animal

Can dogs sniff cancer? AI joins the hunt in India

BY AISHWARYA KUMAR

  • - Dog 'work-life balance' - India has described cancer as a major public health concern, saying one in nine of its 1.4 billion people are likely to develop the disease.
  • When rescue dog Chloe is not tumbling across the grass on a farm outside India's tech capital Bengaluru, she is learning to sniff human breath for cancer with a little help from AI. Fitted with a 3D-printed helmet and harness packed with sensors, Chloe is part of experimental efforts to use dogs' extraordinary sense of smell to develop a non-invasive test for the disease.
  • - Dog 'work-life balance' - India has described cancer as a major public health concern, saying one in nine of its 1.4 billion people are likely to develop the disease.
When rescue dog Chloe is not tumbling across the grass on a farm outside India's tech capital Bengaluru, she is learning to sniff human breath for cancer with a little help from AI.
Fitted with a 3D-printed helmet and harness packed with sensors, Chloe is part of experimental efforts to use dogs' extraordinary sense of smell to develop a non-invasive test for the disease.
A growing body of global research suggests dogs can be trained to detect cancer and other human illnesses, from Parkinson's to Covid-19.
The Bengaluru-based startup Dognosis is using AI to analyse dogs' brain activity, respiration and body language -- turning their reaction to scent into data.
"In an hour, they can do thousands of sniffs," co-founder Akash Kulgod, 26, told AFP. "Each sniff can evaluate a sample."
Dognosis hopes to launch commercially next year, which it says would make it the third company of its kind, after firms from Germany and Israel.
Early detection can make a crucial difference to cancer survival rates, but in India many patients are diagnosed only after the disease has advanced.
Dog sniffs could provide an easy and affordable first layer of screening to be deployed at scale, finding potential cases for further testing.
As it chases commercial approval, Dognosis -- backed by venture-capital firms including Accel India -- is collaborating with government medical institutions for its research.
Chloe, a Labrador mix, is one of 15 dogs being coached by the startup, clad in customised data-gathering helmets.
"It's like a doggy 'Iron Man' suit," said Kulgod, who comes from a family of doctors and studied cognitive science at the University of California, Berkeley.

'Promising' study

Research suggests diseases can alter the chemicals released by the body, creating distinctive odours.
Dogs have around 300 million scent receptors, compared to about five million in humans.
The testing method is simple: a patient breathes into a cotton mask for about 10 minutes, and the mask is then sealed in a bag and taken to the lab. Patients do not meet the dogs.
A recent Dognosis study of more than 1,500 participants, involving six hospitals in Karnataka state, was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
The company said it achieved an accuracy rate of more than 90 percent across seven major types of cancer, and now plans to test in real-world programmes.
Cancer specialists in Bengaluru independent of the project voiced cautious optimism.
"The study is promising, as an early signal," said Santhosh Kumar Devadas, head of oncology at Ramaiah Memorial Hospital.
"But they need to do the study with a much larger group before we make any definitive conclusions."
Neelesh Reddy, a senior consultant oncologist at Manipal Hospitals, told AFP that "only time will tell how this technology will be useful to the actual patients".

Dog 'work-life balance'

India has described cancer as a major public health concern, saying one in nine of its 1.4 billion people are likely to develop the disease.
Dognosis says it aims to improve "proactive and preventative medicine" while boosting "human-canine communication".
Most of the dogs are beagles, along with some Malinois and Shepherd mixes, brought on board through adoption or legal breeders.
But only the best are selected, said Kulgod. The dog team individually lists each animal on the company website as an official "sniffer", alongside their photographs.
All have a great "work-life balance", with work time limited to around 30-45 minutes a day, he added.
At a centre called "Sniffspace", dogs test human samples on platforms equipped with automatic feeders dispensing dog treats.
Kulgod's co-founder Itamar Bitan, 28, who spent four years in an Israeli special-forces canine unit, said the dogs were trained using "positive reinforcement" to detect a "specific funky smell" for a reward.
"Some of the dogs run directly to the feeder expecting rewards, some dogs freeze, some dogs will scratch the sample with excitement," Bitan said.
"But, as long as the machine that learns how the dogs react to the sample is very consistent... we don't really mind."
ash/abh/pjm/kaf/lga/abs

internet

Australians could opt out of social media algorithms under new law

  • "A lot of Australians appreciate the algorithm, both for the enjoyment they get out of it or the utility they get out of it," Communications Minister Anika Wells told national broadcaster ABC. "A lot of Australians will want to choose the algorithm -- but we think that big tech should offer them the choice in the first place, and they should respect that choice."
  • Australians could be given the option of opting out of powerful social media algorithms under new legislation cracking down on big tech, a minister said Monday.
  • "A lot of Australians appreciate the algorithm, both for the enjoyment they get out of it or the utility they get out of it," Communications Minister Anika Wells told national broadcaster ABC. "A lot of Australians will want to choose the algorithm -- but we think that big tech should offer them the choice in the first place, and they should respect that choice."
Australians could be given the option of opting out of powerful social media algorithms under new legislation cracking down on big tech, a minister said Monday.
The draft law requiring a "digital duty of care" is expected to be introduced to Australia's parliament this week.
It would require firms like Meta to give users the option of turning off algorithms that tailor recommendations to their personal taste.
"A lot of Australians appreciate the algorithm, both for the enjoyment they get out of it or the utility they get out of it," Communications Minister Anika Wells told national broadcaster ABC.
"A lot of Australians will want to choose the algorithm -- but we think that big tech should offer them the choice in the first place, and they should respect that choice."
"We should give Australians more choice over what they should see on their feeds," she said.
Social media firms have long faced scrutiny over their use of allegedly addictive algorithms and stand accused of directing users to sensational or extreme content to keep them scrolling.
Australia implemented legislation barring children from social media platforms in December, part of a world-first crackdown designed to protect children from online bullying and "predatory algorithms".
The UK, France and others have followed suit.
Data last month found that under-16s in Australia were increasing their use of social media apps such as Instagram and TikTok despite the ban.
oho/sft/tc

