World News by Wild Rose

Sherry Shum has embraced a new shopping routine after finding a smart vending machine near her home in Chai Wan. The 37-year-old retail worker uses her phone to scan a QR code, opens the smart machine’s door, picks up a bottle of Coca-Cola, an oolong tea and a pack of potato chips, closes it and walks away with HK$60 (US$7.70) worth of goods. The whole process is so seamless that the only time she spends is deciding what to buy. The moment Shum takes an item from the shelf, the machine detects...

BBC Verify has tracked dozens of AI ads to assess how they are being used by campaigns in the midterms.

There’s no end in sight for the brutal selloff in China’s artificial intelligence model developer stocks, with competition growing ever more heated and the threat of rival listings next year.

The publisher of top-selling Haitian-Canadian writer Thelyson Orelien said Wednesday it had confirmed that he used artificial intelligence to help write his novel It Was Either That or Die. Orelien has denied allegations that he used AI on his breakthrough novel and, last week, Canadian publisher Boreal said it was standing by the 38-year-old writer. But on Wednesday, Boreal said it had conducted a further investigation into the allegations. “New information, confirmed over the past few days,...

Tokyo, Oct. 20 (Jiji Press)--Japan's Leading-edge Semiconductor Technology Center, or LSTC, whose members include chipmaker Rapidus Corp., and other entities said Tuesday that they will jointly develop an artificial intelligence-based medical image-processing system. The project members, also including Hokkaido University and Fujifilm Corp., aim to realize real-time image processing required...

There’s a growing push to review guidelines for the $9.5 trillion-a-day currency market more often, to make sure they keep pace with artificial intelligence’s rapid advance.

In New York last month, US-China talks on artificial intelligence opened up a path of cooperation. This was affirmed by the Xi-Trump summit in Washington where both presidents agreed to establish a formal AI dialogue and hotline. With the next AI meeting set to happen in November, it is imperative that both countries further cooperation. The AI ecosystem is in flux. American tech companies are draining their coffers as they commit vast sums to chips, data centres and energy before the revenue...

In New York last month, US-China talks on artificial intelligence opened up a path of cooperation. This was affirmed by the Xi-Trump summit in Washington where both presidents agreed to establish a formal AI dialogue and hotline. With the next AI meeting set to happen in November, it is imperative that both countries further cooperation. The AI ecosystem is in flux. American tech companies are draining their coffers as they commit vast sums to chips, data centres and energy before the revenue...

Tokyo, Oct. 19 (Jiji Press)--Japan aims to strengthen its investigative capabilities using advanced technology, including artificial intelligence, to tackle cyberattacks and "tokuryu" loosely organized anonymous criminal groups, National Public Safety Commission Chairman Yasuhiro Hanashi has said. "We need to respond without delay to protect safety and security, which are the foundation of ...

China has been urged to learn from a Pentagon project to assess future warfare but warned to avoid the potential conflicts of interest and other shortcomings of the US defence review. Project Meridian, launched late last month, is designed to identify future battlefield requirements and prioritise investment, with a focus on areas such as artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, directed energy, robotics and biotechnology. In an analysis published on Friday, the Beijing-based think tank Blue...

When artificial intelligence agents first arrived, they came with a tantalising promise: autonomous “digital workers” that would finally free humans from corporate drudgery. As businesses across Asia are discovering, however, the reality is quite the opposite – more work, new friction and a whole new layer of management. When Xiao Mengjie, an AI product marketing manager at a Big Tech firm in Shanghai, recently assigned two AI agents what she described as a simple task, she expected efficiency....

To train artificial intelligence models, millions of physical books are being digitised and destroyed. Our colleagues at France 2 investigate this controversial practice and the risk of seeing many rare second-hand books disappear forever.

HSBC, Hong Kong’s biggest lender, said on Thursday it would double its artificial intelligence specialist team in the city to 300, a figure much larger than the workforce planned for its recently announced AI centre in Singapore. The announcement comes after Hong Kong’s regulators were reported to have raised concerns about the Singapore hub. The bank would double its AI specialist headcount in Hong Kong from 150 to 300 over the next two to three years, said David Liao Yi-chien, HSBC co-CEO for...

Japanese semiconductor materials giant Sumitomo Bakelite plans to expand production of advanced chip packaging materials in China and Singapore, marking the second such announcement for its Chinese operations in less than four months as artificial intelligence drives demand for more sophisticated semiconductors. The Tokyo-based company said on Friday that it would add production lines for mould underfill (MUF) materials and compression-moulding granules at its facilities in Suzhou, eastern...

OpenAI’s $70 billion revenue target reignites the AI trade. Jet fuel prices squeeze US airlines, while Goldman leads a Wall Street trading windfall. Plus, Naftali Group CEO Miki Naftali on South Florida’s luxury real estate boom, and Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment CEO Sam Zussman on the Liberty’s playoff push and record crowds at Barclays. Get a jump start on the US trading day with Dani Burger on "Bloomberg Open Interest." (Source: Bloomberg)

China is racing to power a future of artificial intelligence and robots with renewables. But as it builds more electricity capacity than ever before, it faces a new challenge: whether the grid can keep up. (Source: Bloomberg)

An Nvidia-backed US start-up has unveiled an open-weight model to challenge China’s dominance in freely available artificial intelligence, releasing a system that early third-party testing suggests could be one of the most token-efficient open models in its class. Reflection AI on Monday debuted Beam, its first open-weight model built for coding, reasoning and agentic tasks. The US firm said Beam was “competitive” with GLM-5.2 from Z.ai – also known as Zhipu AI – and was “approaching” Alibaba...

Hong Kong has unveiled a four-step artificial intelligence (AI) “talent ladder” strategy to counter entry-level job shock and foster industry leaders, viewing the technology as a “catalyst, not a threat”. Permanent Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry Kevin Choi Kit-ming warned on Monday that the “entry-level shock” was real because AI performed well in many routine tasks that once made up a graduate’s first job, such as basic coding and first-line customer service. Speaking at the...