Silicon Valley baron Elon Musk insulted rival billionaire Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday, escalating a tech wizard war of words over whether robots will become smart enough to kill their human creators.

“His understanding of the subject is limited,” Musk said in a tweet about the Facebook founder whose algorithms and other technology revolutionized social media and won 2 billion monthly active users.

Previously, Zuckerberg was asked about Musk’s views on the dangers of robots. In his response, Zuckerberg chided “naysayers” whose “doomsday scenarios” were “irresponsible.”

Zuckerberg and Musk, who is chief executive of electric car maker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, have been waging a debate at a distance over the past few days on the dangers of artificial intelligence. The two sharply disagree on whether tougher government regulation is needed for the technology.

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the tweet, which Musk sent at 3:07 a.m. California time (1007 GMT) from his verified account, @elonmusk.

The term artificial intelligence, or AI, is used to describe machines with computer code that learns as it goes. The technology is becoming widely used in sectors such as healthcare, entertainment and banking.

Fear that machines could become so intelligent that they might rise up and overthrow humanity is a common theme in science fiction.

Musk told a gathering of U.S. governors this month that the potential dangers are not so imaginary, and that they should move to regulate AI.

“I keep sounding the alarm bell, but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react, because it seems so ethereal,” Musk said, according to a video of the event.

“AI is a fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization,” he added.

On Sunday, Zuckerberg was streaming video live on Facebook while grilling brisket at home and answering viewers’ questions when someone asked him to weigh in on Musk’s comments.

“I’m really optimistic,” Zuckerberg countered, “and I think that people who are naysayers and try to drum up these doomsday scenarios, I don’t understand it. It’s really negative, and in some ways I actually think it’s pretty irresponsible.”

Zuckerberg said AI could result in better diagnoses of diseases and the elimination of car wrecks, and he said he did not see how “in good conscience” people could want to slow down the development of AI through regulation.
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A Wisconsin company is offering to microchip its employees, enabling them to open doors, log onto their computers and purchase break room snacks with a simple swipe of the hand.

Three Square Market, also known as 32M, says it expects about 50 employees to take advantage of the technology. The chips are the size of a grain of rice and will be implanted underneath the skin between the thumb and forefinger.

32M provides technology for the self-serve break room market. CEO Todd Westby says in a statement that he expects the chip technology to eventually be used in air travel, public transit and retail.

The River Falls-based company is partnering with BioHax International, of Sweden, which according to Three Square Market already has chipped many of its employees.

 
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In spite of an earlier denial, the Chinese government has tightened its grip on the Internet, stepping up efforts against netizens’ access to unsupervised connections, including those via virtual private networks (VPNs) halfway through its 14-month-long crackdown nationwide.

VPNs are third-party services that help bypass the so-called Great Firewall, installed by state censors to filter traffic between Chinese and overseas servers and block banned websites such as Google, Twitter and scores of international news media, including VOA.

“Some local services have been brought offline, some VPN apps no longer work, and the authorities are targeting other specific VPN providers,” Charlie Smith, a co-founder of Greatfire.org, said in an emailed reply to VOA.

The anti-censorship group’s earlier report showed that China blocked 135 of the world’s top 1,000 websites.

VPN crackdown

Following the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s announcement in January to clean up unsanctioned VPNs, the authorities were reported to have required the country’s three largest telecommunication firms — China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom — to shut down what they call illegal networks by February 1.

Guangzhou Huoyun Information Technology Ltd., which operates in around 20 cities across China, was also said to have received a directive from the authorities to start blocking services beginning last Tuesday.

Yet the ministry on July 12 denied it has issued any such notice, accusing foreign media of having reported falsely.

“The object of the new regulation is those unauthorized enterprises and individuals who haven’t got the license to use VPNs… As for those foreign trade enterprises and multinational companies [which] need to get access to cross-border network, they can rent VPNs from those authorized carriers,” the ministry reiterated, according to local media.

Negative impact

The tightening move, however, has triggered worries and harsh criticism from online users and expatriates in China, as well as the country’s top-tier academics and researchers, some of whom say their work and competitiveness will be negatively impacted if they are cut off from the outside world.

While some find government-approved carriers acceptable, other users say they can’t possibly seek such carriers to get around the government’s great firewall.

Michael Qiao, formerly a journalism professor from Beijing Foreign Studies University, said he hasn’t been able to access free-of-charge VPNs over the past month and one of his two paid VPN services has also ceased to work.

Qiao speculated that the recent tightening may have something to do with the enactment of China’s Cybersecurity Law in June, increased traffic to fugitive tycoon Guo Wengui’s Twitter postings or the upcoming 19th party congress.

