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South China Morning Post

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ByteDance loses key AI research leader behind Seed models amid monetisation push

A renowned artificial intelligence researcher who spearheaded foundational AI research for TikTok owner ByteDance has announced his departure from the company. The unexpected development comes as the firm is increasingly looking to monetise its core AI offerings, including subscription plans for its flagship consumer AI app Doubao. Gu Quanquan, also an associate professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), announced his departure from ByteDance on social...

South China Morning Post

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Tencent shares jump on expectations of AI agent within WeChat super app

Shares of Tencent Holdings surged as much as 8 per cent on Tuesday, driven by investor optimism over reports that the Chinese tech giant is close to launching an artificial intelligence agent within its super app WeChat. Tencent was testing a prototype AI agent for the WeChat ecosystem, which boasts 1.4 billion active users, and planned to start the compliance process as soon as this month for a public launch, according to a report by the Financial Times on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources. The...

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China’s SAIC plans to build first EU car plant in Spain’s Galicia

China’s SAIC Motor plans to set ⁠up a car ⁠factory in Spain’s ⁠northwestern region of Galicia that would be its first production facility in the European Union, the regional government said on Monday. Galicia’s leader Alfonso Rueda said his administration ‌had given strategic priority to the project, with an initial investment envisaged at around €200 million (US$232 million). The project, which includes a logistics hub, still requires the central government’s approval for foreign direct...

South China Morning Post

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Beyond Nvidia: how US export curbs are forcing China to redesign its AI chip industry

Under the weight of sustained US export controls on advanced semiconductors, China’s AI chipmakers are battling to forge a self-reliant silicon ecosystem capable of breaking Nvidia’s stranglehold on the market. At the centre of this rivalry is a fundamental design debate: Should the country rely on the versatile graphics processing unit (GPU) or pivot to the highly specialised application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)? The fight is no longer about finding a single Nvidia clone; it is about...

South China Morning Post

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Chinese EV makers shift focus from price wars to AI capability: Morgan Stanley

The focus of competition for Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) is shifting from prices to artificial intelligence capability, as carmakers try to manage weakening demand amid tightened regulations, according to Morgan Stanley. The push in AI would likely bring models with conditionally autonomous driving capability, or Level 3 (L3), to market, said Tim Hsiao, head of the Greater China auto and shared mobility research team at Morgan Stanley, in a recent interview with the South China Morning Post....

South China Morning Post

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PolyU Faculty of Business celebrates 30th anniversary of its DBA programme, with over 400 academic and industry leaders gathering to explore new trends for scholar-leaders in AI era

[The content of this article has been produced by our advertising partner.] The Faculty of Business at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) hosted a grand dinner on 14 May to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) programme. The event was attended by Mr Paul CHAN, Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government of the People’s Republic of China, as the guest of honour. It brought together over 400 industry...

South China Morning Post

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AI firm MiniMax prepares for mainland China listing after shares surge in Hong Kong

MiniMax Group, the Chinese artificial intelligence model company, has officially kicked off plans to sell shares in mainland China. This offers onshore investors access to AI players beyond chipmakers and completes a dual-listing status in addition to Hong Kong. The Shanghai-headquartered company signed an agreement with Citic Securities on Friday, hiring the brokerage to help prepare for a sale of yuan-denominated shares. While other details on the listing are scant, it is widely expected that...

South China Morning Post

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Hong Kong may host Shenzhou-23 crew in 2027, including astronaut Lai Ka-ying

Hong Kong could welcome the astronauts of the Shenzhou-23 mission, including the city’s history-making payload specialist, as early as the first half of next year, the technology chief has said. Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry Sun Dong also said on Sunday that the government would establish a new space manufacturing research centre under InnoHK by this year, focusing on using 3D printing and artificial intelligence (AI) to support future space development. “I hope that after...

South China Morning Post

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Firms spent heavily on AI. Now rising costs are outpacing its value

AI is getting expensive – and companies are starting to rethink their embrace of the disruptive technology. Playing by a well-worn Silicon Valley playbook, artificial intelligence companies charged rock-bottom prices to hook customers after ChatGPT burst onto the scene. Kevin Simback of start-up incubator Delphi Labs calls it the era of “subsidised intelligence” – meaning investors were basically footing the bill so companies could offer AI on the cheap. “But the tides are beginning to turn,”...

