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Tag: Information technology

  • Anthropic refuses to bend to Pentagon on AI safeguards as dispute nears deadline

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    A public showdown between the Trump administration and Anthropic is hitting an impasse as military officials demand the artificial intelligence company bend its ethical policies by Friday or risk damaging its business.

    Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei drew a sharp red line 24 hours before the deadline, declaring his company “cannot in good conscience accede” to the Pentagon’s final demand to allow unrestricted use of its technology.

    Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, can afford to lose a defense contract. But the ultimatum this week from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posed broader risks at the peak of the company’s meteoric rise from a little-known computer science research lab in San Francisco to one of the world’s most valuable startups.

    If Amodei doesn’t budge, military officials have warned they will not just pull Anthropic’s contract but also “deem them a supply chain risk,” a designation typically stamped on foreign adversaries that could derail the company’s critical partnerships with other businesses.

    And if Amodei were to cave, he could lose trust in the booming AI industry, particularly from top talent drawn to the company for its promises of responsibly building better-than-human AI that, without safeguards, could pose catastrophic risks.

    Anthropic said it sought narrow assurances from the Pentagon that Claude won’t be used for mass surveillance of Americans or in fully autonomous weapons. But after months of private talks exploded into public debate, it said in a Thursday statement that new contract language “framed as compromise was paired with legalese that would allow those safeguards to be disregarded at will.”

    That was after Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, posted on social media that “we will not let ANY company dictate the terms regarding how we make operational decisions” and added the company has “until 5:01 p.m. ET on Friday to decide” if it would meet the demands or face consequences.

    Emil Michael, the defense undersecretary for research and engineering, later lashed out at Amodei, alleging on X that he “has a God-complex” and “wants nothing more than to try to personally control the US Military and is ok putting our nation’s safety at risk.”

    That message hasn’t resonated in much of Silicon Valley, where a growing number of tech workers from Anthropic’s top rivals, OpenAI and Google, voiced support for Amodei’s stand late Thursday in an open letter.

    OpenAI and Google, along with Elon Musk’s xAI, also have contracts to supply their AI models to the military.

    “The Pentagon is negotiating with Google and OpenAI to try to get them to agree to what Anthropic has refused,” the open letter says. “They’re trying to divide each company with fear that the other will give in.”

    Also raising concerns about the Pentagon’s approach were Republican and Democratic lawmakers and a former leader of the Defense Department’s AI initiatives.

    “Painting a bullseye on Anthropic garners spicy headlines, but everyone loses in the end,” wrote retired Air Force Gen. Jack Shanahan in a social media post.

    Shanahan faced a different wave of tech worker opposition during the first Trump administration when he led Maven, a project to use AI technology to analyze drone footage and target weapons. So many Google employees protested its participation in Project Maven at the time that the tech giant declined to renew the contract and then pledged not to use AI in weaponry.

    “Since I was square in the middle of Project Maven & Google, it’s reasonable to assume I would take the Pentagon’s side here,” Shanahan wrote Thursday on social media. “Yet I’m sympathetic to Anthropic’s position. More so than I was to Google’s in 2018.”

    He said Claude is already being widely used across the government, including in classified settings, and Anthropic’s red lines are “reasonable.” He said the AI large language models that power chatbots like Claude are also “not ready for prime time in national security settings,” particularly not for fully autonomous weapons.

    “They’re not trying to play cute here,” he wrote.

    Parnell asserted Thursday that the Pentagon wants to “ use Anthropic’s model for all lawful purposes” and said opening up use of the technology would prevent the company from “jeopardizing critical military operations,” though neither he nor other officials have detailed how they want to use the technology.

    The military “has no interest in using AI to conduct mass surveillance of Americans (which is illegal) nor do we want to use AI to develop autonomous weapons that operate without human involvement,” Parnell wrote.

    When Hegseth and Amodei met Tuesday, military officials warned that they could designate Anthropic as a supply chain risk, cancel its contract or invoke a Cold War-era law called the Defense Production Act to give the military more sweeping authority to use its products, even if the company doesn’t approve.

    Amodei said Thursday that “those latter two threats are inherently contradictory: one labels us a security risk; the other labels Claude as essential to national security.” He said he hopes the Pentagon will reconsider given Claude’s value to the military, but, if not, Anthropic “will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider.”

    —-

    AP reporter Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.

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  • Fintech company Block lays off 4,000 of its 10,000 staff, citing gains from AI

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    BANGKOK — Shares in the financial technology company Block soared more than 20% in premarket trading Friday after its CEO announced it was laying off more than 4,000 of its 10,000 plus employees, reconfiguring to capitalize on its use of artificial intelligence.

    “The core thesis is simple. Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company,” Jack Dorsey said in a letter to shareholders in Block, the parent company to online payment platforms such as Square and Cash App. “A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better,” he said.

    Dorsey’s comments explicitly naming AI as a key driver behind the move were also posted on X, or Twitter, a company he co-founded. The assertion that the job cuts will add to Block’s profitability and efficiency led investors to jump in and buy, analysts said.

    Block’s shares gained 5% Thursday to $54.53, before it reported its earnings. They shot up to nearly $69 in after-hours trading. The mobile payments services provider reported its fourth quarter gross profit jumped 24% from a year earlier.

    “For years, we have debated whether AI would dent jobs at the margin. Now we have a public case study in which the CEO explicitly says that intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company,” Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.

    “Other large employers have announced tens of thousands of cuts in recent months. Some have downplayed the AI link. Block did not,” he said.

    A global technology company founded in 2009, San Francisco-based Block operates in the United States, Canada, parts of Europe, Australia and Japan.

    In a post on Twitter, Dorsey outlined various ways the company will support those laid off. For employees overseas, the terms might differ, he said.

    It was unclear which employees would be laid off where.

    Layoffs by American companies remain at relatively healthy levels, but the job cuts at Block are the latest among thousands announced in recent months.

    A number of other high-profile companies have announced layoffs recently, including UPS, Amazon, Dow and the Washington Post.

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  • Growing more complex by the day: How should journalists govern use of AI in their products?

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    Like so many sectors of the economy, the news industry is hurtling toward a future where artificial intelligence plays a major role — grappling with questions about how much the technology is used, what consumers should be told about it, whether anything can be done for the journalists who will be left behind.

    These issues were on the minds of reporters for the independent outlet ProPublica as they walked picket lines earlier this month. They’re inching toward a potential strike, in what is believed would be the first such job action in the news business where how to deal with AI is the chief sticking point.

    Few expect this dispute will be the last.

    AI has undeniably helped journalists, simplifying complex tasks and saving time, particularly with data-focused stories. News organizations are using it to help sift through the Epstein files. AI suggests headlines, summarizes stories. Transcription technology has largely eliminated the need for a human to type up interviews. These days, even a simple Google search frequently involves AI.

    Yet rushing to see how AI can help a financially troubled industry has resulted in several cases of publications owning up to errors.

    Within the past year, Bloomberg issued several corrections for mistakes in AI-generated news summaries. Business Insider and Wired were forced to remove articles by a fake author named Margaux Blanchard. The Los Angeles Times had trouble with AI and opinion pieces. Ars Technica said AI fabricated quotes, and the publication that has frequently reported on the risks of overreliance on AI tools embarrassed itself further by failing to follow its policy to tell readers when the tool is used.

    The ProPublica dispute is noteworthy for how it touches on issues that are frequently cause for debates. The union representing ProPublica’s journalists, negotiating its first contract with the the outlet known for investigative reporting, says it wants commitments that mirror those sought elsewhere in the industry about disclosure and the role of humans in the use of AI.

    Along with holding informational pickets, union members pledged overwhelmingly that they would be willing to strike without a satisfactory agreement, said Jen Sheehan, spokeswoman for the New York Guild, the union that represents many journalists in the city.

    “It feels to me pretty monumental when we think about the trajectory of AI and journalism,” said Alex Mahadevan, an expert on the topic at the Poynter Institute journalism think tank.

    ProPublica has rejected its requests, the union said. Insight into why can be found in an essay, “Something Big is Happening,” that circulated widely this month. Author and investor Matt Shumer, who said he’s spent six years building an AI startup, wrote that the technology is advancing so quickly that “if you haven’t tried AI in the last few months, what exists today would be unrecognizable to you.”

    Small wonder, then, that news executives are reluctant to put guarantees in writing that could quickly become outdated.

    Rather than make promises that can’t be kept, ProPublica is exploring how technology can create more space for investigative reporting, company spokesman Tyson Evans said. In the “unlikely event” of AI-related layoffs, ProPublica is proposing expanded severance packages for those affected, he said.

    “We’re approaching AI with both curiosity and skepticism,” Evans said. “It would be a mistake to freeze editorial decisions in a contract that will last years.”

    Fifty-seven of 283 contracts at U.S. news organizations negotiated by the NewsGuild-USA contain language related to artificial intelligence, said Jon Schleuss, president of the union that represents more journalists than any in the country. The first such deals happened in 2023, and The Associated Press was one pioneer. He wants provisions in more contracts.