gaming

Tetris distances itself from controversial White House 'arcade' games

  • The White House released several games Thursday, with a placeholder that teased another one "coming soon." 
  • Tetris said on Friday that it did not give permission for the White House to use the game's iconic imagery for a controversial online arcade that the Trump administration released on Thursday.
  • The White House released several games Thursday, with a placeholder that teased another one "coming soon." 
Tetris said on Friday that it did not give permission for the White House to use the game's iconic imagery for a controversial online arcade that the Trump administration released on Thursday.
"The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of ‘Build the Wall’ and did not authorize or license the Tetris brand or intellectual property for the game," Tetris told AFP in a statement. 
"We are currently reviewing the matter," the statement continued.
A block-stacking game called Build the Wall included instructions to "protect the border from the coming horde."
The arcade-style games and promotional content used by the Trump administration contain images that resemble games created by Tetris and other major game developers including Sega, Microsoft-owned Xbox and the Flappy Bird Foundation.
"At Tetris, we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them," Tetris said in a social media post. 
"P.P.S. We take copyright infringement very seriously," the post continued. 
Promotional content posted by the White House on social media also included images that resemble trademarks and designs from Microsoft-owned Xbox. 
Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment, and the Sega Corporation couldn't immediately be reached.
The White House released several games Thursday, with a placeholder that teased another one "coming soon." 
The web-only games, which were published on the official White House website under a new page called "arcade," sparked condemnation for racist themes and prompted questions about potential copyright violations. 
In one clip, the letters from the Sega logo transform into MAGA, a term that stands for Make America Great Again, which President Trump turned into his campaign slogan during his first presidential run for the 2016 election.
A game called "Flappy Bill" features a bald eagle carrying a document in its claws that tries to avoid smashing into columns of various heights, against a background that resembles Washington DC. 
"This administration is laser focused on ways to innovate and tell the story of the President's many accomplishments in a way that resonates with every American," the White House said Thursday in a statement to AFP.
Rights groups criticized the White House.
"Makes me sick. They've been playing games with people's lives for years, now they've made a video game of what they're doing," Amerika Garcia Grewal, co-director of the Frontera Federation in Eagle Pass, Texas, told AFP.
"There's no attention paid to the quality of life for human beings, both those in their game or those in real life. We who live in the borderlands are US citizens and yet are treated with suspicion and violence," she added.
The game designers "have lost touch with what it means to be human and care for others."
Trump campaigned on a promise to expel millions of undocumented migrants and has taken several actions since returning to power aimed at speeding up deportations and reducing border crossings.
His White House meanwhile has long used social media stunts to ram home its points and troll liberal opponents, and has sparked a backlash from several artists by using their music without permission.
The White House is trying to convince voters that Trump's second presidential term has been successful ahead of the midterm election in November. The balance of power in Congress will also be at stake when Americans go to the polls in just over two months. 
smb

TikTok

How a Dostoevsky novella took TikTok by storm

BY ANNA PELEGRI WITH AFP REPORTERS IN MOSCOW

  • Paloma Lima, a 29-year-old influencer and fan of Russian literature, told AFP that young TikTok users came to her YouTube channel after reading "White Nights."
  • Marcelo Nogueira is not well versed in the classics but the 27-year-old Brazilian book influencer was seduced by Fyodor Dostoevsky's "White Nights," a 19th-century tale of love and loneliness at the center of an unlikely TikTok craze.
  • Paloma Lima, a 29-year-old influencer and fan of Russian literature, told AFP that young TikTok users came to her YouTube channel after reading "White Nights."
Marcelo Nogueira is not well versed in the classics but the 27-year-old Brazilian book influencer was seduced by Fyodor Dostoevsky's "White Nights," a 19th-century tale of love and loneliness at the center of an unlikely TikTok craze.
Dostoevsky's story of a dreamer who, while strolling through the streets of Saint Petersburg, meets a young woman with whom he falls madly in love has become a bestseller in Brazil, nearly 180 years after its release.
Editora 34 publishing house told AFP that its sales of the novella, one of Dostoevsky's earliest works, had jumped 463 percent year-on-year.
In the United Kingdom and Spain, it is also flying off the shelves.
Nogueira, who has 13,000 followers on TikTok, explained that Gen Z readers found an echo in "the figure of the solitary dreamer, which is how many young people feel today."
Dostoevsky follows the narrator over four nights and a morning during which he ceases living in his imagination and embraces reality for the first time.
His peregrinations are the prelude to a love story as passionate as it is fleeting.
"My God! A whole minute of bliss! Is that really so little for the whole of a man's life?" the narrator exclaims in one of the lines most quoted on social media, reflecting on the enduring value of brief bursts of joy.

Bowled over

Tens of thousands of comments on BookTok, a popular book community on TikTok, attest to the popularity of one of Russia's greatest novelists with the social media generation.
It "bowls you over: it's real life written in a poetic way," user @thayslaaaa commented.
Paloma Lima, a 29-year-old influencer and fan of Russian literature, told AFP that young TikTok users came to her YouTube channel after reading "White Nights."
"It makes sense" because it's a "short and intense" book and falls into one of the most popular tropes on TikTok, she said, citing popular narratives such as "friends becoming lovers."
In Russia, the phenomenon is a source of both surprise and pride.
Speaking at the Moscow Book Fair, Ekaterina Kvitko, a 28-year-old author, said young Russian readers were far less enthused.
Perhaps it's because it's a "story about a protagonist who is alone, searching for some kind of love, some crutch to lean on. Maybe teenagers in the West are living in that state right now," she mused.

Criticism or advertising?

"White Nights" has emerged as a gateway book for Dostoevsky's work, with some young readers progressing onto more challenging novels, such as "Crime and Punishment."
It's an "unexpected" phenomenon, says Danilo Hora of Editora 34, reporting a 53 percent increase in sales of Dostoevsky's iconic tale of murder and guilt during the first seven months of the year.
In an era when short TikTok and YouTube videos are being blamed for eroding attention spans and fueling a reading crisis, social media, it transpires, is creating new audiences for the classics.
"Being a reader is a very beautiful idea; it can even be marketed. There's an associated aesthetic that's spreading" on TikTok, Nogueira said.
Aesthetics are also driving demand for the physical book over the digital version.
"It attracts more attention to have a wonderful cover than a Kindle," said Nogueira.
For his video discussing the book he used an edition with a colorful pop-art cover of a couple kissing, which is sold out in several bookstores in Rio de Janeiro.
Cecilia Rosas, a Brazilian researcher and translator of Russian literature, hailed the interest in the classics on social media.
She stressed, however, the importance of distinguishing between literary criticism and what often passes for such on social media but which, in her view, amounts to "advertising."
burs-app/tmo/cb/hol

film

Director Maggie Gyllenhaal ditched AI for Marilyn Monroe film

BY ADAM PLOWRIGHT

  • "They were... training it off of Marilyn Monroe films that we had licensed.
  • American actress and director Maggie Gyllenhaal said Friday she ditched AI-generated video planned for her latest film about Marilyn Monroe due to quality problems, offering a degree of reassurance to actors worried about their jobs -- for now.
  • "They were... training it off of Marilyn Monroe films that we had licensed.
American actress and director Maggie Gyllenhaal said Friday she ditched AI-generated video planned for her latest film about Marilyn Monroe due to quality problems, offering a degree of reassurance to actors worried about their jobs -- for now.
The "Dark Knight" star is head of the jury at this year's Venice Film Festival but she is also premiering a new short film -- "Flesh Impact" -- which imagines 1950s screen icon Marilyn Monroe as if she had lived to 100 years old.
Gyllenhaal told an audience in Venice how artificial intelligence technology -- one of the top topics at the festival -- is being pushed aggressively at directors as a cost-saving measure and as an alternative to acting.
"The people who commissioned this project from me asked me to use AI," Gyllenhaal told The Future of Creativity event.
"They were... training it off of Marilyn Monroe films that we had licensed. And I went for it," said the director.
"I was like, 'All right, I'm curious. I don't know. Let's see'."
The technology was meant to transform "Fifty Shades of Grey" actress Dakota Johnson into the elderly version of Monroe.
"It fundamentally did not work," Gyllenhaal said. 
"We worked hard at it, and in the end, I threw it away because what was coming through Dakota playing Marilyn Monroe was so much more moving, human, alive."

