Tech & Science

Small desktop AI models can rival cloud systems, Stanford study finds

A Stanford University study is drawing fresh attention for its finding that small language models running on desktop computers can match the performance of large cloud-based AI systems on the vast majority of tasks — while consuming far less energy.…

Study finds 2011 Tohoku quake’s core-reflected waves shifted all of Japan eastward

The devastating 2011 Tohoku earthquake was so powerful that it sent seismic waves plunging nearly 6,000 kilometers to Earth's iron core and back — and when those waves returned to the surface minutes later, they triggered a massive fault slip…

NASA’s Lucy mission finds ancient water on asteroid Donaldjohanson

NASA's Lucy spacecraft has revealed that asteroid Donaldjohanson once harbored liquid water, according to findings published in the journal Science on June 18, 2026. The results, drawn from data collected during Lucy's flyby of the asteroid on April 20, 2025,…

OpenAI says GPT-5.5 Instant now matches its top models on health questions

OpenAI announced on Wednesday that GPT-5.5 Instant, the default model powering free ChatGPT accounts, has reached a level of health-response quality comparable to the company's most advanced reasoning models. The update arrives as more than 230 million people use ChatGPT…

General Intuition raising $300M to train AI on gaming data

General Intuition, the AI lab that emerged from gaming clip platform Medal after rejecting a reported $500 million acquisition offer from OpenAI, is raising approximately $300 million at a valuation of just over $2 billion, according to TechCrunch reporting cited…

Google DeepMind publishes plan to defend against rogue AI agents

Google DeepMind Alphabet Inc. on Thursday published what it calls an "AI Control Roadmap," a 35-page technical framework that treats the company's own AI agents not as trusted software tools but as potential insider threats capable of sabotage, data exfiltration,…

Top 10% of consumers cause trillions in environmental damage, study finds

The world's highest-consuming 10% of people are responsible for environmental damage worth $1.7 trillion to $5.7 trillion every year — a sum that at its upper end dwarfs what the international community has pledged to spend on climate action and…

Fossil babies upend 150-year theory of how animals first reached land

For 150 years, scientists assumed the first vertebrates to leave the seas underwent a tadpole-like stage on their path to life on land. A study published Thursday in the journal Science upends that narrative, revealing that fossilized hatchlings of early…

Webb telescope finds salt clouds on the ‘Pink Planet’

New observations from the James Webb Space Telescope have uncovered clouds made of salt swirling through the atmosphere of GJ504b, a mysterious magenta-hued world discovered more than a decade ago. The finding, published Wednesday in the Astronomical Journal, provides some…

Perplexity unveils Brain, a self-improving memory system for agents

Perplexity AI has begun rolling out Brain, a continuously learning memory system designed to make its Computer agent platform more capable over time. CEO Aravind Srinivas announced the feature on LinkedIn, describing it as "a self-improving context-graph of all your…

OpenAI’s o3 model helped diagnose 18 children with unsolved rare diseases

Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard used OpenAI's o3 Deep Research model to identify 18 new diagnoses among children whose rare genetic diseases had stumped clinicians for years, according to a study published Wednesday in NEJM AI.

Google, Microsoft launch open standard for AI agent discovery

A coalition of major technology companies on June 17 published the Agentic Resource Discovery specification, an open protocol designed to let AI agents find, evaluate, and connect to tools and services across the internet without hard-coded integrations.

Apple opens iOS to rival app stores in Brazil

Apple announced on Thursday that developers in Brazil can now distribute iOS apps through alternative marketplaces and process payments outside of its system, marking the formal implementation of a settlement reached with Brazilian competition regulator CADE in December 2025.