    It won’t be easy, judging by the reluctance of many outlets to be tied down. The organization Trusting News, which encourages news organizations to develop and make public its policies on AI use, estimates that less than half of U.S. outlets have done so.

    “I think it is becoming harder,” Schleuss said, “because too many newsrooms are being run by the greedy side of the organization and not by the journalism side of the organization.”

    The guild pushing for contracts that guarantee AI won’t eliminate jobs. That’s no surprise; unions exist to protect jobs. Schleuss characterized a proposal that ensures an actual journalist is involved when AI is used as a way to prevent errors and help an outlet build trust with its readers.

    “Humans are actually so much better at going out, finding the story, interviewing sources, bringing back the relevant pieces, asking the hard follow-up questions and putting that in a way that people can understand and see, whether it’s a news story or a video,” he said. “Humans are way better at doing that than AI ever will be.”

    Apparently, not everyone in journalism agrees. Chris Quinn, editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio, wrote this month of his disgust with a recent college graduate who turned down a job offer because the person had been taught that AI was bad for journalism.

    Quinn’s newspaper has been sending some of its journalists out to cover stories by interviewing people, collecting quotes and information, then feeding it to a computer to write. While a human will edit what the computer spits out, an integral part of the process — a reporter using his or her judgment about how to tell a story — has been stripped from their hands. Quinn defended it as the best use of limited resources.

    Research shows that a vast majority of American consumers believe that it’s very important that newsrooms tell the public when AI is used to write stories or edit photographs, said Benjamin Toff, director of the Minnesota Journalism Center at the University of Minnesota. But here’s the rub: Such disclosure makes them trust the outlet’s stories less, not more.

    A significant minority — 30% in a study Toff conducted last year — doesn’t want AI used in journalism at all.

    Telling a reader that AI was used is not as simple as it sounds. “There are just so many, many uses of AI in journalism, from the very beginning of the reporting process to when you hit publish, that just broadly declaring that when AI is used in the newsgathering process that you have to disclose it, just seems like it is actually a disservice to the reader in some cases,” Poynter’s Mahadevan said.

    Two lawmakers in New York state — the nation’s publishing capital — introduced legislation this month requiring clear disclaimers when artificial intelligence is used in an published content. There’s no immediate word on its chances for passage, but both sponsors are Democrats in a legislature controlled by that party.

    Mahadevan believes it’s fair to have policies that requires human involvement — editing to prevent slip-ups, for example. But even these declarations are open to interpretation, he said. If an outlet uses chatbots to answer reader questions, are they being edited by a human being?

    “Speaking realistically, the newsroom of the future is going to look completely different than it does today,” he said. “Which means people will lose jobs. There will be new jobs. So I think it’s important that we are having these conversations right now because audiences do not want a newsroom completely taken over by AI.”

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    David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

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  • AI song generator startups angered the music industry. Now they’re hoping to join it

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    CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Suno CEO Mikey Shulman pulls up a chair to the recording studio desk where a research scientist at his artificial intelligence company is creating a new song.

    The flute line sounds promising.

    The percussion needs work.

    Neither of them is playing an instrument. They type some descriptive words – Afrobeat, flute, drums, 90 beats per minute – and out comes an infectious rhythm that livens up the 19th century office building where Suno is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They toggle some editing tools to refine the new track.

    Much like early experiences with ChatGPT or AI text-to-image generators, trying to make an AI-generated song on platforms like Suno or its rival, Udio, can seem a little like magic. It takes no musical skills, practice or emotional wellspring to conjure up a new tune inspired by almost any of the world’s musical traditions.

    But the process of training AI on beloved musicians of the past and present to produce synthetic approximations of their work has angered the music industry and brought much of its legal power against the two startups.

    Now, after their users have flooded the internet with millions of AI-generated songs, some of which have found themselves on streaming services like Spotify, the leaders of Suno and New York-based Udio are trying to negotiate with record labels to secure a foothold in an industry that shunned them.

    “We have always thought that working together with the music industry instead of against the music industry is the only way that this works,” said Shulman, who co-founded Suno in 2022. “Music is so culturally important that it doesn’t make sense to have an AI world and a non-AI world of music.”

    Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Records sued the two startups for copyright infringement in 2024, alleging that they were exploiting the recorded works of their artists.

    Since then, the pair have strived to make peace with the industry. Suno, now valued at $2.45 billion, last year struck a settlement with Warner, and Udio has signed licensing agreements with Warner, Universal and independent label Merlin. Only one major label, Sony, has not settled with either startup as the lawsuits move forward in Boston and New York federal courts.

    The first of the settlement deals, between Udio and Universal, led to an exodus of frustrated Udio users who were blocked from downloading their own AI-generated tracks. But Udio CEO Andrew Sanchez said he’s optimistic about what the future will bring as his company adapts its business model to let fans of willing artists use AI to play with and potentially alter their works.

    “Having a close relationship with the music industry is elemental to us,” Sanchez said in an interview. “Users really want to have an anchor to their favorite artists. They want to have an anchor to their favorite songs.”

    Many professional musicians are skeptical. Singer-songwriter Tift Merritt, co-chair of the Artists Rights Alliance, recently helped organize a “Stealing Isn’t Innovation” campaign by artists — including Cyndi Lauper and Bonnie Raitt — to urge AI companies to pursue licensing deals and partnerships rather than build platforms without regard for copyright law.

    “The economy of AI music is built totally on the intellectual property, globally, of musicians everywhere without transparency, consent, or payment. So, I know they value their intellectual property, but ours has been consumed in order to replace us,” Merritt said in an interview in Raleigh, North Carolina.

    Shulman contends technology “evolves very often faster than the law,” and his company tries to be thoughtful about “not breaking the law” but also “deliver products that the world really wants.”

    When the music industry first confronted Suno over alleged copyright infringement, the company’s antagonistic response alienated professionals like Merritt.

    Symbolizing the divide was a clip last year in which Shulman was quoted as saying, “it’s not really enjoyable” to make music most of the time. Shulman started learning piano at age 4 but later dropped it. He took up bass guitar at 12, playing in rock bands in high school and college. He said that experience gave him some of the best moments of his life.

    “You need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece of production software,” Shulman said on the “The Twenty Minute VC” podcast. “I think the majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music.”

    “Clearly, I wish I had said different words,” Shulman told the AP. The context, he added, was that “to produce perfect music takes a lot of repetitions and not all of those minutes are the most enjoyable bits of making music. On the whole, obviously, music is amazing. I play music every day for fun.”

    Sanchez, the Udio CEO, also would like people to know he loves making music. He’s an opera-loving tenor who’s sung in choirs and grew up crooning Luciano Pavarotti in his family’s home in Buffalo, New York.

    Founded in 2023 by a group that included several AI researchers from Google, the startup now employs about 25 people. It has fewer users and raised less capital than Suno, reducing its leverage in its negotiations with record labels.

    But like ride-hailing company Lyft, which pitched itself as the friendly alternative to Uber’s aggressive expansion tactics more than a decade ago, Udio embraces its underdog status.

    “So many tech companies actively cultivate this I-am-a-tech-company-crusader and that’s part of their identity,” Sanchez said. “That alienates people who are creative and I am uniformly opposed to that.”

    Sanchez said he knows not every artist is going to embrace AI, but he hopes those who leave the room after talking with him realize he’s not imposing a kind of “AI bravado.”

    “If you took what we’re doing and pretended that the word AI wasn’t a part of it, people would be like, ‘Oh my gosh. This is so cool.’”

    In the basement office of his Philadelphia, Mississippi home, Christopher “Topher” Townsend is a one-man band, making and marketing Billboard-chart-topping gospel music — none of which he sings himself — and doing it in record time.

    The rapper, whose lyrics reflect his political conservatism, downloaded Suno in October and, within days, created Solomon Ray, a fictional singer that Townsend calls an extension of himself.

    Townsend uses ChatGPT to write lyrics, Suno to generate songs and other AI tools to create cover art and promotional videos under the Solomon Ray name.

    “I can see why artists would be afraid,” Townsend said. ”(Solomon Ray) has an immaculate voice. He doesn’t get sick. You know, he doesn’t have to take leave, he doesn’t get injured and he can work faster than I can work.”

    Trying to dispel that fear for aspiring artists is Jonathan Wyner, a professor of music production and engineering at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, who sees generative AI as just another tool.

    “To the creative musician, AI represents both enormous potential benefits in terms of streamlining things and frankly making kinds of music-making possible that weren’t possible before, and making it more accessible to people who want to make music,” he said.

    Such a vision remains a tough sell for artists who feel their work has already been exploited. Merritt says she’s particularly concerned about labels making deals with AI companies that leave out independent artists.

    Neither Sanchez nor Shulman was invited to the Grammy Awards in February, but both spent time schmoozing at the sidelines of the event.

    “I think AI music is still officially not allowed, and my hope is that some of these rules change over the next year, and then maybe the 2027 Grammys, I’ll get an invite,” Shulman said.

