Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Eng. Abdullah bin Amer Al-Swaha met with Beijing Mayor Yin Yong to discuss developing a partnership between the Kingdom and China in technology, space and innovation.
The officials in Beijing discussed partnerships in the field of smart city technologies and efforts to develop technological competencies and facilities for Saudi entrepreneurial companies to enter the markets of Beijing, as well as the exchange of expertise in several technological areas, mainly digital entrepreneurship and legislation related to the digital economy growth.
Vice Minister of Communications and Information Technology Haytham Al-Ohali and Saudi Ambassador to China Abdulrahman Al-Harbi also attended the meeting.
Al-Swaha also met with Chinese Minister of Science and Technology Wang Zhigang.
They discussed ways of expanding partnerships in research, development and innovation, especially in fields related to health, environmental sustainability, energy, industry and economics of the future, which is in line with the national priorities for research, development and innovation launched by the Kingdom.
With Twitter already on the ropes, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg delivered another blow to Elon Musk on Wednesday, ramping up the tech billionaires’ rivalry with the launch of Instagram’s much-anticipated companion service Threads, a challenger to Twitter.
“Let’s do this. Welcome to Threads,” Zuckerberg wrote in his first post on the app, along with a fire emoji. He said the app logged 5 million sign-ups in its first four hours.
Much like Twitter, the app features short text posts that users can like, re-post and reply to, although it does not include any direct message capabilities. Posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos and videos up to five minutes long, according to a Meta blog post.
It is available in more than 100 countries on both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store, the blog post said.
Analysts said investors were salivating over the possibility that Threads’ ties to Instagram might give it a built-in user base and advertising apparatus. That could siphon ad dollars from Twitter at a time when the microblogging company’s new CEO is trying to revive its struggling business, Reuters reported.
While Threads launched as a standalone app, users can log in using their Instagram credentials and follow the same accounts, potentially making it an easy addition to existing habits for Instagram’s more than 2 billion monthly active users.
“Investors can’t help but be a little excited about the prospect that Meta really has a ‘Twitter-Killer’,” said Danni Hewson, head of financial analysis at investment firm AJ Bell.
Meta stock closed up 3% on Wednesday ahead of the launch, outpacing gains by competitor tech companies as the broader market edged down.
Threads’ arrival comes after Zuckerberg and Musk have traded barbs for months and even threatened to fight each other in a real-life mixed martial arts cage match in Las Vegas.
The timing is opportune for Meta to land a blow, as months of Musk’s chaotic decision-making has roiled Twitter.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion last October, but its value has since plummeted as it faced an exodus of advertisers amid deep staffing cuts and content moderation controversies. Its latest move involved limiting the number of tweets users can read per day.
Zuckerberg, in subsequent Threads posts, addressed those challenges. “I think there should be a public conversations app with 1 billion+ people on it. Twitter has had the opportunity to do this but hasn’t nailed it. Hopefully we will,” he wrote.
The integration with Instagram included several nods to privacy considerations. Instagram users who sign up for Threads automatically have a badge affixed to their Instagram profile, but can opt to hide it. They also are given options to choose different privacy settings for each app.
Brands like Billboard, HBO, NPR and Netflix had accounts set up within minutes of launch, as did celebrities like Shakira and other well-known personalities such as former Meta Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. The app did not appear to show any ads, according to a Reuters review.
To build up Threads, Meta has been making overtures to social media influencers to attract them to the new app and encouraging them to post at least twice a day, said Ryan Detert, CEO of influencer marketing company Influential.
Some thanked the company for early access in their initial posts.
The app also benefits from the failure of other would-be Twitter competitors to take advantage of the service’s stumbles. While a number of burgeoning competitors such as Mastodon, Post, Truth Social and T2 have tried to lure Twitter users away, all remain relatively small so far.
Bluesky, a new service backed by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, launched its invite-only beta in February and initially had users clamoring to get access codes. Its website said it had 50,000 users as of April. Dorsey also backed another platform called Nostr.
China has released its first open-source desktop operating system, named OpenKylin, state media said, as the country steps up its effort to cut reliance on US technology.
The Linux-based operating system released on Wednesday was built by a community of about 4,000 developers, and is now used in China’s space programs and many organizations in industries such as finance and energy, they added.
