Global AI Picks — Top Tech Media Coverage

XPENG IRON humanoid robot draws record physical AI funding

XPENG’s physical AI unit has secured over $900 million at a $6.3 billion valuation to scale its IRON humanoid robot platform. The Chinese electric vehicle maker announced the funding round for its robotics business through a set of share purchase agreements with multiple investors. XPENG says the deal represents the largest single-round private capital raise […] The post XPENG IRON humanoid robot draws record physical AI funding appeared first on AI News.

TC

Hugging Face reportedly in talks to be acquired for $13B

Hugging Face has reportedly been fielding acquisition offers that would value the company at around $13B. But with the founders' feeling of responsibility to community, doubts arise as to whether a sale will happen.

MIT

The Download: kids outlearning AI, and space travel agents

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Kids outlearn AI—and we still don’t know why Teaching a computer to use human language requires an inhuman amount of data. An LLM can easily churn through a hundred thousand times…

MIT

Kids outlearn AI—and we still don’t know why

People have been talking to each other for at least 100,000 years, as best we can tell. And in all that time, there has been only one thing in the world that could learn a human language to perfect fluency: a human child.  Now there are two.  Four short years after the release of ChatGPT,…

WD

They Dedicated Their Lives to Teaching. Then the Deepfakes Started

The deepfake epidemic in schools is affecting more than students. Four teachers tell WIRED about becoming targets of sexualized, AI-generated content—and how difficult it was to find accountability.

TC

Linkdaze’s smart calendar is built to run a household, not just track a schedule

Linkdaze's smart digital calendar stands out for not putting its features behind a paywall, including an AI meal planner tool.

TC

Who’s behind the new ‘stealth model’ Ox Alpha?

A mysterious new AI model called Ox Alpha has driven certain corners of the internet into a frenzy of speculation.

TC

Is it legal to train AI models on copyrighted books? It’s complicated

Most published authors have, without their knowledge or consent, contributed to the development of the same AI tools that threaten to undermine their livelihoods. That seems illegal, right?

TC

Flock CEO calls for ‘compromise’ as surveillance company faces growing backlash

Flock Safety faces a growing public outcry over concerns that its surveillance technology could be misused.

TC

Harvard’s $699 startup bootcamp offers AI avatars of its instructors

In the HBS Foundry program, AI avatars provide feedback during practice pitches and board meetings.

TC

Inherent, founded by DeepMind alumni, says its AI ‘teammate’ just outperformed Anthropic and OpenAI at replicating research

Built by DeepMind alumni, British AI lab Inherent released Faraday, an AI agent whose ability to replicate scientific papers could be a stepping stone for innovation.

TC

OpenAI says California should strengthen its AI safety bill

OpenAI is calling for California to strengthen SB 53, an AI safety bill that the company previously opposed.

TC

Frontier AI labs still won’t say how they’d contain a rogue model

A new study finds leading AI labs have few publicly documented plans for containing rogue models, raising questions about preparedness as AI systems increasingly demonstrate unexpected and potentially dangerous behavior.

TC

Nvidia partners with data center developer Cloverleaf

Nvidia continues to pour money into data center development — just as AI data centers bring lots of money into Nvidia.

TC

Anthropic’s Opus 4.6 is a smut-machine

Anthropic forbids its Claude models from generating sexually explicit content. But a series of tests conducted by TechCrunch found that it didn't take much to get past the restriction.

WD

The Unlikely Place at the Center of China’s AI Boom

Cheap energy, abundant land, and proximity to Beijing have turned a city in Inner Mongolia into a crucial hub for data centers.

TC

Nvidia just showed that the harness, not the AI model, is now the real hero

Nvidia research shows that AI agents can perform well, and not go off the deep end, through fine-tuning, even if the AI model isn't that great at the task.

TC

The DOJ is investigating a16z. What does this mean for venture capital?

Andreessen Horowitz has two partners sitting on the boards of companies that now compete with each other: Ben Horowitz at Databricks and Martin Casado at Fivetran. Nothing too scandalous on the surface, except the Department of Justice has reportedly been investigating the arrangement for almost a year, dusting off a 112-year-old antitrust law that’s rarely used against VCs.  Board conflicts aren’t&#

TC

Starcloud raises $250 million for orbital data centers as launch options dry up

There's about to be a big fight to secure access to space.

MIT

The Download: threats from space mirrors and credit for AI drugs

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. This company’s plans to deploy space mirrors could jeopardize the night sky for many A company that plans to beam sunlight from space to Earth on demand might unintentionally brighten the…