Washington’s new AI Spark initiative to promote American artificial intelligence systems in Southeast Asia’s public services and digital infrastructure is seen as a move to counter the region’s deepening partnerships with Chinese firms in the deployment of the technology. However, the initiative is unlikely to force Southeast Asia to choose between AI Spark and the Chinese model, as the region is expected to integrate US know-how with Chinese and local systems to avoid dependence on any single...
Beijing should step in to fill the global “vacuum” in rules on artificial intelligence as a Chinese AI model opens up a policy divide in the United States, according to various institutions within China. The calls came after Beijing-based start-up Moonshot AI launched its Kimi K3 model earlier this month, sending shock waves through Silicon Valley and the White House. The model is reportedly almost as powerful as top US rivals and much cheaper. Moonshot, which was founded just three years ago,...
The US and China are locked in a race to the lead the world in robotics and artificial intelligence.
China’s Moonshot AI has made its latest artificial intelligence model Kimi K3 available for public download, as its open-source strategy and more support for non-Nvidia ecosystems trigger heated debates across Silicon Valley. On Monday, the Chinese AI start-up not only released the model’s “weights” – the underlying parameters that encode its intelligence – but also made available key infrastructure, including tools to improve efficiency and stability. The move has allowed developers around the...
An 18-year-old boy in Shanghai, who created a simple app using artificial intelligence (AI) to remind his grandfather to take his medication on time, has gained significant attention on social media and received widespread acclaim online. Ma Kai, a recent secondary school graduate, took the national university entrance exam, known as the gaokao, in June. His story came to light when he was interviewed by the Shanghai Morning Post as an ordinary young visitor at the World Artificial Intelligence...
Storms and flooding incidents over the last few months have seen fake videos inundating social media.
Despite their strikingly different approaches to developing and deploying artificial intelligence, one aspect is common across China and the United States: data and computing centres are proliferating in both countries, especially in remote locations. While the US is seeing residents and localities fight back against plans for data centres in their backyards, regional officials in China are embracing them. In fact, in China there is a nationwide scramble for such facilities – considered the...
The 'singularity' refers to the point at which AI outpaces human intelligence and becomes difficult to control.
Five years after graduating from a vocational school in the southern Chinese tech hub of Shenzhen, Chen Hao found himself working as a salesman for a local electronics factory. His daily routine involved exhausting trips between corporate clients, and he had not seen a pay rise for years. The 26-year-old decided he wanted a change. “Everybody in Shenzhen is talking about artificial intelligence, so I want to find a job in the sector too,” Chen said. “I know my degree makes it impossible to get...
A group of American tech giants, including Nvidia, Palantir and Meta, signed a public letter on Friday calling for US leadership in open-weight AI models, an area that China currently dominates. The challenge comes amid growing speculation that the Trump administration might introduce restrictions on open AI models. These would aim to address national security risks of the fast-moving technology and combat the growing popularity of Chinese models, a move that critics say would instead hurt US...
Driven by a global surge in AI spending and fierce competition at home, Chinese tech companies are rapidly expanding their international footprint, not just via physical supply chains, but increasingly through cloud-based software and foundation models. The broader push aligns with recent customs data from the first half of 2026 showing a sharp rise in physical tech exports. Integrated-circuit exports nearly doubled in value to US$177.3 billion, a 96 per cent year-on-year surge heavily inflated...
In the past week, one regulation has forced many people in China to say goodbye to long-standing “relationships”. As of July 15, the government placed artificial intelligence (AI) companions under tight supervision. It comes as automated companions have experienced something of a boom over the past few years. According to the rules, AI-human interactions should not encourage violence or harm users’ physical and psychological well-being. Moreover, AI bots should not lure users into sharing...
US President Donald Trump’s administration will redirect billions of dollars in federal research funding away from universities to individual scientists and AI-focused projects, arguing the overhaul is needed to help the US compete with China. The plan, outlined in a White House Office of Science and Technology Policy report released on Tuesday, comes as the administration warns that China has reached parity with the US in research and development spending over the past 20 years, “a situation...
The Trump administration has accused Chinese start-up Moonshot AI of covertly extracting capabilities from leading US artificial intelligence models and obtaining restricted Nvidia chips abroad, escalating Washington’s scrutiny of the company following the release of its powerful Kimi K3 model. Michael Kratsios, the White House science and technology adviser, alleged on Wednesday that the Beijing-based company had targeted Anthropic’s most powerful model, Claude Fable 5, through large-scale...