The Xi administration has long promoted the concept of “cyberspace sovereignty” — control of China’s own digital space.

Overall, Qiao finds the government’s long-term trend to stifle Internet freedom a violation of basic civil rights.

“It’s within [everyone’s] fundamental human rights to have access to information and communications. Some researchers or intellectuals may argue that their access to information shouldn’t be as restricted as ordinary people. That’ll be an act of discrimination. It’s not right,” he said.

Cat and mouse game

He added that Beijing can’t possibly win the cat and mouse game, as the precedent of the country’s ban on private satellite dishes has shown.

But Greatfire.org’s Smith isn’t as optimistic.

“This is a cat and mouse game until the cat gets tired and decides to eat the mouse, and at the moment I can hear Xi Jinping’s large round belly starting to grumble,” he said.

Qiao said the all-out ban aims to consolidate Xi’s grip on power while the country risks a brain drain, which will hurt its intellectual creativity and future technological and international trade development.

Already, Freedom House, a U.S.-based democracy and human rights non-profit group, has branded China as “the world’s worst abuser of Internet freedom.”

Online complaints

While lodging complaints over the government’s abuse of internet freedom, many online users took to social media to seek help.

On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform, a user asked for pointers to VPNs that still work since he has problem connecting many of his usual VPNs.

“If I tell you here, those VPNs will soon cease to work,” one replied while another said jokingly “Are you trying to get our VPNs banned?”

Other users compared China’s ban to that in Russia, whose parliament passed a bill on Friday to outlaw VPNs and other proxy services, citing concerns about the spread of extremist materials.

“[China] joins hand with the Big Brother,” a Weibo user commented while another mocked “[Other than Russia], come to think of North Korea, suddenly I no longer feel so sad.”
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Animated chatter spills out from a corner of tech giant Google’s Nairobi offices as five Kenyan schoolgirls discuss their upcoming trip to California where they hope to win $15,000 for I-cut, an app to end Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

The five teenagers, aged 15 to 17, are the only Africans selected to take part in this year’s international Technovation competition, where girls develop mobile apps to end problems in their communities.

“FGM is a big problem affecting girls worldwide and it is a problem we want to solve,” Stacy Owino told the Reuters, while snacking on chocolate on a break from boarding school before flying to the United States on Aug. 6.

“This whole experience will change our lives. Whether we win or not, our perspective of the world and the possibilities it has will change for the better.”

The five girls from Kenya’s western city of Kisumu call themselves the “Restorers” because they want to “restore hope to hopeless girls,” said Synthia Otieno, one of the team.

One in four Kenyan women and girls have undergone FGM, which involves the partial or total removal of the external genitalia, even though it is illegal in the East African nation.

Although the girls’ Luo community does not practice FGM, they have friends who have been cut.

“We were very close, but after she was cut she never came back to school,” said Purity Achieng, describing a classmate who underwent FGM. “She was among the smartest girls I knew.”

I-cut connects girls at risk of FGM with rescue centers and gives legal and medical help to those who have been cut.

Its simple interface has five buttons — help, rescue, report, information on FGM, donate and feedback — offering users different services.

Kenya is one of the most technologically advanced countries in Africa, known for its pioneering mobile money transfer apps.

Technovation, which is sponsored by Google, Verizon and the United Nations, aims to teach girls the skills they need to become tech entrepreneurs and leaders.

“We just have to use this opportunity as a stepping stone to the next level,” said schoolgirl Ivy Akinyi who plans to become a computer programmer.
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A network of satellites that can take high-resolution photos and colored videos of earth is planned. The images could be used in many ways. Videos could track moving vehicles and observe mining sites, while photos would make it possible for the construction of 3D models of the ground. The idea is to provide businesses and other groups with data to help them monitor certain activities or predict future events. VOA’s Deborah Block reports.
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Russia’s parliament passed a bill to outlaw the use of virtual private networks, or VPNs, and other Internet proxy services, citing concerns about the spread of extremist materials.

The State Duma on Friday unanimously passed a bill that would oblige Internet providers to block websites that offer VPN services. Many Russians use VPNs to access blocked content by routing connections through servers outside the country.

The lawmakers behind the bill argued that the move could help to enforce Russia’s ban on disseminating extremist content online.

The bill has to be approved at the upper chamber of parliament and signed by the president before it comes into effect.

Russian authorities have been cracking down on Internet freedoms in recent years. Among other things they want Internet companies to store privacy data on Russian servers.
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Sears will begin selling its appliances on Amazon.com, including smart appliances that can be synced with Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa.

