<p>While several of Google&#8217;s rivals, including OpenAI, have tweaked their AI chatbots to discuss politically sensitive subjects in recent months, Google appears to be embracing a more conservative approach. When asked to answer certain political questions, Google&#8217;s AI-powered chatbot, Gemini, often says it &#8220;can&#8217;t help with responses on elections and political figures right now,&#8221; TechCrunch&#8217;s [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch&nbsp;brought a sales pitch to Mobile World Congress on Tuesday, urging delegates at the world&#8217;s biggest telecoms confab in Barcelona to invest in building data center infrastructure and &#8220;becoming hyperscalers&#8221; to boost the regional AI ecosystem. &#8220;We would welcome more domestic effort in making more data centers,&#8221; he said during an onstage [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The Trump administration has fired a number of National Science Foundation (NSF) employees who had been handpicked for their expertise in AI, threatening the agency&#8217;s ability to sustain key AI research, Bloomberg reported. One of the affected departments inside NSF, called the Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships, was instrumental in funneling government grants focused [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The author of California&#8217;s SB 1047, the nation&#8217;s most controversial AI safety bill of 2024, is back with a new AI bill that could shake up Silicon Valley. California state Senator Scott Wiener introduced a new bill on Friday that would protect employees at leading AI labs, allowing them to speak out if they think [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The U.K.&#8217;s privacy watchdog has launched investigations into three social media companies over how they go about protecting the privacy of children on their respective platforms. The Information Commissioner&#8217;s Office (ICO) announced today that it&#8217;s looking into how TikTok uses personal information of 13- to 17-year-olds to recommend videos, &#8220;in light of growing concerns&#8221; around [&hellip;]</p>

<p>President Donald Trump is throwing his support behind the creation of a federal reserve of cryptocurrency assets — he initially highlighted XRP, Solana, and Cardano for inclusion, then later said Bitcoin and Ethereum would &#8220;obviously&#8221; be included too. In January, Trump issued an executive order calling for the formation of a working group that would [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Billionaire investor Mark Cuban waded into the latest government tech shake-up on Saturday, offering support on the social network Bluesky for newly laid-off federal workers whose job it was to make government tech work better. His message, which quickly gained traction, urged the displaced engineers and designers to turn the upheaval to their advantage. &#8220;If [&hellip;]</p>

<p>In a newly issued executive order (EO), the Trump administration has instructed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Elon Musk-advised initiative to reduce federal spending, to create a &#8220;centralized technological system&#8221; in every agency to record contract and grant awards. As part of the ramp-up of these systems, agency employees who approved individual contract [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Former North Carolina congressman Patrick McHenry announced Wednesday that he landed a job with VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. He will be a senior advisor. His post on X said little about what the job entails, except to be advocating for startups (which a16z likes to call &#8220;little tech&#8221;) with policymakers. Andreessen Horowitz did not immediately [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Amy Gleason is named as the acting administrator of DOGE, amid ambiguity over Elon Musk&#8217;s role.</p>

<p>The U.K.&#8217;s antitrust authority has given the go-ahead to IBM&#8217;s planned multibillion-dollar acquisition of infrastructure software company HashiCorp. In a brief case update published today, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it had &#8220;cleared the anticipated acquisition by IBM of HashiCorp,&#8221; and it would publish the full rationale for its decision in due course. [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The U.K. government is pushing forward with plans to attract more AI companies to the region by changing copyright law. The proposed changes would allow developers to train AI models on artists’ content found online — without permission or payment — unless creators proactively &#8220;opt out.&#8221; Not everyone is marching to the same beat, though. [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Ofcom, the U.K.&#8217;s internet safety regulator, has published another new draft guidance as it continues to implement the Online Safety Act (OSA) &#8212; the latest set of recommendations aim to support in-scope firms to meet legal obligations to protect women and girls from online threats like harassment and bullying, misogyny, and intimate image abuse. The [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Robinhood on Monday said that the SEC has closed its investigation into Robinhood&#8217;s crypto unit and will not pursue action. This follows Coinbase saying on Friday that the SEC has dropped its lawsuit against it. The SEC, under former chair and crypto hawk Gary Gensler, was looking into a number of crypto exchanges over how [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Today marks three years since Russia’s illegal, unprovoked, and brutal invasion of Ukraine. The Ukrainian people have heroically fought the war with grit and determination, but they have also, against the odds, innovated on and off the battlefield.&nbsp; In addition to establishing a defense tech initiative called&nbsp;BRAVE1, the country has also hosted tech conferences like [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The U.S. government is leaning hard on tech companies to make more commitments to building their businesses in the country, and Big Tech is falling in line. On Monday, Apple laid out its own plans in that area: It will spend $500 billion over the next four years in areas like high-end manufacturing, engineering, and [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Palantir co-founder and CEO Alexander Karp opens his new book with a provocative declaration: “Silicon Valley has lost its way.” Over the past decade or so, as the data analytics company rose to prominence with its work for U.S. military and intelligence, Karp has largely stayed out of the limelight. Last year, in a rare [&hellip;]</p>

<p>As school districts struggle to support the mental health of their students, a startup called Sonar Mental Health has built a “wellbeing companion” called Sonny to help. As described in the Wall Street Journal, Sonny is a chatbot that relies on a combination of human staff and AI. When students text their questions to Sonny, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) could fire as many as 500 staffers, according to multiple reports — cuts that further threaten a fledgling AI safety organization. Axios reported this week that the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute (AISI) and Chips for America, both part of NIST, would be “gutted” by layoffs targeting [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The General Services Administration, the agency that manages buildings owned by the federal government, is planning to shut down its entire network of electric vehicle chargers, according to a report in The Verge. The GSA reportedly operates a network of hundreds of EV chargers with a total of 8,000 plugs that can be used to [&hellip;]</p>