For humanity: China's AI philosophy wins broad international backing

 For humanity: China's AI philosophy wins broad international backing

Chinese President Xi Jinping's advocacy for a people-centred approach to artificial intelligence (AI) – emphasizing that AI should be a trusted, human-controlled tool for the positive, for good and for all – has won broad international support and acclaim.

In his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the 2026 World AI Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance, Xi put forward a fundamental and vital concept that establishes a philosophical anchor for AI development and governance, according to Katleho Moloi, a professor at the University of South Africa.

"Ultimately, we don't want a system that will replace humanity, but we want a system that will improve the quality of life of humanity," Moloi said of the AI technology in an interview with China Media Group (CMG).

In a nod to the Chinese president's stress that AI's development is to be a trustworthy tool for humanity, he said, "The theme that we believe in is how we can make people's life better, not only by producing techniques that will replace them, but produce techniques that will make whatever they do to be more profitable, and more efficient."

Xi on Friday announced the creation of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), a Shanghai-headquartered body that aims to ensure that AI is beneficial, safe, fair and serves the benefit of all humanity.

"I fully support President Xi's initiative, and this will augur well for the world," said Liow Tiong Lai, chairman of the ASEAN-China Association for the Promotion of Industrial Cooperation and Development and a former Malaysian transport minister, since the world needs "a body that will be able to promote accessibility and equality."

WAICO "will be able to ensure that we train the necessary talent, we provide the necessary infrastructure. We also share our values so that whatever regulations and whatever AI initiative, it is more humane and it is for the humanity," Liow said.

Public goods that answer the needs of the Global South

Analysts have welcomed Xi's pledge that China, as a responsible major country, is always committed to providing international public goods relating to AI.

"We must carry out extensive international cooperation and help Global South countries with capacity building to bridge the AI and digital divides, promote sustainable development, and prevent creating new historical injustice in AI," Xi said on Friday.

President Xi's emphasis on China as a provider of AI public goods is significant, said Haris Bilal Malik, a researcher at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, a think tank in Pakistan.

"It carries a broader meaning that the artificial intelligence is no more an issue of rich countries, or developed countries, or the great powers. It should serve the humanity across the board, across the globe, for every country, especially for the Global South," Malik said.

Donald Ramotar, former president of Guyana, also commended China's key proposals on AI and its push for a governance framework that leaves no nation behind.

China is advocating that the United Nations play a central role in forming "a global AI governance system with broad consensus to benefit all humanity," Ramotar wrote in a recent opinion piece. "This is to ensure that no country is left behind."

An open approach that builds global capacity, not walls

The international community has also applauded and embraced China's public pledge to roll out a range of practical measures for global AI capacity building over the next five years.

Xi announced at Friday's gathering that China will provide developing countries with 5,000 opportunities in AI training and seminar programs, and enable 30 countries to use the AI-powered meteorological warning system MAZU, to safeguard homes around the world.

China will also develop international AI application cooperation centers with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the League of Arab States, the African Union, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and BRICS.

Blade Nzimande, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation of South Africa, hailed the significance of the Chinese concept of building a community with a shared future for humanity and advocating universal participation by all nations in AI development and governance.

African nations lack AI infrastructure, and China has proactively created favorable conditions to enable developing countries to genuinely share in the dividends of AI development, Nzimande said.

Nikki Gastinel, head of the California Software Association, hailed China's approach to AI development as one rooted in openness and the goal of benefiting all.

In expressing her appreciation, Gastinel called on all other nations to build more bridges for communication and cooperation rather than erecting walls that breed division and confrontation.

Xue Lan, dean of the Institute for AI International Governance at Tsinghua University, dismissed the narrative promoted by some in Europe and the United States that frames China and the US as rivals locked in head-to-head AI competition.

Xue said the Chinese president has made it crystal-clear in his speech that China develops AI for the positive, for good and for all humanity, thus spelling out the core purpose of China's AI strategy.