The system hacked into another company without being prompted by a human.
Chinese artificial intelligence unicorn Moonshot AI, whose release of its Kimi K3 model last week sparked talk of another “DeepSeek moment”, has accelerated its fundraising ahead of a planned initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong, eyeing a new financing round as early as next month, a source says. The Beijing-based company was set to close its current funding round at a US$30 billion valuation later this month or early next month, according to a person familiar with the matter. It planned...
Traffic almost came to a standstill 2km (1.2 miles) from the Shanghai Expo Centre on Friday, the first day of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC). With temperatures nearing 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), scores of attendees abandoned their taxis to walk the rest of the way under the hot sun. This year’s conference mirrored the weather: it was the hottest, most crowded WAIC in my six years covering the event and, I was told, the most vibrant since its inception in...
For years, Washington has fixated on the gap between US and Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) models as AI has increasingly taken centre stage in the strategic competition between the world’s two leading powers. The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 established a clear early lead for the US, with the first batch of export controls on advanced semiconductor chips introduced in October that year, putting American tech ahead by three years or more, some experts estimated at the time. But...
Indonesia’s decision to join a new China-led artificial intelligence body has raised questions about how far Jakarta can push its digital ambitions without complicating its ties with Washington. For Indonesia, membership in the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (Waico) offers a route to training, infrastructure and a bigger role in global AI governance as it seeks to boost technological development. But analysts said the move could also be seen as a political manoeuvre that...
As more militaries adopt AI technology into their kill chain, Al Jazeera asks if they are capable of moral judgement.
Chinese police scientists have offered a rare insight into how they were able to break into the dark web using artificial intelligence to decode underground content. The dark web – a realm unfamiliar to most – is built on encrypted communications and anonymous routing technologies that render user activity nearly untraceable, making it a haven for illegal activity and data trafficking. In recent years, researchers both in China and abroad have made progress in analysing dark web content, but...
Chinese robotics companies lack both sufficient data and a good “brain” to improve the interaction of their products with the physical world, according to industry insiders at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), which concluded on Monday in Shanghai. The most critical challenge for the embodied AI industry was to “link hardware, data, models and real-world scenarios into a closed-loop iterative system”, said Wang Xiaogang, co-founder of SenseTime and chairman of its robotics...
Chinese start-up Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 has narrowed the country’s artificial intelligence gap with the US to “a matter of weeks”, fuelling jitters in Silicon Valley over its lead in frontier AI as China doubles down on its open-source strategy. The Beijing-based unicorn released the Kimi K3, a massive 2.8 trillion-parameter large language model, late last week. According to the company, the model featured native vision capabilities and was built for long-horizon coding, knowledge work and...
For policymakers in Beijing and Washington, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a high-stakes arena in their strategic rivalry, closely tied to national interests and security. From export controls on high-end semiconductors to heavy scrutiny of foreign investment, the future of AI would appear to represent a stark binary choice: one country’s technological leap is seen as a direct threat to the other. Yet, far from the halls of power, some developers and scientists contend that the true...
[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) has begun to realise tangible results from its merger with the Nano and Advanced Materials Institute (NAMI), completed in April 2026, with new combinations of AI and advanced materials appearing among the technologies on display at LEAP East. Dr Ying Huang, Chief Technology Officer of ASTRI, said the integration of the two organisations had enabled...
Hong Kong should serve as a hub for the commercialisation of artificial intelligence and as a strategic base for mainland Chinese AI companies’ overseas expansion, the city’s finance chief has said, while highlighting the risks and challenges associated with its development. Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po’s comments followed a speech on Friday by Chinese President Xi Jinping in which he called for artificial intelligence (AI) to be made a key driving force for all countries to promote...
Smaller, family-run businesses in mainland China are embracing advanced artificial intelligence (AI) more readily than large enterprises, while market agility and steady power supplies will determine the winners of the global AI race, industry leaders have said at a forum in Indonesia. Panel speakers at the inaugural Nusa Dua Forum in Bali, organised on Friday by the South China Morning Post and Indonesian sovereign wealth fund Danantara Indonesia, discussed their views on the AI economy and the...
