Category: Technology

SAN FRANCISCO: Google updated its principles on Tuesday when it comes to artificial intelligence, removing vows not to use the technology for weapons or surveillance. Just weeks after Google chief executive Sundar Pichai and other tech titans attended the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, revised AI principles were posted. When asked by AFP about the change, a Google spokesperson referred to a blog post outlining the company’s AI principles that made no mention of the promises, which Pichai first outlined in 2018. “We believe democracies should lead in AI development, guided…

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India’s finance ministry has instructed its employees to refrain from using AI tools such as ChatGPT and DeepSeek for official work, citing concerns over the confidentiality and security of government data, according to an internal advisory. Similar restrictions have been imposed by countries like Australia and Italy, which have flagged data security risks associated with DeepSeek. Reports of the advisory emerged on social media on Tuesday, just ahead of OpenAI chief Sam Altman’s scheduled visit to India on Wednesday, during which he is set to meet the IT minister. “It…

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Australia has officially banned the DeepSeek chatbot from all government devices following advice from security agencies regarding potential privacy and malware risks associated with the AI programme developed by a China-based startup. Launched last month, DeepSeek has garnered significant attention and disrupted financial markets. However, concerns over its security and data practices have prompted a growing number of countries, including South Korea, Italy and France, to voice their concerns about the application’s security and data practices. Australia’s decisive action marks one of the most stringent responses to the Chinese-developed chatbot…

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OpenAI chief Sam Altman inked a deal with tech giant Kakao in South Korea on Tuesday as the US firm seeks new alliances after Chinese rival DeepSeek shook the global AI industry. Kakao, which owns an online bank, South Korea’s largest taxi-hailing app and KakaoTalk, announced a partnership allowing them to use ChatGPT for its new artificial intelligence services, joining a global alliance led by OpenAI amid intensifying competition in the sector. Altman’s company is part of the Stargate drive announced by US President Donald Trump to invest up to…

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From a relative “Wild West” in the United States to extremely complicated regulations in the European Union, nations and economic blocs around the world are in different phases of regulating artificial intelligence (AI). Prior to the February 10–11 Paris AI summit, here are some important points regarding regulation in major boundaries. US   Returning President Donald Trump last month rescinded Joe Biden’s October 2023 executive order on AI oversight. Largely voluntary, it required major AI developers like OpenAI to share safety assessments and vital information with the federal government. Backed…

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WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to set up a sovereign wealth fund, which he says could be used to buy TikTok, instructing the US Treasury and Commerce Departments to create the fund, which aims to generate money from government assets. “We’re going to establish this within the next 12 months. We’re going to monetise the asset side of the US balance sheet for the American people,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters. “There will be a combination of liquid assets and assets that we have…

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Generative artificial intelligence heavyweight OpenAI launched a new AI tool on Sunday called “deep research”, which it said conducts multi-step research on the internet for complex tasks. The announcement comes as China’s AI newcomer DeepSeek’s chatbot sent Silicon Valley into a frenzy, with its high performance and supposed low cost prompting calls for US developers to go faster. OpenAI, whose ChatGPT fronted generative AI’s emergence into public consciousness in 2022, said its new tool “accomplishes in tens of minutes what would take a human many hours”. Deep research is powered…

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An eggshell white, conical probe named SPHEREx, which stands for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionisation and Ices Explorer will enter Nasa’s space telescope epic in February if everything goes as per the plan. “Taking a snapshot with JWST is like taking a picture of a person,” Shawn Domagal-Goldman, who is the acting director of the Astrophysics Division at Nasa Headquarters, told reporters earlier, reported Space.com. He said: “What SPHEREx and other survey missions can do is almost like going into panorama mode, when you want to…

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LONDON: Britain will become the first country to introduce laws against AI tools used to generate sexual abuse images, the government announced Saturday. The government will make it illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to generate sexualised images of children, punishable by up to five years in prison, interior minister Yvette Cooper revealed. It will also be illegal to possess AI “paedophile manuals” which teach people how to use AI to sexually abuse children, punishable by up to three years in prison. “We know that sick predators’…

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MARSEILLE: Three data saving centres, situated alongside the cruise ships and freighters in the French Mediterranean port Marseille, are testing water-saving cooling methods by pumping out an old coal mine. Efforts like these are under the spotlight as generative artificial intelligence (AI) consumes growing volumes of water, one of the environmental priorities for February’s global AI summit in Paris. The portside data centres “pump water at a rate of about 3,000 cubic metres (100,000 cubic feet) per hour”, said Fabrice Coquio, president of their operator Digital Realty’s French business. Water…

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