SEOUL - South Korea introduced on Thursday what it says is the world's first comprehensive set of laws regulating artificial intelligence, aiming to strengthen trust and safety in the sector, but startups fretted that compliance could hold them back. Seoul is hoping that the new AI Basic Act will position the country as a leader in the field. It has taken effect in South Korea sooner than a comparable effort in Europe, where the EU AI Act is being applied in phases through 2027. Global divisions remain over how to regulate AI, with the U.S. favoring a more light-touch approach to avoid stifling innovation. China has introduced some rules and proposed creating a body to coordinate global regulation. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

Javed is a senior editor at TIME, based in the London bureau. Javed is a senior editor at TIME, based in the London bureau. Leaders from across the tech sector, academia, and beyond gathered to explore how to implement responsible AI and ensure safeguarding while fostering innovation, at a roundtable convened by TIME in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan 21. In a wide-ranging conversation, participants in the roundtable, hosted by TIME CEO Jess Sibley, discussed topics including the impact of AI on children's development and safety, how to regulate the technology, and how to better train models to ensure they don't harm humans. Discussing the safety of children, Jonathan Haidt, professor of ethical leadership at NYU Stern and author of said that parents shouldn't focus on restricting their child's exposure entirely but on the habits they form.

OpenAI could be valued at $1tn if it launches an initial public offering, Reuters said. OpenAI could be valued at $1tn if it launches an initial public offering, Reuters said. The year of the'hectocorn': the $100bn tech companies that could float in 2026 Y ou've probably heard of "unicorns" - technology startups valued at more than $1bn - but 2026 is shaping up to be the year of the " hectocorn ", with several US and European companies potentially floating on stock markets at valuations over $100bn (£75bn). OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX and Stripe are among the big names said to be considering an initial public offering (IPO) this year. The success of their flotations - whether the shares maintain their value, rise or fall - could shape concerns about the AI race and whether the resulting market mania is a bubble .

An Australian tourist describes seeing one of the landslides behind him and running from it.

What is the Insurrection Act? Why is the US Fed chair criminal probe causing alarm? The United States House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee has overwhelmingly voted to advance a bill that would give Congress more power over artificial intelligence chip exports despite pushback from White House AI tsar David Sacks and a social media campaign against the legislation. Representative Brian Mast of Florida, a Republican and the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced the "AI Overwatch Act" in December after US President Donald Trump greenlit shipments of Nvidia's powerful H200 AI chips to China. The bill claims that those "countries of concern" also include countries beyond China, such as Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.

Grok's Leering Pictures Are the Newest Version of an Old Problem Image-based abuse predates Elon Musk's latest sleazy bot, but AI is making it worse. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. There's a picture of myself that I had saved on my desktop for years; I suppose we could call it a caricature. A little more than a decade ago, someone on a Nazi messageboard pulled a photo of me from social media, then updated it with some antisemitic flair: a little cartoon rat sitting on my shoulder, a yellow pinned on its tiny body. Referencing what Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust is meant to be a humiliation; the goal isn't hard to figure out, given that the whole star patch thing is near-medieval in both its imagery and its aims.

Do trees really explode in extreme cold? The answer involves frozen sap, the polar vortex, and a lot of internet exaggeration. Heavy snow fall, not explosions, are far more threatening to trees and yourself. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. The majority of the United States is bracing itself for a potentially historic polar vortex winter storm this weekend .

What We Know About the Winter Storm About to Hit the US--and What We Don't A huge portion of the United States is going to be hit with snow or freezing rain this weekend. Exactly where, what, and how much remains uncertain. Over the past weekend, when weather models first started forecasting a winter storm that would sweep over large parts of the country, Sean Sublette, a meteorologist living in Virginia, started telling people in his area to prepare for snow . At the time, Sublette says, "a lot of the data started to point to a substantial snow storm for the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, with significant ice farther southward into Carolina's Tennessee Valley." Then, Sublette woke up Wednesday morning.

A new EPIC report says data brokers, ad-tech surveillance, and ICE enforcement are among the factors leading to a "health privacy crisis" that is eroding trust and deterring people from seeking care. When immigration agents enter hospitals and private companies are allowed to buy and sell data that reveals who seeks medical care, patients retreat, treatment is delayed, and health outcomes worsen, according to a new report that describes a growing "health privacy crisis" in the United States driven by surveillance and weak law enforcement limits. The report, published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), attributes the problem to outdated privacy laws and rapidly expanding digital systems that allow health-related information to be tracked, analyzed, breached, and accessed by both private companies and government agencies. EPIC, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on privacy and civil liberties, based its findings on a review of federal and state laws, court rulings, agency policies, technical research, and documented case studies examining how health data is collected, shared, and used across government and commercial systems. "Unregulated digital technologies, mass surveillance, and weak privacy laws have created a health privacy crisis," the report says.

How much is US support for Israel costing Trump? What is a Palestinian without olives? Why are Gaza's homes collapsing in winter? 'The end of the world as we know it': Is the rules-based order finished? Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the quiet part out loud at the World Economic Forum: what many call the global rules-based order was either collapsing or had collapsed already.