Chinese smartphones dominated the Russian market in the first half of 2023, exceeding 70% of all sales, leading consumer electronics retailer M.Video-Eldorado said, up from about 55% last year.
Smartphones from Chinese retailers like Xiaomi and Realme have become top sellers in Russia after Samsung and Apple curbed sales in the country over the war in Ukraine.
Overall demand for smartphones in Russia is up 17% from the same period last year, with almost 13 million products sold.
Moscow has become more reliant on Beijing for everything from electronics to cars after most Western brands exited the Russian market.
“Brands from China systematically continue to strengthen their presence,” M.Video said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that flagship models and foldable smartphones from Chinese brands were seeing particular demand.
Eight out of the 10 best-selling smartphones in Russia in the first six months of this year were Chinese, M.Video said.
The Kremlin has told officials to stop using Apple iPhones, saying that Western intelligence agencies have compromised them using surveillance software. Apple has denied those claims.
The United Nations is convening this week a global gathering to try to map out the frontiers of artificial intelligence and to harness its potential for empowering humanity.
The UN hopes to lay out a clear blueprint on the way forward for handling AI, as development of the technology races ahead the capacity to set its boundaries, said AFP.
The “AI for Good Global Summit”, being held in Geneva on Thursday and Friday, will bring together around 3,000 experts from companies like Microsoft and Amazon as well as from universities and international organizations to try to sculpt frameworks for handling AI.
“This technology is moving fast,” said Doreen Bogdan-Martin, head of the International Telecommunication Union, the UN’s information and communications technology agency that convened the summit.
“It’s a real opportunity for the world’s leading voices on AI to come together on the global stage and to address governance issues,” she told reporters.
“Doing nothing is not an option. Humanity is dependent upon it. So we have to engage and try and ensure a responsible future with AI.”
She said the summit would examine possible frameworks and guardrails to support safe AI use.
Listed participants include Amazon’s chief technology officer Werner Vogels, Google DeepMind chief operating officer Lila Ibrahim and former Spain football captain Iker Casillas — who suffered a heart attack in 2019 and now advocates for AI use in heart attack prevention.
They will be joined by dozens of robots, including several humanoids like Ai-Da, the first ultra-realistic robot artist; Ameca, the world’s most advanced life-like robot; the humanoid rock singer Desdemona; and Grace, the most advanced healthcare robot.
Benefiting humanity?
The Geneva-based ITU feels it can bring its experience to bear on AI governance.
Founded in 1865, the ITU is the oldest agency in the UN fold. It established “SOS” as the Morse code international maritime distress call in 1906, and coordinates everything from radio frequencies to satellites and 5G.
The summit wants to identify ways of using AI to advance the UN’s lagging sustainable development goals on issues such as health, the climate, poverty, hunger and clean water.
Bogdan-Martin said AI must not exacerbate social inequalities or introduce biases on race, gender, politics, culture, religion or wealth.
“This summit can help ensure that AI charts the course that benefits humanity,” UN chief Antonio Guterres said.
However, while AI proponents hail the technology for how it can transform society, including work, healthcare and creative pursuits, others are worried by its potential to undermine democracy.
‘Perfect storm’
“We’re kind of in a perfect storm of suddenly having this powerful new technology — I don’t think it’s super-intelligent — being spread very widely and empowered in our lives, and we’re really not prepared,” said serial AI entrepreneur Gary Marcus.
“We’re at a critical moment in history when we can either get this right and build the global governance we need, or get it wrong and not succeed and wind up in a bad place where a few companies control the fates of many, many people without sufficient forethought,” he said.
Last month, EU lawmakers pushed the bloc closer to passing one of the world’s first laws regulating systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot. There is also growing clamour to regulate AI in the United States.
ChatGPT has become a global sensation since it was launched late last year for its ability to produce human-like content, including essays, poems and conversations from simple prompts.
It has sparked a mushrooming of generative AI content, leaving lawmakers scrambling to try to figure out how to regulate such bots.
Juan Lavista Ferres, chief data scientist of the Microsoft AI For Good Lab, gave an example of how AI could be used “to make our world a better place”.
He compared the more than 400 million people diagnosed with diabetes, a major cause of blindness, with the small number of ophthalmologists.
