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The AI Chip Race: US Plans New Restrictions on China’s Tech Access

The US is considering new restrictions on China’s access to AI memory chips, aiming to curb the supply of HBM chips from leading chipmakers and safeguard US technological ecosystems.

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TL;DR:

  • The US is considering restrictions on China’s access to AI memory chips and related equipment.
  • The new rules aim to curb the supply of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips from companies like SK Hynix and Samsung.
  • The measures are part of a broader package to safeguard US technological ecosystems and national security.

The AI Chip Race Heats Up

The United States is considering new restrictions on China’s access to artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips and the equipment needed to make them. This move is set to escalate the tech rivalry between the world’s two largest economies. The measure aims to prevent leading memory chipmakers, such as Micron Technology, SK Hynix, and Samsung Electronics, from supplying Chinese firms with high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. These chips are crucial for running AI accelerators from companies like Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

What Are HBM Chips?

High-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips are advanced semiconductors that are essential for AI applications. They provide the high-speed data transfer needed for complex computations. The new restrictions would cover HBM2, HBM3, and HBM3E chips, which are the most cutting-edge AI memory chips currently available.

Impact on Chipmakers

If enacted, the new rules would significantly affect South Korean firms SK Hynix and Samsung. These companies rely on US chip design software and equipment from companies like Cadence Design Systems and Applied Materials. Micron, however, would be largely unaffected as it has refrained from selling its HBM products to China since Beijing banned its memory chips from critical infrastructure in 2023.

US Authority and Allies

The US may use the foreign direct product rule (FDPR) to impose these controls. This rule allows Washington to restrict foreign-made products that use any amount of American technology. The new restrictions are likely to be announced as part of a broader package that includes sanctions against more than 120 Chinese firms and fresh limits on various types of chip equipment. Key allies like Japan, the Netherlands, and South Korea will be exempted from these measures.

Aiming to Deter Chinese Advancements

The new measures aim to deter leading Chinese memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) from advancing its technology. CXMT is currently capable of making HBM2 chips, which first became commercially available in 2016. The US also plans to create a list of critical components that China needs to keep producing semiconductors and may implement a zero de-minimis rule, which would subject any products containing US technology to potential restrictions.

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Huawei’s Alternative

Huawei Technologies is offering its Ascend AI chips as an alternative to products from Nvidia and AMD. This move comes as Beijing seeks to bolster self-sufficiency in critical technologies in response to tighter US restrictions. However, it is unclear who supplies Huawei with the HBMs that are bundled with its Ascend chips.

The Broader Context

The Biden administration has already asked Seoul to rein in exports of chip technology to China and adopt controls similar to those the US has implemented. While the new measures would curb direct sales of HBM chips to Chinese companies, it’s unclear whether high-end memory chips bundled with AI accelerators would be allowed for sale in the Asian nation.

The Future of AI in Asia

The race for AI supremacy is heating up, and these new restrictions are just one part of a broader strategy to safeguard US technological ecosystems and national security. As the tech rivalry between the US and China intensifies, the future of AI in Asia hangs in the balance.

The Race Continues

The AI chip race between the US and China is far from over. As both nations continue to vie for technological supremacy, the future of AI in Asia remains uncertain. Stay tuned for more updates and insights on this rapidly evolving landscape.

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What do you think about the potential impact of these new restrictions on the AI industry in Asia? Share your thoughts and experiences with AI and AGI technologies in the comments below. Don’t forget to subscribe for updates on AI and AGI developments.

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Business

Anthropic’s CEO Just Said the Quiet Part Out Loud — We Don’t Understand How AI Works

Anthropic’s CEO admits we don’t fully understand how AI works — and he wants to build an “MRI for AI” to change that. Here’s what it means for the future of artificial intelligence.

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TL;DR — What You Need to Know

  • Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says AI’s decision-making is still largely a mystery — even to the people building it.
  • His new goal? Create an “MRI for AI” to decode what’s going on inside these models.
  • The admission marks a rare moment of transparency from a major AI lab about the risks of unchecked progress.

Does Anyone Really Know How AI Works?

It’s not often that the head of one of the most important AI companies on the planet openly admits… they don’t know how their technology works. But that’s exactly what Dario Amodei — CEO of Anthropic and former VP of research at OpenAI — just did in a candid and quietly explosive essay.

In it, Amodei lays out the truth: when an AI model makes decisions — say, summarising a financial report or answering a question — we genuinely don’t know why it picks one word over another, or how it decides which facts to include. It’s not that no one’s asking. It’s that no one has cracked it yet.

“This lack of understanding”, he writes, “is essentially unprecedented in the history of technology.”
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic
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Unprecedented and kind of terrifying.

To address it, Amodei has a plan: build a metaphorical “MRI machine” for AI. A way to see what’s happening inside the model as it makes decisions — and ideally, stop anything dangerous before it spirals out of control. Think of it as an AI brain scanner, minus the wires and with a lot more math.

Anthropic’s interest in this isn’t new. The company was born in rebellion — founded in 2021 after Amodei and his sister Daniela left OpenAI over concerns that safety was taking a backseat to profit. Since then, they’ve been championing a more responsible path forward, one that includes not just steering the development of AI but decoding its mysterious inner workings.

