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August 24, 2025
 

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META

Chatbots are pivoting to the ad model and optimizing for eyeballs, just like social media did. And AI knows more about us than Google or Facebook ever did.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 21, 2025
Ads ruined social media. Now they’re coming to AI.
Imagine a person telling their AI they’re feeling depressed, and the system recommending some affordable holiday destinations or medication to address the problem.
A new Facebook data center is under construction in Eagle Mountain, Utah, in May 2019. Manufacturers and builders are reaping windfalls from the AI-driven data center surge.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 18, 2025
The AI building boom is bound to bust
For now, the boom has room to run. The introduction of artificial intelligence into the workplace and society will match the rollout of electricity and the internet.
Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs speaks in 2007 at an iPod event in San Francisco. Top tech executives are engaged in a fierce battle for the best people, with employees holding all the cards and the days of collusion long gone. 
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 17, 2025
The AI talent war is the stuff of Steve Jobs’ nightmares
Today, as some of the same players become locked in AI talent wars, we’re starting to get a sense of what Jobs was so afraid of.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg makes a keynote speech at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, in September last year.
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 15, 2025
Meta AI rules let bots hold ‘sensual’ chats with kids and offer false info
Meta's standards don’t necessarily reflect "ideal or even preferable” generative AI outputs, an internal document states. But they have permitted provocative behavior by the bots.
In a report released on Wednesday, Australia's eSafety Commissioner said YouTube, along with Apple, failed to track the number of user reports it received of child sex abuse appearing on their platforms.
BUSINESS / Tech
Aug 6, 2025
Australian watchdog says YouTube and others 'turning a blind eye' to abuse material
The regulator said some providers had not made improvements to address safety gaps on their services despite it putting them on notice in previous years.
Microsoft is among a group of tech giants that are pouring money into artificial intelligence in order to get ahead of the competition.
BUSINESS
Aug 2, 2025
The AI race has Big Tech spending $344 billion this year
Microsoft, Amazon.com, Meta and Alphabet are pouring money into artificial intelligence in order to get a leg up on the competition.
U.S. President Donald Trump celebrates after signing executive orders on artificial intelligence at the “Winning the AI Race” Summit in Washington on July 23.
COMMENTARY / World / Geoeconomic Briefing
Aug 1, 2025
Will Trump’s tech policies propel U.S. success against China?
As China mobilizes all its resources for an all-out contest for technological supremacy, the U.S. cannot afford economic inefficiencies and to push its closest partners away.
Apple executives John Giannandrea (left) and Craig Federighi. Shares of the company declined as much as 1.5% to $210.82, reaching a session low in New York trading.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 30, 2025
Apple loses fourth AI researcher in a month to Meta’s Superintelligence team
Meta previously lured away the leader of the Apple foundation models group, Ruoming Pang, with a compensation package valued at more than $200 million.
Silver Dania, a Norwegian-owned ship suspected of cable sabotage in the Baltic Sea, whose crew are Russian citizens, in the port of Tromso, Norway, where it has been brought for investigation, on Jan. 31.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 22, 2025
Lawmakers want U.S. tech CEOs to address concerns about submarine cables
Washington has been sounding the alarm about the network of more than 400 subsea cables that handle 99% of international internet traffic and about threats from China and Russia.
The EU flag and Meta logo in an illustration from 2023
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 22, 2025
Meta, X and LinkedIn appeal unprecedented VAT claim by Italy
Italian tax authorities argue that free user registrations with X, LinkedIn and Meta platforms should be seen as taxable transactions.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been frustrated by the quality of his company's past AI efforts, so has been investing heavily in the energy, computing power and talent needed to compete in the fast-moving AI race.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 15, 2025
Meta to spend billions building gigawatt-size data centers for AI
Frustrated by the quality of Meta’s past AI efforts, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been investing heavily in energy, computing power and talent to compete in the fast-moving AI race.
Meta hired Ruoming Pang, who ran Apple’s AI models team, with a pay package in the hundreds of millions over a several-year period, according to sources.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 10, 2025
Meta poached Apple’s Pang with pay package of over $200 million
Apple didn’t try to match Meta's offer to engineer Ruoming Pang as it far exceeded pay at the company for leaders other than CEO Tim Cook.
Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been recruiting top artificial intelligence engineers for the company’s new superintelligence division.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 8, 2025