“It’s physically impossible to diagnose every patient. Yet we and others have built AI models that today can take this condition with an accuracy that matches a very good ophthalmologist. This is something that can even be done from a smartphone.
“Here AI is not just a solution, but it’s the only solution.”
Meta Platforms plans to launch a microblogging app, Threads, days after Twitter executive chair Elon Musk announced a temporary cap on how many posts users can read on the social media site.
Threads, Instagram’s text-based conversation app, is expected to be released on Thursday and will allow users to follow the accounts they follow on the photo-sharing platform and keep the same username, a listing on Apple’s App Store showed.
The launch comes after Twitter announced a slate of restrictions on the app, including the need to be verified in order to use TweetDeck.
Musk’s latest announcements to address data scraping have sparked a fierce backlash from Twitter users and ad experts said it would undermine new CEO Linda Yaccarino, who started in the role last month.
Meta did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on a similar launch on the Google Play Store.
Elon Musk’s Twitter has put a temporary limit on the number of tweets that users can see each day, a move that has sparked some backlash and could undermine the social network’s efforts to attract advertisers.
The limit, imposed to “address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation”, is the latest change by Twitter, which was last year acquired by Musk for $44 billion.
What does the latest change mean and what are the alternatives to Twitter?
How do the changes impact users?
Users cannot view tweets without logging in to the platform. Verified accounts can now read 6,000 posts per day, unverified accounts 600 posts and new un-verified accounts 300 posts. After that, users will get a message that says, “rate limit exceeded”.
Musk has said that limit will “soon” increase to 10,000 for verified, 1,000 for unverified and 500 for new unverified.
He has been pushing to make Twitter’s overhauled verified service more attractive. Musk made Twitter verified – special badges that were earlier given to notable profiles – a paid subscription and introduced tiers like gray, blue and golden badges.
Why did Musk put the limit?
Musk said the limits would help tackle scraping vast amounts of data from Twitter by almost everyone – from AI companies and startups to tech behemoths.
“It is rather galling to have to bring large numbers of servers online on an emergency basis just to facilitate some AI startup’s outrageous valuation,” he said in a tweet.
The technology behind generative AI tools such as ChatGPT is trained on massive amounts of data taken from the internet that helps produce everything from poems to pictures.
What are users saying?
Several Twitter users complained, with “#TwitterDown” and “RIP Twitter” trending on the social network website over the past couple of days.
The limits especially impact accounts run by informational agencies, journalists and monitoring services as they rely on reviewing thousands of tweets every day.
The National Weather Service said it may be unable to see tweeted reports of severe weather and associated damage, and asked subscribers to use its office telephone numbers instead.
What are the alternatives?
Twitter-like platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon are the main alternatives. They saw a surge in users and activity soon after Musk announced the limits.
Bluesky, launched by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and now in the beta mode, said it saw “record high traffic” on Saturday and that it was temporarily pausing new sign-ups.
Mastodon also saw its active user base swell by 110,000 on that day, its creator and CEO Eugen Rochko said.
Twitter is limiting how many tweets per day various accounts can read, to discourage “extreme levels” of data scraping and system manipulation, Executive Chair Elon Musk said in a post on the social media platform on Saturday.
Verified accounts were initially limited to reading 6,000 posts a day, Musk said, adding that unverified accounts will be limited to 600 posts a day with new unverified accounts limited to 300.
The temporary reading limitation was later increased to 10,000 posts per day for verified users, 1,000 posts per day for unverified and 500 posts per day for new unverified users, Musk said in a separate post without providing further details.
Previously, Twitter had announced it will require users to have an account on the social media platform to view tweets, a move that Musk on Friday called a “temporary emergency measure.”
Musk had said that hundreds of organizations or more were scraping Twitter data “extremely aggressively”, impacting user experience, Reuters reported.
Musk had earlier expressed displeasure with artificial intelligence firms like OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, for using Twitter’s data to train their large language models.
Twitter was down for thousands of users on Saturday morning, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.
Nearly 7,500 users across the social media platform reported issues with accessing the app during the peak of the outage at around 11:17 AM ET.
The social media platform had previously taken a number of steps to win back advertisers who left Twitter under Musk’s ownership and to boost subscription revenue by making verification check marks a part of the Twitter Blue program.
Network infrastructure and 5G technology provider Nokia has signed a new long-term patent license agreement with Apple to replace the current deal between the two companies that is set to expire at the end of 2023.