A Mexican surveillance giant you’ve never heard of is now watching the US border

A Mexican surveillance giant you’ve never heard of is now watching the US border - Rest of World


A Mexican surveillance giant you’ve never heard of is now watching the U.S. border

Grupo Seguritech quietly built a $1.27 billion surveillance empire. Now it’s expanding into the U.S. and across Latin America.

Adriana Zehbrauskas for Rest of World
By JOSÉ OLIVARES
8 APRIL 2026 • CIUDAD JUÁREZ, MEXICO
TRANSLATE





This article was produced in partnership with Type Investigations.

Inside a law enforcement command center in Ciudad Juárez, a police officer scrolled across a map on her touch-screen computer. As she used her fingers to navigate through the Mexican state of Chihuahua, where Juárez is located, different colored bubbles lit up. “That one is a camera,” the analyst explained, pointing at a circle. “We can just click it and see the live view.”


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“Look,” an analyst next to her said, demonstrating how the technology works. They zoomed in on a camera feed inside the women’s unit of a state prison. On screen, the camera focused on a group of women sitting around a table — the details of their playing cards clearly visible.

For decades, Juárez, which sits just across the border from El Paso, Texas, has been considered one of the most dangerous cities in the world. For years, rival gangs and drug cartels have battled for control of the city. To combat the violence, Mexican authorities have engaged in an ongoing fight against criminal groups in the area using surveillance technology.

This command center is key to Chihuahua’s growing surveillance network, Gilberto Loya Chávez, the state’s square-jawed and charismatic secretary of public security, said during a tour of the facility last October. Behind him, large screens blasted live camera feeds from throughout the state, as more than a dozen analysts typed away on computers.

CXMT’s founder is giving 40% of his new fortune to his workers

CXMT’s founder is giving 40% of his new fortune to his workers

Zhu Yiming became one of China's richest men on Monday, when the memory chipmaker he runs closed its Shanghai debut up 466%. He has promised to hand 40% of that fortune to his staff. The pledge is real, it is written into the prospectus, and it starts paying out in three years.

July 27, 2026 - 12:17 pm


Image by: CXMT


Zhu Yiming got about $10bn richer on Monday. He has promised to give roughly $5.6bn of it away, and not to charity.

The chairman of CXMT saw his fortune climb nearly 300% to $13.9bn when the memory chipmaker closed its Shanghai debut up 466%, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. About 40% of that is earmarked for his employees, Bloomberg reported.

The promise is not new. It is the price tag that is.
What he actually pledged

Zhu committed the shares in CXMT’s IPO prospectus in May, well before anyone knew what Monday would do. He promised to transfer 767.9 million shares into employee incentive programmes.



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At the debut close of 49 yuan, those shares are worth about $5.6bn. Had the stock merely held its 8.66 yuan sale price, the same pledge would have been worth under $1bn.

He also agreed to restrictions on selling his own stock for 10 years. Bloomberg notes that both commitments are unusual in the history of mainland-listed Chinese companies.
The catch, and there are several

Nobody is getting paid soon. The bonus only begins paying out in three years, and payments are then phased across a decade.

CXMT also has not said who qualifies. The prospectus does not specify whether some or all staff benefit, and the company did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.

The headcount gives a sense of scale. CXMT had 19,298 employees at the end of 2025. Split evenly, which the company has not said it will be, $5.6bn is roughly $290,000 a head.

That figure is not far off what the competition already pays. Samsung chip workers received an average bonus of about $340,000 this year, and SK Hynix has made comparable payouts.
This is a talent war, not a gift

Chinese founders now have to satisfy the state and hold on to engineers at the same time. The second problem is the one money can solve.

“This is very much a newly emerging phenomenon,” said Meng Shen, director at investment bank Chanson & Co. “Talent retention is definitely a key factor.”

Shen added that no single founder can drive success alone in high-growth tech, and that it takes a large influx of top talent.

The argument is familiar from the other side of the same industry. Jensen Huang recently said companies should pay workers as much as possible. In Korea, the same logic has produced its own problems, from appliance staff rallying over bonuses that went to chip divisions, to warnings that the payouts are an inflation risk.
He has done this before

Zhu has form on symbolic sacrifice. In 2018 he stepped back from GigaDevice Semiconductor, his first successful public venture, to run CXMT in partnership with the Hefei municipal government.

