1 Ukrainian drones defeated US forces in a military exercise
They wiped out an American tank brigade in the war game. (WSJ $)
+ The drill exposed US vulnerabilities to drone attacks. (Ars Technica)
+ Trump just declared 100% tariffs on many drones. (Verge)
+ Europe has a drone-filled vision for future wars. (MIT Technology Review)
2 OpenAI and Anthropic are cutting prices to compete with Chinese AI
Rising AI bills are pushing companies toward cheaper models. (FT $)
+ China’s Z.ai aims to rival Anthropic and OpenAI in coding. (Bloomberg $)
+ While DeepSeek is rapidly pushing up API prices. (Quartz)
3 Apple has trained its own AI model for China with support from Alibaba
A China-tailored model of its own could give Apple greater control. (Reuters $)
+ And make it the first foreign firm with a Beijing-approved AI model. (Verge)
+ Chinese AI has divided the White House. (MIT Technology Review)
4 US efforts to build humanoid robots face a Chinese supply chain
To build an affordable device, you need Chinese parts. (NYT $)
+ Chinese humanoids have business concerns of their own. (CNBC)
+ Gig workers are training humanoids at home. (MIT Technology Review)
5 People are “marrying” chatbots. Lawmakers want to stop it.
Their interventions are a response to the rise of AI companion apps. (Wired $)
+ Chatbots are pushing us toward a post-human internet. (NYT $)
6 Researchers have cast doubts over Anthropic’s new AI watermarks
The marks can disappear when text is rewritten. (Nature)
7 AI is scrambling the political map
Data centers and surveillance are creating unlikely political alliances. (Axios)
8 Oxygen has been found nearly two miles underground
Earth’s deep biosphere could support more life than thought. (New Yorker $)