As a deadly heatwave grips Europe, Rome leans on a bracelet to watch its elderly
As a deadly heatwave grips Europe, Rome leans on a bracelet to watch its elderly

Dina Gazzella is 85, and on her wrist is a small black band that looks like a watch and does rather more than tell the time. “If I feel unwell, this is a lifesaver,” she told Reuters. In a summer that has turned lethal across Europe, that is not a figu…

Google Cloud will sell specialist AI models built for science
Google Cloud will sell specialist AI models built for science

Google is adding SandboxAQ’s ‘large quantitative models’ to its cloud marketplace, pairing Gemini with AI trained on scientific equations and laboratory data. The large language models that power most of the AI industry are very good at words and surpr…

Germany’s AI rollout is being sold as a fix for its worker shortage
Germany’s AI rollout is being sold as a fix for its worker shortage

The case for artificial intelligence in Germany is being made, increasingly, in the language of arithmetic rather than ambition. The country does not have enough workers, and AI is being pitched as a way to need fewer of them. The concrete version of t…

Australia moves to double Big Tech fines and arm its regulator over the under-16 ban
Australia moves to double Big Tech fines and arm its regulator over the under-16 ban

Six months after Australia became the first country to bar under-16s from social media, the government has concluded that the platforms are not taking the rule seriously enough, and is preparing to make the consequences of ignoring it considerably more…

Austria asks the EU to consider giving Anthropic a home in Europe
Austria asks the EU to consider giving Anthropic a home in Europe

European government has, in writing, asked the European Union to find a way to host an American artificial-intelligence company. The request is unusual enough that the official making it conceded, in the same breath, that people would doubt it could be…

Baidu’s chip unit Kunlunxin is targeting a $50 billion Hong Kong IPO and asked investors to buy its semiconductors
Baidu’s chip unit Kunlunxin is targeting a $50 billion Hong Kong IPO and asked investors to buy its semiconductors

Baidu’s AI chip unit Kunlunxin is planning to go public in Hong Kong at a target valuation of $50 billion, The Information reported on Sunday. In an unusual twist, the company asked prospective IPO investors to also commit to purchasing its semiconduct…

Nvidia-backed Firmus will build a 360MW AI data centre in Indonesia and expects $30 billion in offtake deals
Nvidia-backed Firmus will build a 360MW AI data centre in Indonesia and expects $30 billion in offtake deals

Firmus Technologies, an Australian AI infrastructure company valued at $5.5 billion, will build its first data centre in Indonesia through an eight-year partnership with Nvidia. The 360-megawatt Nvidia DSX AI Factory campus in Batam, an island just off…

Researchers built an AI therapist that reads your smartwatch and earbuds to detect distress before you ask for help
Researchers built an AI therapist that reads your smartwatch and earbuds to detect distress before you ask for help

Mental health chatbots all share the same limitation: the user has to reach out first. That is not always easy when someone is stressed, anxious, or unable to articulate how they feel. Researchers at the University of Ottawa are building an AI assistan…

California will tax downloaded software for the first time as part of a $351.7 billion budget deal
California will tax downloaded software for the first time as part of a $351.7 billion budget deal

California Governor Gavin Newsom and top Democratic legislators agreed on a $351.7 billion state budget that will extend sales tax to prewritten software downloaded from the web. The tax is expected to raise $900 million for the state and another $1.1 …

The BIS warns an AI bust could hit credit markets as hard as the 2008 financial crisis
The BIS warns an AI bust could hit credit markets as hard as the 2008 financial crisis

The Bank for International Settlements warned on Sunday that an AI investment bust could hit credit markets with disruption comparable to the 2008 financial crisis. In its annual report, the Basel-based institution listed AI-led risks alongside inflati…