Research & Development news

• Qatar, UAE Join US Tech Supply Chain Initiative

  12-01-2026 17:00 via eweek.com
  Qatar and the United Arab Emirates will soon join a U.S.-led initiative aimed at securing AI and semiconductor supply chains, a move that underscores Washington’s push to reshape global technology cooperation and reduce reliance on rival powers.
  Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg said the inclusion of the two Gulf states reflects a deliberate U.S. effort to bring Israel and Arab partners into a shared, technology-focused economic framework, despite the Middle East&r
  
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• Bill Gates: ‘AI Will Change Society,” Including the Job Market

  14-01-2026 15:51 via eweek.com
  Bill Gates may call himself an eternal optimist, but he has added a caveat to that characterization after citing concerns over what the AI era will bring.In his latest annual The Year Ahead letter, which touched on areas including healthcare, climate change, and education, the Microsoft founder and philanthropist explained that he remains an optimist “because I see what innovation accelerated by artificial intelligence will bring. But these days, my optimism comes with footnotes.”Bad
  
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• OpenAI Reportedly Planning 60-Second Super Bowl Ad as AI War Intensifies

  14-01-2026 15:19 via eweek.com
  The AI boom has entered its most expensive phase yet… and OpenAI is reportedly spending big to stay in front.OpenAI is expected to return to the Super Bowl stage this year, with plans to air a 60-second commercial during NBC’s Super Bowl LX broadcast, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter. If confirmed, it would mark the second year in a row the ChatGPT maker has bought airtime during the biggest night in US television.The move comes as AI comp
  
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• Anthropic Makes Leadership Changes for Labs Expansion

  14-01-2026 12:15 via eweek.com
  Anthropic is shaking things up in the intense AI race as it expands its Labs.
  On X, the busy AI firm said, “We’re expanding Labs—the team behind Claude Code, MCP, and Cowork—and hiring builders who want to tinker at the frontier of Claude’s capabilities.”
  According to the announcement, Mike Krieger is stepping away from his chief product officer role to co-lead Anthropic’s Labs team. It looks like the company is doubling down on rapid product iteration t
  
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• China Limits Nvidia Chip Purchases to ‘Special Circumstances’

  14-01-2026 11:59 via eweek.com
  China isn’t banning Nvidia’s AI chips outright, but it is tightening the rules on who can buy them. Chinese authorities told a group of technology companies that purchases of Nvidia’s H200 processors would be approved only under ‘special circumstances,’ such as university research and development. The guidance signals Beijing’s continued caution about reopening its market to US chipmakers, even as demand for advanced AI hardware remains strong. While
  
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• SK Hynix Places $13B Bet on AI Memory as Chip Shortages Intensify

  14-01-2026 11:18 via eweek.com
  South Korea’s SK Hynix has announced plans to invest roughly $13 billion in a new advanced chip packaging plant, as the global memory shortage deepens. As AI systems demand ever-greater computing power and faster data movement, memory makers are racing to expand capacity in some of the industry’s most complex and capital-intensive segments.The South Korean memory giant said it will invest 19 trillion won in the new facility, which will be built in the city of Cheongju. Construction i
  
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• Voice AI Deepgram Hits $1.3B Unicorn Status with $130M Funding

  14-01-2026 10:27 via eweek.com
  Voice AI company Deepgram has secured a $130 million Series C round to give it a $1.3 billion valuation and entry to unicorn land.
  Along with that good news, it is simultaneously acquiring Y Combinator-backed startup OfOne that could change how millions order their lunch.
  The funding round, led by AVP with participation from heavyweight investors including BlackRock, Tiger, and Y Combinator, reveals confidence in voice AI’s growth potential.
  CEO Scott Stephenson says the company achieved c
  
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• New Windows 11 Leak Reveals Copilot Moving Into File Explorer