'Dont buy the hype'

Gyllenhaal's testimony underlines the current limitations of AI video technology, which has sparked fears about job losses throughout the film and TV industries -- as well as the mass theft of intellectual property by software companies.
Speaking at the same event, the head of open-source messaging application Signal, Meredith Whittaker, warned about AI being controlled by a handful of billionaires, but urged the audience "don't buy the hype".
Hollywood icon George Clooney sounded downbeat about the implications, however.
"A lot of people are going to get replaced, not just actors: crew members, visual effects supervisors," the 65-year-old, who picked up a lifetime achievement award in Venice on Wednesday, told the audience.
Gyllenhaal, from a well-connected Hollywood family that includes actor brother Jake, also stressed how AI companies were seeking to license the images of actors in order to reproduce them in digital form.
"Someone who I respect a lot theoretically asked me to consider the idea of asking actors who trust me -- because I have a lot of actors who trust me that I love -- and they should trust me to give me their likeness and to make a film with them," she said.
"I thought it's a completely and absolutely different paradigm than how I think, how I work," she added.

Mixed feelings

The advent of new AI video-generation technology is again a major topic of conversation at Venice as change sweeps through the industry.
In an AFP interview earlier this week, Venice festival supremo Alberto Barbera acknowledged the dangers but he sounded more optimistic than other leading movie figures.
The technology enables artists and directors "to achieve things that until now were not possible," he explained.
The festival has programmed a documentary made entirely with AI  -- "Be Brave" from Italian director Francesco Carrozzini, which centres on the founder of jeans brand Diesel, Renzo Rosso.  
"Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson, a special effects specialist, said in May at the Cannes Film Festival that he thought AI was "going to destroy the world".
When it came to film however, "I don't dislike it at all," he added.
adp/ams/jj

AI

US safety regulator probes Tesla's Cybercab

  • Tesla notified the agency it had certified the Cybercab as meeting all applicable standards, and that it planned to widen deployment to more vehicles and more locations.
  • US auto safety regulators have opened an inquiry into Tesla's driverless Cybercab, questioning how the company concluded that a vehicle with no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors meets federal safety rules.
  • Tesla notified the agency it had certified the Cybercab as meeting all applicable standards, and that it planned to widen deployment to more vehicles and more locations.
US auto safety regulators have opened an inquiry into Tesla's driverless Cybercab, questioning how the company concluded that a vehicle with no steering wheel, pedals or mirrors meets federal safety rules.
In a filing late Thursday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it would examine the process and technical data Tesla relied on when certifying the two-seater vehicle.
The announcement came hours after the company began deploying the Cybercab commercially in Austin, Texas after a launch event.
Tesla has touted what it called the vehicle's safety and ease of use for disabled people, and said the Cybercab was "democratizing clean transportation for all."
In the United States, automakers certify their own vehicles as compliant with the federal standards.
Tesla notified the agency it had certified the Cybercab as meeting all applicable standards, and that it planned to widen deployment to more vehicles and more locations.
NHTSA said it would weigh how much that certification rested on Tesla's own determinations that certain standards simply do not apply to a car lacking permanently attached manual controls.
Tesla began driverless service in Austin last year using Model Y SUVs, expanding to cities in Texas, Florida and California.
State rules require many of those vehicles to carry a human supervisor who is able to take over.
Tesla had registered 314 robotaxis in Texas as of Wednesday, including 45 Cybercabs, according to FSD Database, based on data from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles.
Waymo, the self-driving vehicle subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, offers its services in 11 US cities.
arp/acb

AI

OpenAI begins rollout of new powerful AI model GPT-6 Astra

BY SARA BLOOMBERG

  • "It's not unreasonable to feel that we are now in the AGI era," Brockman said on the call, referring to artificial general intelligence, a hypothetical stage at which AI systems match human intelligence across most tasks.
  • ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Thursday it would begin rolling out its newest and most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) model to select customers, saying it had built in safeguards to mitigate security risks.
  • "It's not unreasonable to feel that we are now in the AGI era," Brockman said on the call, referring to artificial general intelligence, a hypothetical stage at which AI systems match human intelligence across most tasks.
ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Thursday it would begin rolling out its newest and most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) model to select customers, saying it had built in safeguards to mitigate security risks.
"At this level of capability, safety has to become our top priority," OpenAI President Greg Brockman told reporters on a call about the release of GPT-6, also known as Astra.
Just over a year has passed since OpenAI launched the previous version of its flagship model, GPT-5.
Concerns about the capabilities of advanced models have grown since then, following incidents involving systems built by OpenAI and rival developer Anthropic.
OpenAI paused some model development for two weeks this summer after two models it was testing were involved in a security breach at AI platform Hugging Face.
The San Francisco-based company said Astra was developed with stronger safeguards after that incident, though Astra itself was not involved in the hack.
Some cybersecurity customers will get access to the new model Thursday, the company said, with a wider rollout to other paying customers to follow. Users on the free tier or the cheapest paid plan will not get access.
"We are working towards getting Astra in everyone's hands as quickly as we can; I know it is frustrating and I appreciate the patience. It should be quick," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on social media Thursday afternoon.
In a blog post, OpenAI said Astra can autonomously handle a wide range of "tedious" computer tasks, including website creation, scientific analysis, game development, cybersecurity and coding.
To illustrate the time savings of building autonomous AI agents with Astra, the company said the model could cut apartment hunting from six hours to under 10 minutes.
"It's not unreasonable to feel that we are now in the AGI era," Brockman said on the call, referring to artificial general intelligence, a hypothetical stage at which AI systems match human intelligence across most tasks.
OpenAI previously had an agreement with Microsoft, one of its earliest and largest investors, under which an exclusivity clause would end once OpenAI reached AGI. Those terms were scrapped in April.

'Limited window'

OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki acknowledged there was still uncertainty about how a new model behaves once released.
"A model can become very good at achieving a goal, and it can still act in ways that go against what the person intended," Pachocki said on the same call.
"We also have to be willing to slow down or withhold further scaling when our confidence in safety is not sufficient," he added.
Altman explained in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday afternoon why the company decided to release a new model with this level of uncertainty and risk.
"The world is very close to a complete change in the landscape of cyber attacks, and the only way that we see for society to collectively defend itself... is to use tools like Astra to rapidly defend against these new cyber threats," Altman said.
In July OpenAI confirmed that it had reached one billion active users across all of its products, including both free and paid users.
OpenAI, Anthropic and more than 100 other organizations signed an open letter last week calling for a coordinated global response to AI-related cybersecurity risks, warning that the window to strengthen cyber defenses was limited.
Anthropic went further on Monday, calling for industry-wide coordination on safety and on the pace of developing increasingly capable models.
"I believe that shared safety standards and international coordination on further AI development need to be prioritized now," OpenIA's Pachocki said on Thursday.
The US state of Alabama opened an investigation into OpenAI last week over the Hugging Face breach, his office citing what it called the company's complete lack of oversight and adequate safeguards.
It also comes as OpenAI and rival Anthropic are both racing towards becoming public companies over the next several months, though OpenAI might not hold its IPO till sometime in 2027, according to reports. 
smb/arp/acb

