Know What's Happening in AI
Know What's Happening in AI
SoftBank, NEC, Sony and Honda launch $7.2B AI venture
SoftBank, NEC, Sony Group and Honda have each taken over 10% equity in a new AI joint venture aimed at building high‑performance, Japanese‑made artificial intelligence. The partnership will seek up to ¥1 trillion (≈$7.2 billion) in government support from NEDO starting fiscal 2026.
Also developing:
By the numbers: EGYM merges with Playlist in $7.5B deal
In 2025, the four biggest tech firms poured $380 billion into AI tools, a figure projected to rise to $650 billion this year, with a large share earmarked for elite talent. Packages such as a $250 million four‑year deal for a single researcher illustrate the intensity of the “reverse‑acqui‑hire” race. Academic AI researchers, especially early‑career, highly‑cited scholars, are leaving universities at a rate 100 times higher than seasoned peers. The exodus threatens the collaborative, curiosity‑driven nature of scientific discovery.
In this episode, hosts Ed and his co‑host chat about recent travels before diving into a conversation with Torsten Slok, partner and chief economist at a major investment firm. Slok challenges listeners’ assumptions about portfolio diversification, explaining how AI tools...
A DataCamp survey finds two‑thirds of leaders see data and AI skill gaps, yet fewer than half provide basic AI literacy training. Dayforce chief AI officer David Lloyd argues the real problem is a lack of deliberate AI fluency and...
The Hard Fork episode examines how the United States and Israel are integrating artificial intelligence into the Iran conflict, using AI to pinpoint targets such as data centers and fiber‑optic infrastructure. It also highlights a new workplace phenomenon dubbed “AI...
FedEx announced a multiyear plan to embed artificial‑intelligence agents across more than half of its core operational workflows by 2028, extending AI beyond software development into network planning, customs clearance and marketing. The company is building a data‑centric foundation, consolidating...
A humorous “Author AI Scams Bingo” highlights the surge of AI‑generated spam targeting writers. The piece showcases a bingo card filled with typical scam language such as “I recently came across your book” and promises of wider audiences. It illustrates...
An AI‑generated image falsely claimed a school in Isfahan housed military equipment, priming audiences before a real missile strike hit Minab girls’ school, killing at least 175 people. Fact‑checkers debunked the fake photo, but the real tragedy was later clouded...
Bayesian‑driven digital twins are emerging as a trusted AI alternative in oncology, where uncertainty and fragmented data hinder large language model (LLM) reliability. Concr, an AI oncology startup, has built a three‑component Bayesian framework that simulates cancer‑treatment risks and updates...
Raspberry Pi 5 now supports sophisticated offline AI by pairing the LM AA50 accelerator and the AI Hat Plus 2 with the 2‑billion‑parameter CR3VL vision‑language model and a latent consistency generator. The hardware can interpret images, transform visuals, and create pictures from spoken or typed prompts...
Singapore‑based Synscribe unveiled a multi‑tenant AI agent built on the open‑source OpenClaw framework that autonomously handles end‑to‑end SEO and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) tasks. The agent performs keyword research, creates landing pages, builds links and even drafts blog posts, reducing...
The pizza sector has become the leading proving ground for restaurant technology, with AI, robotics, and predictive analytics reshaping ordering, kitchen, and delivery processes. Brands such as Jet’s Pizza, Donatos, Domino’s and Papa John’s have deployed AI‑driven SMS ordering, autonomous...
Perplexity just gave every retail investor a Bloomberg Terminal. For free. Watch this demo. It's wild. @perplexity_ai connects to brokerage accounts via @Plaid and builds a custom investment dashboard in seconds. Perplexity Computer pulls from 40+ live finance tools like: - SEC filings -...
AI is forcing the debate about energy and infrastructure. As hyperscale data centers expand, critics argue they are pushing up electricity demand and prices. Tech companies say they will absorb the costs or invest in alternative energy, but the long-term economics...
OpenRouter recently listed two previously unknown models, Healer Alpha and Hunter Alpha, sparking intense speculation that they are early versions of the rumored DeepSeek V4. Both models demonstrate multimodal capabilities and trillion‑parameter scale, aligning with DeepSeek V4’s touted 1‑million‑token context...
𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗮 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴. 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗖𝗹𝗮𝘄 may be the latest example. The open source AI agent from the West began spreading quickly across Chinese developer communities this week. Soon after, Beijing raised security concerns. And within days, companies such as 𝗧𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁,...
Elon Musk unveiled Macrohard, an AI‑robotic platform that pairs xAI’s Grok large‑language model with Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot to automate a broad range of workplace tasks. The initiative, a joint effort between xAI and Tesla, leverages Nvidia GPUs and Tesla‑built...
Enterprise AI security startup Bold emerged from stealth after closing a $40 million Series A round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Picture Capital and Red Dot Capital Partners. The company’s edge‑AI platform runs lightweight models on each endpoint to monitor user behavior,...
Ireland has published its first national AI strategy for health, outlining a five‑year roadmap across four strategic pillars: clinical care, operations, research and innovation, and public health. The plan emphasizes AI‑driven improvements such as shorter waiting times, personalised treatment, diagnostic...
AI‑driven search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity no longer rely on traditional SEO signals such as meta tags or backlinks. Instead they pull from third‑person, recommendation‑style content and trusted mentions across the web. For restaurants, this means they can...
Pony.ai has expanded its robotaxi service by integrating it into Tencent’s Mobility Service on WeChat. The rollout allows users in selected Guangzhou districts to request fully driverless rides directly through the popular app. The move builds on a broader Tencent...
Wow. @GarryTan (@ycombinator's CEO) just dropped the ultimate cheat code for software engineers. 🔥 He just open-sourced gstack, his personal toolkit that transforms Claude Code from a basic chatbot into an entire virtual engineering department. Instead of asking Claude to "build a feature"...
Ragan Training launched a new course, “Prompt Like a Pro: GenAI Prompting for Communicators,” teaching how to treat AI prompt engineering as a structured communications workflow. The curriculum emphasizes strengthening prompts to reflect context, building documented prompt libraries, and using...
Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries told Mobile World Live that AI is now embedded across the company, with 95% of employees using it daily in a closed environment. He described the current impact as marginal improvements rather than a transformative...
At a Peacock product preview, NBCUniversal unveiled "Your Bravoverse," an AI‑driven vertical‑video experience that uses Andy Cohen’s voice and likeness to guide users through personalized Bravo playlists drawn from over 5,000 hours of content. The feature, slated for a summer launch, lets...
Robert Half’s 2026 IT salary report identifies ten tech roles that have outpaced market growth, with AI/ML engineering, cybersecurity, and cloud/network engineering leading the demand surge. Business leaders prioritize AI/ML (45%), IT operations (36%) and cloud architecture (24%), yet only...
Emil Michael, Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, explains how he streamlined the Pentagon’s technology priorities from 14 vague areas to six, placing applied AI at the top. Within 90 days, AI usage surged from 80,000 to 1.2 million personnel,...
ESET security advisor Jake Moore demonstrated how consumer‑grade smart glasses, deep‑fake tools, and face‑swap software can defeat widely deployed facial recognition systems. He captured strangers’ faces in real time, created AI‑generated identities to open a bank account, and bypassed a...
Researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Baidu and Huawei unveiled a teacher‑student AI framework that predicts optical transceiver failures in large‑scale AI training clusters. Tested on Baidu’s 400 Gbps data‑center fabric, the model achieved a 0.964 F1‑score, a 9.3% gain over...
If it is true that Meta licenses Gemini to power MetaAI, and I find it somewhat dubious, it would be an incredible coup for Google and give Gemini a credible claim as the world’s most scaled model by consumer use...
Avahi, an AWS Premier partner, is launching a free webinar on March 18 to demystify AI agents for healthcare executives. The session, titled “The AI Agent Implementation Framework,” will explain how AI agents operate within hospitals and identify high‑impact use...
Canal+, the French media group owned by MultiChoice, announced that it will integrate generative AI tools from Google Cloud and OpenAI into its StudioCanal production pipeline. CEO Maxim Saada said the technology will enable the creation of scenes that were previously...
Delhi‑based startup RaagaPay launched in October 2025 to create India’s first ethical Hindustani classical music dataset for AI. The initial phase delivered ten hours of recordings across sitar, tabla, vocals and other instruments, with a goal of 1,000 hours from...