The announcement Thursday sent shares of Sears soaring almost 11 percent. The tie-up with the internet behemoth could give shares of the storied retailer one of its biggest one-day percentage gains ever.

Sears, which also owns Kmart, said that its Kenmore Smart appliances will be fully integrated with Amazon’s Alexa, allowing users to control things like air conditioners through voice commands.

“The launch of Kenmore products on Amazon.com will significantly expand the distribution and availability of the Kenmore brand in the U.S.,” Sears Chairman and CEO Edward Lampert said in a company release.

Sears bleeding money?

Sears has struggled with weak sales for years, and announced more store closings earlier this month, partly due to the emergence of Amazon.com and other internet operators. It said in March that there was “substantial doubt” it could continue as a business after years of bleeding money.

Neil Saunders, managing director of research firm GlobalData Retail, said it’s a win for Sears, putting its products where customers are shopping.

Sales at existing Sears stores, a key measure of a retailer’s health, have been in rapid retreat for years.

“Other channels and routes to market are needed,” Saunders said.

Lifeline for Sears

Many saw the agreement with Amazon.com as a lifeline for Sears, with the volume of trading company shares enormous on Thursday.  

And the law of action-reaction is almost always visible when Amazon.com is in the mix.

Shares of other major retailers that sell appliances, Best Buy, Home Depot and Lowe’s, fell between 4 percent and 6 percent.

Sears will handle after-sale services

The agreement with Seattle-based Amazon goes beyond the point of sale for Sears. Also part of the deal is delivery, installation and the service work that comes with product warranties, which will be provided by Sears Home Services.

While Saunders doesn’t think the deal represents a big shift for the retail sector, he said that it does illustrate how retailers must adapt and offer goods through multiple channels if they want to thrive. He believes others are already scrambling to do so.

Shares of Sears Holdings Corp., based in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, just outside of Chicago, jumped 92 cents to close at $9.60.
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Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk on Thursday said he had received “verbal” approval to start building a high-speed underground transport system linking New York and Washington that could cut travel time between the cities to about half an hour.

Musk, the chief executive of electric car maker Tesla Inc. and rocket company SpaceX, is seeking to revolutionize transportation by sending passengers and cargo packed into pods through an intercity system of giant vacuum tubes known as the “hyperloop.”

He recently started a project, the Boring Company, to build transport tunnels for the system, which he says would be far faster than current high-speed trains and use electromagnetic propulsion.

In tweets on Thursday, Musk said he had “Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins.”

Amtrak’s high-speed Acela train currently takes nearly three hours to cover the distance between the two cities, assuming no delays.

Without clarifying, Musk also tweeted that a first set of tunnels would be to “alleviate greater LA [Los Angeles] urban congestion,” adding that the company would “probably” do a loop from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and another in Texas.

“City center to city center in each case, with up to a dozen or more entry/exit elevators in each city,” he wrote.

Musk acknowledged there was still a “lot of work” to do before formal approval was granted, but said he was optimistic.

Signaling that Musk’s tweets may be premature, the press secretary for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted a reply: “This is news to City Hall.”

Last month, Musk tweeted that he had “promising conversations” about a tunnel network with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

By traveling in vacuum tubes on magnetic cushions, hyperloop trains would avoid being slowed down by air pressure or the friction of wheels on rails, making them faster and cheaper to operate, supporters say. A number of startups have begun to develop the technology, despite concerns about the cost and practicality.

On its website, the Boring Company says its goal is to lower costs by a factor of 10 or more. Some tunneling projects today cost as much as $1 billion per mile, the company said.

In 2013, Musk said a hyperloop between Los Angeles and San Francisco would cost less than $6 billion and take seven to 10 years for completion.

Major infrastructure projects typically require complex approval from various levels of government and likely would cost billions of dollars.

President Donald Trump in March met with Musk, who raised the Boring Company idea then, White House officials said. Musk also talked about his plans to launch a mission to Mars.

White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn in April praised the idea of Musk using tunnels to speed rail transit on the densely populated East Coast of the United States and also to cut traffic congestion in Los Angeles.

In a statement, the White House said it had had “promising conversations to date” with Musk and was committed to “transformative infrastructure projects.”

The Boring Company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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A Chinese telecoms carrier said it had begun closing virtual private networks (VPNs) and other tools that can bypass the so-called Great Firewall, which state

authorities use to filter and block traffic between Chinese and overseas servers.

