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China’s robots go up for rent <br> China&rsquo;s robot industry has spent the past few years trying to make machines cheaper, smarter and more capable. At this year&rsquo;s World Robot Conference in Beijing, some companies were also trying something less glamorous, namely, renting them out. One household-service robot maker interviewed at the conference charges 3,000 yuan ($446) a month for a robot that costs more than 20,000 yuan to build. It initially offered one-day trials and weekly rentals of about 700 yuan before settling on the monthly model. The company is not yet offering long-term contracts; demand was already strong enough to push its booking schedule into December, while limiting customers to a month at a time allows the machines to circulate among more households. That may sound like a small experiment in consumer financing. It is more interesting as a sign of how the robotics industry is trying to solve a problem that technology alone cannot, that is,...

South Korea media commission says Meta's youth protection changes should apply globally <br> South Korea&#39;s media regulator said on Thursday that measures proposed by Meta to curb potentially addictive features for young users should ideally be applied worldwide, as Seoul considers tighter rules on how social media platforms serve minors. The Korea Media and Communications Commission (KMCC) said in a statement to Reuters that social media companies needed to take greater responsibility for protecting children and teenagers and pointed to seven bills pending in the country&#39;s parliament aimed at strengthening youth protections online. The commission &quot;believes that to create an environment in which Korean youth can use social networking services safely, it is necessary to strengthen social media providers&#39; responsibility to protect minors,&quot; the regulator said. The comments followed landmark US settlements announced on Wednesday un...

US says Chinese hackers broke into Justice Department, NASA, Federal Reserve, Senate and more <br> The United States said on Wednesday that it had ​disrupted a Chinese hacking operation responsible for break-ins at the &zwnj;US Justice Department, NASA, the Federal Reserve, the US&nbsp;Senate and other sensitive government agencies. In a statement, &nbsp;the Justice Department said it had seized domains ​used by two hacking platforms, dubbed &ldquo;QScan&rdquo; and &ldquo;QTRouter&rdquo;, which it ​said were used as part of the campaign. An affidavit&nbsp;⁠identified the US Department of Energy, the Department of Health ​and Human Services, the National Institutes of Health, and four unnamed companies ​in the US and South Korea as being among the hackers&#39; victims. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately return a message seeking comment. Beijing ​routinely denies responsibility for hacking activity. Read More: China...

Bill Gates, alarmed by AI, has policy ideas he wants to discuss with China's Xi <br> Bill Gates is looking to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping later this year, eager to propose global efforts to mitigate the growing &zwnj;risks posed by artificial intelligence. The Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist told Reuters in an interview that he believes China might agree to restricting potentially dangerous AI model releases if the US took initiative on that first. &quot;The whole world would go along with that,&quot; said Gates, who met with Xi&nbsp;three years ago, when he was the first foreign entrepreneur to be hosted by the Chinese president post-pandemic. Gates also said he&#39;d like to propose ​that countries monitor AI&#39;s ability to create molecules and carry out biological attacks &mdash; something that would not get in the way of any tech industry&#39;s development. Gates&#39; staff are ​working to final...

Brazil fines TikTok owner ByteDance for unlawful processing of teenagers' data <br> Brazil&#39;s data protection authority (ANPD) has fined TikTok owner ByteDance 153.8 million reais ($29.81 million) for allegedly violating the country&#39;s General Data Protection Law, according to a decision published in the official gazette on Tuesday. ANPD said that the local unit of China&#39;s ByteDance had processed personal data of teenagers aged 13 to 18 without a valid legal basis. ByteDance Brasil did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Brazilian authorities are stepping up scrutiny of online platforms&#39; safeguards for children and teenagers, part of a broader global trend that has seen countries including Australia, France and China impose or consider stricter rules on minors&#39; use of social media. Earlier this month, ANPD ordered chat platform Discord to suspend livestreaming features over concerns about children&#39;s and teen...

The AI founders who walked away from Bezos-backed Prometheus to model the universe <br> A research duo, once pitched to lead the Jeff Bezos-backed&nbsp;Project Prometheus, on Tuesday unveiled what they&#39;ve built on their own: an AI model that can take ​in and produce information so vast that a lone computer might not handle it. Their company, Accelerated Understanding Inc, says it has developed a different type of AI model that, in tests, handled 5 trillion pieces of data in a single prompt. That is some 5 million times the size of what Anthropic and Google&#39;s&nbsp;flagship models can typically consume &mdash; like reading Tolstoy&#39;s &quot;War and Peace&quot; not once but 5 million times in one sitting. The difference is that this new system is not built for understanding language. It is built for physics, said co-founders Anima Anandkumar and Benedikt Jenik, in an exclusive interview ahead of Tuesday&#39;s corporate launch. Wh...