    —————-

    O’Brien reported from Cambridge, Massachusetts and New York. Ngowi reported from Cambridge and Somerville, Massachusetts. AP journalists Sophie Bates in Philadelphia, Mississippi and Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

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  • Feds give record $27B in loans for utility expansion in Georgia and Alabama

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    ATLANTA — Federal energy officials on Wednesday announced a record $27 billion loan to electric utilities in Georgia and Alabama, saying the loan will save customers money as the companies undertake a huge expansion driven by demand from computer data centers.

    A total of $22.4 billion will go to Georgia Power and $4.1 billion to Alabama Power. Both are subsidiaries of Atlanta-based Southern Company, one of the nation’s largest utilities. The companies plan to use the cash to build new natural-gas fueled power plants, build new transmission lines and upgrade existing power plants.

    Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the loan will result in more than $7 billion in savings over decades from a lower, federally subsidized interest rate.

    “We’re focused on driving down costs,” Wright said. He added that the loan would help ensure Southern customers “have access to affordable, reliable and secure energy for decades to come.”

    Wright and President Donald Trump have frequently made the case for their fossil fuel-friendly policies — including orders over the past nine months to keep some coal-fired plants open past planned retirement dates — as necessary to ensure reliability of the nation’s electric grid.

    Wright says the orders have saved utility customers millions of dollars and helped keep lights on during last month’s winter storm. Critics say the orders are unnecessary and have raised electric bills as utilities keep older, more expensive plants operating.

    “These loans will help lower the cost of investments in our grid that will enhance reliability and resilience for the benefit of our customers,” said Chris Womack, Southern’s chairman, president and CEO.

    The new loan comes amid scrutiny on rising utility bills, with electricity prices increasing faster than inflation in many states. There is also widespread opposition to new data centers for artificial intelligence.

    Trump in his State of the Union Tuesday announced a “ratepayer protection pledge” against higher utility bills tied to AI. He said tech companies will provide their own power as they build data centers. Trump didn’t provide details but claimed prices will go down.

    It is unclear whether any tech companies have signed pledges to build their own power plants, but Wright said on a call with reporters Wednesday that “every name you know that’s developing a data center has been in dialogue with us.”

    He cited “cooperation” from giants such as Microsoft, Google and Meta, but he didn’t specify any written agreements.

    Federal officials have long given utility loans, including $12 billion in loans that the first Trump administration and President Barack Obama’s administration guaranteed for two costly nuclear reactors at Georgia’s Plant Vogtle, partially owned by Georgia Power.

    Trump’s tax and budget bill last year reshaped the loan program to focus on increasing capacity to generate and transmit electricity. Loan guarantees under President Joe Biden focused on green energy goals.

    Gregory Beard, who directs the newly renamed Office of Energy Dominance Financing, said Wednesday that cutting interest rates and discarding Biden’s policy “will get us back on the right track in terms of affordability.”

    The loan office will review individual projects to ensure they’re financially viable, he said. “We’re not going to build this plant or deploy this capital until we are sure that it’s the right thing to do for the local community, for the local ratepayer,” Beard said in an interview.

    Those requirements don’t seem to be laid out in loan agreements that Southern released Wednesday. Jennifer Whitfield, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center who represented Georgia Power expansion opponents, said the loans will save money for Georgians, but questioned their wisdom.

    “As a taxpayer, it’s hard to avoid the fact that this is a bailout paid for by every taxpaying citizen of the United States,” she said.

    Any savings for customers must be approved by the elected Public Service Commissions in Alabama and Georgia. Commissioners last July approved a three-year rate freeze requested by Georgia Power, while commissioners in Alabama approved a two-year rate freeze in December. Company officials tout the freezes when utilities nationwide have been seeking record increases. But opponents complain company-friendly regulators locked in high prices and high utility profits.

    Voters booted two Republican incumbents off the Georgia commission in November amid complaints about rising bills.

    Commissioner Peter Hubbard, one of two new Democrats, unsuccessfully tried to roll back approval for Georgia Power’s expansion in recent weeks. He said Wednesday that the declining costs of solar, wind and battery power could make new natural gas plants uneconomic over time.

    “It’s locking us into a costlier option,” he said of the federal loan. ”And so I think it just is not meeting the moment of affordability.”

    ___

    Daly reported from Washington.

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  • Asian stocks gain after optimism about AI sends Wall Street higher

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    TOKYO — U.S. futures were flat after President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech, while Asian shares were mostly higher.

    Japan’s benchmark briefly hit a record high as investors were cheered by an overnight Wall Street rally driven by optimism about the artificial-intelligence boom.

    Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 surged 2.2% to 58,583.12.

    Shares also rose in China. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 0.5% to 26,735.22, while the Shanghai Composite added 0.6% to 4,142.17.

    South Korea’s Kospi surged 2.1% to 6,093.33, as the benchmark continued to benefit from the global demand for computer chips.

    In Taiwan, the Taiex jumped 2.1% as shares in TSMC, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of computer chips, surged 2.5%.

    Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 jumped 1.2% to 9,128.30.

    In his speech, Trump focused on jobs, manufacturing and an economy he says is stronger than many Americans believe. He didn’t dwell on efforts to lower the cost of living — despite polling showing that his handling of the economy and kitchen-table issues has increasingly become a liability.

    The futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were nearly unchanged.

    On Tuesday, before the speech, the S&P 500 climbed 0.8% to 6,890.07. The Dow industrials added 0.8% to 49,174.50, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 1% to 22,863.68.

    Advanced Micro Devices helped lead the market and rallied 8.8% after announcing a multiyear deal where it will supply chips to Meta Platforms to help power its AI ambitions. Meta also got the right to buy up to 160 million shares of AMD stock for 1 cent each, depending in part on how many chips Meta ultimately buys.

    It’s a reminder of the excitement that built in recent years about the billions of dollars pouring into AI, producing a sharp turnaround from the prior day, when worries about the potential downsides of AI shook Wall Street. IBM rose 2.7% to recover some of its 13.1% drop from Monday, which was its worst since 2000.

    Chipmaking giant Nvidia is due to report its earnings later Wednesday in a quarterly report likely to sway a jittery stock market as investors weigh whether the massive bets riding on technology’s latest craze will pay off.

    As has been the case since Nvidia’s chipsets emerged as AI’s best building blocks, the expectations are sky high for the results covering the company’s fiscal quarter, covering November through January.

    Big U.S. companies have reported mostly better profits for the end of 2025 than analysts expected. Keysight Technologies rallied 23.1% for the biggest gain in the S&P 500, while Home Depot rose 2% after likewise delivering stronger profit and revenue than analysts expected.

    In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady after a report said that confidence among U.S. consumers improved by more than economists expected. The yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.03%, where it was late Monday.

    In other dealings early Wednesday, benchmark U.S. crude oil added 48 cents to $66.11 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 48 cents to $71.06 a barrel.

    The U.S. dollar slipped to 155.82 Japanese yen from 155.91 yen. The dollar traded close to 160 yen levels several months ago. The euro cost $1.1803, up from $1.1774.

    ___

    Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama

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  • Hegseth and Anthropic CEO set to meet as debate intensifies

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    WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to meet Tuesday with the CEO of Anthropic, with the artificial intelligence company the only one of its peers to not supply its technology to a new U.S. military internal network.

    Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, declined to comment on the meeting but CEO Dario Amodei has made clear his ethical concerns about unchecked government use of AI, including the dangers of fully autonomous armed drones and of AI-assisted mass surveillance that could track dissent.

    The meeting between Hegseth and Amodei was confirmed by a defense official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

    It underscores the debate over AI’s role in national security and concerns about how the technology could be used in high-stakes situations involving lethal force, sensitive information or government surveillance. It also comes as Hegseth has vowed to root out what he calls a “woke culture” in the armed forces.

    “A powerful AI looking across billions of conversations from millions of people could gauge public sentiment, detect pockets of disloyalty forming, and stamp them out before they grow,” Amodei wrote in an essay last month.

    The Pentagon announced last summer that it was awarding defense contracts to four AI companies — Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI. Each contract is worth up to $200 million.

    Anthropic was the first AI company to get approved for classified military networks, where it works with partners like Palantir. The other three companies, for now, are only operating in unclassified environments.

    By early this year, Hegseth was highlighting only two of them: xAI and Google.

    The defense secretary said in a January speech at Musk’s space flight company, SpaceX, in South Texas that he was shrugging off any AI models “that won’t allow you to fight wars.”

    Hegseth said his vision for military AI systems means that they operate “without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications,” before adding that the Pentagon’s “AI will not be woke.”

    In January, Hegseth said Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok would join the Pentagon network, called GenAI.mil. The announcement came days after Grok — which is embedded into X, the social media network owned by Musk — drew global scrutiny for generating highly sexualized deepfake images of people without their consent.

    OpenAI announced in early February that it, too, would join the military’s secure AI platform, enabling service members to use a custom version of ChatGPT for unclassified tasks.

    Anthropic has long pitched itself as the more responsible and safety-minded of the leading AI companies, ever since its founders quit OpenAI to form the startup in 2021.

    The uncertainty with the Pentagon is putting those intentions to the test, according to Owen Daniels, associate director of analysis and fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

    “Anthropic’s peers, including Meta, Google and xAI, have been willing to comply with the department’s policy on using models for all lawful applications,” Owens said. “So the company’s bargaining power here is limited, and it risks losing influence in the department’s push to adopt AI.”

