The launch of "Xoli" adds to the technological efforts promoted by the federal government to turn the 2026 World Cup into an engine of development for the entire country. Xoli, the new chatbot, is named after the axolotl, a salamander with external gills. The Government of Mexico City has launched Xoli, a chatbot that will provide information on services, tourism, and cultural offerings. The platform was designed to meet the demand of the millions of visitors expected to arrive during the 2026 FIFA World Cup . However, the authorities assure that the tool will remain active once the sporting event is over, with the aim of promoting economic activities and facilitating access to public services in the capital.

Iran's Digital Surveillance Machine Is Almost Complete After more than 15 years of draconian measures, culminating in an ongoing internet shutdown, the Iranian regime seems to be staggering toward its digital surveillance endgame. Iranian protesters gather on Enghelab (Revolution) Street during a demonstration in Tehran on January 8, 2026. Over the past four weeks, the Iranian government completely shut down connections to the global internet while its forces killed thousands of anti-regime protesters around the country. The shutdown follows years of Tehran imposing connectivity filtering, digital curfews, and total blackouts as part of previous attempts to quell unrest. Over more than 15 years, the regime has developed technological and systemic mechanisms to fundamentally control connectivity in the country--including an internal Iranian intranet known as the National Information Network (NIN).

Suspected Chinese state-backed hackers hijacked the Notepadd++ update infrastructure to deliver a backdoored version of the popular free source code editor and note-taking app for Windows. Infrastructure delivering updates for Notepad++--a widely used text editor for Windows--was compromised for six months by suspected China-state hackers who used their control to deliver backdoored versions of the app to select targets, developers said Monday. "I deeply apologize to all users affected by this hijacking," the author of a post published to the official notepad-plus-plus.org The post said that the attack began last June with an "infrastructure-level compromise that allowed malicious actors to intercept and redirect update traffic destined for notepad-plus-plus.org." The attackers, whom multiple investigators tied to the Chinese government, then selectively redirected certain targeted users to malicious update servers where they received backdoored updates.

Measuring global AI diffusion remains challenging due to a lack of population-normalized, cross-country usage data. We introduce AI User Share, a novel indicator that estimates the share of each country's working-age population actively using AI tools. Built from anonymized Microsoft telemetry and adjusted for device access and mobile scaling, this metric spans 147 economies and provides consistent, real-time insight into global AI diffusion. We find wide variation in adoption, with a strong correlation between AI User Share and GDP. High uptake is concentrated in developed economies, though usage among internet-connected populations in lower-income countries reveals substantial latent demand. We also detect sharp increases in usage following major product launches, such as DeepSeek in early 2025. While the metric's reliance solely on Microsoft telemetry introduces potential biases related to this user base, it offers an important new lens into how AI is spreading globally. AI User Share enables timely benchmarking that can inform data-driven AI policy.

Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you've likely seen the statistics: Rates of depression and anxiety in the United States--fairly stable in the 2000s--rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent. The problem was not limited to the U.S.: Similar patterns emerged around the same time in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, the Nordic countries, and beyond. By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data. The decline in mental health is just one of many signs that something went awry. Loneliness and friendlessness among American teens began to surge around 2012. Academic achievement went down, too. According to "The Nation's Report Card," scores in reading and math began to decline for U.S. students after 2012, reversing decades of slow but generally steady increase. PISA, the major international measure of educational trends, shows that declines in math, reading, and science happened globally, also beginning in the early 2010s. As the oldest members of Gen Z reach their late 20s, their troubles are carrying over into adulthood. Young adults are dating less, having less sex, and showing less interest in ever having children than prior generations. They are more likely to live with their parents. They were less likely to get jobs as teens, and managers say they are harder to work with.

Rural and remote communities in Canada often rely on satellites to access the internet, but those connections are fraught with many glitches and service interruptions because the technology can be unreliable. The inequity in internet access between these communities and those who live in cities is an ongoing problem with myriad consequences for Canada's economic productivity. A team of researchers from the University of Waterloo and the National Research Council (NRC) are tackling this long-standing issue using machine learning. The team's method, the Multivariate Variance-based Genetic Ensemble Learning Method, merges several existing AI-driven models to detect anomalies in satellites and satellite networks before they can cause major problems. "For remote areas in Canada and around the world, satellites are often their best option for maintaining internet access," said Peng Hu, an adjunct professor of computer science and statistics and actuarial science at Waterloo and the corresponding author of the study.

This paper introduces Artificial Intelligence Clinics on Mobile (AICOM), an open-source project devoted to answering the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3) on health, which represents a universal recognition that health is fundamental to human capital and social and economic development. The core motivation for the AICOM project is the fact that over 80% of the people in the least developed countries (LDCs) own a mobile phone, even though less than 40% of these people have internet access. Hence, through enabling AI-based disease diagnostics and screening capability on affordable mobile phones without connectivity will be a critical first step to addressing healthcare access problems. The technologies developed in the AICOM project achieve exactly this goal, and we have demonstrated the effectiveness of AICOM on monkeypox screening tasks. We plan to continue expanding and open-sourcing the AICOM platform, aiming for it to evolve into an universal AI doctor for the Underserved and Hard-to-Reach.

ChatGPT is trained till 2021, and that was a big bummer. With the latest update from OpenAI, it can access the internet, upload images, videos, audio, and CSV files, and connect to your website for enhanced functionality. Well, that world is here! OpenAI has just announced a game-changing upgrade to ChatGPT that will revolutionize how you interact with AI. OpenAI recently announced a massive upgrade to ChatGPT, which now supports plugins that extend its functionality.

Every week I get dozens of emails about ChatGPT and student education. As a professor of law focused on technology and a mom of three kids I am fielding messages from my kids' schools, from my workplace, and from colleagues near and far. They share a sense of panic about the AI chatbot that is able to almost magically--and instantly--generate schoolwork that students for centuries produced through laborious research and writing. How will students learn to research and write? How will we assess them?

Vivek Wadhwa and Mauritz Kop recently penned an op-ed urging governments around the world to get ahead of the threat posed by the emerging technology known as quantum computing. They even went so far as to title their article "Why Quantum Computing is Even More Dangerous Than Artificial Intelligence." Up front: This one gets a very respectful hard-disagree from me. While I do believe that quantum computing does pose an existential threat to humanity, my reasons differ wildly from those proposed by Wadhwa and Kop. Wadhwa and Kop open their article with a description of AI's failures, potential misuse, and how the media's narrative has exacerbated the danger of AI before it settles on a powerful lead: The world's failure to rein in the demon of AI--or rather, the crude technologies masquerading as such--should serve to be a profound warning.