  14-01-2026 00:06 via eweek.com
  Microsoft appears set to deepen Copilot’s role in Windows, with File Explorer potentially the next app to receive built-in AI features.An invisible button was spotted in the latest preview build of Windows 11, which appears to be tied to Microsoft’s generative AI chatbot. Users may be able to ask Copilot to find specific documents, photos, or file types, or even direct them to a particular file within a large folder.The button was spotted by Windows tester @phantomofearth, who shared
  
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• ‘Not Woke’: Pentagon Embraces Elon Musk’s Grok AI Despite Global Backlash

  13-01-2026 20:24 via eweek.com
  The Pentagon is betting on Elon Musk’s Grok… even as the chatbot faces global backlash for generating sexualized images.Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the deal between the Department of Defense and xAI on Jan. 12, according to ABC News. The integration will place Grok alongside technologies like Google’s AI engine, Gemini, in the military’s AI arsenal.This decision signals Musk’s belief in Grok’s utility beyond consumer use, despite the recent co
  
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• Elon Musk Slams Apple-Google AI Deal as ‘Unreasonable’ Power Grab

  13-01-2026 19:54 via eweek.com
  The tech industry has been buzzing over Monday’s blockbuster announcement that Apple and Google have joined forces to power the next generation of Siri.One person who didn’t enjoy the news? Elon Musk.Responding directly to the news on X, the Tesla and xAI CEO didn’t hide his disdain for the partnership, labeling it a dangerous expansion of Google’s influence.“This seems like an unreasonable concentration of power for Google, given that [they] also have Android and C
  
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• 7 Best ChatGPT Image Prompts in 2026: How to Get Better AI Photos

  13-01-2026 19:44 via eweek.com
  In 2026, the difference between a forgettable AI image and one that stops people mid-scroll often comes down to a single thing: how well the prompt was written.Across creative blogs, AI prompt guides, and hands-on experimentation, a new generation of “prompt literacy” is emerging.As image generation inside ChatGPT has matured and become mainstream, users are learning a hard truth: the tool is powerful, but it’s not psychic. The best results come from prompts that are clear, int
  
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• MIT Just Solved AI’s Memory Problem (And It’s Brilliantly Simple)

  13-01-2026 17:37 via eweek.com
  You know that feeling when you’re reading a 300-page PDF, and someone asks about page 47? You don’t re-read everything. You flip to the right section, skim for relevant bits, and piece together an answer. If you have a really great memory (and, more importantly, great recall), you can reference what you read right off the top of your head.Current AI models? Not so smart. They try cramming everything into working memory at once. Once that memory fills up (typically around ~100,000 tok
  
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• Trump Insider Dina Powell McCormick Joins Meta as President

  13-01-2026 16:43 via eweek.com
  Mark Zuckerberg has played his ‘Trump’ card with a new appointment.
  Meta revealed this week that Dina Powell McCormick—former Trump administration insider and Goldman Sachs powerhouse—is joining as president and vice chairman to spearhead a $600 billion infrastructure plan.
  Powell McCormick stepped into this newly created role as Meta simultaneously announced the creation of Meta Compute, a new organization designed to build data centers consuming “tens of gigawatts
  
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• How 1X Is Teaching Its Humanoid Robot to Learn on Its Own

  13-01-2026 16:25 via eweek.com
  The home robot from 1X is taking a step that could change how machines learn everyday skills.This week, 1X unveiled what it calls the 1X World Model (1XWM), a new AI system designed to help NEO understand the physical world and act inside it more naturally. Instead of relying mainly on hand-coded rules or thousands of hours of human-operated robot training, NEO now learns from internet-scale video, much like humans do.According to 1X, this marks a shift away from traditional robot AI systems tha
  
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• Meta Cuts 1,500 Reality Labs Jobs as AI Takes Priority

  13-01-2026 14:57 via eweek.com
  Meta is preparing to eliminate approximately 1,500 positions from its Reality Labs division this week, marking another shift in the tech giant’s strategic priorities.
  The cuts represent roughly 10% of the division’s 15,000-person workforce and signal Meta’s accelerating pivot away from its metaverse ambitions toward AI dominance.
  The New York Times reports that Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth has called an urgent all-hands meeting for Wednesday (Jan. 14), describing it
  
