Category: Technology

Apple announced this week it would spend $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years and create 20,000 jobs, signaling its pro-U.S. jobs and investment policy. U.S. President Donald Trump also announced he would double tariffs on China, where most Apple products are made. Michelle Quinn reports. …

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — A private company launched another lunar lander Wednesday, aiming to get closer to the moon’s south pole this time with a drone that will hop into a black crater where the sun never shines.  Intuitive Machines’ lander, named Athena, caught a lift with SpaceX from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. It’s taking a fast track to the moon, with a landing on March 6. The company hopes to avoid the fate of Athena’s predecessor, which tipped over at touchdown.  Never before have so many spacecraft angled for the moon’s surface all at once. Last month, U.S. and Japanese companies shared a rocket and separately launched landers toward the moon. The lander from the U.S. company, Firefly Aerospace of Texas, should get there first this weekend.  The two U.S. landers are carrying tens of millions of dollars’ worth of experiments for NASA as it prepares to return astronauts to the moon.  “It’s an amazing time. There’s so much energy,” NASA science mission chief Nicky Fox told The Associated Press a few hours ahead of the launch.  Last year, Texas-based Intuitive Machines made the first U.S. touchdown on the moon in more than 50 years. But an instrument that gauges distance did not work, and the lander came down too hard and broke a leg, tipping onto its side.  Intuitive Machines said it has fixed that issue and dozens of others. A sideways landing like last time would prevent a drone and a pair of rovers from moving out. A …

LONDON — More than 1,000 musicians including Kate Bush and Cat Stevens on Tuesday released a silent album to protest proposed changes to Britain’s copyright laws which could allow tech firms to train artificial intelligence models using their work. Creative industries globally are grappling with the legal and ethical implications of AI models that can produce their own output after being trained on popular works without necessarily paying the creators of the original content. Britain, which Prime Minister Keir Starmer wants to become an AI superpower, has proposed relaxing laws that currently give creators of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works the right to control the ways their material may be used. The proposed changes would allow AI developers to train their models on any material to which they have lawful access, and would require creators to proactively opt out to stop their work being used. The changes have been heavily criticized by many artists, who say it would reverse the principle of copyright law, which grants exclusive control to creators for their work. “In the music of the future, will our voices go unheard?” said Bush, whose 1985 hit “Running Up That Hill” enjoyed a resurgence in 2022 thanks to Netflix show “Stranger Things.” The co-written album titled “Is This What We Want?” features recordings of empty studios and performance spaces to represent what organizers say is the potential impact on artists’ livelihoods should the changes go ahead. A public consultation on the legal changes closes later on Tuesday. Responding …

U.S. tech giant Apple has announced plans to create some 20,000 jobs and invest $500 billion over the next four years in the United States.  Apple says it will expand teams and facilities in nine states across the country and that it aims to open a 23,200-square-meter server manufacturing facility in Texas in 2026.  The announcement comes just days after Apple CEO Tim Cook met with U.S. President Donald Trump.  “We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we’re proud to build on our long-standing U.S. investments with this $500 billion commitment to our country’s future,” Cook said on the investment.  “From doubling our Advanced Manufacturing Fund, to building advanced technology in Texas, we’re thrilled to expand our support for American manufacturing. And we’ll keep working with people and companies across this country to help write an extraordinary new chapter in the history of American innovation,” he added in a company statement.  Trump thanked Cook and Apple for the investment on Monday morning on the social media platform Truth Social.  “Apple has just announced a record $500 billion investment in the United States of America. The reason, faith in what we are doing, without which, they wouldn’t be investing 10 cents,” Trump said.  Most of Apple’s consumer goods are currently assembled and produced overseas. Many of them, assembled in China, are liable to 10% tariffs imposed by Trump earlier in February.  To reduce its reliance on international supply chains, Apple announced in January that it had begun mass …

Sydney — Australia’s online safety regulator fined messaging platform Telegram about $640,000 on Monday for its delay in answering questions about measures the app took to prevent the spread of child abuse and violent extremist material. The eSafety Commission in March 2024 sought responses from social media platforms YouTube, X and Facebook to Telegram and Reddit, and blamed them for not doing enough to stop extremists from using live-streaming features, algorithms and recommendation systems to recruit users. Telegram and Reddit were asked about the steps they were taking to combat child sexual abuse material on their services. They had to respond by May, but Telegram submitted its response in October. “Timely transparency is not a voluntary requirement in Australia and this action reinforces the importance of all companies complying with Australian law,” eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said in a statement. Telegram’s delay in providing information obstructed eSafety from implementing its online safety measures, Grant said. Telegram said it had fully responded to all eSafety’s questions last year, with no outstanding issues. “The unfair and disproportionate penalty concerns only the response time frame, and we intend to appeal,” the company said in an email. Australia’s spy agency in December said one in five priority counterterrorism cases investigated involved youths. The messaging platform has been under growing scrutiny around the world since its founder Pavel Durov was placed under formal investigation in France in August in connection with alleged use of the app for illegal activities. Durov, who is out on bail, …