Amazon aims to sell Trainium AI chips beyond its own cloud

Amazon Amazon.com, Inc. is moving closer to selling its proprietary Trainium AI chips directly to outside companies, with Peter DeSantis, the company's senior vice president overseeing AI, custom silicon, and quantum computing, reinforcing that ambition at VivaTech 2026 in Paris…

Anthropic opens Seoul office amid US export controls on its top AI models

Anthropic opened its Seoul office on Tuesday and announced a memorandum of understanding with South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT to cooperate on AI safety, even as the company's most advanced models remain disabled worldwide under a U.S. government…

BYD launches flagship Datang SUV after record 150,000 preorders

BYD officially launched its Great Tang full-size electric SUV on Wednesday, June 17, confirming over 150,000 pre-orders — the highest pre-launch total for any single model in the Chinese automaker's history. The seven-seat flagship undercuts its own pre-sale pricing, starting…

Manus investors plan $2B buyback from Meta after Beijing order

The original Chinese investors in AI startup Manus are planning to repurchase the company from Meta at the same $2 billion price the social media giant paid for it, according to a report by The Information published Thursday. The buyback…

Swiss startup raises $100M as Anthropic ban fuels sovereign AI push

The U.S. Commerce Department's abrupt order forcing Anthropic to disable its most powerful AI models has set off a global reckoning over dependence on American AI infrastructure, with governments and startups from Europe to India scrambling to articulate alternatives.

98-qubit quantum computer’s record results published in Nature

Quantinuum and Sandia National Laboratories have published peer-reviewed results in Nature demonstrating that Helios, a 98-qubit trapped-ion quantum computer, operates well beyond the reach of classical simulation while maintaining the highest gate fidelities of any commercial quantum system.

Nvidia becomes top data center Ethernet vendor, IDC reports

Nvidia has become the number-one vendor in the global data center Ethernet switching market for the first time, according to IDC's Quarterly Ethernet Switch Tracker, marking one of the fastest ascents in the history of enterprise networking.

ChatGPT generates graphic violence, sexual images from simple prompts

OpenAI's ChatGPT can be manipulated into generating sexualized and graphically violent images using only minor modifications to a widely circulated prompt, according to findings by British AI security firm Mindgard reported by the BBC on Tuesday.

WHO releases first clinical guidelines for all Ebola and Marburg viruses

The World Health Organization on Tuesday released its first comprehensive clinical guidelines covering all major filovirus diseases, including every known species of Ebola and Marburg virus, as a fast-moving outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo strain in the Democratic Republic of…

EU cybersecurity agency meets Anthropic over Mythos AI access

The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, known as Enisa, is set to meet with U.S. artificial intelligence company Anthropic in San Francisco on Thursday to discuss the cybersecurity implications of the firm's advanced Mythos model, according to reports confirmed by…

Basel researchers build reusable nanorobot with DNA ‘Velcro’

Researchers at the University of Basel in Switzerland have developed a modular nanorobot that uses complementary DNA strands to autonomously snap its components together, a design they liken to a miniature lunar rocket. The system, published in Advanced Functional Materials,…

France and Germany demand EU digital sovereignty at VivaTech

The opening day of VivaTech 2026 in Paris on Wednesday brought a pointed political message alongside the startup demos and keynote speeches: Europe must stop talking about digital sovereignty and start building it. France and Germany's digital ministers used the…

Linux Foundation launches Appia Foundation for AI safety standards

The Linux Foundation on Wednesday announced the Appia Foundation, a new initiative to create open specifications and conformity assessment frameworks for AI systems, adding to a broader push to bring standardization to the rapidly evolving AI ecosystem. The launch comes…

Nvidia’s Huang opens VivaTech with European AI factory push

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took the stage at VivaTech 2026 in Paris on Wednesday as the 10th-anniversary edition of Europe's largest technology conference opened its doors, delivering a keynote focused on the continent-wide buildout of AI factories, agentic AI systems,…

SK Telecom identified as firm behind Anthropic export controls

The Trump administration's sweeping decision to bar foreign nationals from accessing Anthropic's most advanced artificial intelligence models was triggered by the discovery of a South Korean telecommunications company with suspected ties to China on the firm's access list, according to…

Apple logs every App Store keystroke with no opt-out, researchers find

Security researchers have revealed that Apple records every keystroke users make when searching the App Store, including timestamps precise enough to calculate typing speed, with no option to disable the data collection.

Two AI systems match or beat doctors in Nature studies

Two AI systems designed for clinical medicine performed at or above the level of physicians in simulated settings, according to a pair of studies published Wednesday in Nature. The results mark a new benchmark for medical AI but come with…