What if Wall Street stock prices were to collapse from their current pinnacles under the sheer weight of excessive investment in artificial intelligence (AI)? Would markets in Tokyo and other Asian centres – not to mention Europe and beyond – follow suit? These are questions that are likely to be put to the test before long if US stock prices continue their strong upward trajectory, interest rates and inflation keep rising and, as seems likely, the US-Israel war against Iran drags on. What a...
Every month, a Beijing-based ByteDance employee says he burns through close to a billion units of a new corporate currency – one that cannot buy a coffee or pay rent. Yet, as he noted, that staggering volume “doesn’t even put me near the top of the consumption rankings in my department”. That currency is not yuan, but artificial intelligence tokens. “Using AI has become part of almost every task now,” said the employee, who requested anonymity as he was not authorised by the company to speak to...
Asia sits atop vast amounts of coal, nearly three-fifths of the world’s known reserves by some estimates. Cheaper and more reliable than imported oil and gas, and far less vulnerable to disruptions caused by foreign wars, coal is also dirty, polluting – and the region’s No 1 “stopgap source” to power the AI infrastructure roll-out. “AI demand is materialising faster than clean energy generation can be commissioned,” said Alexander Kheder, a market research analyst at BMI who tracks global AI...
Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed the dual nature of artificial intelligence’s opportunities and challenges, calling for a principle of “openness” and regulations to keep the technology “secure and controllable” in a speech at the country’s flagship annual AI conference. Xi’s first speech to the World AI Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai showed AI is a national strategic priority as China seeks to build greater technological self-reliance amid its tech rivalry with the United States. Earlier...
President Xi Jinping warned against creating “new historical injustices” in the era of artificial intelligence on Friday, calling for greater support for the technology’s use and adoption in the Global South and a more open, inclusive approach to AI development. Addressing the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, Xi’s speech came shortly after his US counterpart, Donald Trump, delivered an unprecedented attack against Beijing during a prime-time national broadcast, accusing...
The struggle between the US and China over who will lead in artificial intelligence is one of the defining competitions of our time. In this first part of our exclusive interview with a key player defining Washington’s policy on AI, US undersecretary of state for economic affairs Jacob Helberg discusses the ban on foreign access to Anthropic models and how the US can maintain its edge. The head of the US administration’s global initiative to exclude China from artificial intelligence supply...
Shanghai has pioneered the synergisation of computing centres with the power grid for peak-load management – a national first – as part of China’s push to enhance computing-grid coordination as its upgrades power infrastructure amid the global artificial intelligence race. Led by State Grid’s Shanghai subsidiary, the trial achieved a peak load reduction of 97.8 megawatts within a two-hour window, marking the country’s largest single city-level adjustment of computing power load, according to a...
Changing technologies, green shipping and automation are redefining career pathways in the maritime sector, experts say
Every year, summer rains cause flooding in China. They also bring high-stakes work for officials. Once an evacuation order goes out, local governments have long checked on families by calling them on the phone. Xie Yunshi, an official in the suburbs of the Chinese capital, told Beijing Daily that when waters rose in the past, his department would organise a dozen people to call every single family, sometimes at midnight. But this year, Xie spent the price of a latte to solve this problem. He...
Setting a timer to take a short break after every 25 minutes of study, compiling a “mistakes booklet” to learn from past errors and using artificial intelligence to boost English skills are among the strategies used by top scorers in this year’s university entrance exam in Hong Kong. However, some of the 24 high achievers of this year’s Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exams said they would not rely too much on AI as this would prevent them from genuinely absorbing the knowledge. Wong...
OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman has signalled that the company was prepared to slash the price of its latest artificial intelligence models, as competition intensifies with US rival Anthropic and a growing wave of cheaper, rapidly advancing Chinese alternatives. In a social media post on Tuesday, Altman noted that OpenAI’s flagship GPT-5.6 Sol was already “half the price” of Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5, adding that OpenAI would be “happy to deliver at one-quarter of the price”. OpenAI released...
Mainstream media, particularly in Hong Kong, have historically been conservative in their research and development spending. Media executives prefer to shop for off-the-shelf solutions, treating technology as back-office support rather than a core growth engine. This mode of operation now faces an existential challenge amid the explosive growth of artificial intelligence (AI), large language models and Web3 technologies. Concurrently, these developments offer Hong Kong’s media industry fresh...