SUSONO — Woven City near Mount Fuji is where Japanese automaker Toyota plans to test everyday living with robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomous zero-emissions transportation. Daisuke Toyoda, an executive in charge of the project from the automaker’s founding family, stressed it’s not “a smart city.” “We’re making a test course for mobility so that’s a little bit different. We’re not a real estate developer,” he said Saturday during a tour of the facility, where the first phase of construction was completed. The Associated Press was the first foreign media to get a preview of the $10 billion Woven City. The first phase spans 47,000 square meters (506,000 square feet), roughly the size of about five baseball fields. When completed, it will be 294,000 square meters (3.1 million square feet). Built on the grounds of a shuttered Toyota Motor Corp. auto plant, it’s meant to be a place where researchers and startups come together to share ideas, according to Toyoda. Ambitious plans for futuristic cities have sputtered or are unfinished, including one proposed by Google’s parent company Alphabet in Toronto; “Neom” in Saudi Arabia; a project near San Francisco, spearheaded by a former Goldman Sachs trader, and Masdar City next to Abu Dhabi’s airport. Woven City’s construction began in 2021. All the buildings are connected by underground passageways, where autonomous vehicles will scuttle around collecting garbage and making deliveries. No one is living there yet. The first residents will total just 100 people. Called “weavers,” they’re workers at Toyota and partner companies, …

After China’s DeepSeek gained global recognition, some argue that the U.S.-China rivalry in AI may be upended. In addition, the Chinese Communist Party is actively offering to help developing countries strengthen their AI capacity building. Observers said that China is selling its AI software to targeted regions, which can challenge U.S. AI and serve as a strategy for Chinese companies to get more business overseas. Click here for the full story in Mandarin.  …

BRUSSELS — The European Commission said Thursday it had approved 920 million-euro of German state aid, or $960 million, to Infineon Technologies for the construction of a new semiconductor manufacturing plant in Dresden. The measure will allow Infineon to complete the MEGAFAB-DD project, which will be able to produce a wide range of different types of computer chips, the Commission said. Chipmakers across the globe are pouring billions of dollars into new plants, as they take advantage of generous subsidies from the United States and the EU to keep the West ahead of China in developing cutting-edge semiconductor technology. The European Commission has earmarked 15 billion euros for public and private semiconductor projects by 2030. “This new manufacturing plant will bring flexible production capacity to the EU and thereby strengthen Europe’s security of supply, resilience and technological autonomy in semiconductor technologies, in line with the objectives set out in the European Chips Act,” the Commission said in a statement. The Commission said the plant — which is slated to reach full capacity in 2031 — will be a front-end facility, covering wafer processing, testing and separation, adding that its chips will be used in industrial, automotive and consumer applications. The aid will take the form of a direct grant of up to 920 million euros to Infineon to support its overall investment, amounting to 3.5 billion euros. Infineon, Germany’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, which was spun off from Siemens 25 years ago, has said the plant will be the largest single investment …

WASHINGTON — Chinese social media users are not impressed by the newly released AI model Grok 3 by Elon Musk’s xAI, retaining their preference and support for DeepSeek, the free China-made AI model that rivals leading Western competitors while costing significantly less to train. Click here for the full story in Mandarin. …

A recent study found doctors were able to detect breast cancer more often when they used artificial intelligence to help read mammogram results. As VOA’s Dora Mekouar reports, AI helped boost the breast cancer detection rate by more than 17%. …

