China’s AI talent race is starting in high school

21 July 2026 at 05:00

Yang is immensely proud of his 13-year-old son. The middle-school student from Hangzhou has won artificial intelligence model-building competitions across China, and has 136,000 followers on Chinese social media platform...

AI is shrinking video game development teams to one

Rest of World

By: Kaya Genç

20 July 2026 at 05:00

As a teen, Emirhan Gül was a keen gamer, so he was thrilled to join a gaming startup in Istanbul as a developer after university. Over five months, as Turkey...

Can AI beat a goldfish at calling the World Cup?

Rest of World

By: Indranil Ghosh

17 July 2026 at 08:00

Kylian Mbappé of France entered the World Cup semifinals with Argentina’s Lionel Messi in the race for the Golden Boot. Pundits, punters, and chatbots are divided on who finishes as...

The problem AI content moderation cannot solve

Rest of World

By: Hera Hussain

16 July 2026 at 05:00

Meta recently unveiled Muse Image, an artificial intelligence image generator that allows anyone to manipulate pictures of any Instagram user with a public profile. Just as its Meta glasses —...

AI powers citizen-led disaster relief from afar for Venezuela

Rest of World

By: Daniella Fernández and Andrea Paola Hernández

15 July 2026 at 05:00

After twin earthquakes struck northern Venezuela last month, thousands of people took to social media, pleading for help locating friends and family. The interim government was slow to act, but...

TOPSHOT - This aerial view taken on July 2, 2026 in Caraballeda in the state of La Guaira shows collapsed buildings following the June 24 twin earthquakes.

The Gulf has billions to spend on AI. It still needs Nvidia

Rest of World

By: Indranil Ghosh

14 July 2026 at 05:00

The Gulf’s oil-rich states, betting billions on reinventing themselves as centers of artificial intelligence, are discovering that money can buy almost everything, except a way out of Nvidia. Saudi Arabia...

India’s crackdown on a new WhatsApp feature risks setting a global precedent

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

13 July 2026 at 05:00

The Indian government’s latest tussle with WhatsApp has raised concerns about the censorship of app features globally. On June 29, WhatsApp began rolling out usernames globally, allowing users to chat...

Older adults know AI is slop. They just like it

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

10 July 2026 at 08:00

Young people can’t seem to stop watching AI slop videos of cats talking and fruits cheating on each other. Older people are enjoying a different kind of AI-generated content, which...

Your next nurse may monitor you from the Philippines

Rest of World

By: Michael Beltran and Jonathan Feakins

9 July 2026 at 05:00

In his job as a nurse and healthcare administrator, Chris decided on appropriate treatments for patients, and checked their vital signs. Sometimes, he monitored up to 10 patients in intensive...

Data centers should benefit the cities that power them

Rest of World

By: Nasiphi Moya

8 July 2026 at 05:00

One of the most significant developments today is the rapid growth of data centers and other artificial intelligence-related infrastructure. This is true of Africa, too, where demand for digital services...

China’s AI boom is creating a different kind of entrepreneur

Rest of World

By: Lin Zhang

7 July 2026 at 05:00

Involution — neijuan (内卷) in Mandarin, literally “inward curling” — entered everyday Chinese speech around 2020. The concept was borrowed from the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who described a pattern...

China’s web novel platforms embraced AI. Now they are fighting it

Rest of World

By: Viola Zhou

6 July 2026 at 05:00

Gordon Sheng, a 32-year-old civil engineer in China, spent two decades reading web novels before using AI to write his own. He used DeepSeek to outline a dramatic divorce plot,...

India is testing an alternative to Silicon Valley’s AI playbook

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

2 July 2026 at 05:00

As frontier artificial intelligence becomes increasingly centralized in the hands of a few Western companies, India is betting that innovation doesn’t have to come only from the biggest labs. The...

China’s EV makers are taking over the European factories Ford and Nissan can’t fill

Rest of World

By: Indranil Ghosh

1 July 2026 at 05:00

China’s EV makers, squeezed at home, are moving into Europe’s idle car factories. Chery will start building EVs later this year at a former Nissan plant in Barcelona, Spain. It...

America’s immigrant tech workers are paying an uncertainty tax

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

30 June 2026 at 05:00

Highly skilled immigrant tech workers in the U.S. are eyeing relocation to Canada, the U.K., or the Gulf as H-1B visa uncertainty continues to haunt them. On June 8, a...

I went to the Maldives. Everyone wanted to talk about Temu

Rest of World

By: Itika Sharma Punit

29 June 2026 at 05:00

One evening in the Maldives, I spent a few hours talking with local entrepreneurs. I expected to hear about tourism, politics, or the economy. Instead, they kept talking about Temu....

What happened to China’s overseas EV factory boom?

Rest of World

By: Ananya Bhattacharya

25 June 2026 at 05:00

Despite all the global worry about China building car factories around the world and stifling local competitors, it turns out that Chinese EV companies have actually been homebodies. Between 2020...

China and the West are taking opposite paths on EV battery recycling

Rest of World

By: Indranil Ghosh

24 June 2026 at 05:00

The first wave of electric-vehicle batteries is reaching the end of the road, and China and the West are taking very different paths on what to do with them. An...

The AI-powered World Cup runs on thousands of data workers

Rest of World

By: Rina Chandran and Michael Beltran

23 June 2026 at 05:00

The current edition of the FIFA World Cup features a sensor-fitted ball, real-time tracking, artificial intelligence-assisted offside calls, and an AI assistant for each of the 48 teams. Behind these...

Chinese universities are cutting language majors to make way for AI

Rest of World

By: Kinling Lo

22 June 2026 at 05:00

As artificial intelligence reshapes the global economy, Chinese universities are rapidly redrawing the landscape of what is worth studying. In recent months, Chinese universities have actively cut foreign language and...

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