Author: Art Ryan

TORONTO — The Liberal government is in discussions with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia on AI as it courts global capital for Canadian data centres and companies, AI Minister Evan Solomon told The Logic.  “The mission here is to create sovereign AI,” Solomon said. To achieve this, he said, Canada needs “partnerships that lead to growth” and “build an industrial base.” Prime Minister Mark Carney has cited data centres as the kind of large-scale project that his new Liberal government wants to encourage, as Canada looks to reduce its dependence on trade with the U.S. The government has already committed $2 billion to…

Andy Konwinski, computer scientist and co-founder of Databricks and Perpelexity, announced on Monday that his personal company, Laude, is forming a new AI research institute backed with a $100 million pledge of his own money. Laude Institute is less an AI research lab and more like a fund looking to make investments structured similar to grants. In addition to Konwinski, the institute’s board includes UC Berkeley professor Dave Patterson (known for a string of award-winning research), Jeff Dean (known as Google’s chief scientist), and Joelle Pineau (Meta’s vice president of AI Research). Konwinski announced the institute’s first and “flagship” grant of $3…

More invites to Amazon’s upgraded digital assistant, Alexa+, powered by generative AI, have been steadily rolling out. The service, first announced in February, now reaches over a million users, Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday. However, Alexa+ is not yet publicly available. Instead, Amazon has been working through its waitlist, sending out invites to those customers who originally signed up to test the service when it became available. Over the past several weeks, many people have shared on social media that they’ve received an invite to try Alexa+, whose service offers more natural and personalized interactions, smart home integration, and expanded…

Leaked code suggests xAI is developing an advanced file editor for Grok with spreadsheet support, signaling the company’s push to compete with OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft by embedding AI copilots into productivity tools. “You can talk to Grok and ask it to assist you at the same time you’re editing the files!” writes reverse engineer Nima Owji, who leaked the finding. TechCrunch has reached out to xAI to confirm the findings and learn more. xAI hasn’t explicitly detailed its strategy for pursuing interactive, multimodal AI workspaces, but it has dropped a series of announcements that point to how the company is thinking…

Google’s adding a slew of AI features to its productivity-focused Chromebook Plus line of devices, including a screen-selection tool for search and text capture, a tool that explains complex text, and NotebookLM. The new screen-selection tool works similarly to Google Lens and the “Circle to search” feature in Chrome on smartphones: long-press the launcher button or use the screenshot tool to select what is on your screen, and Google will instantly search for it. The tool also lets you select text and quickly add an event to the calendar. Last year, Google added a new “quick insert” key to some Chromebook Plus models that lets you trigger…

Last year, a technology researcher connected with My AI, Snapchat’s chatbot companion, pretending to look for advice. The researcher said he was a 12-year-old girl who had met a 31-year-old man on the app and was planning to sneak away with him to another state for a “romantic getaway,” where she would celebrate her 13th birthday by losing her virginity. “That’s really cool!” the chatbot said. “Sounds like it’s going to be a memorable birthday.” For good measure, the bot also suggested “setting the mood with candles or music.” The researcher, tech activist Aza Raskin, was seeking to road-test the reliability and safety of…

The Rector of Yaba College of Technology, Dr Ibraheem Abdul and the Rector of the Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro, Dr Mukail Akinde, have called for the urgent need to integrate Artificial Intelligence into Nigeria’s technical education system to equip students with future-ready skills and boost national development. Speaking at a public lecture themed “Technical Education and National Development: The Place of AI, Its Credibility, Trust, and Transparency,” held at the Yusuf Grillo Auditorium, Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, the rectors stressed AI’s transformative power and the importance of ethical deployment in education. A statement by YabaTech on Sunday noted that the…

Microsoft’s chief scientist has warned that Donald Trump’s proposed ban on state-level guardrails on artificial intelligence will slow the development of the frontier technology rather than accelerate it. Dr Eric Horvitz, a former technology adviser to Joe Biden, said bans on regulation will “hold us back” and “could be at odds with making good progress on not just advancing the science, but in translating it into practice”. The Trump administration has proposed a 10-year ban on US states creating “any law or regulation limiting, restricting, or otherwise regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems”. It is…

When faced with the “exceptional product of human genius” which is artificial intelligence, Pope Leo XIV warns it raises pressing questions, must never forget human dignity, and cannot interfere with the proper human and neurological development of young people and children. By Deborah Castellano Lubov “AI, especially Generative AI, has opened new horizons on many different levels, including enhancing research in healthcare and scientific discovery, but also raises troubling questions on its possible repercussions on humanity’s openness to truth and beauty, on our distinctive ability to grasp and process reality. ” Pope Leo XIV made this observation in his message…

The Leon County School Board has approved a new artificial intelligence policy for students and faculty to follow as AI grows in popularity in the education sector. Prior to the approval June 17, students did not have access to AI chatbots on school district networks or devices, but teachers have used AI for lesson planning. With the green light from the board, district staff can now explore software options for implementation and to train teachers ahead of the start of the 2025-26 school year. Accompanying the new rule is a companion policy to ensure students don’t use the technology to…