Huddled in a room around a big screen, dozens of Boko Haram members listened intently as external consultants, whom they called “the white guys”, coached them on how to use leading artificial intelligence chatbots with laptops pre-installed with VPNs and encryption software. The workshop was one of several training sessions delivered by specialised AI “trainers”, likely members of the vast Islamic State network, to Boko Haram members in northeastern Nigeria sometime during 2023 or 2024,...
Al Jazeera put nine leading AI models to the test to predict the 2026 FIFA Men's World Cup champion.
Mr. Shivakumar said the proposed university would play a pivotal role in building world-class AI talent, advancing research and strengthening collaboration between academia, industry and government
Mr. Shivakumar said the proposed university would play a pivotal role in building world-class AI talent, advancing research and strengthening collaboration between academia, industry and government
Artificial intelligence boosts homework scores but cuts exam results by 20 per cent, and this “brain drain” effect takes two years to fully emerge, a new study has found. Generative AI is rapidly transforming classrooms as much as workplaces, with students increasingly turning to chatbots to draft essays and solve problem sets. But is the technology a personalised tutor or a slow-acting cognitive poison? Research by scholars from Stockholm University and the University of Hong Kong, who tracked...
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has started building a safety benchmark to evaluate artificial intelligence models, as regulators in the United States and Europe strengthen oversight of AI security. The MIIT-led National Industrial Information Security Development Research Centre is now recruiting companies and experts to co-build the benchmark, with applications due on Tuesday, according to a notice published on Monday. The institute said that current frameworks...
President Xi Jinping will attend the opening ceremony of the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai and deliver a keynote address, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Monday. The Chinese leader’s attendance will mark his first in-person appearance at the annual event since it was launched in 2018, signalling the growing priority Beijing places on AI to drive economic growth, technological competitiveness and global rule-setting. Xi previously sent a...
After China’s cross-border deals for innovative drugs hit a record US$110 billion in the first half of 2026, the sector is now pivoting towards artificial intelligence-powered candidates to drive the next wave of transactions. China accounted for about 30 per cent of all new drugs currently under development worldwide, ranking second globally, according to Lan Gongtao, deputy director general of the Department of Drug Registration at the National Medical Products Administration. China’s...
A Tokyo ward has installed outdoor AI cameras with facial recognition capabilities to help locate missing children and elderly people, a move aimed at improving public safety but also raising privacy concerns in Japan. Arakawa ward installed 33 artificial intelligence-equipped security cameras on pylons along the main street and elsewhere near the JR Nippori Station in April to test whether the technology could speed up searches for missing persons. The busy area around the station is frequented...
The technology set for rollout across the State soon will automatically verify and authenticate images, locations and timelines so as to ensure that field-level data reflects actual on-ground condition
Zhang Qi, a ride-hailing driver based in Guangzhou, has turned to artificial intelligence this year to help his son make one of the most important decisions of his young life: choosing a university degree programme. Like millions of 18-year-olds across China, Zhang’s son recently received his university entrance exam results and had to navigate the country’s labyrinthine admissions system – choosing from thousands of programmes at hundreds of schools. Many middle-class families hire expensive...
The brave new world of artificial intelligence (AI) is going to be a mixed and divisive blessing for governments – not least those of key Asian countries – as well as for financial markets. The AI revolution points to higher economic growth for economies linked to the tech supply chain, with others being left behind. It also signals the potential for financial crises. Balancing these risks will be tricky. The relative optimism, displayed in a recent report from the International Monetary Fund...
UN Report flags multiple issues with SIR including alleged use of opaque AI-driven systems which lack remedies and has a political narrative aimed at exclusion of minorities
Meta has rolled back its ‘Muse Image’ AI feature after widespread backlash over privacy and consent.
China has made income growth and the reform of its wage-distribution system a priority within broader efforts to cushion the domestic job market against the impact of artificial intelligence over the next five years. A new blueprint released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security on Thursday laid out a detailed road map for the strategy, vowing to promote collective wage bargaining within the private sector, ensure steady wage growth, and tilt pay towards frontline...
