Arizona wants Taiwan’s investors to think beyond chips

As Arizona’s economic fortunes have become increasingly tied to TSMC and its chip supply chain, it’s been keen to diversify the roster of investors beyond tech companies. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 17 hours ago

The offline messaging apps challenging internet shutdowns

Jack Dorsey’s Bluetooth messaging app surged during India’s internet blackout — and the government’s response suggests a new tech battleground. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 day ago

Growth without work: The human cost of the AI revolution

In an excerpt from his book “The New Divide: Power, Control & the Cost of AI,” writer Jibu Elias examines the technology’s impact on jobs. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 days ago

The global grassroots gatherings trying to humanize the AI boom

Local tech groups in Kenya, India, and the U.S. are building communities and conversations around AI, but also face questions about privilege and reach. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 3 days ago

Why Silicon Valley is divided over China’s powerful, cheap AI models

Low-cost Chinese open-weight models are splitting tech executives and Washington over national security and competitiveness. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 4 days ago

Can we train AI to choose safety over speed?

Delivery platforms use sophisticated weather algorithms to profit from storm demand, while shifting all the physical risk onto workers trapped by pay incentives. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 7 days ago

With Moonshot’s free Kimi K3, China changes the sovereign AI playbook

Governments can now deploy top-tier AI locally, bypassing costly U.S. cloud rentals. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 8 days ago

Anxious Chinese students are trusting AI to help pick colleges and majors

Alibaba, ByteDance, Baidu, and Tencent guide hundreds of millions of high-school grads to optimize the high-stakes university match system. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 9 days ago

Indian EV makers beat Tesla and BYD on energy efficiency

Tata Motors and Mahindra topped a global ranking of battery efficiency, showing India's strength in building frugal electric cars — even as they lag on charging speed and driving range. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 10 days ago

In China, people are renting out their faces to AI

New platforms are paying people to license their likeness for AI-generated dramas and ads, creating a new marketplace for biometric identity. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 11 days ago

Why state-owned AI won’t solve inequality

Government ownership of AI companies may promise shared wealth, but it risks weakening oversight and accountability. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 14 days ago

The hidden cost of Myanmar’s rare earth mines

As the U.S. races to bypass China, the global hunger for critical minerals is financing warlords and poisoning Myanmar's borderlands. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 15 days ago

Fed up with Big Tech, communities turn to data collectives for control

Data collectives and cooperatives, which let creators control the collection and distribution of their data, are emerging as preferred alternatives to big tech companies. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 15 days ago

The U.S. wants to contain China’s AI. Silicon Valley keeps using it

As Apple, Thinking Machines, and developers worldwide embrace Chinese AI models such as Kimi K3, U.S. policymakers are struggling to protect the AI lead. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 16 days ago

China’s AI talent race is starting in high school

As demand for elite AI engineers outpaces supply, companies are recruiting teenagers through camps, research programs, and guaranteed job pipelines. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 17 days ago

AI is shrinking video game development teams to one

AI is helping solo developers thrive in Turkey’s gaming industry, but writers, artists, and junior programmers are being left behind. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 18 days ago

Can AI beat a goldfish at calling the World Cup?

As chatbots compete to forecast the tournament, an unlikely rival from a Toronto fish tank continues to outperform them. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 21 days ago

The problem AI content moderation cannot solve

Meta and other big tech companies are increasingly using AI for content moderation, but as the backlash to Muse Image shows, it cannot protect users because it does not account for consent. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 22 days ago

AI powers citizen-led disaster relief from afar for Venezuela

After the earthquakes, developers and citizens used AI to build websites and apps to help locate missing persons and coordinate relief efforts amid a slow government response. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 23 days ago

The Gulf has billions to spend on AI. It still needs Nvidia

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are trying to diversify their AI supply chains, but geopolitical constraints and Nvidia's technological lead leave them with few viable alternatives. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 24 days ago

India’s crackdown on a new WhatsApp feature risks setting a global precedent

If Meta complies or modifies its app for India, it risks creating a “slippery slope” that emboldens governments worldwide to demand changes to encrypted messaging apps. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 25 days ago

Older adults know AI is slop. They just like it

AI-generated singers, children, and even virtual lovers are providing seniors with comfort and companionship. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 28 days ago