Network International and ADCB Egypt have launched Egypt’s first AI‑powered transactional fraud solution, FICO Falcon Fraud Manager. The system leverages machine‑learning to build behavioral profiles and analyze millions of transactions in real time, instantly flagging suspicious activity. Deployment marks a milestone in...
The article argues that generative AI will not deliver business transformation unless firms invest in three critical areas: dedicated time for experimentation, robust tools and infrastructure, and ongoing support through training and mentorship. It cites Google’s 20% time model, cloud...
China’s tech firms are rapidly embracing OpenClaw as the race to deploy AI agents accelerates. With installation simplified and local models integrated, adoption in China has reportedly already surpassed the U.S. What started as a complex developer tool is quickly becoming...
The Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI) has launched the South African System of Systems for Agricultural Modernisation (SASSAM), a digital platform delivering soil analysis, pest identification, weather and AI‑driven forecasts to farmers. Funded through the Technology Innovation Agency,...
The Algorithm That Taught Cameras to See Think your phone's face detection is magic? It actually started with a clever trick from 2001. Before the era of GPUs and AI, two researchers-Viola and Jones-changed everything by looking at simple...
Vilnius‑based startup WhiteBridge AI announced a €2.6 million seed financing round. The round was led by FIRSTPICK VC with participation from several other VCs and angels. WhiteBridge offers an AI‑powered people research platform that aggregates, verifies and analyses publicly available personal...
Spotted Zebra unveiled its AI Interview Agent, an enterprise‑grade hiring tool that conducts live, adaptive two‑way interviews using validated Role Skills Profiles. The platform delivers transparent, evidence‑based scores with audit trails, operates 24/7 on any device, and meets ISO 42001 and...
The EU’s AI Act tightly regulates biometric surveillance inside Europe but omits any export‑control provisions. Slovak firm Innovatrics’ facial‑recognition system is now deployed in more than 1,700 public schools in Brazil’s Paraná state, scanning up to one million children daily....
𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗵 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹 𝗮 𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻. With iOS 18, Apple introduced an AI-powered Calculator that can understand handwritten equations. You simply write the math problem. The system reads your handwriting, solves it instantly, and even keeps the result in your...
Inside Cyber: How AI, 5G, IoT, and Quantum Computing Will Transform Privacy and Our Security https://t.co/P5qqtToeX8 #cybersecurity #ArtificialIntelligence #quantum #tech #book
LegalWeek’s 2026 mock courtroom debated the defensibility of generative AI (GenAI) for document review, with the mock judge accepting validation statistics as sufficient. The article argues that recall and precision metrics only measure retrieval, not the interpretive judgments that GenAI...
🔮What is next for FP&A in 2026? From AI agents and explainable ML to integrated real-time planning and autonomous insights, our final FP&A Trends Webinar of 2025 covered 5 key trends for 2026 and beyond: https://t.co/S2cTWIhcUz #fpatrends #aiinfinance #digitaltransformation
#Microsoft launches #AI platform - Copilot for #Health, but don’t get too excited, you’ll have to join a waitlist to use it. https://t.co/qcOxiBXRHw #Healthcare #TechNews
Artificial intelligence is reshaping large‑scale pharmaceutical manufacturing by automating process design, real‑time control, and supply‑chain management. Machine‑learning models can simulate optimal temperature, pressure and reactant levels, accelerating scale‑up and reducing waste. AI‑driven advanced process control continuously adjusts bioreactor conditions, while...
China’s ByteDance Gets Access to Top Nvidia AI Chips—TikTok parent, pushing global expansion, plans to tap Blackwell processors that are barred for export to China @JonathanEmont @lizalinwsj https://t.co/cTBSVMnK4r https://t.co/cTBSVMnK4r
Random Forest jumped 300% yesterday. LSTM appeared from zero. Gemini dropped to zero. While everyone chases the newest AI model, the deployment cycle is quietly choosing reliability over novelty. The boring tech is winning. https://t.co/XmiRXPXvvm
🚨 Who’s Winning the AI Visibility Race, and How to Compete Without Risking Your SEO? Don't miss the free webinar hosted by @AdelleKehoe of @Similarweb where @lilyraynyc and I will be going through the biggest insights from...
Mission Control AI captures digital transformation projects—from requirements to testing. It's our proprietary tool for AI-driven insights into every stage of your project's journey. #DigitalTransformation #AI #ProjectManagement https://t.co/VGhdMdJCXZ