NAIROBI, KENYA — Milk and egg vendor Caroline Mukundi has lost a lot of her stock in her years of selling fresh food at a Nairobi market. Mukundi said she had no way to keep food fresh, and the cost of refrigerating was out of reach. “The food would go bad,” she said, and she would have to throw it away. “It was a big challenge for me.” Mukundi said her situation turned around when she acquired a solar-powered refrigerator. The refrigerators, named Koolboks and manufactured in Kenya, are fitted with ice compartments that can chill food even without a source of power. The devices can keep food cool for up to four days without electricity, even with limited sunlight. Customers can buy the refrigerators on a customized payment model, said Natalie Casey, chief business officer at the Koolboks startup company. “They can be between 1,500 and 3,000 US dollars, because it includes not only the appliances but also the solar panels and battery storage to enable the continuous cooling,” she said. “We’ve decided what might be more accessible to them is to first pay a down payment between 20 and 35% of the total, and the customer can pay in installments of up to 24 months.” Koolboks has sold about 7,000 solar-powered refrigerators. Conventional refrigerators for businesses can cost anywhere from $11,000 to $100,000 or more, said Dorothy Otieno, program manager at the Center for Environmental Justice and Development. “Some businesses, especially small businesses, are not able to afford it,” …

Manila, Philippines — The Philippines has detected foreign attempts to access intelligence data, but its cyber minister said on Tuesday no breaches have been recorded so far. Attempts to steal data are wide-ranging, said minister for information and communications Ivan Uy. Advanced Persistent Threats or APTs have repeatedly attempted but failed to infiltrate government systems, suggesting the country’s cyber-defenses have held firm. APTs are a general term for cyber actors or groups, often state-backed, that engage in malicious cyber activities. “These have been present for quite some time, and threats come from many actors, but a big majority of them are foreign,” Uy told Reuters. Some of these threats, which Uy referred to as “sleepers,” had been embedded in systems before being exposed by government’s cyber security efforts. “Why are these things operating in those systems, without even anybody calling it out?,” he said. So far, the government has not seen any cyberattacks targeting critical infrastructure, he said. “Hopefully it’s because our cyber defenses and cyber security are strong enough,” he said. Uy acknowledged the difficulty of attributing cyber intrusions to specific attackers, as they sometimes leave misleading digital traces. However, the government is working through diplomatic channels and sharing intelligence with the military, including with other countries, to validate threats and strengthen defenses, he said. Last year, the Philippine said it thwarted attempts by hackers operating in China to break into websites and e-mail systems of the Philippine president and government agencies, including one promoting maritime security. Uy described the …

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — South Korea’s data protection authority on Monday said new downloads of the Chinese AI app DeepSeek had been suspended in the country after DeepSeek acknowledged failing to take into account some of the agency’s rules on protecting personal data. The service of the app will be resumed once improvements are made in accordance with the country’s privacy law, the Personal Information Protection Commission (PIPC) said in a media briefing. The measure that came into force on Saturday aims to block new downloads of the app, the agency said, though DeepSeek’s web service remains accessible in the country. The Chinese startup appointed legal representatives last week in South Korea and had acknowledged partially neglecting considerations of the country’s data protection law, the PIPC said. Italy’s data protection authority, the Garante, said last month it had ordered DeepSeek to block its chatbot in the country after failing to address the regulator’s concerns over its privacy policy. DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a request for comment. When asked about earlier moves by South Korean government departments to block DeepSeek, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told a briefing on February 6 that the Chinese government attached great importance to data privacy and security and protected it in accordance with the law. The spokesperson also said Beijing would never ask any company or individual to collect or store data in breach of laws. …

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — There is no need for one country to control the semiconductor industry, which is complex and needs a division of labor, Taiwan’s top technology official said on Saturday after U.S. President Donald Trump criticized the island’s chip dominance. Trump repeated claims on Thursday that Taiwan had taken the industry and he wanted it back in the United States, saying he aimed to restore U.S. chip manufacturing. Wu Cheng-wen, head of Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council, did not name Trump in a Facebook post but referred to Taiwan President Lai Ching-te’s comments on Friday that the island would be a reliable partner in the democratic supply chain of the global semiconductor industry. Wu wrote that Taiwan has in recent years often been asked how its semiconductor industry had become an internationally acclaimed benchmark. “How did we achieve this? Obviously, we did not gain this for no reason from other countries,” he said, recounting how the government developed the sector from the 1970s, including helping found TSMC, now the world’s largest contract chipmaker, in 1987. “This shows that Taiwan has invested half a century of hard work to achieve today’s success, and it certainly wasn’t something taken easily from other countries.” Each country has its own specialty for chips, from Japan making chemicals and equipment to the United States, which is “second to none” on the design and application of innovative systems, Wu said. “The semiconductor industry is highly complex and requires precise specialization and division of labor. Given …