South China Morning Post

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How a decade-long bet on photonics handed this Chinese venture capital firm an AI windfall

As artificial intelligence strains the physical limits of existing data centres, scientists and investors are turning to the ultimate speed limit of the universe for the next computing frontier: light. For Mi Lei, founder of CAS Star, a venture capital firm born out of the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the sudden global fascination with photonics is less a surprise than a delayed validation. It is a thesis he has spent more than a decade trying to support with funding. “New...

South China Morning Post

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AI ‘slopaganda’ and the battle for Philippine political reality

The Philippines is no stranger to politically weaponised memes and internet trolls. What has changed is the way information warfare is waged, now requiring nothing more than a smartphone and a well-crafted prompt. Supporters of former president Rodrigo Duterte helped pioneer the industrialised use of social media to spread disinformation, rewarding loyalists and destroying opponents through the ruthless deployment of memes, viral videos, paid amplifiers and manufactured trending topics. Analysts...

RTHK News (Hong Kong)

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HK lawyers can flourish in Central Asia: Law Society

Hong Kong's legal professionals are uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between the different legal systems used in the city and Central Asia, according to the president of the Law Society of Hong Kong. Roden Tong will be part of Chief Executive John Lee's delegation to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. While Hong Kong practises common law under "One Country, Two Systems", most Central Asian jurisdictions follow civil law traditions. Speaking to RTHK ahead of the trip, Tong said Hong Kong's legal sector could play a "pivotal role" in facilitating investment between the two markets — pointing to a little-known common law enclave in the heart of Central Asia. He was referring to the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) in Kazakhstan that opened in 2018. "They adopt common law within the AIFC," Tong said. "That is quite very similar to Hong Kong." The AIFC features an independent court system whose judges are predominantly from the United Kingdom, creating a legal environment Tong described as "very equivalent to Hong Kong". The president revealed the Law Society has been building ties with the region since 2016, and signed a memorandum of understanding with the AIFC in 2022. "Hopefully during this delegation, on this occasion, we can further explore more business opportunities for the entire business sector," he said. Tong drew parallels with Dubai, where its international financial centre also operates under a common law system — a model Hong Kong legal professionals have already navigated successfully. For Central Asian companies looking to invest in Hong Kong and access the mainland Chinese market, Tong said the city's legal infrastructure offers several distinct advantages. Hong Kong's dual-language capability — English, Cantonese and Mandarin — provides certainty and predictability for international businesses, he said, particularly in dispute resolution, arbitration and mediation. Tong also pointed to the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (Cepa), where overseas companies partnering with Hong Kong firms can adopt common law in the Greater Bay Area — complete with tax incentives. The recent establishment of the International Organisation for Mediation (IOMed) headquarters in Hong Kong adds another layer of appeal as well, Tong said. The Law Society recently met with Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Christopher Hui and IOMed Secretary-General Teresa Cheng to discuss creating a specialised mediation panel for commodities trading. "This is something that, if at the end of the day, there's any disputes or even in the contractual formulation... Hong Kong legal professionals can actually play this pivotal role," Tong said. Edited by Raymond Yeung

South China Morning Post

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China launches AI framework to improve ‘black box’ transparency and raise standards

China has pledged to improve the accuracy, reliability and transparency of AI through a new national evaluation framework, as policymakers move to establish common standards for assessing the fast-evolving technology. New guidelines released by the central government said Beijing would create a common yardstick for AI, allowing models, computing power and data quality to be measured and compared under a unified national standard. The move comes as artificial intelligence plays an increasingly...

South China Morning Post

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Is Huawei’s new chip scaling law a true breakthrough, or mere hype?

Microchip development has always been a race to build smaller and smaller transistors – the fundamental components of chip circuits. Now China’s Huawei Technologies wants to change the game entirely. Faced with US tech export restrictions that block its access to the world’s most advanced chipmaking machinery, Huawei is proposing a fundamental shift in semiconductor progress: stop obsessing over how small the transistors are and start focusing on how fast data moves through the system. It is a...