A spokesman for Guangzhou Huoyun Information Technology Ltd, which operates in around 20 cities across China, told Reuters the company received a directive from authorities to start blocking services from midday on Tuesday.

Enlisting telecom firms will extend China’s control of its cyberspace – which it believes should mimic real-world border controls and be subject to the same laws as sovereign states.

While the Great Firewall blocks access to overseas sites, much like a border control, the telecoms firms can filter and censor online access at a more granular level, in the home and on smartphones.

“The telcos have methods at their disposal that the Great Firewall may not,” said Philip Molter, Chief Technology Officer at Golden Frog, which operates VyprVPN, a popular VPN in China.

“Because these routers deal with far less traffic, they can block more aggressively using more resource intensive methods.”

The telecoms firms have taken up their new filtering roles under a law introduced in January, and set to come into full effect next March. Experts say this could lead to increasingly targeted attacks on VPNs, one of the few tools Chinese can use to access overseas internet services.

A member of China-based anti-censorship site GreatFire.org, who goes by the pseudonym of Charlie Smith, said the authorities were shifting the responsibility to the telecoms firms.

“This is a major step towards closing whatever windows are still left open,” he said.

New attacks

The latest moves come after dozens of popular China-based VPNs have been shut down in recent weeks, and there have been rolling attacks on overseas VPNs.

This week, users also reported partial blocks and delays in the encrypted messaging app WhatsApp, the latest western social media tool to be hit. And researchers found that messages related to Liu Xiaobo, a dissident and Nobel laureate who died

from cancer in custody last week, disappeared from local messaging apps.

VPN services say they are bracing for further blocks in the run-up to this autumn’s Communist Party Congress.

President Xi Jinping, who has overseen a marked sharpening of China’s cyberspace controls, including tough new data surveillance and censorship rules, is expected to consolidate his hold on power at the Congress, which takes place every five years.

The January regulations make telecoms providers and other internet service providers (ISPs) liable for filtering and blocking unlawful network tools, according to the Ministry of Information Industry and Technology (MIIT).

Beyond VPNs, experts say the telecoms firms could potentially bar a range of services, and even prevent mobile apps from being installed.

“Much of the usage we see from China is via mobile devices, so limitations on this kind of functionality would hit a large number of Chinese,” said Golden Frog’s Molter.

Yet, despite the ambitious plans, the authorities will likely struggle to put up the blanket safeguards necessary to cripple foreign VPNs by March, experts say.

“There’s been an ongoing game of cat-and-mouse with China and VPNs … we’re optimistic that VPNs will continue to be accessible from China for the foreseeable future,” said a spokesman for ExpressVPN, noting its user numbers continue to grow in China.

Small businesses

While VPNs with foreign servers, including VyprVPN and ExpressVPN, play cat-and-mouse with regulators, quickly patching blocks and developing workarounds, small business owners say they have been hard hit by the rapid loss of local VPNs.

“Our small logistics business has just imploded”, said one business owner on the Weibo microblogging site, adding she could no longer access foreign sites despite trying several new VPNs.

Large numbers of free or low-cost VPN services flourished in Chinese app stores in the 18 months or so prior to the recent blocks.

“The ministry says we must apply for a license … and we have to buy Chinese services,” one person operating a small online media site told Reuters, asking not to be named. “If the website touches on social and political news, we have to hand over the platform account passwords. Of course, if we still had a VPN this wouldn’t be the case.”

The MIIT did not respond to a request for comment. It said last week that the new measures were not intended to harm business interests, and has previously said it would allow businesses to operate VPNs licensed by the government.

“These newest measures are one more hurdle for Chinese users to jump, in what is turning out to be an extremely long steeplechase,” said GreatFire.org’s Smith.
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China unveiled a national artificial intelligence (AI) development plan on Thursday, laying out its ambitions to build world-leading technology amid heightened international friction over applications of AI in military technology.

The value of the country’s core AI industries will exceed 150 billion yuan ($22.15 billion) by 2020 and 400 billion yuan ($59.07 billion) by 2025, the State Council said in a notice on Thursday.

“The situation with China on national security and international competition is complex… we must take initiative to firmly grasp this new stage of development for artificial intelligence and create a new competitive edge,” it said.

The plan comes as the United States is poised to bolster its scrutiny of investments, including artificial intelligence, over fears that countries including China could access technology of strategic military importance.

It follows a similar national AI development plan released by the U.S. in October last year.

The report says China aims to catch up to global leaders by rectifying existing issues including a lack of high-end computer chips and equipment, software and trained personnel.

It outlines strategic plans to strengthen links between private firms, research bodies and military bodies to promote mutual development in AI.