TAIPEI — Taiwan President Lai Ching-te pledged on Friday to talk with the United States about President Donald Trump’s concerns over the chip industry and to increase U.S. investment and buy more from the country, while also spending more on defense. Trump spoke critically about Taiwan on Thursday, saying he aimed to restore U.S. manufacturing of semiconductor chips and repeating claims about Taiwan having taken away the industry he wanted back in the United States. Speaking to reporters after holding a meeting of the National Security Council at the presidential office, Lai said that the global semiconductor supply chain is an ecosystem in which the division of work among various countries is important. “We of course are aware of President Trump’s concerns,” Lai said. “Taiwan’s government will communicate and discuss with the semiconductor industry and come up with good strategies. Then we will come up with good proposals and engage in further discussions with the United States,” he added. Democratic countries including the United States should come together to build a global alliance for AI chips and a “democratic supply chain” for advanced chips, Lai said. “While admittedly we have the advantage in semiconductors, we also see it as Taiwan’s responsibility to contribute to the prosperity of the international community.” Taiwan is home to the world’s largest contract chipmaker, TSMC, a major supplier to companies including Apple and Nvidia, and a crucial part of the developing AI industry. TSMC is investing $65 billion in new factories in the U.S. state of …

Technology company Google recently broke with its long-standing policy against developing AI weapons. VOA’s Matt Dibble has more from Silicon Valley. …

At this week’s Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, world leaders and technologists gathered to discuss the rapidly evolving field of generative artificial intelligence. Many are eager to join the global AI race, while others are proceeding with caution. Tina Trinh reports. …

Seoul — As a high school junior in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, Daneel Kutsenko never gave much thought to China. Last month, though, as the U.S. government prepared to ban TikTok – citing national security concerns about its Chinese ownership – Kutsenko downloaded RedNote, another Chinese video-sharing app, which he felt gave him a new perspective on China. “It just seems like people who live their life and have fun,” Kutsenko told VOA of RedNote, which reportedly attracted hundreds of thousands of U.S. users in the leadup to the now-paused TikTok ban. Kutsenko’s move is part of a larger trend. Even as U.S. policymakers grow louder in their warnings about Chinese-owned apps, they have become a central part of American life. TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, boasts 170 million U.S. users. China’s AI chatbot DeepSeek surged to the top of Apple’s App Store rankings, including those in the United States, for several days after its release last month. Another major shift has come in online shopping, where Americans are flocking to digital Chinese marketplaces such as Temu and Shein in search of ultra-low prices on clothes, home goods, and other items. According to a 2024 survey by Omnisend, an e-commerce marketing company, 70% of Americans shopped on Chinese platforms during the past year, with 20% doing so at least once a week. Multifaceted threat U.S. officials warn that Chinese apps pose a broad range of threats – whether to national security, privacy, human rights, or the economy. TikTok has been …

U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance on Tuesday vowed that the United States would maintain its leadership position in the development of advanced artificial intelligence and warned leaders of other countries not to adopt regulatory standards that might “kill” the new technology “just as it’s taking off.”  “The United States of America is the leader in AI, and our administration plans to keep it that way,” Vance told an audience of world leaders at an AI summit in Paris. He said the administration of President Donald Trump “will ensure that the most powerful AI systems are built in the U.S. with American-designed and manufactured chips.”  Vance said that the U.S. is open to collaboration with its allies. “But,” he said, “to create that kind of trust, we need international regulatory regimes that foster the creation of AI technology rather than strangles it, and we need our European friends in particular to look to this new frontier with optimism rather than trepidation.”  Regulations criticized  The vice president criticized the European Union’s regulatory structure, in particular the privacy-focused General Data Protection Regulation and the misinformation-focused Digital Services Act, and he said the Trump administration will not accept foreign governments “tightening the screws on U.S. tech companies with international footprints.”  Vance also appeared to criticize the effort in Europe to replace power generated by burning fossil fuels with more sustainable sources, saying that countries are “chasing reliable power out of their nations” at a time when AI systems demand ever-greater access to electricity.  “The …

Europe says it will ease regulations on artificial intelligence at a key AI summit in Paris on Feb. 11, 2025, that brought together the U.S. and other global tech giants and politicians. But some experts see bigger challenges stalling the bloc’s ambitions to be an AI heavyweight, from the need to pool resources to attracting more investment and talent. After U.S. President Donald Trump’s massive Stargate investment project and China’s DeepSeek startup, Europe wants to get a share of the artificial intelligence pie. Among other announcements at the Paris summit, co-host French President Emmanuel Macron outlined plans for $113 billion in private AI investment. The two-day summit underscored tensions between fears of too much AI regulation and not enough. “At this moment, we face the extraordinary prospect of a new Industrial Revolution, one on par with the steam engine or Bessemer steel,” U.S. Vice President JD Vance told summit attendees Tuesday. “But it will never come to pass if overregulation deters innovators from taking the risks necessary to advance the ball.” Macron, who’s been nicknamed France’s startup president, outlined caveats. He said advancing international governance of AI will enable the consolidation of trust, acceleration and innovation in order to set the rules for AI, which are necessary to move forward. Currently, Europe’s AI industry lags behind those of the U.S. and China. But the right policies, some experts believe, can help close the gap. “Europe really has pretty much everything else it needs to lead in AI or other complex …