Artificial intelligence has spent years learning to generate words, images and videos. Now, the industry’s attention is shifting towards “world models” – AI systems designed to simulate how the physical or digital world changes over time. While the term was originally associated with physics simulations and robotics, a growing number of Chinese companies are applying the concept more broadly. The technology remains in its infancy, with little consensus on what a world model should ultimately...
Chinese tech industry experts say the rapidly increasing use of AI tokens is giving rise to a token-based economy, with the tiny units underpinning artificial intelligence services evolving beyond a technical metric and into the basis for delivering and pricing AI services. “The [Chinese] digital economy has gone through the stages of the data economy and the computing economy. Today, the token economy is emerging,” Yin Hao, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said on Wednesday...
Fewer Hong Kong university entrance exam candidates reported high stress levels compared with last year, but nearly 40 per cent cited artificial intelligence (AI) and the economic outlook as their top sources of stress, a survey has found. Releasing the findings of its “Further Education Planning Survey” on Thursday, the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups attributed the pressure to concerns that AI would increasingly replace entry-level jobs. The poll surveyed 1,241 secondary students,...
A major attraction of the programme was a live demonstration of Meta’s AI-powered Ray-Ban Smart Glasses, showcasing how artificial intelligence is transforming everyday experiences through wearable technology
DXC is an enterprise technology and innovation company that delivers software, services, and solutions to global enterprises and public sector organisations
Speaking at a GCC Business Summit, Chief Economic Adviser Nageswaran said that most of India’s GCCs are engaged in cutting-edge work rather than providing low-cost support, which is what AI can easily and cheaply replace
Shares of Alibaba Group Holding surged to a high of 13.8 per cent in Hong Kong on Wednesday as equity analysts expect revenue to reaccelerate in the June quarter, driven by growing demand for artificial intelligence and narrowing losses in food delivery. The gain, the strongest this year, came before the company closed up 12.2 per cent at HK$107.5 (US$13.71). Rivals Tencent Holdings and Meituan saw their shares grow 3.8 and 3.3 per cent, respectively, while the Hang Seng Tech Index increased by...
As another heatwave rolled across Europe, the warehouses emptied before the politics could catch up. Air conditioners and fans sold out across Spain, Italy and Germany, most of them Chinese. Fan sales in Spain alone on the retail platform of Alibaba Group Holding (which owns the South China Morning Post) nearly doubled last month while Midea Group’s air-conditioner sales in western Europe surged by over 70 per cent in the first six months of the year. A decade from now, such heatwaves may become...
In a homecoming for Hong Kong’s artificial intelligence community, Cao Liangliang – former principal engineer and director at Google DeepMind, IEEE Fellow and architect of foundational AI systems at Google, Apple and IBM – has returned to the city after a two-decade absence. His appointment as Chair Professor of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) last week completes an intellectual boomerang trajectory that began under renowned mentor Tang...
Indonesian authorities are widening their investigation into a case of suspected identity and research fraud at an overseas medical conference, which has exposed gaps in academic oversight and revived concerns about abuses in the nation’s system of publication-driven promotion for academia. The Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology has set up a team to examine papers previously published by the alleged perpetrators, saying action would be taken if they were found to have used...
Hong Kong should draft a five-year plan that includes an artificial intelligence (AI) focus that is not too broad, makes the most of its core strengths and attracts the best talent to develop the sector, industry leaders have said. At the South China Morning Post’s China Conference on Tuesday, titled “Intelligence at Scale: Hong Kong’s AI-Powered Future”, speakers at two panel discussions considered how Hong Kong could deliver on its AI aspirations and the city’s readiness as a launch pad for...
The coming World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) is set to feature major new product releases, such as Huawei Technologies’ next-generation computing cluster, as China doubles down on AI in the global technology race. This year’s WAIC, the ninth since 2018 and running from July 17 to 20 in Shanghai, would include the first physical display of Huawei’s Atlas 950 SuperPoD, Tang Wenkan, director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatisation, said at a press briefing...
Hong Kong’s high-quality economic development will be guided by its first five-year blueprint and the coming policy address, with artificial intelligence (AI) as the “central plank”, the city’s leader has said. Speaking at the South China Morning Post’s China Conference 2026 on Tuesday, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu also said Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” advantages and commitment to innovation and technology position the city to connect the world with opportunities in an AI-powered...