It also says it will increase the role of government in guiding development of AI with policy support and market regulation as well as developing AI safety assessments and control capabilities.

China has already begun investing heavily in artificial intelligence technology, including a mix of private and state-backed initiatives.

Several top Chinese firms have established research bases in the U.S., including Baidu Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd.

This year AI was named as a strategic technology by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in an annual report that lays out the most important leadership priorities.
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An underwater robot entered a badly damaged reactor at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant Wednesday, capturing images of the impact of its meltdown, including key structures that were torn and knocked out of place. 

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the robot, nicknamed “the Little Sunfish,” successfully completed the day’s work inside the primary containment vessel of the Unit 3 reactor at Fukushima, which was destroyed by a massive March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

TEPCO spokesman Takahiro Kimoto praised the work, saying the robot captured views of the underwater damage that had not been previously seen. However, the images contained no obvious sign of the melted nuclear fuel that researchers hope to locate, he said.

The robot was left inside the reactor near a structure called the pedestal, and is expected to go deeper inside for a fuller investigation Friday in hopes of finding the melted fuel.

“The damage to the structures was caused by the melted fuel or its heat,” Kimoto told a late-night news conference held nine hours after the probe ended its exploration earlier in the day.

‘The Little Sunfish’

The robot, about the size of a loaf of bread, is equipped with lights, maneuvers with five propellers and collects data with two cameras and a dosimeter. It is controlled remotely by a group of four operators.

The robot was co-developed by Toshiba Corp., the electronics and energy company charged with helping clean up the plant, and the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning, a government-funded consortium.

It was on a mission to study the damage and find the fuel that experts say has melted, breached the core and mostly fallen to the bottom of the primary containment chamber, where it has been submerged by highly radioactive water as deep as 6 meters (20 feet).

The robot discovered that a grate platform that is supposed to be below the reactor core was missing and apparently was knocked down by melted fuel and other materials that fell from above, and that parts of a safety system called a control rod drive were also missing.

Robots key to mothballing plant

Remote-controlled robots are key to the decadeslong decommissioning of the damaged plant, but super-high levels of radiation and structural damage have hampered earlier probes at two other reactors at the plant.

Japanese officials say they want to determine preliminary methods for removing the melted nuclear fuel this summer and start work in 2021.

Scientists need to know the fuel’s exact location and understand the structural damage in each of the three wrecked reactors to work out the safest and most efficient ways to remove the fuel.

Two earlier robots failed

Robots tested earlier became stuck inside the two other reactors. A scorpion-shaped robot’s crawling function failed and it was left inside the plant’s Unit 2 containment vessel. A snake-shaped robot designed to clear debris for the scorpion probe was removed after two hours when its cameras failed because of radiation levels five times higher than anticipated.

The robot used Wednesday was designed to tolerate radiation of up to 200 sieverts, a level that can kill humans instantly.

Kimoto said the robot showed that the Unit 3 reactor chamber was “clearly more severely damaged” than Unit 2, which was explored by the scorpion probe.
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Amazon.com has launched a social feature called Spark that allows members to showcase and purchase products on its platforms, the retail giant’s first clear move into the world of social media.

Spark, which is currently only available for Amazon’s premium paying Prime members, encourages users to share photos and videos, just like popular social media platforms Instagram and Pinterest. The new feature publicly launched on Tuesday for use on mobile devices that use Apple’s iOS operating system.

Spark users can tag products on their posts that are available on Amazon and anyone browsing the feeds can instantly find and purchase them on the platform. Users can also respond to posts with “smiles,” equivalent to Facebook’s “likes.”

“We created Spark to allow customers to discover – and shop – stories and ideas from a community that likes what they like,” said an Amazon spokeswoman.

“When customers first visit Spark, they select at least five interests they’d like to follow and we’ll create a feed of relevant content contributed by others. Customers shop their feed by tapping on product links or photos with the shopping bag icon.”

Amazon has also invited publishers including paid influencers and bloggers to post on Spark. Their posts are identified with a sponsored hashtag.

Many Amazon users on social media called the service a cross between Instagram and Pinterest with a touch of e-commerce.

Brand strategist Jill Richardson (@jillfran8) said: “Been messing with #AmazonSpark all morning and I am LIVING. It’s like Pinterest, Instagram, and my credit card had a baby and it’s beautiful.”

Community manager Lucas Miller (@lucasmiller3) also tweeted: “So #amazonspark is going to be a dangerous pastime.

The app is already too easy to shop…” Amazon shares closed up 0.2 percent at $1,026.87 on Wednesday.
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