executed? Legend has it that a man called Sessa, who lived in India long ago, developed the rules for the game and presented them to a king. The king was delighted and offered the man his pick of reward. Sessa asked for a supposedly humble quantity of rice.

Japanet is expanding its venture capital fund with Pegasus Tech Ventures, after early investments in firms like SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI showed strong growth. Japanese home shopping company Japanet is expanding its venture capital fund with San Jose-based Pegasus Tech Ventures, following the success of early bets in SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI. The Nagasaki-based retailer known for infomercials targeting seniors in aging Japan will allocate $200 million to the fund, up from an initial $50 million in 2021, following significant growth" in investments so far, the companies said in a statement. The fund, of which Pegasus is general partner, will focus on areas such as generative AI, robotics and space technology. Its Japan portfolio includes startup Aillis, which seeks to use artificial intelligence to analyze medical scans. Asian companies have struggled to win stakes in promising startups in Silicon Valley, hampered by a lack of personal connections and reputation for slow decision-making. Pegasus also manages startup investments on behalf of Toyota Motor-affiliate Aisin, Japanese chemical maker Denka, Taiwan's Asustek Computer and Acer and Indonesia's pharma company Kalbe Farma. Everybody wants a piece of the Silicon Valley AI action," Pegasus Chief Executive Officer Anis Uzzaman said on a video call.

Attendees at the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, China, take pictures of various service robots on display. At the world's largest trade show, it's not just the clientele that had a different look this year. Despite the near absence of buyers wearing a traditional Arab headdress and robe at the Canton Fair, a vast showcase that started last week in China's southern metropolis of Guangzhou, a brash new generation of tech companies stood out just as much. Few wanted to dwell on the war. Even as the conflict in the Middle East once more fractures global commerce, interviews with more than a dozen exporters at the fair found many were already eager to look beyond the hostilities blamed for the worst energy disruption in generations.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by several former employees of OpenAI. Amazon is investing an additional $5 billion in Anthropic, and may inject $20 billion more over time, a deal that deepens the companies' ties in an increasingly competitive artificial intelligence industry. Anthropic, which makes the Claude chatbot and coding tool, plans to spend more than $100 billion over the next 10 years on Amazon's cloud technologies and chips, the companies said in a statement on Monday. Amazon shares gained about 3% on the news in extended trading. Amazon was already one of Anthropic's biggest backers, with prior investments totaling $8 billion.