AI

OpenAI begins rollout of new powerful AI model GPT-6 Astra

  • Some cybersecurity customers will get access to the new model Thursday, the company said, with a wider rollout to other paying customers to follow.
  • ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Thursday it would begin rolling out its newest and most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) model to select customers, saying it had built in safeguards to mitigate security risks.
  • Some cybersecurity customers will get access to the new model Thursday, the company said, with a wider rollout to other paying customers to follow.
ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Thursday it would begin rolling out its newest and most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) model to select customers, saying it had built in safeguards to mitigate security risks.
"At this level of capability, safety has to become our top priority," OpenAI President Greg Brockman told reporters on a call about the release of GPT-6, also known as Astra.
Just over a year has passed since OpenAI launched the previous version of its flagship model, GPT-5.
Concerns about the capabilities of advanced models have grown since then, following incidents involving systems built by OpenAI and rival developer Anthropic.
OpenAI paused some model development for two weeks this summer after two models it was testing were involved in a security breach at AI platform Hugging Face.
The San Francisco-based company said Astra was developed with stronger safeguards after that incident, though Astra itself was not involved in the hack.
Some cybersecurity customers will get access to the new model Thursday, the company said, with a wider rollout to other paying customers to follow. Users on the free tier or the cheapest paid plan will not get access.
In a blog post, OpenAI said Astra can autonomously handle a wide range of "tedious" computer tasks, including website creation, scientific analysis, game development, cybersecurity and coding.
To illustrate the time savings of building autonomous AI agents with Astra, the company said the model could cut apartment hunting from six hours to under 10 minutes.
"It's not unreasonable to feel that we are now in the AGI era," Brockman said on the call, referring to artificial general intelligence, a hypothetical stage at which AI systems match human intelligence across most tasks.
OpenAI previously had an agreement with Microsoft, one of its earliest and largest investors, under which an exclusivity clause would end once OpenAI reached AGI. Those terms were scrapped in April.
smb/arp

AI

Hugging Face, the French start-up that became AI's warehouse

  • Decentralizing artificial intelligence "is much more interesting for society and for humanity in general," Wolf told AFP in 2024.
  • Hugging Face, the artificial intelligence platform US chip giant Nvidia is buying for $12.9 billion, is a French success story -- founded by three Frenchmen and incubated in Paris -- even if its headquarters and many of its investors are American.
  • Decentralizing artificial intelligence "is much more interesting for society and for humanity in general," Wolf told AFP in 2024.
Hugging Face, the artificial intelligence platform US chip giant Nvidia is buying for $12.9 billion, is a French success story -- founded by three Frenchmen and incubated in Paris -- even if its headquarters and many of its investors are American.
The company's cutesy name comes from an emoji, smiling with open hands to convey human warmth.
It entered the headlines in July, when some 700 autonomous agents built by OpenAI breached the platform after escaping an isolated test environment. The unprecedented incident shocked the tech world.
Hugging Face grew out of a 2011 meeting between Clement Delangue, a serial entrepreneur since his teens, and Julien Chaumond, a graduate of France's elite Polytechnique engineering school with a computer science degree from Stanford.
They were soon joined by another Polytechnique alumnus, Thomas Wolf, a wide-ranging talent who holds a doctorate in quantum physics and also worked as an intellectual property lawyer.
The three partners founded Hugging Face in New York, where Delangue was already living, with the aim of building a conversational AI interface -- a sort of forerunner of ChatGPT -- aimed primarily at teenagers.
Along the way, the company joined Station F, the vast tech start-up incubator housed in the Halle Freyssinet, a renovated rail freight depot in Paris.
Hugging Face ultimately decided to pivot to a "B2B" model, targeting professionals and businesses and built around access to AI models.
Little known in its early days, the platform took off sharply with the launch of ChatGPT and the rise of so-called generative AI, capable of answering requests written in everyday language.
It went on to become the world's reference library for AI, today hosting more than two million models and counting 18 million users.
The founders present their site as a way of opening up AI to as many people as possible, with a focus on so-called open models ("open-source" or "open-weight") -- free to download and use, and modifiable.
That sets them apart from the closed models offered by most of the AI sector's leading names, such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.
Decentralizing artificial intelligence "is much more interesting for society and for humanity in general," Wolf told AFP in 2024.

Wake-up call'

The start-up's revenues come mainly from data storage services, renting out computing power to run AI models, and AI management tools.
Fiercely protective of its independence, Hugging Face long turned down several stake purchases and takeover offers before reaching a deal with Nvidia, chosen for its commitment to developing the "open" ecosystem.
While French investors took part in several of the company's funding rounds, the largest capital contributions came from Americans -- from New York private equity firm Lux Capital to professional basketball player Kevin Durant.
Ahead of the official announcement of the takeover, French Economy Minister Roland Lescure voiced concern about American takeovers of start-ups rooted in France and Europe.
"If we don't have enough capital in Europe to bring our champions to the next stage, they're going to go and find the capital elsewhere," he warned, adding that the deal should serve as "a wake-up call."
Hugging Face has nonetheless kept strong ties to France.
"A big part of the team is French, and so we hope that after this acquisition, they'll be able to reinvest quite a lot in the European tech ecosystem," Delangue said Wednesday during a conference call with reporters.
The company has organized several events and set up a number of partnerships with Station F, incubator director Roxanne Varza told AFP.
Delangue also said he expected the deal to draw more money from Nvidia into Europe.
"I think we also will have a chance to get Nvidia to invest even more than they've had, even if they already invested a lot in Europe and in France," he said.
dax-kf-bl-tu/arp/sms

autonomous

Tesla to launch self-driving 'Cybercab' in Texas

  • Last year Tesla debuted its self-driving cars in Austin using its Model Y SUV vehicles, with the "Robotaxi" service gradually expanding to several other cities in Texas, Florida and California. 
  • Electric vehicle-maker Tesla will debut its self-driving robotaxi, dubbed "Cybercab," in Texas on Thursday in a bid to compete with the likes of Uber and Waymo.
  • Last year Tesla debuted its self-driving cars in Austin using its Model Y SUV vehicles, with the "Robotaxi" service gradually expanding to several other cities in Texas, Florida and California. 
Electric vehicle-maker Tesla will debut its self-driving robotaxi, dubbed "Cybercab," in Texas on Thursday in a bid to compete with the likes of Uber and Waymo.
First unveiled in October 2024, the gold-colored vehicle has no pedals or steering wheel. With a capacity to carry two passengers, it was specifically designed to provide driverless taxi services.
CEO Elon Musk on Thursday posted an image on X of a Cybercab looming over the Texas capital city Austin, where Tesla is headquartered, a cloud of dust behind it.
In late August, Tesla shared a promotional image on social media promising "exclusive access" to Cybercabs at Thursday's event in Austin.
The company has shared few specifics. Fans of the brand who claim they are among the invitees say the event will begin at 4:45 pm local time (2145 GMT).
Last year Tesla debuted its self-driving cars in Austin using its Model Y SUV vehicles, with the "Robotaxi" service gradually expanding to several other cities in Texas, Florida and California. 
However, state laws require many of the vehicles to have a human supervisor or driver ready to take over control if necessary.
Waymo, the self-driving vehicle subsidiary of Google parent company Alphabet, offers its services in 11 US cities.
Tesla had registered 314 robotaxis in Texas as of Wednesday, including 45 Cybercabs, according to FSD Database, based on data from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles. 
Itay Michaeli, an analyst at TD Securities, told AFP he expects a "slow launch" of the Cybercab similar to that of the Robotaxi. Tesla will likely take into account feedback from early users before expanding the service, he said.
Texas has regulations favorable to autonomous vehicles, making it one of the preferred testing grounds for many robotaxi services already in operation, such as Waymo and Zoox, or in trials, such as Motional. 
"Tesla is really just getting started," said Anthony Townsend, a senior research associate at Cornell Tech, a policy research organization in New York.
It remains to be seen which company in the crowded field has the best business model, he said.
"It's always been the promise AV taxi companies will become cheaper than human-driven rides, but it's not clear that's even within sight," Townsend said in a note, adding that it's also not known when the companies could break even.
bur-elm/aha/jmb/acb

