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AI news flash: From Hong Kong: Homegrown AI is a key part of China’s tech self-reliance strategy, but growing doubts about AI profitability are weighing on Chinese stocks. A recent selloff in US AI stocks has raised investor worries about the earnings outlook of Chinese AI companies, and those concerns have spilled over into the Chinese market. The original summary only says that investor concern over Chinese AI companies’ profits is rising, and it points to a contradiction…

AI news flash: website security and blockchain news collided this week, beyond just Cloudflare. A site called ‘Steal My Bitcoin’ deliberately left the PHP2Shell vulnerability unpatched and hid the keys to a roughly $2,000 Bitcoin wallet on its server, where only the PHP user account can read them through an executable called print-flag, to prove the wallet isn’t at risk…

AI news flash: A wave of AI wearables and pocket devices is hitting the market, all aiming to weave AI into everyday life, from pendants and rings to bracelets and portable gadgets. Some pitch themselves as productivity tools, others as companions that listen to your daily thoughts, and even OpenAI is reportedly building a small AI companion device. Bee is a budget $49.99 pendant that clips onto clothing or wears as a wristband, records everything it hears…

AI news flash: In a new research note, Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok says AI hasn’t delivered any profit growth to large companies outside the tech sector. Apollo is the private equity giant that once owned TechCrunch. Slok’s analysis focuses on what he calls the ‘S&P 493,’ which is the S&P 500 minus Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. He found that profit margins and revenue per employee look flat, with no evidence that AI has improved productivity.

AI news flash: SoftBank Group is in talks on a $50 billion investment in Malaysia, focused on AI and data centers. It’s another step in SoftBank’s push to expand its AI infrastructure footprint in Asia after the US and Europe. According to the headline, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said he held a video call with SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son and revealed the investment plan. Only limited details can be confirmed from the original summary: the plan is still…

AI news flash: Indonesia’s government plans to make public education free from elementary school all the way through university, but the idea has raised concerns that it will become another source of fiscal strain on top of costly policies like free school lunches. According to Nikkei Asia, delivering this fully free education would cost close to ten percent of total government spending, which is a significant amount. The report says the government wants to ease the education burden on families, but it also has to face tight budgets…

AI news flash: Relay, an AI-powered workflow automation tool positioned as a Zapier alternative, shut down completely in August. It let users hand email and task workflows off to AI agents, but as big platforms like OpenAI and Google built similar automation straight into their own tools, five-year-old Relay slowly lost its reason to exist as a standalone product…

AI news flash: Tokio Marine Holdings announced it will start selling insurance designed specifically for AI-enabled robots next month, making it the first Japanese non-life insurer to cover them. The backdrop is the fast-growing global ‘physical AI’ robot market, which is projected to top $80 billion by 2035, just ten years from now. On premiums, this kind of AI robot insurance is expected to cost about 20% more than comparable coverage for ordinary industrial robots…

AI news flash: Research shows most AI chatbots won’t tell you outright who to vote for, but some of the models behind them will. A new study forced models to pick one side in this year’s US midterms and found that SpaceXAI’s Grok 4.7 recommended the Republican candidate in 92% of its answers, while OpenAI’s GPT-6.1 Sol chose the Democratic candidate in 97%. Across nearly 50…

AI news flash: Fourteen years ago, American sci-fi author Daniel Suarez described swarms of autonomous killer drones attacking humans in his novel Kill Decision. Now, drone technology is leaping forward on the battlefields of Ukraine, bringing the dark vision he imagined closer to reality. Nikkei Asia reporter Eiji Furukawa interviewed Suarez in Kyiv…