Apple loses top AI models executive to Meta’s hiring spree
The departure of Ruoming Pang marks another setback in the iPhone maker’s struggling efforts in the emerging space.
The people tasked with removing harmful content from tech giants like Meta Platforms or TikTok report a range of noxious health effects, from loss of appetite to anxiety and suicidal thoughts.
WORLD / Science & Health
Jul 4, 2025
Content moderators for Big Tech unite to tackle mental trauma
Social media companies are facing increasing pressure to address the emotional toll of moderation, with many moderators reporting a range of toxic health effects.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's controlling interest in the tech titan frees him to have the company invest heavily in artificial intelligence efforts.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jun 30, 2025
Meta spending big on AI talent but will it pay off?
OpenAI boss Sam Altman recently lamented that Meta has offered $100 million bonuses to engineers who jump to Zuckerberg's ship, where hefty salaries await.
Racks of servers being tested at the new Amazon Web Services facility in New Carlisle, Indiana, on June 3
BUSINESS / Tech
Jun 30, 2025
AI data-center boom could destroy Big Tech's net-zero plans
The tech sector faces a "climate strategy crisis" as its data centers demand ever more electricity and water to power growing fields, such as artificial intelligence.
A San Francisco District Court has ruled that Meta's use of copyrighted works to train its AI model was "transformative" enough to constitute "fair use" under copyright law, in the second such courtroom triumph for AI firms this week.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jun 26, 2025
U.S. judge rules for Meta in AI training copyright case but says it isn't lawful
The ruling said the authors could have pitched a winning argument — that by training AI with copyrighted works, tech firms are creating competition in the marketplace.
Morning commute traffic streams past the Meta sign outside the headquarters of Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc, in Mountain View, California, in 2022.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jun 12, 2025
Meta taps top researchers from Google and Sesame for new AI lab
The new group is part of an ambitious, and costly, effort by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to gain ground on rivals like Google and OpenAI.
Alexandr Wang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Scale AI, has emerged as an influential force in the artificial intelligence industry. His company's army of contractors label the data that tech firms use to train and improve their AI models.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jun 9, 2025
Meta set to throw billions at startup that leads AI data market
Scale AI uses an army of contractors to label the data that tech firms use to train and improve their AI models
Meta headquarters in Menlo Park, California, on Jan. 28
BUSINESS / Tech
Jun 8, 2025
Meta in talks for Scale AI investment that could top $10 billion
The financing could exceed $10 billion in value, some of the people said, making it one of the largest private company funding events of all time.
Japan to revise romanization rules for first time in 70 years
The Agency for Cultural Affairs is recommending replacing the government’s long-standing Kunrei system with more widely used Hepburn-style spellings.
Women-only communities flourish in China
Chen Yani (right), nicknamed "Keke," eats lunch with friends and guests in a female co-living space she founded called "Keke's Imaginative Space" in Hangzhou, in eastern China's Zhejiang province, on July 14.
JR East cancels luxury train run over crew's boozing
East Japan Railway said Thursday that it will cancel one trip of a luxury overnight sleeper service, which was originally scheduled to depart from Ueno Station in Tokyo on Aug. 30, after crew members were found to have been drinking alcohol on duty.
Man arrested over deadly stabbing of woman in Kobe
Masashi Tanimoto, 35, the suspect in the deadly stabbing a 24-year-old woman, is taken into custody in Kobe on Friday night.
Japanese city proposes two-hour daily limit for smartphone use
The Toyoake Municipal Government in Aichi Prefecture is planning to enact an ordinance to urge all smartphone users in the city to limit screen time to two hours a day outside work or school.
Alicia Keys closed Summer Sonic, but J-pop owned it
Summer Sonic’s 2025 lineup demonstrated its strength, showcasing the latest in J-pop, including “new kawaii” act Fruits Zipper.
Is the LDP’s catch-all approach to politics still effective?
Former economic security minister Sanae Takaichi visits Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on Aug. 15. Political commentator Toru Hashimoto has suggested that Takaichi ought to lead a group of like-minded hawkish politicians out of the Liberal Democratic Party and form their own party.
Fingers sore from too much phone time? You might have ‘sumaho yubi.’
A catch-all term for tendonitis and arthritis caused by excessive smartphone use, 'sumaho yubi' may be difficult to treat for gadget-crazy Japan.
As farm minister, Koizumi is held ‘hostage’ by Ishiba
Farm minister Shinjiro Koizumi (center) attends a Lower House session on Aug. 1. Locking Koizumi into the Cabinet is Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s way of turning a potential rival into a team player, according to one expert.
Big burgers and bigger ambitions for Japan's Burger King
Kazuhiro Nomura, president of BK Japan Holdings, which operates Burger King in Japan

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past
By Alex K.T. Martin

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