landslide

Grief on Chinese internet as wait for Tibet flood news drags on

  • - As of a week after the floods, the death toll from inside China stands at 21, with 541 people missing.
  • Photos of sons, daughters, uncles and husbands pepper Chinese social media, shared by people hoping for news about relatives missing since deadly floods on the border with Nepal last week.
  • - As of a week after the floods, the death toll from inside China stands at 21, with 541 people missing.
Photos of sons, daughters, uncles and husbands pepper Chinese social media, shared by people hoping for news about relatives missing since deadly floods on the border with Nepal last week.
Hundreds of people remain unaccounted for on the Tibetan side of the frontier, where Chinese authorities keep tight control over media access and sources of information.
In neighbouring Nepal, authorities have given regular updates on the rising number of dead and display names of the missing, while national media show images of families openly grieving.
Chinese official media has neither shared the names of the missing nor published much footage of the families' reactions. But dozens of social media posts, reviewed by AFP, offer a glimpse into the emotional toll the catastrophe has taken.
"Hurry up and come back, your parents miss you a lot, we need you," one woman wrote on a popular platform on Wednesday.
She attached a photo of a her relative -- a police officer -- and his wife, who are thought to have been at the Gyirong border post last week when it was overwhelmed by a torrent of water, mud and debris that buried buildings and roads.
A previous post by the same woman showed a photo of a plane ticket to Tibet.
She told AFP last week that she had not been able to reach the couple since the flood and had been told by her relative's work unit that he was missing.
Family members of the missing were being temporarily housed in the area, she said at the time.
She has since stopped replying to messages from AFP.
Chinese authorities tightly restrict access to Tibet for foreign journalists, and AFP knows of no overseas outlets that have been able to visit the disaster site there.
Officials and state media have focused on the scale of search operations, with some reports giving extensive space to the deployment of more than 2,300 rescuers along with helicopters and drones.
They have also highlighted the concern of the country's leaders. President Xi Jinping convened an emergency meeting on aid efforts, and Premier Li Qiang travelled to Tibet in the immediate aftermath.

'What are we supposed to do?'

As of a week after the floods, the death toll from inside China stands at 21, with 541 people missing.
In Nepal, the figures were more than 1,200 dead and over 4,200 missing as of Thursday.
Nearly 100 Chinese remain unaccounted for in Nepal, according to Beijing's foreign ministry.
Tibetan advocacy groups in exile have questioned China's account of the disaster, but Beijing insists that the "release of information has been open, transparent and timely".
Local authorities were "promptly replying" to more than 800 calls from affected relatives, state news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday.
Online, relatives of China's missing have written of going days without updates, and of travelling to Tibet to wait for news.
Border police, tourists and construction workers are among those unaccounted for on both sides of the border, the posts show.
"I hope a miracle will happen. We all miss you very much. You must not leave us behind," wrote one father about his daughter, another police officer at the border.
"My heart hurts so much, and I haven't been able to sleep at night," a wife wrote to her husband.
Another seemed resigned to the worst outcome: "You left so suddenly, leaving behind elderly parents and young children. What are we supposed to do?"
Users shared screenshots of the names of the missing released by Nepali authorities, which include people from China.
Even those untouched by the disaster have shared in a sense of collective grief.
"Every time I see Tibet as someone's location, my heart hurts," a comment read.
mya/dhw/mjw

technology

US govt sides with OpenAI in New York Times copyright lawsuit

  • "This Administration will never let our Nation be at a disadvantage relative to our foreign adversaries based on a plainly incorrect understanding of copyright law," Woodward wrote on X. The Times' lawsuit partly hinges on the limited "fair use" exception, which permits copyrighted work to be used without the rights holders' consent.
  • US President Donald Trump's administration sided with OpenAI in a lawsuit brought by the New York Times, defending training AI models on copyrighted works, according to a court document filed Tuesday.
  • "This Administration will never let our Nation be at a disadvantage relative to our foreign adversaries based on a plainly incorrect understanding of copyright law," Woodward wrote on X. The Times' lawsuit partly hinges on the limited "fair use" exception, which permits copyrighted work to be used without the rights holders' consent.
US President Donald Trump's administration sided with OpenAI in a lawsuit brought by the New York Times, defending training AI models on copyrighted works, according to a court document filed Tuesday.
In late 2023, the New York Times sued ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Microsoft, its main investor, alleging that the companies' powerful artificial intelligence models used millions of articles for training without permission.
Copyright has been a major battleground for the generative AI sector, with publishers, musicians and artists lawyering up or cutting deals to get paid for technology that is being built with their content.
The Justice Department said in a 20-page document that the "creative possibilities and public benefits that (large language model) training advances far outweigh any competitive harm."
"Constraining LLM development under a misunderstanding of fair use doctrine would thwart such creative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity and economic mobility," the document read.
The Justice Department added that the Times' interpretation of the law would create an anti-competitive entry barrier that "function primarily as large subsidies for old mainstream media companies."
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said on Wednesday that Trump has made clear that "AI dominance is critical" to national security, prosperity and economic mobility.
"This Administration will never let our Nation be at a disadvantage relative to our foreign adversaries based on a plainly incorrect understanding of copyright law," Woodward wrote on X.
The Times' lawsuit partly hinges on the limited "fair use" exception, which permits copyrighted work to be used without the rights holders' consent.
The Justice Department argued that the training of AI models on written works is "exceedingly transformative," allowing it to benefit from the exception.
Graham James, a spokesman for the New York Times, told US media that the Justice Department was siding with "trillion-dollar AI companies" at the expense of American creators.
"The administration's proposal to let companies take that content without permission or compensation would undermine the sustainability of the human-created content that a healthy society depends on, and which AI needs to function," James said in a statement.
In July, a US judge approved a $1.5 billion settlement between Anthropic and several authors who claimed the San Francisco company illegally copied their work to train its AI model, Claude.
It was a partial victory for Anthropic -- a judge ruled that the company's use of books to train Claude was transformative enough to constitute "fair use" under US law but that other uses of pirated materials were not.
In May, multiple publishers, including Hachette, Cengage, Elsevier and Turow, sued Meta in a New York court for allegedly stealing copyrighted content.
bur/hol/ami

Open

US Open under the influence: content creators spark debate

  • The influencers focus not just on tennis, but on fashion, food and lifestyle topics that are now an inextricable part of the game.
  • Jessica Pegula is all in favor of bringing more fans into tennis, but the world number three said Wednesday it's important to keep the focus on the game.
  • The influencers focus not just on tennis, but on fashion, food and lifestyle topics that are now an inextricable part of the game.
Jessica Pegula is all in favor of bringing more fans into tennis, but the world number three said Wednesday it's important to keep the focus on the game.
The US Tennis Association doubled down this year on credentials awarded to content creators -- reportedly handing out almost 100 after making 54 available in 2025 to amplify the tournament's presence on social media.
The influencers focus not just on tennis, but on fashion, food and lifestyle topics that are now an inextricable part of the game.
But the embrace of content creators sparked some backlash when the chair umpire of Naomi Osaka's first round match against Anastasia Zakharova had to shush a group in a courtside suite who appeared to be conducting a noisy photo shoot during a point.
"I think I can appreciate, you know, the influencers coming and kind of showcasing the US Open experience," Pegula said.
"I think that's something that the US Open has utilized a lot as far as food and drinks and things to do and the shops. That part is part of a fan experience and something that people might not know and make them want to go.
"But I do think that it's tough when you see videos like that, when they're taking pictures and using the selfie lights.
"People are down there trying to perform, and it's their career and their job. It seems a bit disrespectful," Pegula concluded.
Russian Daniil Medvedev, a former world number one and the 2021 US Open champion, said the more focus on the sport the better, and any problems can be ironed out.
"In general, the more the sport grows, the better it is," Medvedev said.
"For sure, if it disturbs during the play, like if you see the light or something, well, you always say to the referee.
"(It) can be sometimes challenging, like if during the point this happens. But I'm pretty sure as well, even them, you know, maybe one time they do it, and then someone tells them not to do it.
"I think (there is) a lot of more upside than downside, so go for it."
bb/rcw

