Sometimes it helps me to write by thinking about how a radio broadcaster or television presenter would deliver the information, so I'm your host, Blake Montgomery. Today in tech news: questions hover over the automation of labor in the worker-strapped US healthcare system; and drones proliferate in a new conflict: India v Pakistan, both armed with nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, in contrast to a thoughtful and robust conversation, the US is taking the opposite tack. Legend has it that Alexander the Great was presented with a knot in a rope tying a cart to a stake. So complex were its twistings that no man had been able to untie it of the hundreds who had tried. Alexander silently drew his sword and sliced the knot in two.

Tech expert Kurt Knutsson says the Ability Hand brings real touch, natural movement and unmatched durability. Losing a hand or limb is a life-changing event, and finding a prosthetic that can truly feel has long been a challenge. For many, traditional prosthetics offer limited movement and no sense of touch, making everyday tasks difficult and frustrating. But what if a prosthetic hand could do more than just move? What if it could actually feel the objects you touch, giving you real-time feedback and control?

In the largest gathering of 2026 gubernatorial candidates to date, seven Democrats vying to lead California courted labor leaders on Monday, vowing to support pro-union agreements on housing and infrastructure projects, regulation of artificial intelligence, and government funding for university research. Throughout most of the hourlong event, the hundreds of union members inside the Sacramento hotel ballroom embraced the pro-labor pledges and speeches that dominated the candidates' remarks, though some boos rose from the crowd when former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa strayed from the other Democrats on stage. Villaraigosa was the only candidate to raise objections when asked if he would support providing state unemployment benefits to striking workers, saying it would depend on the nature and length of the labor action. Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023 vetoed a bill that would have provided that coverage, saying it would make the state's unemployment trust fund "vulnerable to insolvency." The Monday night event was part of a legislative conference held by the California Federation of Labor Unions and the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, two of the most influential labor organizations in the state capital.

ChatGPT can go far beyond writing an email or coding a complex project. Some of the most useful applications are assistance with practical tasks in your everyday life, such as explaining that really complex x-ray diagnosis that is pure jargon or why your electric bill was sky-high (both based on real scenarios that happened to me). However, this requires you to give your personal information. If you are hesitant about giving ChatGPT your private information, you have good reason to be. The companies behind these popular generative AI tools, such as OpenAI, often use user inputs to further train the models and make them smarter.

In this interview series, we're meeting some of the AAAI/SIGAI Doctoral Consortium participants to find out more about their research. Ananya Joshi recently completed her PhD, where she developed a system that experts have used for the past two years to identify respiratory outbreaks (like COVID-19) in large-scale healthcare streams across the United States using her novel algorithms for ranking real-time events from large-scale time series data. In this interview, she tells us more about this project, how healthcare applications inspire basic AI research, and her future plans. When I started my PhD during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an explosion in continuously-updated human health data. Still, it was difficult for people to figure out which data was important so that they could make decisions like increasing the number of hospital beds at the start of an outbreak or patching a serious data problem that would impact disease forecasting.

With the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump pursuing its "America First" policy, Japan needs to produce its own artificial intelligence technology for defense purposes as cutting-edge AI could become a tool for political leverage, the CEO of a much-hyped Japanese AI startup said Tuesday. Speaking at a news conference in Tokyo, Sakana AI CEO David Ha said that as U.S. foreign policy becomes more U.S.-centric, AI services could serve as "a bargaining chip for countries." "Especially in defense and cybersecurity, AI is becoming a core part of this technology. So Japan should have its own know-how and capabilities to produce the AI systems it needs to run them," said Ha, who founded Sakana AI in 2023 and has raised some 30 billion ( 203 million) from investors including Nvidia.

SoftBank Group reported a 124% jump in quarterly profit on resilient AI demand that's supporting startup valuations and chip unit sales, a boost to its aggressive data center investment plans. The Tokyo-based company reported net income of 517.18 billion ( 3.5 billion) in its fiscal fourth quarter. It was helped by the Vision Fund, which swung to a profit of 26.1 billion. The earnings come at a critical juncture for SoftBank as it plans to invest 30 billion in OpenAI while leading a 100 billion foray into building AI hardware in the U.S. Maintaining a healthy cash flow and balance sheet is key to securing the billions of dollars needed at minimum cost.

Former President Donald Trump is embarking this week on a high-stakes tour of the Persian Gulf region, targeting business deals and strategic partnerships with three oil-rich nations: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. The trip marks Trump's first major foreign visit of his new term and comes as nuclear negotiations with Iran drag on and as war continues between Israel and the Palestinian terror organization, Hamas, in the Gaza Strip. While business is the official focus, the backdrop is anything but calm. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described the mission as part of Trump's broader vision that "extremism is defeated [through] commerce and cultural exchanges." Under President Joe Biden, U.S. relations with Gulf states cooled, particularly after Biden vowed to make Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a "pariah" over the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In a sprawling warehouse in a Shanghai suburb, dozens of humanoid robots are maneuvered by their operators to carry out tasks like folding a T-shirt, making a sandwich and opening doors, over and over again. Operating 17 hours a day, the site's goal is to generate reams of data that its owner, Chinese humanoid startup AgiBot, uses to train robots it hopes will become ubiquitous and change the way humans live, work and play. "Just imagine that one day in our own robot factory, our robots are assembling themselves," said Yao Maoqing, a partner at AgiBot.

Even if you've never fallen victim to a tech support scam, you've likely been targeted. Have you ever gotten a pop-up, or a cascading series of pop-ups that crowd your entire screen, warning you that your device has been compromised and urging you to call tech support ASAP? If the unlucky victims who fall for these tricks give the scammers access to their computer, the perpetrators can plant malware, steal personal information, or even wipe out victims' bank accounts. Now, Google wants to use AI to stop these scams in real time for Google Chrome users. "Chrome has always worked with Google Safe Browsing to help keep you safe online. Now, with this week's launch of Chrome 137, Chrome will offer an additional layer of protection using the on-device Gemini Nano large language model," Google said in a blog post.