    In the AI craze that followed the release of ChatGPT, Anthropic closely aligned with President Joe Biden’s administration in volunteering to subject its AI systems to third-party scrutiny to guard against national security risks.

    Amodei, the CEO, has warned of AI’s potentially catastrophic dangers while rejecting the label that he’s an AI “doomer.” He argued in the January essay that “we are considerably closer to real danger in 2026 than we were in 2023″ but that those risks should be managed in a “realistic, pragmatic manner.”

    This would not be the first time Anthropic’s advocacy for stricter AI safeguards has put it at odds with the Trump administration. Anthropic needled chipmaker Nvidia publicly, criticizing Trump’s proposals to loosen export controls to enable some AI computer chips to be sold in China. The AI company, however, remains a close partner with Nvidia.

    The Trump administration and Anthropic also have been on opposite sides of a lobbying push to regulate AI in U.S. states.

    Trump’s top AI adviser, David Sacks, accused Anthropic in October of “running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering.”

    Sacks made the remarks on X in response to an Anthropic co-founder, Jack Clark, writing about his attempt to balance technological optimism with “appropriate fear” about the steady march toward more capable AI systems.

    Anthropic hired a number of ex-Biden officials soon after Trump’s return to the White House, but it’s also tried to signal a bipartisan approach. The company recently added Chris Liddell, a former White House official from Trump’s first term, to its board of directors.

    The Pentagon-Anthropic debate is reminiscent of an uproar several years ago when some tech workers objected to their companies’ participation in Project Maven, a Pentagon drone surveillance program. While some workers quit over the project and Google itself dropped out, the Pentagon’s reliance on drone surveillance has only increased.

    Similarly, “the use of AI in military contexts is already a reality and it is not going away,” Owens said.

    “Some contexts are lower stakes, including for back-office work, but battlefield deployments of AI entail different, higher-stakes risks,” he said, referring to the use of lethal force or weapons like nuclear arms. “Military users are aware of these risks and have been thinking about mitigation for almost a decade.”

    ___

    O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

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  • Hegseth and Anthropic CEO set to meet as debate intensifies over the military’s use of AI

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    WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to meet Tuesday with the CEO of Anthropic, with the artificial intelligence company the only one of its peers to not supply its technology to a new U.S. military internal network.

    Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, declined to comment on the meeting but CEO Dario Amodei has made clear his ethical concerns about unchecked government use of AI, including the dangers of fully autonomous armed drones and of AI-assisted mass surveillance that could track dissent.

    The meeting between Hegseth and Amodei was confirmed by a defense official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

    It underscores the debate over AI’s role in national security and concerns about how the technology could be used in high-stakes situations involving lethal force, sensitive information or government surveillance. It also comes as Hegseth has vowed to root out what he calls a “woke culture” in the armed forces.

    “A powerful AI looking across billions of conversations from millions of people could gauge public sentiment, detect pockets of disloyalty forming, and stamp them out before they grow,” Amodei wrote in an essay last month.

    The Pentagon announced last summer that it was awarding defense contracts to four AI companies — Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI. Each contract is worth up to $200 million.

    Anthropic was the first AI company to get approved for classified military networks, where it works with partners like Palantir. The other three companies, for now, are only operating in unclassified environments.

    By early this year, Hegseth was highlighting only two of them: xAI and Google.

    The defense secretary said in a January speech at Musk’s space flight company, SpaceX, in South Texas that he was shrugging off any AI models “that won’t allow you to fight wars.”

    Hegseth said his vision for military AI systems means that they operate “without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications,” before adding that the Pentagon’s “AI will not be woke.”

    In January, Hegseth said Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok would join the Pentagon network, called GenAI.mil. The announcement came days after Grok — which is embedded into X, the social media network owned by Musk — drew global scrutiny for generating highly sexualized deepfake images of people without their consent.

    OpenAI announced in early February that it, too, would join the military’s secure AI platform, enabling service members to use a custom version of ChatGPT for unclassified tasks.

    Anthropic has long pitched itself as the more responsible and safety-minded of the leading AI companies, ever since its founders quit OpenAI to form the startup in 2021.

    The uncertainty with the Pentagon is putting those intentions to the test, according to Owen Daniels, associate director of analysis and fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

    “Anthropic’s peers, including Meta, Google and xAI, have been willing to comply with the department’s policy on using models for all lawful applications,” Owens said. “So the company’s bargaining power here is limited, and it risks losing influence in the department’s push to adopt AI.”

    In the AI craze that followed the release of ChatGPT, Anthropic closely aligned with President Joe Biden’s administration in volunteering to subject its AI systems to third-party scrutiny to guard against national security risks.

    Amodei, the CEO, has warned of AI’s potentially catastrophic dangers while rejecting the label that he’s an AI “doomer.” He argued in the January essay that “we are considerably closer to real danger in 2026 than we were in 2023″ but that those risks should be managed in a “realistic, pragmatic manner.”

    This would not be the first time Anthropic’s advocacy for stricter AI safeguards has put it at odds with the Trump administration. Anthropic needled chipmaker Nvidia publicly, criticizing Trump’s proposals to loosen export controls to enable some AI computer chips to be sold in China. The AI company, however, remains a close partner with Nvidia.

    The Trump administration and Anthropic also have been on opposite sides of a lobbying push to regulate AI in U.S. states.

    Trump’s top AI adviser, David Sacks, accused Anthropic in October of “running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering.”

    Sacks made the remarks on X in response to an Anthropic co-founder, Jack Clark, writing about his attempt to balance technological optimism with “appropriate fear” about the steady march toward more capable AI systems.

    Anthropic hired a number of ex-Biden officials soon after Trump’s return to the White House, but it’s also tried to signal a bipartisan approach. The company recently added Chris Liddell, a former White House official from Trump’s first term, to its board of directors.

    The Pentagon-Anthropic debate is reminiscent of an uproar several years ago when some tech workers objected to their companies’ participation in Project Maven, a Pentagon drone surveillance program. While some workers quit over the project and Google itself dropped out, the Pentagon’s reliance on drone surveillance has only increased.

    Similarly, “the use of AI in military contexts is already a reality and it is not going away,” Owens said.

    “Some contexts are lower stakes, including for back-office work, but battlefield deployments of AI entail different, higher-stakes risks,” he said, referring to the use of lethal force or weapons like nuclear arms. “Military users are aware of these risks and have been thinking about mitigation for almost a decade.”

    ___

    O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

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  • Why adults pursuing career growth or personal interests are the ‘new majority’ student

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    FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Interested in starting a business, learning about artificial intelligence or exploring a new hobby? There’s a class for that.

    Millions of U.S. adults enroll in credit and non-credit college courses to earn professional certificates, learn new skills or to pursue academic degrees. Some older students are seeking career advancement, higher pay and job security, while others want to explore their personal interests or try new things.

    “They might have kids, they might be working full-time, they might be older non-traditional students,” said Eric Deschamps, the director of continuing education at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. But returning to school “opens doors to education for students that might not have those doors open to them otherwise.”

    Older students, many of whom bring years of work and life experience to their studies, often are juggling courses with full-time jobs, caregiving and other family responsibilities. It is a challenging balancing act but can also sharpen priorities and provide a sense of fulfillment.

    Here’s what experts have to say about returning to school, what to consider beforehand and how to balance coursework with work and personal commitments.

    UCLA Extension, the continuing education division of the University of California, Los Angeles, offers more than 90 certificate and specialization programs, from interior design, early childhood education and accounting to photography, paralegal studies and music production. Individual courses cover a wide range of topics, including retirement planning, writing novels, the business of athletes and artists, and the ancient Japanese art of ikebana, or flower arranging.

    About 33,500 students — nearly half of them older than 35 — were enrolled during the last academic year. UCLA reported a full-time enrollment of about 32,600 degree-seeking undergraduate students during the same period.

    “I prefer calling our (adult) learners not only continuous, but the new majority student. These are learners who tend to already be employed, often supporting a family, looking for up-skilling or sometimes a career change,” Traci Fordham, UCLA’s interim associate dean for academic programs and learning innovation, said.

    Higher education experts say some adults take classes for professional development as economic concerns, technological advances and other workforce changes create a sense of job insecurity.

    “A great example of that is artificial intelligence. These new technologies are coming out pretty quickly and for folks that got a degree, even just 5 or 10 years ago, their knowledge might be a little bit outdated,” Deschamps said.

    Adults interested in becoming students again may want to assess their time and budgets, and weigh the potential benefits and consequences, including the financial impact, the potential for burnout and rewards of education that may take a while materialize, academic advisors say.

    Deschamps suggests asking where you want to be in 5 or 10 years and how the training and knowledge received through an additional class or certificate can help get you there. For example, if you want to start a microbrewery, learning to brew your own beer or launching a business will help. If a promotion or career change is the goal, training for a new job, refreshing skills or understanding a different industry may help show you are qualified.

