china
Meet the Battery Startup Taking on China's Giants
Solid-state batteries are safer and more capable--but harder to mass-produce. They also represent an opportunity for non-Chinese companies to get back in the game. The field of lithium batteries is currently dominated by Chinese companies like BYD and CATL. Not only do they sell the majority of batteries that go into electric vehicles and energy storage projects worldwide, they're also opening up new factories in your backyard . When companies outside China try to compete, like Europe's Northvolt, they quickly realize how hard it is .
Robot Dogs, Teslas, and Rescue Helicopters: The UN AI Summit Was a Lot
Amid live coding sessions and Silicon Valley optimism, the UN's AI for Good summit wrestled with an increasingly urgent question: Can global governance catch up before the technology races beyond its control? Dodge past the live onstage coding sessions, AI refresher courses, an obstacle course of gizmos, round people walking round with glowing green silent-disco-style headphones blaring UN panel discussions into your ears, and you can take a pause for breath. But you might find yourself in the Networking Zone, on a rotating seating contraption called UFOTECH that looks more like the kind of lazy Susan you'd encounter at a Chinese restaurant than the networking bench it is designed to function as. This is the AI for Good summit, organized by the United Nations' International Telecommunication Union (ITU), where representatives from the private and public sectors try to discuss how to harness the technology for the benefit, rather than the detriment, of humanity. While Silicon Valley execs and AI lab leaders are testifying to lawmakers in Washington about the risks of superintelligence, and the White House slaps export controls on chips, the UN AI for Good Summit--now in its 10th year--is focused on much more idealistic goals.
China Is Already Trying to Control Who the Next Dalai Lama Will Be
Follow this section to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. Follow this tag to personalize your feed and get instant alerts. Follow Go to your personalized feed WHY FOLLOW? Smart Alerts: Get notified about major news as it happens. In early June, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was wheeled into an operating room at Apollo Hospital in New Delhi. Spiritually, His Holiness is an emanation, or of the bodhisattva Chenrezig, who renounced nirvana to help mankind.
The humanoid robot designed 'for a lifetime': China reveals creepy bots that look and feel like real humans - and they can even reproduce 90% of our movements
Trump declares deal with Iran is DEAD after'scum' opened fire on tankers: Oil prices surge Trump's pick for Florida governor accused of ambushing mom in gourmet grocery store: Watch him vow to'crush' her as aide screams Trump's inner circle have shown me the real UFO disclosure: The president has an imminent speech'written and ready'... what he'll explain about non-human life will make it all make sense Group chats of Travis Kelce's Chiefs teammates explode with's**t talk' about Taylor Swift wedding... as groom's snubbed friends vent their fury and players take sides: 'WTF?!' Actress who starred with Robert Redford and has famous daughter spotted out in LA... can you guess who she is? English King Alfred who massacred thousands of Vikings is'found buried' under Hampshire car park days before England play Norway in World Cup USA star at the heart of World Cup controversy offers groveling apology for team's failure: 'Not good enough' Bombshell first details about Taylor Swift's wedding dress: Stunning off-the-shoulder design revealed... incredible '25ft train'... and shock SECOND outfit Ford wrongly accused a worker of stealing a $1.95 cookie and fired him - then BEGGED him to return to work MTG brands Mitch McConnell's wife a'communist spy' as she flees to China during terrifying hospitalization Middle-aged man with America's WORST table manners sparks fury by chewing with his mouth open and hurling food on floor at bagel bakery Everyone's missed something so utterly humiliating about Taylor and Travis's wedding... I can't help but scream it: JANA HOCKING Sick twist in horrific case of youth pastor who pushed wife off cliff: Friends and family reveal chilling new details his final phone call hours before suicide... and insult from beyond the grave The humanoid robot designed'for a lifetime': China reveals creepy bots that look and feel like real humans - and they can even reproduce 90% of our movements China has revealed a new generation of creepy humanoid robots that are designed for a'lifetime' of companionship. At an event in the Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen, UBTech Robotics launched the world's first mass-produced ultra-realistic humanoid robots. These Uworld U1 androids are covered with'biomimetic skin' that looks and feels just like that of a real human.