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• OpenAI Strengthens ChatGPT Health Plans With Torch Acquisition

  13-01-2026 12:53 via eweek.com
  OpenAI has acquired Torch, a tiny healthcare startup that’s barely one year old, for a reported $100 million in equity.
  The move comes days after OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT Health. With more than 40 million users already turning to ChatGPT daily for health questions, this acquisition makes perfect sense.
  On X, OpenAI said, “We’ve acquired Torch, a healthcare startup that unifies lab results, medications, and visit recordings. Bringing this together with ChatGPT Health opens up a n
  
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• Chinese Tech Leaders Temper Expectations in Global AI Race

  13-01-2026 10:52 via eweek.com
  China’s AI sector has been portrayed as rapidly closing in on the United States in the race to lead the global AI market, but today’s experts offer a more down-to-earth perspective on whether China will push ahead.The nation’s new models, flashy demos, and bold government targets have fuelled the idea that a turning point is just around the corner. But although China’s AI sector has made rapid strides over the past decade, leading researchers inside the country say there
  
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• Meta Compute Initiative Launches for AI Infrastructure Boost

  13-01-2026 10:38 via eweek.com
  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made an announcement that livens up the AI arms race.
  It was intense enough already, but the tech giant is launching Meta Compute—a dedicated “top-level organization” that will build computing infrastructure measured in hundreds of gigawatts. This is Meta declaring all-out war in the battle for AI supremacy.
  Zuckerberg announced on Threads that Meta plans to construct “tens of gigawatts this decade, and hundreds of gigawatts or more over time.
  
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• Anthropic Just Turned Claude Code Into Cowork — and It’s Not Just for Coders

  13-01-2026 00:28 via eweek.com
  Claude Code, Anthropic’s coding agent, is having a “main character moment” as the first true general-purpose AI agent. Despite the name, people have realized it’s not just a coding tool. It’s an everything tool.Its magic lies in its perfect fit for a software world. Claude Code runs commands locally on your machine with full access to files, browsers, and your command line. It can handle anything a human with computer access could.Well, Anthropic just released Cowor
  
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• Google Is Powering Apple’s Biggest Siri Upgrade Yet

  12-01-2026 21:58 via eweek.com
  Apple and Google have been circling each other for years. Now, they’re officially sharing the brain.Google’s Gemini AI is set to help power the next generation of Siri. Under a newly announced multi-year agreement, Apple will use Gemini models and cloud technology as the foundation for its upcoming Apple Intelligence features, marking one of the most significant behind-the-scenes collaborations between the companies to date.A joint statement released by Google and Apple on Jan. 12 re
  
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• This Chinese AI Video Tool Just Reached 60M Users, Competing With Sora

  12-01-2026 21:20 via eweek.com
  What began as a short-video platform competing with ByteDance has evolved into one of the world’s most widely adopted AI video tools.Beijing-based Kuaishou’s AI video generator, Kling, has exploded in popularity since launching in July 2024, with reports indicating that the video tool has already garnered more than 60 million users. That growth now places Kling in direct competition with high-profile rivals like OpenAI’s Sora and other leading generative video platforms.Followi
  
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• Inside OpenAI’s New Experiment: Using Real Jobs to Measure AI vs Humans

  12-01-2026 19:26 via eweek.com
  OpenAI is taking an unusually direct route to see how well its AI can handle real jobs.The AI juggernaut is asking third-party contractors to upload real work they completed in previous or current jobs as part of a new effort to test how well its AI systems perform on real-world tasks. The details were first reported by WIRED, which reviewed internal documents and presentations tied to the project.According to the report, the initiative is being carried out in partnership with the training data
  
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• This AI-Powered Drone Sees Through Fog, Rain, and Darkness

