Government
Thinking Beyond Tokens: From Brain-Inspired Intelligence to Cognitive Foundations for Artificial General Intelligence and its Societal Impact
Qureshi, Rizwan, Sapkota, Ranjan, Shah, Abbas, Muneer, Amgad, Zafar, Anas, Vayani, Ashmal, Shoman, Maged, Eldaly, Abdelrahman B. M., Zhang, Kai, Sadak, Ferhat, Raza, Shaina, Fan, Xinqi, Shwartz-Ziv, Ravid, Yan, Hong, Jain, Vinjia, Chadha, Aman, Karkee, Manoj, Wu, Jia, Mirjalili, Seyedali
Can machines truly think, reason and act in domains like humans? This enduring question continues to shape the pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Despite the growing capabilities of models such as GPT-4.5, DeepSeek, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Phi-4, and Grok 3, which exhibit multimodal fluency and partial reasoning, these systems remain fundamentally limited by their reliance on token-level prediction and lack of grounded agency. This paper offers a cross-disciplinary synthesis of AGI development, spanning artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, generative models, and agent-based systems. We analyze the architectural and cognitive foundations of general intelligence, highlighting the role of modular reasoning, persistent memory, and multi-agent coordination. In particular, we emphasize the rise of Agentic RAG frameworks that combine retrieval, planning, and dynamic tool use to enable more adaptive behavior. We discuss generalization strategies, including information compression, test-time adaptation, and training-free methods, as critical pathways toward flexible, domain-agnostic intelligence. Vision-Language Models (VLMs) are reexamined not just as perception modules but as evolving interfaces for embodied understanding and collaborative task completion. We also argue that true intelligence arises not from scale alone but from the integration of memory and reasoning: an orchestration of modular, interactive, and self-improving components where compression enables adaptive behavior. Drawing on advances in neurosymbolic systems, reinforcement learning, and cognitive scaffolding, we explore how recent architectures begin to bridge the gap between statistical learning and goal-directed cognition. Finally, we identify key scientific, technical, and ethical challenges on the path to AGI.
New AI voice tool trained to copy British regional accents
There is concern that languages and dialects are being lost in the digital era. "Among the over seven thousand languages that still exist today, almost half are endangered according to UNESCO; about a third have some online presence; less than 2 percent are supported by Google Translate; and according to OpenAI's own testing, only fifteen, or 0.2 percent are supported by GPT-4 [an OpenAI model] above an 80 percent accuracy," writes Karen Hao in the book Empire of AI. "Language models are homogenising speech," agrees AI expert Henry Ajder, who advises governments and tech firms, including Synthesia. However, the better these products become, the more effective they will also be in the hands of scammers. Synthesia's product will not be free when it is released in the coming weeks, and will have guardrails around hate speech and explicit material. But there are already many free, open-source voice-cloning tools which are easily accessible and less protected.
xAI announces 200m US military deal after Grok chatbot had Nazi meltdown
The week after its Grok chatbot identified itself as "MechaHitler" and generated antisemitic posts, Elon Musk's xAI firm announced a contract with the US Department of Defense worth nearly 200m. The deal is for developing and implementing artificial intelligence tools for the agency. The DoD on Monday also announced similar contracts with 200m ceilings with several other major US-based artificial intelligence developers, including Google, Anthropic and OpenAI. The agency is partnering with the General Services Administration to make these companies' AI tools available for use throughout the federal government. "Leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our joint mission-essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence, business, and enterprise information systems," the US chief digital and AI officer Dr Doug Matty said in a statement.
Israel killing Gaza civilians with commercial drones, probe finds
The Israeli army is weaponising Chinese-made drones to kill Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, according to an investigation by the Israeli publications 972 Magazine and the Local Call. The drones are operated manually by soldiers on the ground to bomb civilians โ including children โ to force them out of their homes or prevent them from returning to areas where Palestinians have been expelled, the outlets reported on Sunday. The publications interviewed seven soldiers and officers to produce their findings, they said. The report was published as criticism of Israel's plan to set up an internment camp in southern Gaza is growing. Former Israeli Prime Ministers Yair Lapid and Ehud Olmert said it would amount to a "concentration camp" if Palestinians there are not allowed to leave. "The weaponisation of civilian drones to kill and dispossess Palestinians is the latest revelation of the cruelties normalised in Gaza and further evidence of how Israel is trying to forcibly transfer the population to the south of the Strip," Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh said, reporting from Amman, Jordan, because Israel has banned Al Jazeera from reporting from Israel and the occupied West Bank.