Google

US judge rejects bid to break up Google's ad business

  • The decision is the second time in recent years that a federal judge has declined to dismantle a piece of Google's business, after a judge last year refused to force the sale of its Chrome browser in a separate monopoly case over online search.
  • A US federal judge on Wednesday refused to force Google to sell a division of its digital advertising business, rejecting the government's push to break up part of the company's ad empire.
  • The decision is the second time in recent years that a federal judge has declined to dismantle a piece of Google's business, after a judge last year refused to force the sale of its Chrome browser in a separate monopoly case over online search.
A US federal judge on Wednesday refused to force Google to sell a division of its digital advertising business, rejecting the government's push to break up part of the company's ad empire.
In a court order, US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema opted instead for a set of rules governing how Google must operate in the ad market.
The decision is the second time in recent years that a federal judge has declined to dismantle a piece of Google's business, after a judge last year refused to force the sale of its Chrome browser in a separate monopoly case over online search.
Those cases are part of a broader effort by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to curtail the competitive dominance of big tech companies, including Apple, Amazon and Meta. 
Results have been mixed, with another judge deciding against government lawyers in a suit concerning Meta's social media empire but other decision going the government's way.
"We're very pleased the Court rejected the DOJ's proposal to break apart tools that help small businesses reach new customers and grow," Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google's vice president of regulatory affairs, said in a statement.
Matt Schruers, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association -- of which Google is a member -- said the decision "confirms that antitrust remedies should be narrowly tailored to address specific identified harms."

Ruling under seal

The reasoning behind today's decision was not immediately made public. 
Brinkema filed her opinion under seal for 14 days, leaving the details of how Google must change its ad business unknown for now. 
She gave the two sides 30 days to submit a joint proposed final judgment.
The case focused on Google's ad tech "stack" -- the suite of tools that website publishers use to sell ads and advertisers use to buy them.
Brinkema -- whose court is in Alexandria, Virginia, outside Washington -- ruled last year that Google had willfully monopolized both the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets, and had unlawfully tied the two products together.
Google has said it will appeal the underlying liability ruling.
The government's case portrayed Google as simultaneously controlling multiple sides of the digital advertising marketplace, owning the platform that publishers use to sell ads as well as the exchange where transactions occur, all while commanding huge advertiser demand. 
According to the Department of Justice, Google once compared this arrangement to Goldman Sachs owning the New York Stock Exchange.
Prosecutors had sought the sale of Google's ad auction site AdX and the open-sourcing of critical auction technology.
Google characterized the proposed remedies as extreme government overreach that would harm publishers, advertisers and consumers.
It had also argued that splitting up the service would be technically unfeasible.
At closing arguments last year, Brinkema questioned how long a forced sale would take and noted that no buyer for AdX had been identified.
arp/sst/mjf

AI

Tech bosses press G20 to build data centers, but split on risk

BY ALEX PIGMAN

  • "Some of you will choose to build data centers.
  • Top US tech bosses, including Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and OpenAI's Sam Altman, urged G20 ministers Wednesday to embrace artificial intelligence and build the data centers to run it.
  • "Some of you will choose to build data centers.
Top US tech bosses, including Nvidia chief Jensen Huang and OpenAI's Sam Altman, urged G20 ministers Wednesday to embrace artificial intelligence and build the data centers to run it.
The executives spoke on the second day of a G20 meeting in North Carolina, where the Trump administration corralled the AI industry's top figures to pitch their vision to ministers from the world's leading economies.
"In the end, what every single country will have to recognize is that (AI) is infrastructure, just as it's water, roads, electricity, the internet," Huang told the ministers.
"Every single country needs to build infrastructure so that you can support your own local economy," he said.
Nvidia is the key corporation behind the generative AI frenzy that has catapulted it to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company.
Housed in data centers going up around the world, the company's graphics processing units are key components for training AI models.
Such facilities provide "the digital intellectual capacity to support your researchers and students and society and industries and startups," Huang said.
However, data centers have become a political hot potato in the United States, with many communities opposed to their construction and concerned about the impact they will have on electricity rates.
Huang also pushed back on notions that AI posed a threat to jobs.
"The idea that somehow all the jobs are going to be eliminated or removed -- that's just nonsense," he said.
Work would be redefined rather than eliminated, he argued.
"The tasks are going to be automated, but our jobs' purpose remains," he said.
In a reflection of public concern, the meeting on the campus of University of North Carolina was met with about 100 to 200 people protesting AI's fast development.
Huang reserved his sharpest warning for governments that dwell on the technology's risks.
"The worst outcome is that you don't take advantage of it, that you are left behind," he said, adding that countries would suffer if leaders "talk about the technology with fear, with uncertainty."
His appearance was moderated by US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who called Huang an "American treasure."

'Worry is warranted'

Altman, addressing another session, was less pushy about data centers.
"Some of you will choose to build data centers. Some of you will choose to rent data centers (from) other people because you don't want them in your country," he said. "I think all that's fine."
But adoption itself was not optional, the OpenAI chief argued, comparing a country refusing AI to one refusing electricity a century ago.
"It is non-negotiable. You have to use it," Altman said. "The value to a country is too high to ignore."
He struck a more alarmist tone from Huang on risk.
"Worry is warranted. Worry is how we anticipate problems," Altman said, drawing a parallel with the development of fire safety after blazes destroyed cities.
He also cautioned against the technology concentrating wealth, saying OpenAI did not want to be the only company in the field or to "suck up all the value."

Goldilocks moment

Ministers in the room were more circumspect.
Chris McDonald, the UK's science and technology minister, told AFP nobody disputed the opportunity the executives were describing, but that "clearly the people leading businesses have a different set of responsibilities to people running countries."
Britain was pursuing AI acceleration and public trust at once, he said, warning that neglecting either would be problematic.
"There's no choice between things like IP protection and AI, or economic growth and growing AI. You've got to get the sweet spot where you get them both in the same place," McDonald said.
"The porridge can't be too hot or too cold. It's got to be just right, and that's a matter of judgment," he added, calling it a Goldilocks moment.
Britain has not seen the level of opposition now facing US projects, McDonald said, but he cautioned against assuming it would stay that way, citing British resistance to hydrogen projects and fracking.
"We have to be really careful just to make sure we take communities with us," he said. "It's not about being an evangelist for the technology; it's about being practical, pragmatic."
arp/mjf