  12-01-2026 18:19 via eweek.com
  While most drones are grounded the moment a little fog or rain rolls in, a new player just proved that “bad weather” is now a choice rather than a limitation.Chinese drone manufacturer GDU took the stage at CES 2026 to unveil the UAV-P300, an enterprise-grade machine they are calling the world’s first drone equipped with “AI sight” capable of piercing through thick fog and heavy rain. Unlike standard cameras that simply struggle with low visibility, this drone
  
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• GPT-5.2 Just Solved a 30-Year Math Problem

  12-01-2026 17:24 via eweek.com
  Remember those brain-teaser math problems from school that made you want to throw your pencil? Now imagine ones so hard they’ve stumped mathematicians for decades.Paul Erdős, who published more papers than anyone in math history, left behind hundreds of these puzzles when he died in 1996. This weekend, GPT-5.2 Pro solved one.Neel Somani prompted the AI to tackle Erdős Problem #397, which asks whether infinitely many solutions exist for a specific equation involving central binomi
  
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• Best AI Tools for Gamers

  12-01-2026 15:53 via eweek.com
  Gaming today is about more than just playing. Many gamers create mods, share clips, experiment with game ideas, or tweak characters and movements. But doing so often means learning complex tools, buying expensive software, or spending hours on trial and error, which can be frustrating.That’s where AI actually helps  —  and it’s far less complicated than it sounds. The best AI tools for gamers don’t replace creativity or skills but allow for faster expe
  
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• A ‘Zombie’ AI Attack Shows How ChatGPT Can Leak Your Secrets

  12-01-2026 15:35 via eweek.com
  ChatGPT, the world’s most popular chatbot with over 800 million weekly users, just got a stark reminder that convenience can come at a price. Security firm Radware has revealed a new attack technique, dubbed “ZombieAgent,” that could turn the AI assistant into a stealthy data thief and even a persistent spy inside users’ accounts.ZombieAgent exploits ChatGPT’s Connectors — the feature that links the chatbot to Gmail, Outlook, Google Drive, GitHub, Teams,
  
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• 5 Things to Know About the Grok AI Deepfake Crisis and the Fallout for X

  12-01-2026 15:33 via eweek.com
  What began as an AI image feature quickly turned into an international crisis. After Grok generated pornographic deepfakes, X moved to contain the fallout by restricting access.The company’s attempt to curb the controversy by limiting Grok’s image generation to paying subscribers has prompted further backlash. According to a Jan. 9 report from CNN, this response has done nothing to appease critics, with government officials from the US, UK, EU, and Asia pushing for harsher actions ov
  
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• Wing and Walmart Expand Drone Delivery to 150 New Stores

  12-01-2026 15:16 via eweek.com
  When drones fly. Alphabet’s Wing and retail giant Walmart have made a princely deal that could change how millions of Americans get their groceries.
  The companies announced plans to bring drone delivery to 150 additional stores across the country, creating the largest commercial drone network in U.S. history.
  This expansion will establish over 270 drone delivery locations by 2027, serving roughly 40 million people and making aerial deliveries as common as ordering pizza. The rollout kicks
  
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• Google Embraces Agentic Commerce With Universal Protocol Release

  12-01-2026 14:02 via eweek.com
  Something has happened that could fundamentally reshape how commerce works online.
  Google has unveiled its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) at the National Retail Federation’s annual show, creating what could become the infrastructure layer for an AI-dominated shopping future.
  This move represents Google’s counterstrike against competitors who’ve been rapidly claiming territory in AI-powered commerce. With backing from retail powerhouses including Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Targe
  
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• Anthropic Shows Caring Side With Claude for Healthcare Launch

  12-01-2026 12:07 via eweek.com
  Competition is healthy. Following OpenAI’s ChatGPT Health popping up last week, Anthropic has unveiled Claude for Healthcare.
  Anthropic’s offering introduces specialized AI tools that let patients share medical records directly with AI for personalized health insights—and it’s available for Claude Pro and Max subscribers across the US.
  It could be argued that Anthropic isn’t playing catch-up with ChatGPT Health—but changing how providers, insurers, and patient
  
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