At the time he pledged not to draw a single yuan in salary until the project turned a profit. It was a multibillion-dollar bet on a company with no product.

That bet worked. CXMT is now China’s largest maker of DRAM, the memory that feeds server databases and AI workloads, and the fourth largest in the world.

He is also not alone. Yan Junjie of MiniMax has pledged to take no salary until his firm hits an AI milestone, while handing his own shares to long-serving staff.
Who actually owns CXMT

There is a larger shareholder in this story than Zhu, and it is the state.

Before the IPO, the Hefei municipal government held more than 30% through local state vehicles. China’s Big Fund II held over 8%. The Big Fund, formally the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, exists to buy the country semiconductor self-sufficiency.

Set against what Zhu and the state made on Monday, $5.6bn is a modest slice. The generosity is real, and it is also affordable.
Whether it happens

A pledge that starts in three years and runs for ten is a long promise. Shen, who called the trend genuinely new, was also the one to say so.

“Whether these promises will actually be fulfilled, and to what extent, depends entirely on how binding the commitments really are,” he said.

He put the founder’s side of it more bluntly. “For founders at this stage, wealth eventually becomes nothing more than a number,” he said, adding that it can be a number with negative side effects.

Zhu spent seven years not taking a salary to build this company. He has now committed to a decade of not selling it, and to giving away a share of it beginning three years from now. On Monday the market decided what that share is worth. It picked $5.6bn.

EU: Meta’s apps are so addictive they violate the law

  

EU: Meta’s apps are so addictive they violate the law

Matt Cardy/Getty Images

A European Union investigation has determined that Meta’s Facebook and Instagram apps are too addictive, presumably after regulators lost half a day watching cooking reels and clips of 20-year-old TV shows. Now, the European Commission wants Zuck and company to make some changes, or face massive fines.

What happened? EU investigators announced yesterday that Meta is currently in breach of the bloc’s Digital Services Act. Regulators said Meta didn’t fully consider how some of its app features fuel compulsive use by sending users, especially younger ones, into a zombified “autopilot mode.” Meta will now have time to propose remedies before a final judgment—and fines—are handed down. The European Commission has some suggestions:

• Disable autoplay and infinite scroll.
• Implement screen time breaks.
• Make its recommendation algorithm less “engagement-oriented.”

Fine line: If the preliminary findings are upheld, Meta could get fined up to 6% of its annual global revenue. The company said it disagrees with the report, pointing to its recent efforts to strengthen parental controls, but that it will “continue to engage constructively” with regulators.

And elsewhere in the Meta-verse…the company removed its controversial new Muse Image feature from Instagram, following days of complaints from users and Hollywood agencies and unions over how all IG accounts were opted in for their images to be used in the tool.

Private spreadsheets for sensitive work - Proton

 

Private spreadsheets for sensitive work

In case you missed it, Proton Drive now includes Proton Sheets, alongside Proton Docs, to protect your spreadsheets, documents, and other data from tracking, surveillance, and AI training. Like Docs, Sheets is fully end-to-end encrypted, so you can safely collaborate with friends and colleagues online in real time. Proton Sheets looks and works like the tools you already know, while ensuring only you and your collaborators can access your data.

To get started, go to drive.proton.me and select New spreadsheet. Try it now

 

American Tech Companies Are Suddenly Sweating Bullets as China Catches Up on AI

Reality is setting in.

By Frank Landymore

Published Jul 9, 2026 9:50 AM EDT

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The head start that the US companies enjoyed in the AI race is quickly vanishing. Chinese competitors are now nipping at their heels, and it’s causing a wave of anxiety in the American sector.

Over a year ago, DeepSeek spurred an existential crisis — and a mass stock selloff — in the US tech industry when it released a competitive AI model created for a fraction of the cost of the leading American models.

If that was a wakeup call, then the release of GLM-5.2 last month is loudly banging on the front door. The model, from the Chinese start-up Z.ai, has been hailed as nearly or just as powerful as frontier US systems, especially when it comes to its coding capabilities and cybersecurity applications — while being significantly cheaper to use. 