South China Morning Post

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Chip boom powers Hong Kong stock exchange at 40. Innovation, resilience set next stage

Stepping into the former trading hall in Exchange Square on Thursday was like walking through a doorway into the 1980s. Brokers, wearing the iconic red jackets of the period, stood alongside Cathay Pacific Airways flight attendants in retro uniforms, evoking memories of the hall before its closure. The special gong-striking ceremony in Central marked the 40th anniversary of the merger of Hong Kong’s four stock exchanges into the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK). Cathay was the first company to...

South China Morning Post

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Alibaba AI voice model cracks top 5 globally, outperforming US rivals in regional accents

A new artificial intelligence voice model from Alibaba Group Holding has beaten out Western rivals OpenAI and xAI on a major global benchmark, underscoring its technical edge in capturing complex Chinese dialects and accents. Fun-Realtime-TTS-Preview, developed by Alibaba’s Tongyi Lab, has secured the fifth spot on the Artificial Analysis Speech Arena leaderboard with a score of 1,190. It was the only Chinese-engineered voice system in the global top five. Alibaba owns the South China Morning...

South China Morning Post

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Asia faces ‘costly paradox’ over divergent AI rules in US and EU

Asian technology firms are facing a “costly paradox” as they try to navigate an increasingly uneven global AI rule book, with divergent compliance requirements in the European Union and the United States threatening to blunt their competitive edge. Analysts say the challenge is acute for Asian companies. While the EU has a single, comprehensive and legally binding artificial intelligence framework based on the landmark EU AI Act, US technology-related laws are decentralised at the state...

South China Morning Post

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China doubts Musk’s Starship future; ex-TSMC chip prodigy returns: SCMP’s 7 highlights

We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Concerns mount in China’s space sector that Musk’s Starship will be a failure There are growing doubts within China’s space sector that Starship, the world’s most powerful rocket being developed by SpaceX in the United States, will...

South China Morning Post

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China unveils AI system to automate satellite targeting and surveillance

The United States is reportedly bringing a powerful new weapon to the Iran war: large artificial intelligence (AI) models tasked with automating every stage of the targeting process, from satellite imagery analysis to final strike selection. But how these systems operate remains strictly classified, with incidents such as the February bombing of a primary school that killed more than 200 children in southern Iran raising public concerns about AI’s potential role in committing war crimes. Now...

South China Morning Post

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Huawei and scientists build 2D parallel computing chip that rewrites Moore’s Law

Chinese researchers, in collaboration with Huawei Technologies, have built the world’s first parallel processor using a two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor. As silicon devices approach their physical size limits, Moore’s Law – the observation that computing power doubles roughly every two years, while the cost of computers is cut in half – is hitting a wall. But two-dimensional materials such as molybdenum disulfide are naturally atom-thin, allowing electrons to move stably and efficiently and...

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ByteDance loses key AI research leader behind Seed models amid monetisation push

Tencent shares jump on expectations of AI agent within WeChat super app

China’s SAIC plans to build first EU car plant in Spain’s Galicia

Beyond Nvidia: how US export curbs are forcing China to redesign its AI chip industry

Chinese EV makers shift focus from price wars to AI capability: Morgan Stanley

PolyU Faculty of Business celebrates 30th anniversary of its DBA programme, with over 400 academic and industry leaders gathering to explore new trends for scholar-leaders in AI era

AI firm MiniMax prepares for mainland China listing after shares surge in Hong Kong

Hong Kong may host Shenzhou-23 crew in 2027, including astronaut Lai Ka-ying

Firms spent heavily on AI. Now rising costs are outpacing its value

How a decade-long bet on photonics handed this Chinese venture capital firm an AI windfall

AI ‘slopaganda’ and the battle for Philippine political reality

HK lawyers can flourish in Central Asia: Law Society

China launches AI framework to improve ‘black box’ transparency and raise standards

Is Huawei’s new chip scaling law a true breakthrough, or mere hype?

Chip boom powers Hong Kong stock exchange at 40. Innovation, resilience set next stage

Alibaba AI voice model cracks top 5 globally, outperforming US rivals in regional accents

Asia faces ‘costly paradox’ over divergent AI rules in US and EU

China doubts Musk’s Starship future; ex-TSMC chip prodigy returns: SCMP’s 7 highlights

China unveils AI system to automate satellite targeting and surveillance

Huawei and scientists build 2D parallel computing chip that rewrites Moore’s Law