Paris — U.S. Vice President JD Vance told Europeans on Tuesday their “massive” regulations on artificial intelligence could strangle the technology, and rejected content moderation as “authoritarian censorship.” The mood on AI has shifted as the technology takes root, from one of concerns around safety to geopolitical competition, as countries jockey to nurture the next big AI giant. Vance, setting out the Trump administration’s America First agenda, said the United States intended to remain the dominant force in AI and strongly opposed the European Union’s far tougher regulatory approach. “We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry,” Vance told an AI summit of CEOs and heads of state in Paris. “We feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship,” he added. Vance criticized the “massive regulations” created by the EU’s Digital Services Act, as well as Europe’s online privacy rules, known by the acronym GDPR, which he said meant endless legal compliance costs for smaller firms. “Of course, we want to ensure the internet is a safe place, but it is one thing to prevent a predator from preying on a child on the internet, and it is something quite different to prevent a grown man or woman from accessing an opinion that the government thinks is misinformation,” he said. European lawmakers last year approved the bloc’s AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive set of rules governing the …

PARIS — Europe will invest an additional $51.5 billion to bolster the bloc’s artificial intelligence ambition, European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said on Tuesday. It will come on top of the European AI Champions Initiative, that has already pledged 150 billion euros from providers, investors and industry, von der Leyen told the Paris AI Summit. “Thereby we aim to mobilize a total of 200 billion euros for AI investments in Europe,” she said. Von der Leyen said investments will focus on industrial and mission-critical technologies. Companies which have signed up to the European AI Champions initiative, spearheaded by investment company General Catalyst, include Airbus, ASML, Siemens, Infineon, Philips, Mistral and Volkswagen. …

French President Emmanuel Macron wants Europe to become a leader in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, he told a global summit of AI and political leaders in Paris Monday where he announced that France’s private sector has invested nearly $113 billion in French AI. Financial investment is key to achieving the goal of Europe as an AI hub, Macron said in his remarks delivered in English at the Grand Palais. He said the European bloc would also need to “adopt the Notre Dame strategy,” a reference to the lightning swift rebuilding of France’s famed Notre Dame cathedral in five years after a devastating 2019 fire, the result of simplified regulations and adherence to timelines. “We showed the rest of the of the world that when we commit to a clear timeline, we can deliver,” the French leader said. Henna Virkkunen, the European Union’s digital head, indicated that the EU is in agreement with simplifying regulations. The EU approved the AI Act last year, the world’s first extensive set of rules designed to regulate technology. European countries want to ensure that they have a stake in the tech race against an aggressive U.S. and other emerging challengers. European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen is scheduled to address the EU’s ability to compete in the tech world Tuesday. Macron’s announcement that the French private sector will invest heavily in AI “reassured” Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, a U.S. company with French co-founders that is a hub for open-source AI, that …

A consortium led by Elon Musk said Monday it has offered $97.4 billion to buy the nonprofit that controls OpenAI, another salvo in the billionaire’s fight to block the artificial intelligence startup from transitioning to a for-profit firm. Musk’s bid is likely to ratchet up longstanding tensions with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the future of the startup at the heart of a boom in generative AI technology. Altman on Monday promptly posted on X: “no thank you but we will buy twitter for $9.74 billion if you want.” Musk cofounded OpenAI with Altman in 2015 as a nonprofit, but left before the company took off. He founded the competing AI startup xAI in 2023. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and owner of tech and social media company X, is a close ally of President Donald Trump. He spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump, and leads the Department of Government Efficiency, a new arm of the White House tasked with radically shrinking the federal bureaucracy. Musk recently criticized a $500 billion OpenAI-led project announced by Trump at the White House. OpenAI is now trying to transition into a for-profit from a nonprofit entity, which it says is required to secure the capital needed for developing the best AI models. Musk sued Altman and others in August last year, claiming they violated contract provisions by putting profit ahead of the public good in the push to advance AI. In November, he asked a U.S. …