AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li warns policymakers not to let sci-fi sensationalism shape AI rules

Fei-Fei Li, the Stanford researcher who also founded World Labs, was invited to the Grand Palais in Paris on Monday to give the opening speech at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit that is taking place this week. While she shared some of her talking points over the weekend, her stance on AI

Media giant Lee Enterprises confirms cyberattack as news outlets report ongoing disruption

Publishing giant Lee Enterprises has confirmed a cyberattack on its systems is behind ongoing disruption at dozens of newspapers and media outlets across the United States. In an email shared with customers sent Friday, which technewss has seen, Lee CEO Kevin Mowbray said the company was working

Macron unveils $112B AI investment package, France's answer to US’ Stargate

Late Sunday local time, French president Emmanuel Macron announced a total of €109 billion in private investments in the AI ecosystem — or around $112 billion at current exchange rates. Paris is hosting the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit this week — the third international summit f

Saudi’s BRKZ closes $17M Series A for its construction tech platform

Construction procurement is highly fragmented, manual, and opaque, forcing contractors to juggle multiple suppliers, endure lengthy negotiations, and deal with delayed payments. In Saudi Arabia, where trillion-dollar infrastructure and real estate projects are underway, these inefficiencies are eve

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admits that AI’s benefits may not be widely distributed

In a new essay on his personal blog, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company is open to a “compute budget,” among other “strange-sounding” ideas, to “enable everyone on Earth to use a lot of AI” and ensure the benefits of the technology are widely distributed. &#

Apple could launch a new iPhone SE and PowerBeats Pro 2 on February 11

Apple could launch a new iPhone SE and PowerBeats Pro headphones as early as February 11, according to reporting from Bloomberg. The announcement is likely to be on the smaller side, given that the company has not yet issued invites for either an in-person or virtual event. A new iPhone SE would m

Here are five startups that are running Super Bowl ads this year

Super Bowl weekend is here with the Philadelphia Eagles set to take on the Kansas City Chiefs in New Orleans on Sunday evening. While many folks tune in to the Super Bowl for the actual football, others do so for the halftime performance, and some tune in just for the ads. The ad roster this year

Investments in French AI ecosystem reach $85B as Brookfield commits $20B

Canadian investment firm Brookfield plans to invest €20 billion by 2030 in artificial intelligence projects in France (around $20.7 billion at current exchange rates), according to a report from La Tribune Dimanche confirmed by news agency AFP. The majority of the sum will be used to build AI-foc

These apps are building Instagram alternatives on open protocols

Consumer demand for alternatives to Big Tech’s social apps is heating up. Alternative social networks like Bluesky and Mastodon are gaining traction with people looking to leave X, while others are building ban-proof TikTok alternatives on open protocols. Similarly, many independent developer

How to use Apple’s new event planning ‘Invites’ app

Apple has released a new app called Invites that is designed to make it easy to create custom invitations for events using an iPhone or on the web. Invites is Apple's version of Partiful, a popular invitation app that was crowned Google Play's Best App of 2024.  Invites lets you creat

Apple's new research robot takes a page from Pixar's playbook

Last month, Apple offered up more insight into its consumer robotics work via a research paper that argues that traits like expressive movements are key to optimizing human-robot interaction. “Like most animals,” starts the report, “humans are highly sensitive to motion and subtle changes in

Elon Musk said he's not interested in acquiring TikTok

Elon Musk recently said he is “not champing at the bit to acquire TikTok.” Musk made those remarks during an interview at the WELT Economic Summit on January 28. A video of the interview was published today. The interview came after President Donald Trump delayed a law requiri

Autodesk CTO Raji Arasu calls for diversity in the teams building AI

To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, technewss has been publishing a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who've contributed to the AI revolution. Raji Arasu, the CTO of Autodesk, said that she’s b

Why the ‘spirit’ of open source means much more than a license

Arguments about what is and isn’t “open source” are often resolved by deferring to the Open Source Initiative (OSI): If a piece of software is available under a license rubber stamped as “open source” by the OSI’s formal “definition,” then that softwa