wireless

Europe, US closer than they look on tech rules, says EU tech chief

  • "In Europe, we have regulation in advance, and in the USA they are often coming with the court cases," she said.
  • EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen on Wednesday played down the regulatory gulf between Brussels and Washington, arguing that US courts end up policing the same companies for the same behavior that European law targets in advance.
  • "In Europe, we have regulation in advance, and in the USA they are often coming with the court cases," she said.
EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen on Wednesday played down the regulatory gulf between Brussels and Washington, arguing that US courts end up policing the same companies for the same behavior that European law targets in advance.
"The differences are not so big when we look at it in practice," the European Commission's executive vice-president for tech sovereignty told AFP on the sidelines of a G20 meeting of technology ministers in North Carolina.
"In Europe, we have regulation in advance, and in the USA they are often coming with the court cases," she said. "The same companies, the same practices, are under investigation and under discussion."
Her remarks came after two days of sessions in which the ministers were addressed by industry figures including Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Elon Musk, who used the platform to repeat the familiar charge that Europe over-regulates technology.
Virkkunen said she did not accept the premise.
"We don't see -- and I don't see -- that innovation and regulation are opposite things," the Finnish official said.
She pointed to a recent Eurobarometer survey published in which 80 percent of European respondents said careful regulation of AI was important for safety reasons.
"For Europeans, it's important that we can trust these technologies," she said, while acknowledging that Brussels would bring forward proposals to streamline some EU rules.
She noted that the absence of national tech laws in the United States has not left the industry free of government rules there.
"At (the) state level, there are hundreds of rules now on AI (in the US)," she said. "That is the situation we wanted to avoid with our AI Act -- that we have one rule for the whole market."
Virkkunen said the convergence between Europe and the United States could be seen most clearly in attitudes toward protecting minors on social media.
Meta last month reached a landmark settlement with nearly every US state, promising curfews and time limits for teens on Instagram and Facebook.
Asked about the settlement, she said some of its provisions were already law in Europe under the Digital Services Act, which requires platforms to let users flag illegal content and choose the recommender system that serves them.
But she said Brussels was pursuing the same underlying concerns about how addictive the platforms can be -- an issue that has seen Meta, YouTube and TikTok face thousands of lawsuits in the United States.
The Commission published preliminary findings in July on the addictive design of Meta's services, and earlier in the summer on how the company checks whether a user is at least 13 years old.
It has also issued preliminary findings against TikTok on addictive design and opened an investigation into Snapchat in the spring.
"We are ready to come up with stronger rules also in Europe on this matter, but I think social media platforms could also do much more now already," Virkkunen said.

'Comply on AI'

On AI safety, she said the enforcement powers attached to the EU's AI Act took effect in August, and that most leading AI developers had been cooperating with the Commission voluntarily before then.
"They understand that if they want to operate in the European markets, we have our rules and they have to comply with our rules," she said.
Asked whether Europe was seeing the kind of local opposition to data centers now spreading in the United States, Virkkunen said the debate was already lively in some EU member states -- an outcome she said careful planning was meant to avoid.
She described an imbalance within the bloc, with data center builders gravitating toward countries with abundant cheap clean power. 
"It's not a good solution if they are just located in some countries in Europe," she said. "We need them in all countries because they are a very important part of our digital infrastructure."
arp/mjf

tech

Nvidia boss presses G20 ministers to build AI infrastructure

  • He warned that countries would suffer if leaders "talk about the technology with fear, with uncertainty."
  • Nvidia chief Jensen Huang urged G20 ministers on Wednesday to build more data centers to support the artificial intelligence revolution, and warned that leaders who talk up the technology's dangers risk leaving their countries behind.
  • He warned that countries would suffer if leaders "talk about the technology with fear, with uncertainty."
Nvidia chief Jensen Huang urged G20 ministers on Wednesday to build more data centers to support the artificial intelligence revolution, and warned that leaders who talk up the technology's dangers risk leaving their countries behind.
Huang made the plea on the second day of a G20 meeting in North Carolina, where the Trump administration has corralled top AI executives to pitch their vision to ministers from the world's leading economies.
"In the end, what every single country will have to recognize is that (AI) is infrastructure, just as it's water, roads, electricity, the internet," Huang told ministers at the event.
"Every single country needs to build infrastructure so that you can support your own local economy," he said.
Nvidia is the key company behind the generative AI frenzy that has catapulted it to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company.
The company's graphics processing units (GPUs), housed in specially built data centers going up across the world, are the key components for training AI models.
Such facilities provide "the digital intellectual capacity to support your researchers and students and society and industries and startups," he said.
Huang pushed back on notions that AI posed a threat to jobs, one of the fears that has fueled public opposition to the technology.
"The idea that somehow all the jobs are going to be eliminated or removed -- that's just nonsense," Huang told the G20 technology ministers.
Work would be redefined rather than eliminated, he argued. 
"The tasks are going to be automated, but our jobs' purpose remain," he said.
He warned that countries would suffer if leaders "talk about the technology with fear, with uncertainty."
"The worst outcome is that you don't take advantage of it, that you are left behind. That is the single worst outcome," Huang said.
Huang also urged governments not to overregulate the technology, echoing similar comments by Elon Musk a day earlier.
"Don't regulate hypothetical theoretical harm, regulate actual and pragmatic harm," Huang said.
His appearance was moderated by US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who called Huang an "American treasure."
"Your company is leading us in a path that none of us, when we were young, ever dreamed possible," Lutnick said.
The meeting came amid a growing backlash against the construction of AI data centers in the United States, an issue that has taken on political weight as the country heads toward midterm elections in November.
President Donald Trump on Monday attacked opponents of artificial intelligence data centers, saying they would end up "backwards and poor."
arp/des

AI

John Ternus takes over as Apple enters era of AI, foldable phones

  • He becomes executive chairman of Apple's board, with a mandate the company has said includes engaging policymakers around the world.
  • John Ternus took over as Apple's chief executive on Tuesday, inheriting a company that towers over the smartphone market but trails its rivals in artificial intelligence.
  • He becomes executive chairman of Apple's board, with a mandate the company has said includes engaging policymakers around the world.
John Ternus took over as Apple's chief executive on Tuesday, inheriting a company that towers over the smartphone market but trails its rivals in artificial intelligence.
One of his biggest challenges will be balancing the company's dependence on China while parrying acute political pressure from the White House.
The handover ends Tim Cook's 15-year run, replacing the operations specialist who built Apple's supply chain with the engineer who built its hardware.
Ternus, 51, joined Apple's design team in 2001 and worked his way up to senior vice president of hardware engineering, reporting to Cook.
He leads the engineering teams behind Apple's entire product lineup, including the iPhones that generate most of the company's revenue.
He gets barely a week to settle in, with Apple holding its annual iPhone event on September 9, where it is expected to unveil its first foldable handset.
"Tim Cook left the house in phenomenal order," said Dan Ives, partner and senior managing director at investment firm Yorkville Ives & Co.
"But now it's about Ternus defining the AI chapter."
Ives expects the new chief executive to lean into what he knows. 
"There's no reason to fix what's already working," he said, predicting Ternus will concentrate on hardware innovation while leaving Cook's supply chain intact.
Some analysts had argued software chief Craig Federighi was the more logical pick for a company scrambling to catch up on AI. 
Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Creative Strategies, said that misreads how consumers actually adopt technology.
"Consumers are still buying hardware first, and it's going to be like that for a long time," she said. "You're not going to discover the value of AI if you're not interested in the hardware."
Cook echoed that sentiment in a final memo to employees on Monday. 
"Few people understand what it takes to build products that change the world the way John does," Cook wrote.
Ternus earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and worked as an engineer at Virtual Research Systems before joining Apple.
Inside the company he is credited with driving a push to make products more durable, reliable and resilient, and with design work that cut their carbon footprint.
The harder question is what kind of leader he becomes.
"Even people that know him now don't know him as a CEO," Milanesi said.
"You might know him as the head of engineering, but once you're CEO, things change. Your responsibility is bigger, your power is bigger. You're dancing a different kind of dance."
Ternus' base salary will be $3 million -- the same amount Cook received when he was CEO -- but stock options could increase total compensation to $58 million in his first year, according to a securities filing on Tuesday.
Cook's salary will decrease to $2 million, while his total compensation over the next year could be worth $47 million, according to the filing. Cook's total compensation for 2025 exceeded $74 million.

