Futurology

"The remarks amounted to Xi’s clearest articulation yet of China’s ambition to shape global AI governance, framing its open-source models as a global public good and positioning Beijing as an alternative to Washington ​at a pivotal moment in the race for technological leadership. Comparing AI’s significance to the invention of the steam engine and electricity, Xi outlined a vision in which China shares AI technology and ​expertise with countries across the Global South, while leading global efforts to create standards governing the emerging technology."

SpaceX is preparing for Starship’s 13th test flight. Starship is still experiencing issues during ascent and has yet to successfully launch anything from orbit. This test flight will only be sub-orbital.

"From the Black Sea to the Red Sea, powerful navies are finding that access to contested waters can no longer be taken for granted. The decisive maritime strategy of the 21st century is not sea control but sea denial — and its true pioneer was not a great power but an archipelagic one. For the middle powers of the Indo-Pacific, this is not a threat to be managed. It is leverage waiting to be seized."

"The warning has a target. London’s streets are about to host a robotaxi race, with Alphabet’s Waymo and China’s Baidu both eyeing launches. Kendall singled out the British contender, Wayve, as a “brilliant British success story”. The startup begins piloting driverless taxis in London with Uber later this year. ……. Andy Burnham is the favourite to be Britain’s next prime minister. Last week, the Financial Times reported that his team wants to revamp the AI strategy. His advisers distrust the driverless rollout, fearing it will cost taxi and Uber drivers their jobs. The report rattled the UK tech sector."

"OpenAI said GPT-5.6 is a major step forward for health intelligence, highlighting that Luna at lowest effort beats GPT-5.5 at highest effort while costing 25× less. Karan Singhal added that, in blinded physician comparisons over 20,000 axis ratings, physicians found fewer flaws in GPT-5.6 responses than physician-written responses across a hard task set."

Despite all their problems (hallucinations, confident mistakes, etc, etc) current LLM AIs could be all the AI needed to make capable Jetsons-style robot maids. No waiting around for AGI, as they won’t need it.

"France’s domestic intelligence service is to ditch AI data tools from the US tech company Palantir in favour of a domestic provider in an effort to avoid ‘strategic dependency” the prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has said. “We must use our own AI models; we cannot accept new strategic dependencies in ‌the digital sphere,” Lecornu posted on social media. “We cannot rely on tools developed by foreign powers. France must have its own tools.”

"Alongside X-energy and its Xe-100, TerraPower was selected for fast-tracking through one of the three programs under the umbrella of the US DOE’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP)……………TerraPower’s 2031 operational target represents a 5–7 year delay from the original timeline to commercialization set by the US DOE, which aimed for a 2025–2027 start date for both X-energy and TerraPower."

People own individual animals, or even large groups of them, but no one claims ownership of an entire species ~ will that change?