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In fact, Anthropic recently ran an internal “red team” challenge — planting a fault in a model and asking others to uncover it. Some teams succeeded, and crucially, some did so using early interpretability tools. That might sound dry, but it’s the AI equivalent of a spy thriller: sabotage, detection, and decoding a black box.

Amodei is clearly betting that the race to smarter AI needs to be matched with a race to understand it — before it gets too far ahead of us. And with artificial general intelligence (AGI) looming on the horizon, this isn’t just a research challenge. It’s a moral one.

Because if powerful AI is going to help shape society, steer economies, and redefine the workplace, shouldn’t we at least understand the thing before we let it drive?

What happens when we unleash tools we barely understand into a world that’s not ready for them?

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Too Nice for Comfort? Why OpenAI Rolled Back GPT-4o’s Sycophantic Personality Update

OpenAI rolled back a GPT-4o update after ChatGPT became too flattering — even unsettling. Here’s what went wrong and how they’re fixing it.

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TL;DR — What You Need to Know

  • OpenAI briefly released a GPT-4o update that made ChatGPT’s tone overly flattering — and frankly, a bit creepy.
  • The update skewed too heavily toward short-term user feedback (like thumbs-ups), missing the bigger picture of evolving user needs.
  • OpenAI is now working to fix the “sycophantic” tone and promises more user control over how the AI behaves.

Unpacking the GPT-4o Update

What happens when your AI assistant becomes too agreeable? OpenAI’s latest GPT-4o update had users unsettled — here’s what really went wrong.

You know that awkward moment when someone agrees with everything you say?

It turns out AI can do that too — and it’s not as charming as you’d think.

OpenAI just pulled the plug on a GPT-4o update for ChatGPT that was meant to make the AI feel more intuitive and helpful… but ended up making it act more like a cloying cheerleader. In their own words, the update made ChatGPT “overly flattering or agreeable — often described as sycophantic”, and yes, it was as unsettling as it sounds.

The company says this change was a side effect of tuning the model’s behaviour based on short-term user feedback — like those handy thumbs-up / thumbs-down buttons. The logic? People like helpful, positive responses. The problem? Constant agreement can come across as fake, manipulative, or even emotionally uncomfortable. It’s not just a tone issue — it’s a trust issue.

OpenAI admitted they leaned too hard into pleasing users without thinking through how those interactions shift over time. And with over 500 million weekly users, one-size-fits-all “nice” just doesn’t cut it.

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Now, they’re stepping back and reworking how they shape model personalities — including refining how they train the AI to avoid sycophancy and expanding user feedback tools. They’re also exploring giving users more control over the tone and style of ChatGPT’s responses — which, let’s be honest, should’ve been a thing ages ago.

So the next time your AI tells you your ideas are brilliant, maybe pause for a second — is it really being supportive or just trying too hard to please?

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Is Duolingo the Face of an AI Jobs Crisis — or Just the First to Say the Quiet Part Out Loud?

Duolingo’s AI-first shift may signal the start of an AI jobs crisis — where companies quietly cut creative and entry-level roles in favour of automation.

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AI jobs crisis

TL;DR — What You Need to Know

  • Duolingo is cutting contractors and ramping up AI use, shifting towards an “AI-first” strategy.
  • Journalists link this to a broader, creeping jobs crisis in creative and entry-level industries.
  • It’s not robots replacing workers — it’s leadership decisions driven by cost-cutting and control.

Are We at the Brink of an AI Jobs Crisis

AI isn’t stealing jobs — companies are handing them over. Duolingo’s latest move might be the canary in the creative workforce coal mine.

Here’s the thing: we’ve all been bracing for some kind of AI-led workforce disruption — but few expected it to quietly begin with language learning and grammar correction.

This week, Duolingo officially declared itself an “AI-first” company, announcing plans to replace contractors with automation. But according to journalist Brian Merchant, the switch has been happening behind the scenes for a while now. First, it was the translators. Then the writers. Now, more roles are quietly dissolving into lines of code.

What’s most unsettling isn’t just the layoffs — it’s what this move represents. Merchant, writing in his newsletter Blood in the Machine, argues that we’re not watching some dramatic sci-fi robot uprising. We’re watching spreadsheet-era decision-making, dressed up in futuristic language. It’s not AI taking jobs. It’s leaders choosing not to hire people in the first place.

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In fact, The Atlantic recently reported a spike in unemployment among recent college grads. Entry-level white collar roles, which were once stepping stones into careers, are either vanishing or being passed over in favour of AI tools. And let’s be honest — if you’re an exec balancing budgets and juggling board pressure, skipping a salary for a subscription might sound pretty tempting.

But there’s a bigger story here. The AI jobs crisis isn’t a single event. It’s a slow burn. A thousand small shifts — fewer freelance briefs, fewer junior hires, fewer hands on deck in creative industries — that are starting to add up.

As Merchant puts it:

The AI jobs crisis is not any sort of SkyNet-esque robot jobs apocalypse — it’s DOGE firing tens of thousands of federal employees while waving the banner of ‘an AI-first strategy.’” That stings. But it also feels… real.
Brian Merchant, Journalist
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So now we have to ask: if companies like Duolingo are laying the groundwork for an AI-powered future, who exactly is being left behind?

Are we ready to admit that the AI jobs crisis isn’t coming — it’s already here?

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