It’s generated heaps of discussion in tech circles. Marc Andreessen, one of Silicon Valley’s foremost venture capitalists, tweeted that “AI insiders are saying GLM-5.2 is the first Chinese AI model to match and often beat the American big lab public AI models with no compromises.”

Perhaps betraying their sense of a weakening grip on the field, US companies are crying foul about China’s AI ascension. Earlier this year, Anthropic accused China’s DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax of using a technique called distillation to illegally gather data to imitate its models, which is essentially claiming that they cheated their way to the front of the pack.

In distillation, a weaker “student” model is trained on the outputs of a more advanced “teacher.” AI labs routinely use this to create smaller and more efficient versions of the their largest systems, but Anthropic says Chinese firms are abusing the trick in a mass coordinated effort involving tens of thousands of accounts that probe its models for data that it can extract and use to train their own AI models, thereby effectively pilfering Anthropic’s tech. These claims were relitigated last month, when Anthropic sent a letter to US senators accusing Chinese titan Alibaba of also engaging in this practice.

“These distillation attacks are carried out illicitly, systematically and at industrial scale to harvest US AI capabilities across frontier labs and repackage them as their own,” Anthropic told the senators, per the New York Times.

But Anthropic may be wasting its breath. Distillation is an open secret among rivals in the US tech sector. And as the NYT notes, it’s not even clear if it’s illegal. Unless some court rulings go their way, US firms will have to rely on their own countermeasures to stop it. (Anthropic was caught trying to do this by secretly embedding code in its Claude Code model that allowed it to spy on Chinese users, creating alarm among its customer base.)

American firms could also benefit for some geopolitical strong-arming, such as the US cutting off China’s access to its powerful AI chips, or even blocking Americans from accessing Chinese models (which isn’t as far-fetched as it may sound, when you consider that the US threatened banning TikTok as a way of forcing China’s ByteDance into divesting its US operations, or that it’s also effectively banned Chinese electric vehicles, which are far cheaper than American ones, with prohibitively high tariffs).

Chinese firms may very well have used surreptitious measures to help catch up to the US, but according to the NYT, many experts believe that a distillation crackdown would be meaningless, as building a model as advanced as Z.ai’s can’t be explained by distillation alone. US firms may simply have to accept that their Chinese counterparts are now on equal footing. The complaining about distillation is a convenient distraction at a time when their coding products are under more scrutiny for being too expensive to use as they get deployed in corporate settings — or perhaps a desperate plea for the US government to intervene and rescue them from the horrors of global, free market competition.

More on AI: Bank of America Warns That AI Investors Are in for a Nasty Reality Check

Prepare to pay a fortune for your next iPhone

 

Prepare to pay a fortune for your next iPhone. Does $1,399 sound fine?

 

It seems 2027 is going to be the year when iPhones finally get a juicy price hike. According to an estimate by The Wall Street Journal, the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro could cost as much as $1,299. However, if one were to take into account the planned camera hardware upgrades, the starting price of the iPhone 18 Pro could touch $1,399. In an interview with the Journal, Tim Cook made it clear that Apple will dig into its cash reserves to address some of the supply chain constraints in the face of rising memory and storage module prices and the tight supply. However, the Apple chief made it clear that the company is not going to invest in building up manufacturing facilities for these components. An iPhone that's nearly $200 pricier than its predecessor is definitely a shocker, but if you look at this smartphone industry, even the price of Chinese flagship phones has touched the $1,500 to $1,600 mark leading into 2027.