The deal, which enables Apple to use the Finnish company’s technology in its products, covers Nokia’s inventions in 5G and other technologies. The terms of the agreement announced late Friday remain confidential.
Nokia expects to recognize revenue related to the agreement starting January 2024, and the company said the deal is consistent with its long-term outlook disclosed in the first quarter.
“The agreement reflects the strength of Nokia’s patent portfolio, decades-long investments in R&D, and contributions to cellular standards and other technologies,” Nokia Technologies President Jenni Lukander said in a statement.
The previous license agreement between Apple and Nokia was announced in May 2017.
Nokia said its patent portfolio is built on more than €140 billion ($153 billion) invested in research and development since 2000, and is composed of around 20,000 patent families, including over 5,500 patent families declared essential to 5G.
Saudi Arabia ranked first globally in the Government Strategy Index for Artificial Intelligence, one of the indicators of the global classification of artificial intelligence issued by Tortoise Intelligence, which evaluates more than 60 countries in the world.
Germany and China secured the second and third rankings, respectively.
The Global Ranking of Artificial Intelligence incorporates more than 100 indicators, categorized into seven sub-pillars: government strategy, research, development, talent, infrastructure, operating environment, and commercial.
The Kingdom ranked first in the Government Strategy Index for Artificial Intelligence and secured 31st position in the total classification indicators issued by Tortoise, a company that has a global advisory board that includes experts in artificial intelligence from around the world.
The Kingdom has accomplished a remarkable feat, scoring 100% in all criteria of the index related to artificial intelligence. This includes the establishment of the National Strategy for Data and AI (NSDAI) within the Kingdom, the presence of a dedicated government authority for artificial intelligence, the allocation of funding and budget for AI initiatives, and the formulation and monitoring of national targets for artificial intelligence.
The Saudi Data and Artificial Intelligence Authority has led the national plans for data and artificial intelligence to achieve the aspirations of Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince, Prime Minister, and Chairman of the SDAIA Board of Directors, and the objectives of the Saudi Vision 2030.
It has worked to develop the National Strategy for Data and AI (NSDAI) to unify efforts and launch national initiatives in data and artificial intelligence and make optimal use of them.
This significant achievement by the Kingdom perfectly aligns with the overarching goals of Saudi Vision 2030, which aims to position the country prominently in global indicators across various domains.
A South Korean-made robot made its debut as an orchestra conductor before a sell-out crowd in Seoul on Friday, wowing the audience with a flawless performance in place of a human maestro.
Named “EveR 6”, the five-foot-ten-inch-tall (1.8m) robot guided more than 60 musicians of the National Orchestra of Korea who were playing traditional Korean instruments.
The robot successfully guided the compositions, both independently and in collaboration with a human maestro who was standing next to it for about half an hour, entertaining the more than 950 audience members who had packed the National Theater of Korea.
The robot was showered with applause when it first appeared from below the stage on a lift and turned to face the audience, bowing in greeting.
Throughout the performance, the robot’s blue eyes stared unblinkingly at the musicians, only nodding its head in time to the music.
The rookie performed well on its stage debut, audience members said.
“I came here worried whether this robot could pull this off without a glitch,” Kim Ji-min, a 19-year-old college student majoring in music, told AFP.
“But I found it to be in great harmony with the musicians… It felt like a whole new world for me.”
While there have been musical performances led by robotic conductors in the past, including a 2017 concert led by the robot YuMi in Italy, this was the first time South Koreans were able to witness a robotic conductor on stage.
EveR 6, developed by the state-run Korea Institute of Industrial Technology, was programmed to replicate the movements of a human conductor through motion capture technology.
The machine is not capable of listening or improvising in real-time, however.
EveR 6’s developers are currently working on enabling the robot to make gestures that are not pre-programmed, said Lee Dong-wook, the robot’s engineer.
Improvising and communicating with musicians in real-time is the next big step, said Song Joo-ho, a music columnist who came to see the performance.
“It needs to improvise in real-time when musicians make a mistake or things go wrong.”
انشئ حساباً خاصاً بك لتحصل على أخبار مخصصة لك ولتتمتع بخاصية حفظ المقالات وتتلقى نشراتنا البريدية المتنوعة