Tag - ai

 
 

AI

SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son is preparing a big artificial intelligence bet.
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 6, 2024
SoftBank to log slim profit ahead of Masayoshi Son’s next AI bet
Emerging from a month of sharp selloffs, the investment firm is expected to report a net income of ¥1 billion for the June quarter.
An ultrasonographic checkup to detect Little League elbow (top). The image on the bottom left shows a healthy elbow while an arrow on the bottom right image shows damage.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Aug 6, 2024
Japanese team develops AI program to detect Little League elbow
The researchers aim to develop diagnostic equipment using an AI program for practical use in about a year.
The entrance gate of the SEG electronics market in Shenzhen, China, on June 27.
WORLD / Politics
Aug 5, 2024
With smugglers and front companies, China is skirting U.S. AI bans
The U.S. worries advanced semiconductors could help China develop superior weaponry, launch cyberattacks and make faster decisions on the battlefield.
The dark side of artificial intelligence is that it could make deadly and low-cost bioweapons more accessible to nonstate actors.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 4, 2024
AI may save us, or may construct viruses to kill us
One reason biological weapons haven’t been much used is that they can boomerang. If Russia released a virus in Ukraine, it could spread to Russia.
A Samsung HBM chip
WORLD / Politics
Aug 1, 2024
U.S. weighs restrictions on China’s access to AI memory chips
The new restrictions are likely to be unveiled as soon as late August as part of a broader package that also includes sanctions against over 120 Chinese firms.
Samsung has won the long-awaited approval from artificial-intelligence giant Nvidia for a version of its high-bandwidth HBM3 memory chips.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 30, 2024
Samsung begins closing gap in making AI memory chips for Nvidia
The advances that include winning approval from artificial-intelligence giant Nvidia come after months of stumbles for Samsung.
Joining the revolution brought by the era-defining release of ChatGPT requires a supply of cash that only tech behemoths like Microsoft can provide.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 29, 2024
AI startups swap independence for Big Tech's deep pockets
In the past few months promising companies have seen founders and key executives quietly exit the stage to join the world's dominant tech companies.
A study shows that autocracies and weak democracies are more likely to import Chinese artificial intelligence facial-recognition technology, especially during times of domestic unrest. 
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2024
China is exporting its AI surveillance state
Trade does not always foster democracy or liberalize regimes. Instead, China’s greater integration with the developing world may do precisely the opposite.
Beijing's push to integrate core socialist values into its chatbots highlights a significant challenge in China's bid to compete with the U.S. in AI development.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 26, 2024
What's wrong about ‘Chat XiPT’ is bigger than China
The difficulty of creating AI models infused with specific values will likely hurt China’s efforts to create chatbots as sophisticated as those in the U.S.
While Japan’s media may influence global perceptions of robots as friendly and lovable, the near-future robots will likely not match the capabilities or roles depicted in TV show's like "Sunny."
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 25, 2024
Japan isn't the 'robotopia' Apple TV's 'Sunny' portrays
One of the reasons we still see relatively few robots doing the menial jobs is that human labor is cheap.
Nidec separately announced it signed a memorandum of understanding on Monday with Tata Elxsi, an Indian technology service provider, to develop software programs for India and other markets.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 23, 2024
Japan's Nidec lifts annual profit outlook after first quarter
The company raised its expectations for operating profit in the financial year to the end of March 2025 to ¥240 billion ($1.53 billion).
Artificial intelligence is transforming various business sectors and the economy. But concerns about humanoid robots replacing all jobs are unfounded, as human dexterity will remain essential for the foreseeable future.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 23, 2024
AI is making robots smarter. They’ll need boundaries.
Where AI meets the physical world — and creates the potential for conflicts — is in manufacturing and logistics.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang presents on the chipmaker's Blackwell platform at an event ahead of the Computex forum, in Taipei on June 2. The flagship Blackwell series was unveiled in March.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 22, 2024
Nvidia preparing version of new flagship AI chip for Chinese market, sources say
The Chinese version of the chip will be made compatible with current U.S. export controls.
While chip stocks have been on a tear this year, some strategists see signs of overheating within the sector.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 22, 2024
Top Taiwan tech fund says there’s still more juice in AI rally
Fund manager sees more opportunities in Taiwanese and Japanese stocks amid tensions between the U.S. and China.
At a waste center in Kamikatsu, Tokushima Prefecture, residents separate trash into 45 different categories as the town aims to become "zero waste."
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 22, 2024
How circular economy initiatives are changing the world
From Asia to Europe to Africa, public and private entities are finding new ways to revolutionize the economic paradigm from a linear to a circular model. In Japan, too.
Goki Kusunoki, CEO and co-founder of Samansa, with the company's Loverse app in Tokyo on May 10. The app allows interaction only with generative artificial intelligence.
BUSINESS
Jul 21, 2024
Tiny Japanese startup is bringing AI dating to the masses
Loverse is the latest in a long line of digital solutions to Japan’s loneliness crisis.
U.S. pressure to slow Beijing’s advances in making semiconductors led the Netherlands to ban exports to China of ASML’s second-most advanced category of machinery at the start of the year. But ASML continues to service machines that were bought before the restrictions were in place.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 18, 2024
ASML falls as outlook clouded by risk of U.S. export curbs
ASML shares plunged 11% in Amsterdam on Wednesday to €870.90 ($952), wiping out €42.7 billion of market value — its biggest decline since March 2020.
Tools at an exploration site run by KoBold Metals in Chililabombwe, Zambia, on June 11. A complex AI-driven technology that data crunchers at KoBold Metals painstakingly built over years helped identify a copper bonanza deep below a site in Zambia, and the company’s process could radically transform the discovery of metal and mineral deposits critical not only to the tech industry but to the fight against climate change.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 18, 2024
AI joins search for needed metals just in time
KoBold’s find comes as the United States and China are increasingly clashing over global access to minerals.
The Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association says AI-assisted online search services offered by Google and Microsoft is highly likely to not only infringe news organizations' copyrights but damage their trustworthiness.
JAPAN
Jul 18, 2024
Japan news media association demands consent and accuracy from generative AI
Without regulation, generative AI will erode media content, harming democracy and national culture, according to the association.
Actor Kim Dae-gun won a Korean Fantastic Actor award for his performance in Yoon Eunkyoung’s “The Tenants,” which takes a dark satirical look at the scarcity of decent affordable housing in Seoul.
CULTURE / Film
Jul 18, 2024
Bucheon film festival contemplates a future with AI
Dark comedy and surreal fantasy stood out at the genre film event that focused on the advent of generative AI.

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Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?