What Happens if China Hacks the US Water Supply? I Went to a Secret War Game to Find Out
In a closed-door simulation, insurers played out their response to a mass disruption by China's Volt Typhoon hackers--and found a nightmare scenario. It's around an hour and 10 minutes into the role-playing game I've been invited to observe, a simulated catastrophic cyberattack on US water utilities, when the whole thing begins to feel less like a fun afternoon playing Dungeons & Dragons and more like a plausible threat to civilization. A full 24 hours of in-game time have passed since hackers disrupted 5,000 water utilities across the United States in this imagined scenario. Joshua Corman, the former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency strategist serving as our dungeon master, stands at the front of a conference space in an office tower high above Times Square, narrating the latest updates to the game's participants, a few dozen insurance executives set up in six teams. All of them have gone disturbingly silent. It's about to get harder," Corman says. "I'm going to share a few things, and it's going to hurt." It is, of course, still the same April afternoon as when we started--but in game time, the second-order effects of widespread water outages have started to become clear. Food refrigeration systems are failing at cold storage warehouses. Water-dependent drug and chemical manufacturing has been bottlenecked, leading to insulin shortages. Data centers' cooling systems are failing, causing outages of cloud services. Most critically, 2,000 hospitals are without water, hampering patient care and in some cases leading to evacuations as HVAC systems shut down and the July heat--the game takes place just before Independence Day in 2027--bakes facilities. Worse yet, Corman is playing a looping video onscreen, at the front of the room, showing a burst water main: The hackers have managed to trigger not just IT disruption but also, in at least some cases, real physical destruction that will take far longer to fix. "Everyone downstream is without water pressure," Corman says. "There are no breaks in real incident response," Corman explains just before the giant water pipe starts gushing onscreen. "If you have to go to the bathroom, go to the bathroom.
This Former DeepMind Exec Thinks the AI Arms Race Could End in Disaster
Verity Harding tells WIRED that the US government's nationalistic attitude toward AI is evidence that a worst-case scenario is taking shape. Reports of an artificial intelligence arms race are everywhere-- even in this very publication . But what if that framing is fundamentally dangerous? Between 2016 and 2020, Harding spent her days briefing politicians across the globe, from Barack Obama to Emmanuel Macron, on advances in AI. As the head of global public policy at Google DeepMind, Harding was responsible for mapping out ethical conundrums and potential risks.
Can China repeat its EV success with robotaxis?
Can China repeat its EV success with robotaxis? In Beijing's Yizhuang district, driverless vehicles have become a common sight. Robotaxis weave through traffic alongside ordinary cars, while autonomous delivery vans glide along the inside lane as they carry packages to collection points. The district has become one of China's testing grounds for autonomous driving, with companies including Baidu, WeRide and Pony.ai operating commercial robotaxi services within designated areas. Booking a ride requires little more than opening an app.
China wants to solve the hardest problem in robotics – making hands
Race to develop'embodied AI' focuses on creating dextrous hands to transform humanoid robots from gimmicks into useful products Human hands - nimble, nerve-filled appendages that are the most flexible part of the human skeleton - are exceptionally complex. Many tasks that most people can do largely without thinking, from tying a pair of shoelaces to buttoning up a shirt, in fact require a complex set of neurological instructions and precise choreography. In thousands of years of human history, no machine has been able to truly replicate human's greatest tool. But now, as artificial intelligence (AI) races forwards, some companies think they are close to surpassing this final but most difficult hurdle in robotics. Most of them are in China . A new suite of Chinese start-ups are leveraging China's advantages in manufacturing and enthusiasm for what the government calls "embodied AI" to build the fully dextrous robotic hands that are needed to transform humanoid robots from dancing gimmicks into useful products.