Tesla Inc on Monday broke ground on a Texas lithium refinery that CEO Elon Musk said should produce enough of the battery metal to build about 1 million electric vehicles (EVs) by 2025, making it the largest North American processor of the material.  The facility will push Tesla outside its core …

Most Democrats and Republicans agree that the federal government should better regulate the biggest technology companies, particularly social media platforms. But there is little consensus on how it should be done.  Concerns have skyrocketed about China’s ownership of TikTok, and parents have grown increasingly worried about what their children are …

Tracking down accurate information about Philadelphia’s elections on Twitter used to be easy. The account for the city commissioners who run elections, @phillyvotes, was the only one carrying a blue check mark, a sign of authenticity. But ever since the social media platform overhauled its verification service last month, the …

Google is planning to make its search engine more “visual, snackable, personal and human,” with a focus on serving young people globally, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing documents. The move comes as artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as ChatGPT are rapidly gaining in popularity, highlighting a technology …

Billionaire Warren Buffett said artificial intelligence may change the world in all sorts of ways, but new technology won’t take away opportunities for investors, and he’s confident America will continue to prosper over time. Buffett and his partner Charlie Munger are spending all day Saturday answering questions at Berkshire Hathaway’s …

White House Mulls AI Oversight, Protections with Industry Leaders …

Good news for all the password-haters out there: Google has taken a big step toward making them an afterthought by adding “passkeys” as a more straightforward and secure way to log into its services.  Here’s what you need to know:  What are passkeys?   Passkeys offer a safer alternative to …

A computer scientist often dubbed “the godfather of artificial intelligence” has quit his job at Google to speak out about the dangers of the technology, U.S. media reported Monday. Geoffrey Hinton, who created a foundation technology for AI systems, told The New York Times that advancements made in the field …

The European Union is likely to reach a political agreement this year that will pave the way for the world’s first major artificial intelligence (AI) law, the bloc’s tech regulation chief, Margrethe Vestager, said on Sunday. This follows a preliminary deal reached on Thursday by members of the European Parliament …

Artificial intelligence, or AI, could potentially transform arts and entertainment, from music to movies, but it is also raising concerns. Is AI a creative tool or a threat to creators and artists? VOA’s Mike O’Sullivan examines the question. …

British antitrust regulators on Wednesday blocked Microsoft’s $69 billion purchase of video game maker Activision Blizzard, thwarting the biggest tech deal in history over worries that it would stifle competition for popular titles like Call of Duty in the fast-growing cloud gaming market. The Competition and Markets Authority said in …

Mars is Earth’s next-door neighbor in the solar system — two rocky worlds with differences down to their very core, literally. A new study based on seismic data obtained by NASA’s robotic InSight lander is offering a fuller understanding of the Martian deep interior and fresh details about dissimilarities between …

A Japanese space start-up will attempt Tuesday to become the first private company to put a lander on the Moon.    If all goes to plan, ispace’s Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander will start its descent towards the lunar surface at around 15:40 GMT.    It will slow its orbit some 100 kilometers …

The U.S. Space Force said on Monday that Elon Musk’s SpaceX was granted approval to lease a second rocket launch complex at a military base in California, setting the space company up for its fifth launch site in the United States.  Under the lease, SpaceX will launch its workhorse Falcon …

Twitter accounts operated by authoritarian governments in Russia, China and Iran are benefiting from recent changes at the social media company, researchers said Monday, making it easier for them to attract new followers and broadcast propaganda and disinformation to a larger audience.  The platform is no longer labeling state-controlled media …

The AI bot ChatGPT has passed exams, written poetry, and deployed in newsrooms, and now politicians are seeking it out — but experts are warning against rapid uptake of a tool also famous for fabricating “facts.” The chatbot, released last November by U.S. firm OpenAI, has quickly moved center stage …

The Biden administration announced more than $80 million in funding Thursday in a push to produce more solar panels in the U.S., make solar energy available to more people, and pursue superior alternatives to the ubiquitous sparkly panels made with silicon. The initiative, spearheaded by the U.S. Department of Energy …

A viral AI-generated song imitating Drake and The Weeknd was pulled from streaming services this week, but did it breach copyright as claimed by record label Universal? Created by someone called @ghostwriter, Heart On My Sleeve racked up millions of listens before Universal Music Group asked for its removal from …

Competition between the U.S. and China in artificial intelligence has expanded into a race to design and implement comprehensive AI regulations. The efforts to come up with rules to ensure AI’s trustworthiness, safety and transparency come at a time when governments around the world are exploring the impact of the …

U.S. homeland security officials are launching what they describe as two urgent initiatives to combat growing threats from China and expanding dangers from ever more capable, and potentially malicious, artificial intelligence. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced Friday that his department was starting a “90-day sprint” to confront more frequent …

Twitter has removed labels describing global media organizations as government-funded or state-affiliated, a move that comes after the Elon Musk-owned platform started stripping blue verification checkmarks from accounts that don’t pay a monthly fee. Among those no longer labeled was National Public Radio in the U.S., which announced last week …

The CEO of TikTok tried to calm critics’ fears about the security of his company’s app during an appearance Thursday. Shou Chew was asked at a TED2023 Possibility conference if he could guarantee Beijing would not use the TikTok app, owned by the Chinese tech company ByteDance, to interfere in future …

While artificial intelligence, or AI, is not new, the speed at which the technology is developing and its implications for societies are, for many, a cause for wonder and alarm. ChatGPT recently garnered headlines for doing things like writing term papers for university students. Tom Graham and his company, Metaphysic.ai, …

This time it’s for real.  Many of Twitter’s high-profile users are losing the blue check marks that helped verify their identities and distinguish them from impostors on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform.  After several false starts, Twitter began making good on its promise Thursday to remove the blue checks …

SpaceX’s giant new rocket blasted off on its first test flight Thursday but exploded minutes after rising from the launch pad and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. Elon Musk’s company was aiming to send the nearly 400-foot (120-meter) Starship rocket on a round-the-world trip from the southern tip of …