'Learn on the job'

Nowhere is that gap wider than in the geopolitical role Cook excelled at, courting both Beijing and Donald Trump's White House to protect a supply chain that runs largely through China.
Apple's manufacturing operation is among the most complex in corporate history, a web of hundreds of suppliers and assembly lines that Cook painstakingly built over decades.
Cook in recent years began shifting some of the work elsewhere -- iPhone assembly to India, other production to Vietnam -- but the diversification has been gradual, with China, one of Apple's biggest consumer markets, still anchoring the system.
Complicating matters, Trump has repeatedly demanded Apple build iPhones on American soil, threatening tariffs on those made overseas.
Cook avoided the heaviest blows of Trump's trade war by cultivating the president directly, making US investment commitments and political donations -- all while also keeping Beijing onside.
The tricky political terrain will be new for Ternus.
"He knows Apple Park like the back of his pocket in terms of hardware," Ives said of Ternus. "But on the global stage -- that's probably one of the biggest areas where he's going to have to learn on the job."
Cook is not going far. He becomes executive chairman of Apple's board, with a mandate the company has said includes engaging policymakers around the world.
"That was really clever," said Milanesi, arguing the arrangement frees Ternus from a role Cook has handled alone for years.
The September 9 iPhone event will be the first public measure of the handover.
A foldable iPhone would be the most significant redesign in years, and Ternus will be its face -- eight days into the job.
"This is a moment that they created for him," Milanesi said.
arp-smb/pnb

AI

OpenAI to launch new model with 'stronger safeguards' after hack

  • "It is the first model we are designating at this level, and requires stronger safeguards during development and before release," the blog said. 
  • ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Tuesday it was preparing to release its newest powerful model, known as Astra, after implementing "stronger safeguards" following a rogue cyberattack involving a different AI model.
  • "It is the first model we are designating at this level, and requires stronger safeguards during development and before release," the blog said. 
ChatGPT maker OpenAI said Tuesday it was preparing to release its newest powerful model, known as Astra, after implementing "stronger safeguards" following a rogue cyberattack involving a different AI model.
The San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) giant paused some of its model development for two weeks this summer after two models it was testing were involved in a security breach of software company Hugging Face.
Although Astra "was not involved" in the incident, OpenAI has beefed up its safety measures, the company said in a blog post.  
"We have since implemented even stronger safeguards for Astra, including training the model to more reliably refuse harmful cyber requests and respect safety restrictions, additional protections against misuse, and monitoring that can stop potentially unauthorized activity," the blog said. 
That includes classifying Astra as reaching a "critical cybersecurity threshold," which means OpenAI believes the model is capable of finding and exploiting cybersecurity gaps. 
"It is the first model we are designating at this level, and requires stronger safeguards during development and before release," the blog said. 
When OpenAI eventually launches Astra, access to certain capabilities will be limited and the most advanced capabilities will be made available to a select group of early testers, the blog said. 
Concerns have increased in recent months about the capabilities of advanced AI models after incidents involving models from both OpenAI and rival developer Anthropic, though none of the models in those incidents were available to customers.
Anthropic also recently discovered that its models had gained unauthorized access to three unnamed organizations during testing that was supposed to keep them away from "real-world" systems. 
Last week, more than 100 organizations around the world, including OpenAI and Anthropic, signed an open letter calling for a global effort to "strengthen cyber defenses" against AI-powered cybersecurity threats. 
"We have a limited window to strengthen cyber defenses," the letter said. "In the coming months, AI-enabled cyber attacks will become far more widespread and sophisticated as models around the world become increasingly capable."
In June, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for a voluntary review process in which the government would get early access to new AI models before their release to assess security risks.
A final framework for those reviews was supposed to be announced by August 1, but so far the White House has not publicly revealed it.
OpenAI has followed the voluntary framework, nonetheless, as it works toward launching Astra, a spokesperson for the company told AFP.
smb/pnb

AI

Zuckerberg, Musk make plea at G20 for more AI data centers

BY ALEX PIGMAN

  • In separate remarks, Tesla and SpaceX chief Musk stressed the massive amounts of electricity needed by the AI data centers, calling out a "crisis of power" in the AI buildout that was giving China the advantage.
  • Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk on Tuesday stressed the need for more AI data centers and the electric power needed to support them at a meeting of G20 technology ministers focused on the disruptions and opportunity brought by artificial intelligence.
  • In separate remarks, Tesla and SpaceX chief Musk stressed the massive amounts of electricity needed by the AI data centers, calling out a "crisis of power" in the AI buildout that was giving China the advantage.
Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk on Tuesday stressed the need for more AI data centers and the electric power needed to support them at a meeting of G20 technology ministers focused on the disruptions and opportunity brought by artificial intelligence.
The US tech bosses spoke virtually at a G20 meeting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina organized by the White House, which is dedicated to keeping the AI revolution largely free of government rules and scrutiny.
The talks came amid a growing backlash against the construction of AI data centers in the United States, a question that has become a major issue as the country heads to midterm elections later this year.
Meta boss Zuckerberg said the buildout would require "hundreds of thousands and maybe millions of jobs" in the skilled trades, "just because the demand for data centers is immense."
"What we've basically found at Meta is that we... can't find the skilled tradespeople that we need to build the data centers... that we as one company are trying to build," he said.
In separate remarks, Tesla and SpaceX chief Musk stressed the massive amounts of electricity needed by the AI data centers, calling out a "crisis of power" in the AI buildout that was giving China the advantage.
"There will be a significant power shortfall next year, not (the) distant future," Musk said, adding that his company was building the required power generation to go with its data centers.
The tech leaders' comments came a day after US President Donald Trump attacked opponents of AI data centers as "backwards and poor."
Polls show a majority of Americans are now against building the centers, amid complaints about rising electricity bills and noise from the facilities.
Musk said he believed artificial intelligence would increase the size of the global economy by 20-30 percent, or roughly $20 trillion to $30 trillion, per year.
In another virtual address to the ministers, Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis said the achievement of human-level AI would unleash ten times the impact of the Industrial Revolution.
"It's a huge opportunity that we have to grasp... but we've got to do that in a responsible way," Hassabis said.
The United States holds the rotating G20 presidency this year and is hosting a series of ministerial meetings ahead of a leaders' summit that Trump will convene on December 14-15 at his Trump National Doral resort in Miami.
The Chapel Hill meeting is organized by White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Nvidia's Jensen Huang and OpenAI's Sam Altman are expected in person on Wednesday for fireside chats with Lutnick.
Musk in his remarks singled out European governments for what he called overregulation of technology that was stifling their economies.
Technology ministers from EU members France, Italy and Germany were sitting in the room -- as well as EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen.
Innovation needs to be "relatively free of regulation, meaning that new things must be default legal as opposed to default illegal," Musk said.
"In the EU... things are generally default illegal," he added.
"It doesn't ultimately stop it, but it slows it down quite considerably," he said.
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