 

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Xbox starts major layoffs to save its lagging biz

  Xbox starts major layoffs to save its lagging biz

Morning Brew Inc, Photo: Getty Images

One of the biggest names in gaming could use an infinite money glitch right now. With revenue falling and a string of acquisitions not paying off, Microsoft-owned Xbox will slash about one-fifth of its staff and divest from some development studios, CEO Asha Sharma said yesterday. Sharma called it “the most significant restructure” in the company’s history. Xbox will… Lay off 1,600 people this week and another 1,250 over the next year. Sell or spin off four to five game studios that it acquired within the past decade, which will cut another 350+ people from Xbox’s staff (games that are already announced won’t be canceled, Sharma said). “Our business today is not healthy,” Sharma wrote in a memo, acknowledging the company’s measly 3% profit margin. Its quarterly revenue recently declined 5% year-over-year. The Game Pass gamble One big reason for Xbox’s slowdown appears to be its struggling subscription service, Game Pass. TL;DR: To build up an enticing Game Pass library, Xbox bought production giant Activision Blizzard for $69 billion in 2023 and ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Skyrim-maker Bethesda, for $8.1 billion in 2021. Those splurges didn’t pan out. (Xbox is keeping both companies, but the fifth studio it wants to divest is part of ZeniMax.): Game Pass currently has 30 million subscribers, a far cry from the 77 million that Xbox projected it would reach this year. In a normal year, the company lost 64 cents for every dollar it invested, Sharma wrote. But now…Sharma, who became CEO in February, said Xbox will return to growth in 2027. Since taking the helm, she has moved to reduce the number of games Microsoft publishes and reprioritize its most popular franchises, like Minecraft, Fallout, and Candy Crush. This streamlining comes as the AI boom sends memory chip prices soaring, pushing Xbox and its competitors to raise console prices. Zoom out: Xbox’s layoffs are part of 6,400 planned job cuts across Microsoft, whose massive AI spend is spooking investors. It’s the worst-performing megacap tech stock so far this year.

You can now make money off your 500 followers

You can now make money off your 500 followers

Niv Bavarsky

If your dream career involves a ring light, but you can’t get millions of people to like and subscribe, your moment has arrived. Big brands are increasingly looking to do business with small-time influencers, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Research firm Emarketer forecasts that US-based influencers will earn $21 billion this year and…Around 45% of brand spending on influencer marketing will go to creators with less than 20,000 followers, compared with 19.5% in 2021.
Nearly 20% of spending will go to “nanoinfluencers” with less than 5,000 followers, compared with a measly 3.1% five years ago.

It’s not just brands with tiny budgets going micro: Companies like Target, American Eagle, and Soul Cycle are among those working with smaller creators—some with as few as 500 followers, per WSJ.
Why are brands thinking small?

Like everything suddenly becoming pistachio-flavored, you can blame it on the algorithm. Since most of what you see in your feed now doesn’t come from accounts you follow, sponsoring a creator with a big following no longer guarantees views.

Meanwhile, the little guys are driving engagement in a big way. Growth marketing firm ATTN found that microinfluencers average a 3.2% engagement rate, while those with 1+ million followers average a 1.1% rate. Accounts with big followings can generate significantly more revenue for brand partners, but they also cost as much as 18x more to partner with, according to Bloomberg.

But maybe don’t quit your day job yet: Evangelizing a brand to your small but mighty band of followers probably isn’t a shortcut to livestreaming from inside a private jet. Compensation for smaller influencers can often just be discounts, $10 gift cards, or some freebies, the WSJ noted. And unlike a steady but less glamorous office job, the size of your paycheck from influencing can vary each month. More than half of the 3,000 full-time creators surveyed by Influencer Marketing Hub last year said they earned below a living wage.

You probably just need some alone time

 You probably just need some alone time

Unsplash

On Tuesdays, the Brew’s Matty Merritt brings you the news you need to make life a little easier during your 9-5, 5-9, or OOO.

It turns out the greatest workplace perk is some gosh darn peace and quiet. Consulting group Superteams Inc. surveyed 6,000 workers across different industries and found that members of the most successful teams all reported having uninterrupted time to work solo.

When asked which amenities they had available to them—including collaborative workspaces, free coffee, gyms, etc.—individuals identified as members of “superteams” (i.e. more productive, collaborative, minimal tense Slack DMs) were 52% more likely than teams considered average to have access to spaces for quiet, focused work.

It might not matter where that space is. This research suggests that the debate over remote work or RTO may not be as important as whether employees can find a silent spot and a chunk of time to tackle all the stuff they’ve been brainstorming during the team huddle.—MM