    Schools like UCLA and Northern Arizona University are working to make continuing education courses accessible by keeping the cost low in comparison to degree-track classes and offering financial assistance. A variety of learning environments usually are offered — in-person and online classes, accelerated and self-paced instruction — to help adults integrate schoolwork with their home and work lives.

    Katie Swavely, assistant director for academic advising and student success at UCLA, started at community college before transferring to UCLA to study anthropology. She said it took her 10 years after graduating to go back for her master’s degree in counseling with a focus on academic advising. Swavely completed that degree in 2020 and credits access to the program through employer-sponsored tuition assistance from her job at the time.

    “I felt like in so many ways I didn’t really know who I was or what I wanted to do other than just pay the bills and survive,” said Swavely, who is married and has two children. “It was hard. And I thought about quitting many times. We had to budget to the extreme and find additional ways to make it work.”

    She added: “There are questions of how are we going to make it work and do we have the money. As a parent, sacrifices are there all the time. You make those judgment calls every day. But making sure that you’re investing in yourself. There’s always gonna be reasons why it’s not today, not this month, not this year, but it’s also OK to just jump in and go for it and see how it works out.”

    As an avid book lover, Swavely now wants to take a book editing course and hopes to continue her education and enroll in that through the university soon.

    Some experts say one of the main barriers to returning to school is psychological. There might be concerns that their writing skills are rusty and that they don’t know enough math or technology, bringing up feelings of uncertainty or failure.

    “I think this is tied to access. Many of our learners, not all of them, haven’t imagined themselves in any kind of higher education, post-secondary education environment,” Fordham said.

    Swavely said it was important for her to build a support network and take advantage of the counseling and advising options that were available to her as a student.

    She encourages adults who are furthering their educations to spend time “finding your community.” Having people around who helped build up her confidence at home and during classes got her through graduate school, Swavely said. She also suggests setting boundaries and giving yourself grace when you need need help.

    “The biggest piece of advice is for people to realize you’re never too old to learn,” she said.

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  • NYC nursing walkout ends as last striking nurses approve new contract

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    NEW YORK — Nurses at a big New York hospital system approved a new contract Saturday, voting to end a major nursing strike after more than a month.

    More than 4,000 nurses in the privately run NewYork-Presbyterian system went on strike Jan. 12. They are now due to start returning to work in the coming week. The union, called the New York State Nurses Association, said 93% of its members at NewYork-Presbyterian voted to ratify the three-year contract.

    Two other big private hospital systems, Montefiore and Mount Sinai, ended their nurses’ walkout earlier this month by inking contract agreements with the same union.

    “We are so happy with the wins we achieved, and now the fight to enforce these contracts and hold our employers accountable begins,” union President Nancy Hagans said in a statement Saturday.

    NewYork-Presbyterian said that it looked forward to its nurses’ return and that the contract “reflects our respect for our nurses and the critical role they play as part of our exceptional care teams.”

    Both sides had said Friday that they had reached a tentative deal. Union members voted on it Friday and Saturday.

    Provisions included staffing improvements, raises topping 12% over three years and safeguards on the use of artificial intelligence, according to the union.

    The union has said the strike initially involved about 15,000 nurses overall at Montefiore, Mount Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian. It affected only some facilities within the three systems and didn’t involve any city-run hospitals.

    During the strike, Montefiore, Mount Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian brought on thousands of temporary nurses, transferred some patients and canceled some procedures. The hospitals insisted they were smoothly delivering care, including complex surgeries. But some vulnerable patients and their families said some routine tasks took longer.

    The strikers complained of unmanageable workloads and accused the hospitals of trying to chip away at health benefits. The hospitals contested those claims and said the union’s demands were exorbitant.

    Nurses at some Mount Sinai and Montefiore hospitals also walked out in 2023. That strike ended in three days.

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  • Modi pitches India as global artificial intelligence hub at AI summit

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    NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday pitched India as a central player in the global artificial intelligence ecosystem, saying the country aims to build technology at home while deploying it worldwide.

    “Design and develop in India. Deliver to the world. Deliver to humanity,” Modi told a gathering of some world leaders, technology executives and policymakers at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi.

    Modi’s remarks came as India — one of the fastest-growing digital markets — seeks to leverage its experience in building large-scale digital public infrastructure and to present itself as a cost-effective hub for AI innovation.

    The summit was also addressed by French President Emmanuel Macron, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who called for a $3 billion fund to help poorer countries build basic AI capacity, including skills, data access and affordable computing power.

    “The future of AI cannot be decided by a handful of countries, or left to the whims of a few billionaires,” Guterres said, stressing that AI must “belong to everyone.”

    India is using the summit to position itself as a bridge between advanced economies and the Global South. Indian officials cite the country’s digital ID and online payments systems as a model for deploying AI at low cost, particularly in developing countries.

    “We must democratize AI. It must become a tool for inclusion and empowerment, particularly for the Global South,” Modi said.

    With nearly 1 billion internet users, India has become a key market for global technology companies expanding their AI businesses.

    Last December, Microsoft announced a $17.5 billion investment over four years to expand cloud and AI infrastructure in India. It followed Google’s $15 billion investment over five years, including plans for its first AI hub in the country. Amazon has also pledged $35 billion by 2030, targeting AI-driven digitization.

    India is also seeking up to $200 billion in data center investment in the coming years.

    The country, however, lags in developing its own large-scale AI model like U.S.-based OpenAI or China’s DeepSeek, highlighting challenges such as limited access to advanced semiconductor chips, data centers and hundreds of local languages to learn from.

    The summit opened Monday with organizational glitches, as attendees and exhibitors reported long lines and delays, and some complained on social media that personal belongings and display items had been stolen. Organizers later said the items were recovered.

    Problems resurfaced Wednesday when a private Indian university was expelled from the summit after a staff member showcased a commercially available Chinese-made robotic dog while claiming it as the institution’s own innovation.

    The setbacks continued Thursday when Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates withdrew from a scheduled keynote address. No reason was given, though the Gates Foundation said the move was intended “to ensure the focus remains on the AI Summit’s key priorities.”

    Gates is facing questions over his ties to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

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  • From automated farm tractors to exam paper grading, AI boosts efficiency for some in India

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    KARNAL, India — Farmer Bir Virk tapped the iPad mounted beside his tractor’s steering wheel and switched the vehicle to automatic mode. The machine moved forward and began harvesting potatoes on its own in the fields of Karnal, a city in northern India.

    Some 145 kilometers (90 miles) away in the country’s capital of New Delhi, educator Swetank Pandey employed similar automation at his coaching academy. He used algorithms to scan and grade handwritten exam papers from candidates for India’s competitive civil services.

    In both cases, the same invisible hand was at work: artificial intelligence.

    From farms to classrooms, AI is fast emerging as a tool for many Indians to boost efficiency and cut time, costs and labor. Early adopters, like Virk and Pandey, say the technology is helping them boost productivity as they test AI’s potential to find solutions at work.

    “I am able to farm very efficiently and I feel very happy that I do the work what my grandfather and father used to do. Now I am carrying the tradition forward with the right technology,” said Virk.

    As AI use surges across the globe, the technology is steadily gaining ground across India as businesses, startups and individuals experiment with new ways to improve efficiency.

    The Indian government is also rolling out national initiatives to fund research and train workers in AI. That push is on display this week as New Delhi hosts a five-day AI summit, which is being attended by heads of state and top tech CEOs.

    With nearly a billion internet users, India has also become a key focus for global tech companies to scale their AI businesses in one of the world’s fastest-growing digital markets.

    Last December, Microsoft announced a $17.5 billion investment over four years to expand cloud and AI infrastructure in India. It followed Google’s $15 billion investment over five years, including plans for its first AI hub in the country.

    “There’s some good use cases that have started. There are these scaling platforms that are now embedding AI into them,” said Sangeeta Gupta, senior vice president at NASSCOM, a prominent body representing India’s technology industry.

    India’s adoption to AI, however, has its constraints.

    The country still lags in developing its own large-scale AI model like U.S.-based OpenAI or China’s DeepSeek, highlighting challenges such as limited access to advanced semiconductor chips, data centers and hundreds of local languages to learn from.

    While tech companies have ramped up spending on AI training and reskilling, those unable to adapt are being pushed out. Tata Consultancy Services, the country’s largest private employer, cut more than 12,000 jobs last year, driven by a rapid shift toward AI.

    At the same time, however, people like Virk and Pandey say AI tools are already making their work faster and more efficient.

    Virk, the farmer, first encountered AI-driven farming technology five years ago while studying and working in the United States. When he returned to India in 2021, he imported the system from a Swedish company and has been using it on his farm for the past couple of years.

    His automated tractor can plant seeds, spray fertilizer and harvest crops. The system costs about $3,864 and combines a steering motor, satellite signals that help move the tractor precisely, and an AI-driven software that converts data into movement.

    It also logs errors and uploads them to a cloud platform, where the software company analyzes the data and sends related updates back to the machine.

    “Technology and intelligence play a big role in this. The tractor works in a straight line. It maintains an accuracy of 0.01 centimeter (0.004 inch),” Virk said.

