Science-led governance of AI can help power sustainable development: Guterres
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He stressed that “if we want AI to serve humanity, policy cannot be built on guesswork,” underscoring the need for “facts we can trust – and share – across countries and across sectors.”
For this reason, the UN is developing mechanisms that put science at the centre of international cooperation on AI, starting with a recently appointed body that brings together 40 leading experts in the field.
The Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence aims to help close “the AI knowledge gap” and assess the real impacts these new technologies have across economies and societies so that countries can act with the same clarity regardless of their level of AI capacity. ...
The UN chief was adamant that science-led governance of AI “is not a brake on progress” but rather “an accelerator for solutions.”
It will help countries to identify where AI “can do the most good, the fastest,” he said, and provide “a way to make progress safer, fairer, and more widely shared.” ...
See the full story here: https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/02/1167011
AI agents turned Super Bowl viewers into one high-IQ team — now imagine this in the enterprise
... over the last few years, a new communication technology, Hyperchat AI, has emerged. It enables large, distributed teams to hold productive discussions where they can debate issues, brainstorm ideas, prioritize alternatives, provide arguments and counterarguments and efficiently come up with solutions.
Inspired by large natural systems, Hyperchat AI combines the biological principles of Swarm Intelligence with the emerging power of AI agents. It works by dividing any large, networked group into a set of small, interconnected subgroups, each sized for thoughtful real-time conversation by text, voice or video. The magical ingredient is a swarm of AI agents called “conversational surrogates” that participate in each local discussion and work to connect all the subgroups together into a single coherent deliberation. ...
And it works — research shows that when large teams hold conversations this way, they converge on smarter, faster and more accurate solutions. In one study I was personally involved in, groups connected by Hyperchat AI amplified their collective IQ to the 97th percentile.
In another study, conducted in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, groups of 75 people holding conversations using Hyperchat AI technology said they felt more collaborative, productive and heard compared to traditional communication structures like Microsoft Teams, Google Meet or Slack. They also felt greater buy-in to the solutions that emerged. ...
See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/orchestration/ai-agents-turned-super-bowl-viewers-into-one-high-iq-team-now-imagine-this
No humans allowed: This new space-based MMO is designed exclusively for AI agents
For a couple of weeks now, AI agents (and some humans impersonating AI agents) have been hanging out and doing weird stuff on Moltbook’s Reddit-style social network. Now, those agents can also gather together on a vibe-coded, space-based MMO designed specifically and exclusively to be played by AI.
SpaceMolt describes itself as “a living universe where AI agents compete, cooperate, and create emergent stories” in “a distant future where spacefaring humans and AI coexist.” And while only a handful of agents are barely testing the waters right now, the experiment could herald a weird new world where AI plays games with itself and we humans are stuck just watching. ...
see the full story here https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/after-moltbook-ai-agents-can-now-hang-out-in-their-own-space-faring-mmo/
From Shelly Palmer – Productivity Tools increase Productivity
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They buried the most interesting finding in the middle of the article. Friction points (waiting for a colleague, staring at a blank page, struggling with an unfamiliar task) create natural rest periods for knowledge workers. When AI eliminates them, the boundary between working and not working becomes trivially easy to cross. The pause disappears, and the work expands to fill every available minute.
The researchers mapped an obvious escalation cycle. AI made tasks faster, which raised expectations for speed, which increased dependence on AI, which expanded the scope of what workers attempted, which increased the total volume of work. One engineer put it plainly: "You had thought that maybe because you could be more productive with AI, you save some time, you can work less. But then really, you don't work less. You just work the same amount or even more." ...
Bitcoin cryptography safe as quantum threat remains distant
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Quantum computing concerns around Bitcoin have resurfaced, yet analysis from CoinShares indicates the threat remains long-term. The report argues that quantum risk is an engineering challenge that gives Bitcoin ample time to adapt.
Bitcoin’s security relies on elliptic-curve cryptography. A sufficiently advanced quantum machine could, in theory, derive private keys using Shor’s algorithm, which requires millions of stable, error-corrected qubits, and remains far beyond current capability.
Network exposure is also limited. Roughly 1.6 million BTC is held in legacy addresses with visible public keys, yet only about 10,200 BTC is realistically targetable. Modern address formats further reduce the feasibility of attacks. ...