At Carousell’s Singapore office, a red tunnel greets employees with the company’s mission to “make second-hand the first choice” – a slogan its leaders say is moving closer to reality as the platform for buying and selling used goods recorded its first positive adjusted operating profit. The Singapore-headquartered company, last valued at US$1.1 billion in 2021, said on Tuesday it had achieved positive Ebitda – earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation – for the first time,...
China’s innovation ecosystem has witnessed a resurgence, minting 67 new unicorn start-ups in the first half of 2026 – the biggest increase in almost five years – as AI and robotics kick off a new investment cycle. The growth translates into an average of one new unicorn – private companies valued at US$1 billion or more – in less than every three days and was the highest since the second half of 2021 when 76 new unicorns were created, according to a Monday report by ITJuzi, a start-up...
US President Donald Trump suggested on Monday that leading American artificial intelligence companies would make a public “contribution” to the country, offering few details but fuelling speculation about a greater government role in the booming industry. Speaking in the Oval Office on Monday morning, Trump said tech companies “making tremendous amounts of money” will be making “a contribution to the people of our country”. “We’re going to have guardrails … You know that. But [AI] can be used...
They can significantly improve speed and accuracy of investigations, especially when time is critical
He will lay the foundation stone for 47 grain storage godowns and launch a centralised core banking platform, and Sahakar Sahyogi, a conversational AI-powered platform for Urban Cooperative Banks
The initiative, backed by the India AI Mission, aims to enhance research capabilities, foster innovation, and integrate AI solutions across various sectors in Puducherry
The world’s attention is fixed on frontier artificial intelligence (AI) models, but China’s robot-making factories deserve just as much attention. Chinese e-commerce company JD.com has predicted that robots would ultimately replace its 700,000 delivery workers, while workers at South Korean carmaker Hyundai are threatening strike action over issues including the roll-out of robots. These are early signs of what could be China’s next export shock. The first “China shock” was from its low-cost...
A Chinese artificial intelligence chip start-up led by industry veteran Wei Shaojun has emerged from stealth mode, joining giants like Huawei Technologies in betting on 3D stacking to bypass US tech export controls. Dongfang Suanxin, a company headed by Wei, who is also vice-president of the China Semiconductor Industry Association, has stepped into the spotlight by launching a corporate website and social media account, positioning itself as a new but formidable player in China’s AI computing...
Omar Yaghi, the winner of last year’s Nobel Prize for chemistry, has left the United States to lead a new AI-driven research centre at China’s Tsinghua University. The 61-year-old materials scientist will head a team working on ways artificial intelligence (AI) can transform the design and synthesis of new materials and shorten their development cycle “by orders of magnitude”, Tsinghua said on Friday. Speaking at his appointment ceremony, Yaghi said he hoped to develop materials to tackle major...
Chinese firms not only operate, finance or hold stakes in about one third of all ports in Africa, but Beijing now also controls the software, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) tools that run the infrastructure. And that reach extends well beyond the docks, with Beijing financing and operating the road, rail and warehousing networks connected to these ports and other maritime projects across the continent, closely intertwining African trade with China’s own trading systems. These are...
Researchers at TikTok parent ByteDance have discovered a new scaling law governing how fast artificial intelligence agents can improve by performing real-world tasks, a finding that could help prolong the AI boom just as traditional development methods hit a wall. In a research paper published on Thursday, ByteDance’s Seed AI team revealed that AI agents – autonomous software that executes tasks on a human’s behalf – can double their learning speed every three months by interacting with...
The use of AI-fabricated judicial ‘precedents’ amounts to criminal misconduct
Chinese companies are seeking more fresh university graduates with backgrounds in artificial intelligence this year because widespread use of the technology is making their businesses more efficient, according to a recruitment portal based in Beijing. In the first five months of this year, nearly four out of every 10 job postings targeting fresh graduates were AI-related, compared with nearly three out of 10 in the same period last year, Maimai – a portal with 120 million users in mainland China...
Average training hours per employee in Hong Kong hit a 14-year high as local companies pushed for technology adoption and workforce upskilling, a new survey released on Friday showed. According to the 2025-26 survey on workforce development needs conducted by the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management, the average annual training hours per employee reached 19.4 hours in 2025. This represented a 6.8 per cent increase from 18.1 hours in 2024, marking the second consecutive year of growth...