Trump's whirlwind week ahead to include meeting with NATO chief, 'major' announcement on Russia
Former CIA station chief in Moscow Dan Hoffman breaks down two ways the United States can respond to Russia's attacks on Ukraine on'Fox Report.' In his 26th week back in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump is expected to make a "major announcement" related to Russia, hold a meeting with the NATO chief, and join a summit in Pennsylvania as America's race to lead the world on artificial intelligence continues. Trump spent the anniversary at his home in Bedminster, N.J., before traveling with first lady Melania Trump to the FIFA Club World Cup final on Sunday at MetLife Stadium in the Garden State. Trump returned to the White House on Sunday evening and is expected to have another whirlwind workweek. Trump will meet with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte this week following the U.S. president saying last week that the U.S. is selling weapons to its NATO allies for them to be passed along to Ukraine as it continues battling Russia.
Is the U.S. Ready for the Next War?
Late this spring, I was led into a car in Kyiv, blindfolded, and driven to a secret factory in western Ukraine. The facility belongs to TAF Drones, founded three years ago by Oleksandr Yakovenko, a young Ukrainian businessman who wanted to help fend off the Russian invasion. When the war started, Yakovenko was busy running a logistics company in Odesa, but his country needed all the help it could get. Ukraine was overmatched--fighting a larger, wealthier adversary with a bigger army and more sophisticated weapons. "The government said to me, 'We need you to make drones,' " Yakovenko told me.
Not Drowning but Waving, at a Drone
Although it is easy to be enthusiastic about the sea's ability to regulate climate and to produce both oxygen and delicious marine life that goes well with melted butter, it is also easy to recognize that the sea is an uncompromising bringer of death, a hotheaded bully who is perpetually ready to rumble. The other day in the Rockaways, on the shore at Beach Eighty-seventh Street, the ocean was exhibiting its pugilistic side: four-foot waves, strong undertow--perfect conditions for test-driving one of the city's new beach-patrol initiatives. For the past three years, New York City beaches have relied on drones to detect sharks and riptides, and now the gizmos are being used to drop flotation devices on swimmers in trouble. This summer, a stretch of the Rockaways will be patrolled by two all-terrain vehicles, each bearing a drone pilot as well as a rescue swimmer, who can assist lifeguards as needed. A correspondent who had volunteered to pose as a swimmer in distress cast a wary eye at the surf.
China is exploiting our government's tech weakness. We need a rapid reboot
Fox News anchor Bret Baier examines the U.S. power supply on'Special Report.' After more than two decades of serving in the U.S. Navy and building government systems, I have witnessed firsthand how millions of dedicated Americans work every day in service of their fellow citizens and the security of our democracy. I have also seen both the immense potential -- and frustrating inertia -- that plagues public service. An unrealized opportunity exists to connect the U.S. government's critical missions with the transformative power of commercial technology. Consider this: of the world's 10 largest companies by market capitalization, a staggering eight are American founded.
Malaysia controls AI chip exports as U.S. targets China smuggling
Malaysia will now require permits for exports of high-performance U.S. artificial intelligence chips, suggesting the government is seeking to clamp down on potential diversion of the sensitive components to places like China. Effective immediately, individuals and companies must notify Kuala Lumpur at least 30 days prior to exporting or shipping such hardware, Malaysia's trade and industry ministry said Monday. They must inform the agency if they know or "have reasonable grounds" to suspect the items will be misused or used for restricted activities. Malaysia "will not tolerate the misuse of Malaysia's jurisdiction for illicit trading activities," the ministry said. Kuala Lumpur has come under increasing pressure from Washington -- which has effectively banned the sale of advanced AI chips to China since 2022 -- to halt the suspected flow of those parts to China via intermediaries in Malaysia.
Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,236
Russian drone attacks killed a 53-year-old Ukrainian man in Ukraine's Sumy region and left parts of the city of Sumy without power, the Kyiv Independent reported, citing local authorities. Ukraine's SBU intelligence service said it killed several Russian secret service agents during an operation to arrest them in the Kyiv region on Sunday. The SBU said it believed the agents were behind the killing of its colonel, Ivan Voronych, in Kyiv on Thursday. Russia's Ministry of Defence said its forces have captured the villages of Mykolaivka and Myrne in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region. The United Nations's nuclear watchdog reported hearing hundreds of rounds of small arms fire late on Saturday at Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is occupied by Russian forces.