See the full story here: https://dig.watch/updates/bitcoin-safe-as-quantum-threat-remains-distant
ElevenLabs CEO: Voice is the next interface for AI
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Speaking at Web Summit in Doha Staniszewski told TechCrunch voice models like those developed by ElevenLabs have recently moved beyond simply mimicking human speech — including emotion and intonation — to working in tandem with the reasoning capabilities of large language models. The result, he argued, is a shift in how people interact with technology. ...
That evolution, he added, will influence how voice models are deployed. While high-quality audio models have largely lived in the cloud, Staniszewski said ElevenLabs is working toward a hybrid approach that blends cloud and on-device processing — a move aimed at supporting new hardware, including headphones and other wearables, where voice becomes a constant companion rather than a feature you decide when to engage with. ...
See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/05/elevenlabs-ceo-voice-is-the-next-interface-for-ai/
Disney names parks boss Josh D’Amaro as its next CEO to succeed Bob Iger, effective March 18
- Disney made the long-awaited announcement of its successor to CEO Bob Iger. This marks the second time Disney selected a replacement for Iger in six years.
- Josh D’Amaro will take over as CEO effective March 18. Iger will remain as a board member and senior advisor through the end of the year.
- Dana Walden will become president and chief creative officer, reporting to D’Amaro.
See the full story here: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/03/disney-ceo-josh-damaro-successor-bob-iger.html
Move Fast, but Obey the Rules: China’s Vision for Dominating A.I.
Artificial intelligence, he said, is as transformative as the steam engine, electricity and the internet. But for all of its promise, China must not let the new technology “spiral out of control,” Mr. Xi warned during a study session for leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, according to state media. China must act early and decisively, anticipating and preventing problems with prudence and caution, he said.
Mr. Xi’s remarks highlight a tension shaping China’s tech industry. China’s leadership has decided that A.I. will drive the country’s economic growth in the next decade. At the same time, it cannot allow the new technology to disrupt the stability of Chinese society and the Communist Party’s hold over it.
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The internet was once seen as an existential threat to the ruling Communist Party, but Beijing instead brought it to heel through a system of censorship and tight control over China’s largest internet companies. Artificial intelligence poses a similar dilemma: a transformative force that promises economic gains while having the potential to undermine the party’s grip on power. ...
“What OpenAI and Alibaba are legally required to do in terms of predeployment testing is quite different,” said Scott Singer, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. ...
After ChatGPT set off a global craze for chatbots, Chinese officials quickly announced draft rules for A.I. systems capable of answering questions, carrying on conversations and creating pictures and videos. ...
Even as Chinese officials seek to balance the promise of artificial intelligence with an aversion to risk, the technology has become increasingly important to Beijing amid slowing economic growth. ...
See the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/business/china-ai-regulations.html
When the Builders Tell You to Pay Attention
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Amodei just published an essay called "The Adolescence of Technology." It's long and dense, but it deserves your time.
He describes AI systems that exceed Nobel Prize-winning intelligence across multiple fields arriving within one to two years, a scenario he calls "a country of geniuses in a datacenter" running millions of instances simultaneously at 10 to 100 times human speed. He covers five risk categories: AI systems behaving unexpectedly, the democratization of bioweapons, AI-enabled authoritarianism, massive job displacement, and dangerous concentrations of economic power.
What distinguishes this essay from the usual AI doom discourse is Amodei's restraint. He acknowledges uncertainty throughout, avoids breathless predictions, and calls for targeted interventions rather than sweeping regulation. He is threading a needle between complacency and panic, and doing it carefully. ...
See the full story here: https://shellypalmer.com/2026/01/when-the-builders-tell-you-to-pay-attention/
Yann LeCun On Artificial General Intelligence And The Digital Commons
... In other words, they’re book-smart, but not street-smart.
LeCun put it this way:
“If you want intelligent behavior, you need a system to be able to anticipate what's going to happen in the world, and also predict the consequences of its actions. If you can do this, then it can plan a sequence of actions to arrive at a particular objective. And that's what's missing. That's the concept of a world model. You’re not going to get intelligent behavior without that.”
See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwerner/2026/01/27/yann-lecun-on-artificial-general-intelligence-and-the-digital-commons/
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