    He said his AI-enabled tractor has reduced his work time by half.

    “Its most special feature is that it is self-learning,” he said.

    Educator Pandey teaches at a civil services coaching center, a sector known for its fierce competition. Millions of young Indians compete for civil service jobs each year, and coaching centers process vast numbers of tests, evaluations and revisions.

    Pandey said AI has made that workload easier to manage.

    Using large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, along with other automation tools, Pandey and his team scan and evaluate answer sheets, create targeted study material and structure syllabuses for the aspirants.

    Pandey said the technology helps him carry out repetitive tasks, allowing tens of thousands of answer sheets to be evaluated in as little as 20 to 25 minutes.

    “If you have a better machine, bigger system, you can do it in two minutes,” he said.

    For now, his coaching academy uses a hybrid model. AI helps with evaluations and teachers review the output, improving both speed and quality.

    Pandey said AI often produces study material that students find more relatable than those devised by teachers.

    “AI is able to give us in advance a basic idea what the student is doing right now and what next he or she should do to be able to achieve their goals,” he said.

    ——

    Saaliq reported from New Delhi.

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  • Shares fall in Japan, while most Asian markets are shut for Lunar New Year

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    TOKYO — Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index fell Tuesday following a U.S. national holiday, while most markets in Asia were closed for Lunar New Year holidays.

    U.S. futures declined and oil prices were mixed. Prices for gold and silver also fell.

    Weak economic data released Monday appeared to be clouding sentiment in Tokyo, and a 5.4% decline for tech giant SoftBank Group also pulled shares lower. The decline follows a big rally after a resounding win for Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s ruling party in a Feb. 8 general election.

    The Nikkei 225 was down 0.8% in afternoon trading at 56,363.39.

    Traders likely were locking in profits from the recent gains that took the Nikkei to record levels. Polls show Takaichi’s popularity is slowly slipping, as hopes for economic revival from her plans to increase government spending and cut taxes subside.

    In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.2% to 8,958.90, while India’s Sensex edged 0.4% higher. In Thailand, the SET was up 0.5%.

    European shares ended mixed on Monday and trading in the U.S. was closed for Presidents Day. U.S. markets are set to reopen Tuesday.

    On Friday, the S&P 500 edged up less than 0.1% a day after one of its worst losses since Thanksgiving. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.1%, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.2%.

    Share prices have been waxing and waning with fluctuations in confidence over massive investments in AI. Investors are also focused on inflation and how price pressures might affect interest rates. Also in the spotlight for later in the day are jobs data from Britain.

    In other dealings early Tuesday, benchmark U.S. crude rose 48 cents to $63.37 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 42 cents to $68.23 a barrel.

    The U.S. dollar slipped to 152.88 Japanese yen from 153.51 yen. The euro cost $1.1844, down from $1.1852.

    The price of gold fell 2.9% and silver was down 8.2%.

    Bitcoin fell 0.9% to about $68,300.

    ___

    Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama

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  • Amazon scraps partnership with surveillance company after Super Bowl ad backlash

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    Amazon’s smart doorbell maker Ring has terminated a partnership with police surveillance tech company Flock Safety.

    The announcement follows a backlash that erupted after 30-second Ring ad that aired during the Super Bowl featuring a lost dog that is found through a network of cameras, sparking fears of a dystopian surveillance society.

    But that feature, called Search Party, was not related to Flock. And Ring’s announcement doesn’t cite the ad as a reason for the “joint decision” for the cancellation.

    Ring and Flock said last year they were planning on working together to give Ring camera owners the option to share their video footage in response to law enforcement requests made through a Ring feature known as Community Requests.

    “Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated,” Ring’s statement said.

    “The integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety.”

    Beyond the Flock partnership, Ring has faced other surveillance concerns.

    In the Super Bowl ad, a lost dog is found with Ring’s Search Party feature, which the company says can “reunite lost dogs with their families and track wildfires threatening your community.” The clip depicts the dog being tracked by cameras throughout a neighborhood using artificial intelligence.

    And viewers took to social media to criticize it for being sinister, leaving many wondering if it would be used to track humans and saying they would turn the feature off.

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that focus on civil liberties related to digital technology, said this week that Americans should feel unsettled over the potential loss of privacy.

    “Amazon Ring already integrates biometric identification, like face recognition, into its products via features like “Familiar Faces,” which depends on scanning the faces of those in sight of the camera and matching it against a list of pre-saved, pre-approved faces,” the Foundation wrote Tuesday. “It doesn’t take much to imagine Ring eventually combining these two features: face recognition and neighborhood searches.”

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  • As electricity costs rise, everyone wants data centers to pick up their tab. But how?

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    HARRISBURG, Pa. — As outrage spreads over energy-hungry data centers, politicians from President Donald Trump to local lawmakers have found rare bipartisan agreement over insisting that tech companies — and not regular people — must foot the bill for the exorbitant amount of electricity required for artificial intelligence.

    But that might be where the agreement ends.

    The price of powering data centers has become deeply intertwined with concerns over the cost of living, a dominant issue in the upcoming midterm elections that will determine control of Congress and governors’ offices.

    Some efforts to address the challenge may be coming too late, with energy costs on the rise. And even though tech giants are pledging to pay their “fair share,” there’s little consensus on what that means.

    “‘Fair share’ is a pretty squishy term, and so it’s something that the industry likes to say because ‘fair’ can mean different things to different people,” said Ari Peskoe, who directs the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University.

    It’s a shift from last year, when states worked to woo massive data center projects and Trump directed his administration to do everything it could to get them electricity. Now there’s a backlash as towns fight data center projects and some utilities’ electricity bills have risen quickly.

    Anger over the issue has already had electoral consequences, with Democrats ousting two Republicans from Georgia’s utility regulatory commission in November.

    “Voters are already connecting the experience of these facilities with their electricity costs and they’re going to increasingly want to know how government is going to navigate that,” said Christopher Borick, a pollster and director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion.

    Data centers are sprouting across the U.S., as tech giants scramble to meet worldwide demand for chatbots and other generative AI products that require large amounts of computing power to train and operate.

    The buildings look like giant warehouses, some dwarfing the footprints of factories and stadiums. Some need more power than a small city, more than any utility has ever supplied to a single user, setting off a race to build more power plants.

    The demand for electricity can have a ripple effect that raises prices for everyone else. For example, if utilities build more power plants or transmission lines to serve them, the cost can be spread across all ratepayers.

    Concerns have dovetailed with broader questions about the cost of living, as well as fears about the powerful influence of tech companies and the impact of artificial intelligence.

    Trump continues to embrace artificial intelligence as a top economic and national security priority, although he seemed to acknowledge the backlash last month by posting on social media that data centers “must ‘pay their own way.’”

    At other times, he has brushed concerns aside, declaring that tech giants are building their own power plants, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright contends that data centers don’t inflate electricity bills — disputing what consumer advocates and independent analysts say.

    Some states and utilities have started to identify ways to get data centers to pay for their costs.

    They’ve required tech companies to buy electricity in long-term contracts, pay for the power plants and transmission upgrades they need and make big down payments in case they go belly-up or decide later they don’t need as much electricity.

    But it might be more complicated than that. Those rules can’t fix the short-term problem of ravenous demand for electricity that is outpacing the speed of power plant construction, analysts say.

    “What do you do when Big Tech, because of the very profitable nature of these data centers, can simply outbid grandma for power in the short run?” Abe Silverman, a former utility regulatory lawyer and an energy researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “That is, I think, going to be the real challenge.”

    Some consumer advocates say tech companies’ fair share should also include the rising cost of electricity, grid equipment or natural gas that’s driven by their demand.

    In Oregon, which passed a law to protect smaller ratepayers from data centers’ power costs, a consumer advocacy group is jousting with the state’s largest utility, Portland General Electric, over its plan on how to do that.

    Meanwhile, consumer advocates in various states — including Indiana, Georgia and Missouri — are warning that utilities could foist the cost of data center-driven buildouts onto regular ratepayers there.

    Utilities have pledged to ensure electric rates are fair. But in some places it may be too late.

    For instance, in the mid-Atlantic grid territory from New Jersey to Illinois, consumer advocates and analysts have pegged billions of dollars in rate increases hitting the bills of regular Americans on data center demand.

    Legislation, meanwhile, is flooding into Congress and statehouses to regulate data centers.

    Democrats’ bills in Congress await Republican cosponsors, while lawmakers in a number of states are floating moratoriums on new data centers, drafting rules for regulators to shield regular ratepayers and targeting data center tax breaks and utility profits.

    Governors — including some who worked to recruit data centers to their states — are increasingly talking tough.

    Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat running for reelection this year, wants to impose a penny-a-gallon water fee on data centers and get rid of the sales tax exemption there that most states offer data centers. She called it a $38 million “corporate handout.”

    “It’s time we make the booming data center industry work for the people of our state, rather than the other way around,” she said in her state-of-the-state address.

    Energy costs are projected to keep rising in 2026.

    Republicans in Washington are pointing the finger at liberal state energy policies that favor renewable energy, suggesting they have driven up transmission costs and frayed supply by blocking fossil fuels.

