The US Justice Department said Wednesday it charged two brothers for stealing $25 million in cryptocurrency within approximately 12 seconds. Anton Peraire-Bueno, 24, of Boston, and James Pepaire-Bueno, 28, of New York, were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The Justice Department claimed the defendants exploited "the very integrity of the Ethereum blockchain to fraudulently obtain" $25 million worth of cryptocurrency. The brothers were arrested Tuesday in Boston and New York, respectively, and will have a court appearance late W ..read more

China's Baidu (9888.HK) said on Thursday it was confident artificial intelligence would help drive future sales and profits after reporting first-quarter revenue growth of just 1% as weak Chinese economic growth kept advertisers cautious. The company has touted the current fourth version of its GPT-like large language model Ernie - which has undergone several iterations since it was unveiled in March last year - as rivalling OpenAI's GPT-4. "While we operate our legacy business in a challenging environment and (expect) slower revenue growth in the near term, we remain confident that AI will he ..read more

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US have identified three of the oldest stars in the universe, according to the school’s physics department. The stars are thought to have emerged during the early stages of galaxy formation, 12 to 13 billion years ago, around the time when the first galaxies were taking shape, it said. Using data collected from the Magellan-Clay telescope in Chile, researchers analysed the stars' spectra to determine their chemical composition and age. Read also: When stars die: white dwarfs Researchers characterised the stars based on thei ..read more

Meta Platforms' (META.O), opens new tab social media sites Facebook and Instagram will be investigated for potential breaches of EU online content rules relating to child safety, EU regulators said on Thursday, a move that could lead to hefty fines. Tech companies are required to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content on their platforms under the European Union's landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), which kicked in last year.\ The European Commission said it had decided to open an in-depth investigation into Facebook and Instagram due to concerns they had not adequately addres ..read more

Neuralink's disclosure last week that tiny wires inside the brain of its first patient had pulled out of position is an issue the Elon Musk company has known about for years, according to five people familiar with the matter. The company knew from animal testing it had conducted ahead of its U.S. approval last year that the wires might retract, removing with them the sensitive electrodes that decode brain signals, three of the sources said. Neuralink deemed the risk low enough for a redesign not to be merited, the sources added. Neuralink is testing its implant to give paralyzed patients the a ..read more

A government research institute in the United Arab Emirates on Monday released a new open source GenAI model, which could rival the ones from big technology companies. Abu Dhabi's Technology Innovation Institute (TII) said it was releasing the Falcon 2 series: Falcon 2 11B, a text-based model, and Falcon 2 11B VLM, a vision-to-language model that can generate a text description of an uploaded image. TII is a research centre within Abu Dhabi's Advanced Technology Research Council. The UAE, a major oil exporter and influential Middle East power, is making huge investments in artificial intellige ..read more

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI plans to announce on Monday updates to its flagship chatbot as its most advanced AI model GPT-4, which "feels like magic," CEO Sam Altman said on X on Friday. The company said on X that it will hold a livestream conference on Monday at 10am PT (1700 GMT) to "demo some updates to ChatGPT and GPT-4." Reuters last week reported that the Microsoft -backed startup was planning an announcement Monday of an AI-powered search product one day ahead of Google's I/O developers conference, citing sources. Read: How Google Gemini compares to ChatGPT But the company decided to delay the ..read more

A bid by Australia's online watchdog to impose a ban on dozens of violent X posts stumbled on Monday when a top judge ruled in favour of the social media firm. Federal Court Justice Geoffrey Kennett refused to extend a temporary order to take down posts that show the stabbing of a Sydney priest in April, pending further legal action. "The orders of the court will be that the application to extend the interlocutory injunction... is refused," Kennett said, without immediately giving the reasons for his decision. Australia's eSafety Commissioner wants Elon Musk's company to take down about 65 vid ..read more

Robobus, an unmanned minibus independently developed by a Chinese self-driving startup, is expected to hit the roads of the city of Turin at the foot of the Alps, and provide short-distance transportation services. According to the developer, Guizhou Hankaisi Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. (PIX Moving), the company will cooperate with Italian mobile travel solution provider Tecnocad to provide the service. PIX Moving has already obtained a public road self-driving vehicle test and operation license approved by the regulatory authorities of the Turin municipal government. Read: Shenzhen accel ..read more

SpaceX's Starship rocket, a futuristic vehicle designed to eventually carry astronauts to the moon and beyond, will probably have its fourth flight in 3-5 weeks, the company's Chief Executive Elon Musk said in a post on social media platform X on Saturday. "Objective is for the ship to get past max heating or at least further than last time," Musk said in response to a question about Starship. Earlier this year, SpaceX's Starship rocket completed nearly an entire test flight through space on its third try getting farther than ever before, but disintegrated on its return to Earth. During a webc ..read more