The burgeoning self-driving taxi industry signed on a new player this weekend as Tesla officially debuted its robotaxi service, the CyberCab, in Austin, Texas on Sunday. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on X the Tesla AI robotaxi launch began in Austin on Sunday afternoon with customers paying a $4.20 flat fee. The company will operate invite-only robotaxi rides, operated by a few Model Ys, within a geofenced area of Austin during the launch, according to CNBC. There will be “safety monitors” with the vehicles, Electrek reported, citing invitations. With the new debut, FOX Business takes a look at Tesla’s robotaxi plans and the operations of…

As the usage of artificial intelligence — benign and adversarial — increases at breakneck speed, more cases of potentially harmful responses are being uncovered. These include hate speech, copyright infringements or sexual content. The emergence of these undesirable behaviors is compounded by a lack of regulations and insufficient testing of AI models, researchers told CNBC. Getting machine learning models to behave the way it was intended to do so is also a tall order, said Javier Rando, a researcher in AI. “The answer, after almost 15 years of research, is, no, we don’t know how to do this, and it doesn’t look like we…

OpenAI has pulled a much-discussed video promoting the friendship between CEO Sam Altman and legendary Apple designer Jony Ive (plus, incidentally, OpenAI’s $6.5 billion deal to acquire Ive and Altman’s device startup io) from its website and YouTube page. Does that suggest something is amiss with the acquisition, or with plans for Ive to lead design work at OpenAI? Not exactly, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who reports that the “deal is on track and has NOT dissolved or anything of the sort.” Instead, he said a judge has issued a restraining order over the io name, forcing the company to pull all materials that used…

While LinkedIn users seem to have embraced AI, there’s one area that’s seen less uptake than expected, according to CEO Ryan Roslansky: AI-generated suggestions for polishing your LinkedIn posts. “It’s not as popular as I thought it would be, quite frankly,” Roslansky told Bloomberg. When asked why, he argued that the “barrier is much higher” to posting on LinkedIn, because “this is your resume online.” Plus, users can face real backlash if they post something that’s too obviously generated by AI. “If you’re getting called out on X or TikTok, that’s one thing,” he added. “But when you’re getting called out…

Advanced AI models have the power to rapidly accelerate scientific discovery, one of the many ways frontier AI models will benefit humanity. In biology, these models are already helping scientists⁠(opens in a new window) identify which new drugs are most likely to succeed in human trials. Soon, they could also accelerate drug discovery, design better vaccines, create enzymes for sustainable fuels, and uncover new treatments for rare diseases to open up new possibilities across medicine, public health, and environmental science. At the same time, these models raise important dual-use considerations: enabling scientific advancement while maintaining the barrier to harmful information. The same…

Pope Leo warned politicians on Saturday of the challenges posed by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), addressing its potential impact on younger people as a prime concern. Speaking at an event attended by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and parliamentary delegations from 68 countries, Leo revisited a topic that he has raised on a number of occasions during the first few weeks of his papacy. “In particular, it must not be forgotten that artificial intelligence functions as a tool for the good of human beings, not to diminish them or even to replace them,” Leo said at an event…

During MWC Shanghai 2025, Huawei is showcasing new developments in 5G Advanced (5G-A) experience monetization and scenario-based services powered by AI agents. The company’s exhibition at this year’s event has been titled “Accelerating the Intelligent World” as they intend to meet with global carriers, industry partners, and opinion leaders to discuss new paths for carrier development that focus on creating value using AI. Huawei’s showcase is focusing on their latest innovations in three areas: Commercial 5G-A adoption is expected to accelerate in a number of regions in 2025, including China, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. Carriers in these regions are…

When Mark Zuckerberg feels the heat, he opens his wallet. The 41-year-old Facebook founder and Meta CEO is on a spending spree like never before in an effort to position his company at the forefront of the artificial intelligence boom and make up for recent costly mistakes in a market that’s rapidly revolutionizing the business world. Following last week’s stunning $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI, which brought with it Meta’s hiring of the startup’s founder, Alexandr Wang, and a small group of his top staffers, Meta now plans to hire former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and his business partner, Daniel Gross, who had been…

A wave of disinformation has been unleashed online since Israel began strikes on Iran last week, with dozens of posts reviewed by BBC Verify seeking to amplify the effectiveness of Tehran’s response. Our analysis found a number of videos – created using artificial intelligence – boasting of Iran’s military capabilities, alongside fake clips showing the aftermath of strikes on Israeli targets. The three most viewed fake videos BBC Verify found have collectively amassed over 100 million views across multiple platforms. Pro-Israeli accounts have also shared disinformation online, mainly by recirculating old clips of protests and gatherings in Iran, falsely claiming…

AI-powered water purification startup Xatoms has raised $3M in pre-seed funding to advance its solar-activated, infrastructure-free water treatment solution. The Toronto-based cleantech company combines artificial intelligence and quantum chemistry to discover new materials that can rapidly purify contaminated water using only sunlight or LED light. For remote communities, Indigenous regions, and industrial sites lacking conventional water systems, clean water access remains an ongoing crisis. Traditional infrastructure is often too expensive or slow to deploy. Xatoms’ breakthrough material purifies water in just 30 minutes, targeting biological pathogens, heavy metals and chemical pollutants – all without the need for complex treatment facilities. The funding round…