    “Americans are not paying higher prices because of data centers. There’s a perception there, and I get the perception, but it’s not actually true,” said Wright, Trump’s energy secretary, at a news conference earlier this month.

    The struggle to assign blame was on display last week at a four-hour U.S. House subcommittee hearing with members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

    Republicans encouraged FERC members to speed up natural gas pipeline construction while Democrats defended renewable energy and urged FERC to limit utility profits and protect residential ratepayers from data center costs.

    FERC’s chair, Laura Swett, told Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, that she believes data center operators are willing to cover their costs and understand that it’s important to have community support.

    “That’s not been our experience,” Landsman responded, saying projects in his district are getting tax breaks, sidestepping community opposition and costing people money. “Ultimately, I think we have to get to a place where they pay everything.”

    ___

    Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter

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  • Trump administration reaches a trade deal to lower Taiwan’s tariff barriers

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    WASHINGTON — The Trump administration reached a trade deal with Taiwan on Thursday, with Taiwan agreeing to remove or reduce 99% of its tariff barriers, the office of the U.S. Trade Representative said.

    The agreement comes as the U.S. remains reliant on Taiwan for its production of computer chips, the exporting of which contributed to a trade imbalance of nearly $127 billion during the first 11 months of 2025, according to the Census Bureau.

    Most of Taiwan’s exports to the U.S. will be taxed at a 15% rate, the USTR’s office said. The 15% rate is the same as that levied on other U.S. trading partners in the Asia-Pacific region, such as Japan and South Korea.

    Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick attended the signing of the reciprocal agreement, which occurred under the auspices of the American Institute in Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States. Taiwan’s Vice Premier Li-chiun Cheng and its government minister Jen-ni Yang also attended the signing.

    “President Trump’s leadership in the Asia-Pacific region continues to generate prosperous trade ties for the United States with important partners across Asia, while further advancing the economic and national security interests of the American people,” Greer said in a statement.

    The Taiwanese government said in a statement that the tariff rate set in the agreement allows its companies to compete on a level field with Japan, South Korea and the European Union. It also said the agreement “eliminated” the disadvantage from a lack of a free trade agreement between Taiwan and the U.S.

    The deal comes ahead of President Donald Trump’s planned visit to China in April and suggests a deepening economic relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan.

    Taiwan is a self-ruled democracy that China claims as its own territory, to be annexed by force if necessary. Beijing prohibits all countries it has diplomatic relations with — including the U.S. — from having formal ties with Taipei.

    Under the deal, Taiwan will make investments of $250 billion in U.S. industries, such as computer chips, artificial intelligence applications and energy. The Taiwanese government says it will provide up to an additional $250 billion in credit guarantees to help smaller businesses invest in the U.S.

    The agreement would make it easier for the U.S. to sell autos, pharmaceutical drugs and food products in Taiwan. But the critical component might be that Taiwanese companies would invest in the production of computer chips in the U.S., possibly helping to ease the trade imbalance.

    The investments helped enable the U.S. to reduce its planned tariffs from as much as 32% initially to 15%.

    Taiwan’s government said it will submit the deal and investment plans to its legislature for approval.

    The U.S. side said the deal with Taiwan would help create several “world-class” industrial parks in America in order to help build up domestic manufacturing of advanced technologies such as chips. The Commerce Department in January described it as “a historic trade deal that will drive a massive reshoring of America’s semiconductor sector.”

    In return, the U.S. would give preferential treatment to Taiwan regarding the possible tariffs stemming from a Section 232 investigation of the importing of computer chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

    TSMC, the chip-making giant, is expected to be the key investor. It has committed to $165 billion in investments in the U.S., including not only fabrication plants but also a major research and development center that would help build a supply chain to power U.S. artificial intelligence ambitions. Major U.S. tech companies such as Nvidia and AMD rely on TSMC for manufacturing highly advanced chips.

    Taiwan also said the investments will be two-way, with U.S. companies also investing in key Taiwanese industries. Nvidia this week signed a land deal in Taipei to build a headquarters office there.

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  • Anthropic hits a $380B valuation as it heightens competition with OpenAI

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    Artificial intelligence company Anthropic says it is now valued at $380 billion, cementing its position alongside rival OpenAI and Elon Musk’s SpaceX in a trio of the world’s most valuable startups that investors will be watching closely this year to see if they will become publicly traded on Wall Street.

    “These are the three biggest names that could go public this year,” said Angelo Bochanis, an associate at Renaissance Capital, which researches the potential for initial public offerings.

    Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, said Thursday its valuation grew after it raised $30 billion in its latest round of funding, led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and the U.S.-based investment firm Coatue, along with dozens of other major investors.

    The funding also includes a portion of the $15 billion that Nvidia and Microsoft said they would invest in Anthropic in November, part of a deal that would eventually commit Anthropic to buying from Microsoft some $30 billion in computing capacity it needs to build and run AI systems like Claude. Anthropic has also been heavily backed by cloud providers Amazon and Google.

    Anthropic’s chief financial officer Krishna Rao says the company will use the surge of investments to continue building “enterprise-grade products” and AI models.

    Renaissance Capital counts Anthropic as third among the most valuable private firms. It’s behind ChatGPT maker OpenAI, valued at $500 billion. Both San Francisco-based AI companies trail rocket maker SpaceX, which recently merged with Musk’s AI startup xAI, maker of the chatbot Grok.

    Anthropic isn’t profitable but said Thursday it is on track for sales of $14 billion over the next year, a rapid rise from “its first dollar in revenue” that came less than three years ago. While OpenAI has dabbled in a number of revenue models, including digital advertising, Anthropic has tailored Claude products to be a workplace assistant on tasks such as software engineering.

    Anthropic was founded by ex-OpenAI employees in 2021. Its co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei has promised a clearer focus on the safety of the better-than-human technology called artificial general intelligence that both San Francisco firms aimed to build. Anthropic also this week announced a new $20 million bipartisan organization to influence AI regulation in the United States.

    OpenAI first released ChatGPT in late 2022, revealing the huge commercial potential of AI large language models that could help write emails and computer code and answer questions. Anthropic followed that with its first version of Claude in 2023.

    Whichever company is first to do an initial public offering will have “an opportunity to raise even more money,” Bochanis said. “It’s an opportunity to be a big headline and get that sort of boost to your public image.”

    The risks are that they’ll have to invite public inspection of their business models as they continue to lose more money than they make.

    “Private markets have been throwing dozens of billions of dollars at these companies, even as valuations multiply again and again and again,” Bochanis said. “With public markets, there’s going to be a little more scrutiny. A single earnings report could tank a stock.”

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  • Trump’s FTC chairman chides Apple boss Tim Cook for content of Apple news feed

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    President Donald Trump’s Federal Trade Commission chairman has written to Apple chief Tim Cook, complaining that the company has “suppressed” content from conservative news sources in the Apple News feed loaded onto many of its devices

    NEW YORK — The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission has written to Apple chief Tim Cook to complain that the company “suppressed” content from conservative news outlets in the Apple News feed that it loads onto many of its devices.

    Chairman Andrew Ferguson said that while the FTC is not the “speech police,” it does have the authority to protect consumers from material misrepresentations and omissions. He urged Cook to review what is used on the Apple News feed and take corrective action.

    There was no immediate reply by Apple on Thursday to a request for comment.

    Ferguson was responding to a report by the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog. The report said that none of 620 top stories featured in the curated news app during January came from a conservative media source.

    Instead, a majority of its stories came from “leftist” outlets like The Associated Press, NBC News, The New York Times and The Washington Post, the report said. The MRC said right-leaning news sources that were missing include Fox News, the New York Post, the Daily Wire and Breitbart News.

    Cook proved not immune to criticism from President Donald Trump’s administration despite his attendance at Trump’s second term inauguration last year.

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  • One Tech Tip: All you need to know about the iPhone’s Lockdown Mode

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    A little known security feature on iPhones is in the spotlight after it stymied efforts by U.S. federal authorities to search devices seized from a reporter.

    Apple’s Lockdown Mode recently prevented FBI agents from getting into Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson ‘s iPhone.

    Agents seized the phone, as well as two MacBooks and other electronic devices, when they searched Natanson’s home last month as part of an investigation into a Pentagon contractor accused of illegally handling classified information. But the FBI reported that its Computer Analysis Response Team “could not extract” data from the iPhone because it was in Lockdown Mode, according to a court filing.

    So what is Lockdown Mode? Here’s a rundown of how it works and how to use it:

    Apple says Lockdown Mode is an “optional, extreme” protection tool designed to guard against “extremely rare and highly sophisticated cyberattacks.” It’s not for everyone, but instead for “very few individuals” who could be targeted by digital threats because of who they are or what they do.

    “Most people will never be targeted by attacks of this nature,” Apple’s support page says.

    It’s available in Apple’s newer operating systems, including iOS 16 and macOS Ventura. It works by putting strict security limits on some apps and features, or even making some unavailable, to reduce the areas that advanced spyware can attack. It also restricts the kinds of browser technologies that websites can use and limits photo sharing.