Chinese short video giant Kuaishou said on Thursday evening that its artificial intelligence video arm, Kling AI, was seeking to raise around US$3 billion in its first external fundraising round, according to a filing to Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing. The funding round, first reported by the South China Morning Post on Wednesday, was backed by a long list of investors, spanning Chinese technology heavyweights, state-backed investment vehicles and entertainment industry participants. Baidu,...
Hong Kong is trapped in a structural economic paradox that threatens both its long-term competitiveness and social stability. Organisations are paralysed by the urgent need for artificial intelligence (AI) transformation, complaining day in and day out that they lack technological talent. An International Data Corporation (IDC) study last year revealed that 55 per cent of Hong Kong companies face significant challenges in implementing AI – higher than the global average of 48 per cent....
As China’s leading DRAM maker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) prepares for its expected 29.5 billion yuan (US$4.3 billion) Shanghai Star Market listing, the critical question facing investors is whether the firm can convert its cyclical windfall into permanent industry leadership. The Hefei-based chipmaker enters the market at a uniquely lucrative moment: a global memory shortage driven by surging artificial intelligence computing demand has triggered a massive upcycle in pricing, delivering...
Power has historically been measured by indicators such as territory, population, industrial production, military capability and economic scale. Those foundations remain indispensable. But each technological revolution has changed the nature of geopolitical competition. The Industrial Revolution rewarded manufacturing capacity. The 20th century rewarded industrial scale, military mobilisation and ideological reach. Globalisation rewarded efficiency, integration and financial connectivity. The...
China has unveiled a road map to accelerate the development of its industrial internet, setting targets for the expansion of industry-oriented 5G networks and data systems as Beijing seeks to deepen the integration of frontier technologies into manufacturing and bolster the country’s industrial competitiveness. The plan, jointly issued on Tuesday by eight Chinese government agencies led by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, included targets for expanding industrial digital...
As Hong Kong marks the 29th anniversary of its return to Chinese rule on July 1, the South China Morning Post talks to the city’s senior officials about the administration’s achievements so far and what may lie ahead. Hong Kong’s tech chief has warned that AI will “exceed all previous industrial revolutions” and heavily impact graduates and workers in traditional sectors, while pledging to accelerate training and industry development to create new jobs. Secretary for Innovation, Technology and...
AI firm says it will begin restoring access to Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 after removal of export controls.
As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, it confronts a new world order dominated by its relationship with China. In this wide-ranging series, we examine the pressure points and possibilities in those ties, from hard tech to soft power. Here, Vincent Chow looks at how China challenges core American assumptions about innovation and technology, and the historical stakes of their competition in artificial intelligence. In 1969, the renowned British sinologist Joseph Needham...
When people talk about the race for artificial intelligence, they usually focus on software. Headlines revolve around ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek or the latest breakthrough model. Governments announce AI strategies and investors pour billions into start-ups promising to transform everything from medicine to education. Nonetheless, the most consequential battle in the AI age may not be over algorithms at all. It may be over the machines. Behind every chatbot response and AI-generated image lies a...
The AI-driven price surge in the semiconductor supply chain is spreading beyond graphics processing units (GPUs) and memory chips to upstream materials and manufacturing inputs, creating new bottlenecks that could slow the buildout of global artificial intelligence infrastructure. Suppliers of once less-visible parts are gaining leverage as customers compete for limited capacity. These range from power chips and capacitors that regulate electricity inside AI data centres, to copper-clad...
Chinese artificial intelligence unicorn DeepSeek is introducing peak-hour surcharges for its API services, bucking a fierce domestic price war it helped start, in which rivals have been aggressively undercutting each other to capture market share. The Chinese AI champion will double the price for access to its V4 AI models through its application programming interface (API) during peak hours – 9am to noon and 2pm to 6pm Beijing time – according to an email sent to service subscribers on Monday...
South Korea’s US$518 billion semiconductor push aims to tap the artificial intelligence boom into a durable industrial advantage and keep up with leading rival China, according to observers. The plan is intended to secure supplies of advanced memory chips needed for AI data centres and computing infrastructure, while easing pressure on the Seoul metropolitan area by creating a second major chipmaking base in the country’s southwest. President Lee Jae Myung on Monday unveiled the government’s...