The launch of a new chatbot by Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek triggered a plunge in US tech stocks as it appeared to perform as well as OpenAI's ChatGPT and other AI models, but using fewer resources. By Monday, DeepSeek's AI assistant had rapidly overtaken ChatGPT as the most popular free app in Apple's US and UK app stores. Despite its popularity with international users, the app appears to censor answers to sensitive questions about China and its government. Chinese generative AI must not contain content that violates the country's "core socialist values", according to a technical document published by the national cybersecurity standards committee. That includes content that "incites to subvert state power and overthrow the socialist system", or "endangers national security and interests and damages the national image".

Exiled Tibetan leaders and officials in the United States have condemned China's "cruel" policies in Tibet, accusing Beijing of separating families in the Himalayan region, banning their language, and engaging in non-consensual DNA collection. Addressing the US Congress for the first time, Penpa Tsering, the head of the India-based organisation known as Tibet's government in exile, said on Tuesday that Tibet was dying a "slow death" under Chinese rule. "We often get asked why we don't hear about Tibet any more," said Tsering, known as the Sikyong of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). He blamed that silence on China's "Orwellian gridlock system, use of all means of artificial intelligence to surveil people, control the flow of information and lockdown of Tibet to the outside world". "Tibetan language, religion and culture are the bedrock of Tibetan identity … These are facing the unprecedented threat of eradication," he told the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China hearing via video link.

While most of China was quarantined and Mount Everest was closed to climbers due to COVID-19, a herd of nearly 50 yaks made their way up the snowy north slopes of the world's highest mountain in temperatures that dipped below zero degrees Fahrenheit. On their backs were loads of equipment--metal beams, cables, and solar panels strapped down with cord--that would be used to build 5G antennas on rocky moraines scattered across the mountainside. Chinese tech giant Huawei and state-owned network provider China Mobile teamed up for this project to bring the latest in wireless data to Everest, which previously had very little cell coverage above base camp. Now, data speeds in the "death zone" on Everest, where the altitude is too high and the air is too thin to support life, are faster than in most American neighborhoods. In a press release, Huawei stated that the new super-fast data speeds on Everest will be used for "smart tourism"--with high-definition video streaming and virtual reality experiences for digital tourists to "visit" Everest from anywhere in the world.

Sign up for the Week in Patriarchy, a newsletter on feminism and sexism sent every Saturday. Want to see Taylor Swift naked? It's called DeepNude and it uses AI to "undress" photos of women and produce a realistic nude image. Or rather, there was an app for that: the creators of the horrifying program took it down on Thursday after a Vice article about DeepNude catalyzed widespread outrage. "We created this project for user's entertainment a few months ago," the app's creators tweeted.

In his short story "Rattlesnakes and Men," science fiction author Michael Bishop describes a town where everyone is required by law to own a dangerous rattlesnake. It's a scenario that he says is no more absurd than how America treats access to guns. "We lost our son at Virginia Tech in 2007, in the shootings there," Bishop says in Episode 322 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "I had been opposed to the laxity of our gun laws for a long, long time, and that just hardened both my wife and me on that particular point." The story features an organization called the Nokuse Rattlesnake Alliance, which forces schools to adopt living pit vipers, spends large sums to corrupt local politicians, and hides the truth about the number of snakebite victims.

Consciousness is a thriving industry. Consciousness is a buzzing business in neuroscience labs and brain institutes. Just a few decades ago, consciousness barely registered as a credible subject for science. Perhaps no one did more to legitimize its study than Francis Crick, who launched a second career in neurobiology after cracking the genetic code. In the 1980s Crick found a brilliant collaborator in the young scientist Christof Koch. In some ways, they made an unlikely team. Crick, a legend in science, was an outspoken atheist, while Koch, 40 years younger, was a Catholic yearning for ultimate meaning. Together, they published a series of pioneering articles on the neural correlates of consciousness until Crick died in 2004. Koch went on to a distinguished career at Caltech before joining the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. Today, as the president and chief scientific officer, he supervises several hundred scientists, engineers, and informatics experts trying to map the brain and figure out how our neural circuits process information. The Institute recently made news with the discovery of three giant neurons connecting many regions of the mouse brain, including one that wraps around the entire brain. The neurons extend from a set of cells known as the claustrum, which Crick and Koch maintained could act as a seat of consciousness. Koch is one of the great thinkers about consciousness. He has a philosophical frame of mind and jumps readily from one big idea to the next.

Connecting the dots between discoveries in neuroscience(neuroplasticity), psychoneuroimmunology(the brain-immune loop) and user experience (gadget rub-off) indicate the nature of our time spent with gadgets is a vector in human health - mentally, socially and physically. The positive design of our interactions with devices therefore can have a positive impact on economy, civilization and society. Likewise, the absence of design that encourages positive interaction may encourage undesirable behaviors. Much like the architecture of physical spaces and buildings, the consequences of the architecture of the 21stcentury conversation between man and machine may last generations. AI and the Internet of Things are primary vectors for positive and negative impacts of technology.  We describe a growing body of co-discoveries occurring across a variety of disciplines that support the argument for human sciences in technology design.