    Apple has previously rejected U.S. government requests to build so-called backdoor access for its devices.

    In 2016, Apple refused a request by authorities to help bypass lockscreen security for an encrypted iPhone belonging to a shooter who carried out a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif. The company also declined to add an ability to input passcodes electronically, which would make it possible to carry out “brute force” attempts to guess the combination using computers.

    “It would be wrong to intentionally weaken our products with a government-ordered backdoor,” Apple said in explaining its decision.

    Make sure your iPhone, iPad or MacBook has been updated. You’ll have to turn the feature on separately for each of your Apple devices.

    On your iPhone, go to Settings, then to the Privacy and Security section, scroll down to the bottom and tap on Lockdown Mode. Enter your passcode — not a facial or fingerprint scan — to activate it. The device will restart and then you’ll again have to use your passcode to unlock it. On MacBooks, follow a similar procedure from the System Settings menu.

    Apple recommends that you switch it on for all of the company’s devices that you own.

    You might assume that requiring facial or fingerprint recognition to unlock your phone is good enough to protect it from snooping. But experts say passcodes are better than biometrics at protecting your devices from law enforcement, because they could compel you to unlock your device by holding your phone up to your face or forcing you to put your finger on the scanner.

    FBI agents told Natanson that they “could not compel her to provide her passcodes,” but the warrant they used to execute the search did give them the authority “to use Natanson’s biometrics, such as facial recognition or fingerprints, to open her devices.” According to a court filing, Natanson said she didn’t use biometrics to lock her devices but agents were ultimately able to unlock her MacBook with her finger.

    Apple says some apps and features will work differently when Lockdown Mode is on.

    Some websites might load slowly or not work properly, and some images and web fonts could be missing because they block “certain complex web technologies.”

    In Messages, most types of attachments are blocked, and links and link previews won’t be available. Incoming FaceTime calls are blocked unless it’s from a number you’ve called in the past month.

    In Photos, location information is stripped from shared photos and shared albums are removed from the app. Focus mode won’t work normally.

    There are also tighter restrictions on connecting your phone or computer to unsecure Wi-Fi networks or to other computers and accessories.

    When I tried it out on my own iPhone, some apps warned me that certain functions might not work. I noticed that one of my news apps started using a different font and photos on some websites didn’t appear, replaced by a question mark.

    The biggest disruption happened when I went to the gym, which involved using a web-based check-in system to scan a QR code. But my phone camera wouldn’t work so I had to turn off Lockdown Mode in order to get in. To be sure, my iPhone’s standalone Code Scanner app still worked, so the problem seemed to center on using a website to activate the camera.

    Follow the same procedure outlined above that you used to turn on Lockdown Mode. You’ll need to enter your passcode and the phone will perform a restart.

    ___

    Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip.

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  • Taiwan’s AI-powered economy soars in the shadow of bubble fears and China threats

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    TAIPEI, Taiwan — In Taipei, real estate agent Jason Sung is betting that home prices around a high-tech industrial park in the northern part of Taiwan’s capital will soon take flight – because of computer chip maker Nvidia.

    The area is where Nvidia plans to build its new Taiwan headquarters as it rapidly expands on the island, set to surpass Apple to become the biggest customer of Taiwan semiconductor maker TSMC, the biggest contract manufacturer of the advanced chips needed for artificial intelligence.

    Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang describes Taiwan as the “center of the world’s computer ecosystem.” It’s riding high on the global AI frenzy. Its economy grew at an 8.6% annual pace last year, and it’s hoping to maintain that momentum after it recently sealed a trade deal with U.S. President Donald Trump that cut U.S. tariffs on Taiwan to 15% from 20%.

    “We have been lucky,” said Wu Tsong-min, an emeritus economics professor at National Taiwan University and a former board member of Taiwan’s central bank.

    But Taiwan’s heavy reliance on computer chip makers and other technology companies carries the growing risk of the AI craze turning out to be a bubble.

    “What if the AI bubble is real, and what if its rapid growth pace slows, what’s next for Taiwan? That’s the question many have been asking,” Wu said.

    Escalating tensions with Beijing, which claims independently governed Taiwan as mainland China’s territory, are another abiding threat, despite the island’s vital role in global chip and AI supply chains.

    An island of about 23 million people, Taiwan depends heavily on exports. They jumped nearly 35% year-on-year in 2025, as shipments to the U.S. surged 78% due to ballooning AI demand.

    That’s thanks largely to TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., and electronics giant Foxconn, which makes AI servers for Nvidia and is a major supplier to Apple.

    Taiwan has undergone massive economic changes while shifting from mainly labor-intensive industries such as plastics and textiles to advanced manufacturing like semiconductor fabrication.

    The AI frenzy has made TSMC one of the world’s top 10 most valuable companies. Its profit jumped 46% last year to $1.7 trillion Taiwan dollars ($54 billion).

    The chipmaker is investing heavily both in Taiwan and in new factories in Arizona in the U.S. It produces more than 90% of the world’s most advanced chips.

    Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., has doubled its value since 2023. The maker of Apple’s iPhone and iPads now produces AI servers and racks and has a partnership with OpenAI to supply AI data center equipment.

    Taiwan’s heavy reliance on its technology industry means its biggest risk is that growth will be “very highly contingent on the AI boom and tech race continuing,” said Lynn Song, chief economist for Greater China at ING Bank.

    Worries that the AI craze may prove to be a bubble prone to a bust similar to the dot.com crash in 2000 that swept through markets, alarming many in Taiwan.

    “I’m also very nervous about it,” C.C. Wei, TSMC’s chairman said when asked about a potential AI bubble during an earnings call in January. “Because we have to invest about $52-$56 billion (this year).”

    “If we did not do it carefully, that will be a big disaster to TSMC for sure,” he said. “I want to make sure that my customers’ demands are real.”

    In a recent report, analysts from Fitch Ratings argued that AI demand will remain strong at least in the near term. In the longer term, however, the risks “will depend on the evolution of AI, as well as trade and investment policies and the adaptability of Taiwanese firms,” they wrote.

    Taiwanese electronics company Asia Vital Components, a key supplier of liquid cooling systems for Nvidia, is investing heavily in research and development. Its chairman, Spencer Shen, said he saw no signs of a slowdown in AI-related demand so far. The company is already designing thermal solutions for 2028 AI servers, he said.

    “We do not believe this is a bubble,” Shen told The Associated Press in an interview. “AI is driven by companies with real products and massive cash flows, like Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta.”

    “In fact, AI infrastructure is still in short supply,” Shen added. “I expect AI to trickle through to our everyday level and change the way that things will work fundamentally.”

    Some in Taiwan believe that its pivotal role in the technology sector, especially as a maker of computer chips whose main material is silicon, helps to protect the island from attack by communist-ruled Beijing, whose leaders have vowed to reunite the island with the Chinese mainland, by force if necessary.

    The two governments split in 1949 during a civil war. Beijing has been stepping up pressure, conducting military drills nearby. Exercises in late December included live rounds landing closer to the island than before, Taiwan officials said.

    Such geopolitical factors cloud the economic outlook, though many in Taiwan including its former President Tsai Ing-wen believe its importance to global chipmaking would deter China from attacking.

    The risk of an invasion is unclear. Both global tech companies and Chinese industries would suffer from massive disruptions of the chip supply chain, said Wu of National Taiwan University.

    Still, some companies have been identifying contingency scenarios in recent years on how to respond in case of military action by China, said Chen Shin-horng, vice president of the semi-official Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research.

    “We need to understand the potential risk, potential damages to Taiwan,” said Chen.

    While many of its core research and development activities are in Taiwan, TSMC already has plants in China, Japan and the U.S., and it’s expanding its offshore production in the U.S., Germany and Japan.

    Roughly 65% of Foxconn’s manufacturing is in China, and the company has factories in other parts of the world such as India, Mexico and the U.S. AVC has been expanding its production capacity in Vietnam.

    While some have called for Taiwan to diversify its economy away from technology to reduce risks, others argue that doubling down on its world-leading technology is the way forward. “It is our greatest strength,” said Shen of AVC.

    The AI boom has done wonders for Taiwan’s stock exchange, where the benchmark Taiex has climbed nearly 250% over the past decade, making many investors rich. Economists have significantly upgraded forecasts for Taiwan’s economic growth for 2026 based on its robust AI-related exports.

    But as is true elsewhere, the wealth is not evenly spread. Many Taiwan residents feel they have been left behind.

    Taiwan’s wealth gap, according to official data, has roughly quadrupled over the past three decades.

    The pay of tech workers already earning high wages, especially chip engineers and managers, has skyrocketed. For other traditional industries, such as plastics and machine toolmakers, growth has lagged.

    Economists say that gap might widen as the AI frenzy continues.

    “It can be tough to make a living,” said Jean Lin, a 30-something manager of a takeaway outlet selling bento meals in a Taipei neighborhood where Foxconn’s office is located.

    “Many of the younger generation still can’t afford to buy an apartment,” Lin, who wishes to start her own business one day, added. “A lot of young people still feel they don’t have much money.”

    ___

    Associated Press video journalist Johnson Lai contributed.

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