Your next nurse may monitor you from the Philippines

U.S. hospitals are increasingly hiring Filipino nurses for remote roles to fill staffing gaps and for cost savings, but the practice may be aggravating shortages in the Philippines. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 29 days ago

Data centers should benefit the cities that power them

Cities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America must ensure AI infrastructure development benefits local communities and leads to sustainable economic growth. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

China’s AI boom is creating a different kind of entrepreneur

Backed by the state, Chinese workers are using AI to deal with limited resources and drive innovation to compete with Silicon Valley. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

China’s web novel platforms embraced AI. Now they are fighting it

Sites from Tencent, ByteDance, and Baidu set curbs like daily word limits for authors and stricter standards to combat poor-quality automated fiction. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

India is testing an alternative to Silicon Valley’s AI playbook

A new hackathon invites developers to build offline, multilingual AI tools, challenging the idea that cutting-edge innovation belongs only to a handful of Western companies. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

China’s EV makers are taking over the European factories Ford and Nissan can’t fill

What seems like a rescue could prove to be a retreat, as Chery leads its rivals into the heart of Europe’s car industry. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

America’s immigrant tech workers are paying an uncertainty tax

A court struck down Donald Trump’s $100,000 H-1B fee. But many foreign workers say years of shifting immigration rules have already pushed them to consider Canada, the U.K., and the Gulf. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

I went to the Maldives. Everyone wanted to talk about Temu

The Chinese shopping app has become so popular that even a government surcharge couldn't slow demand. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

What happened to China’s overseas EV factory boom?

Three charts show China’s promised overseas production hasn’t materialized — yet. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

China and the West are taking opposite paths on EV battery recycling

China has 85% of the world’s recycling capacity and a mandate to shred old packs. The U.S. has another plan: use them to save the power grid first. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

The AI-powered World Cup runs on thousands of data workers

Human annotators in Brazil, Cambodia, and the Philippines are tracking every movement in the football tournament for teams, broadcasters, and the betting industry. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

Chinese universities are cutting language majors to make way for AI

Universities are dropping programs in translation and foreign languages while adding degrees in embodied intelligence, AI, and robotics. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

GoPro and Roomba were U.S. pioneers. Chinese rivals now dominate

China's consumer-tech brands keep gaining ground. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

Chile turned to China for an undersea cable. The U.S. said no

A proposed undersea cable from Chile to Hong Kong promised to connect South America directly to Asia. Instead, it became a test of how far the U.S. will go to curb Chinese telecom ambitions. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

When Americans choose Chinese AI

Developers say DeepSeek is good enough for a fraction of the cost. “You don’t need God to write your email.” | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

Spotify’s post-English AI future

More than half of Spotify listening is now in non-English languages as the company expands across Africa, Asia, and Latin America with local artists, pricing, and payment systems. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

Can open-source beat OpenAI?

Former Hugging Face executive Tiezhen Wang explains how China's open-source strategy is reshaping the AI race. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

What the SpaceX IPO reveals about Gulf money in AI

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are funding America's AI boom — and getting data centers in return. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

China builds a rival satellite constellation as SpaceX goes public

A Chinese state-backed satellite company is signing the partners and governments Starlink has pushed aside, days before SpaceX’s record listing. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

Big Tech, big cons: Scammers are hiding in the apps that make your life easy

In her new book “Bharat Bluff: Inside the Cons of India’s Internet Revolution,” writer Soumya Gupta explores how fraudsters are exploiting the trust people place in big tech platforms like Google, Facebook and WhatsApp. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

The Great AI Divide: Navigating U.S. and Chinese dominance

At a Rest of World event during New York Tech Week, we explored the challenges and possible solutions to the dominance of American and Chinese AI companies. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 1 month ago

As the world embraces EVs, the U.S. hits the brakes

Canada and the EU opened their doors to Chinese electric cars this year while the U.S. watched from behind a tariff wall. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

Silicon Valley’s lure is fading for India’s tech talent

India’s elite tech talent is starting to see big tech jobs in a new light. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

What to read: A summer book list

Rest of World recommends eight books that cover the history of resistance to tech, our relationship with AI companions, the danger of our dependence on Taiwan chips, and more. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

Scarcity is driving AI innovation outside Silicon Valley

New AI infrastructure is emerging in India, Brazil, the UAE and Africa, where local stacks are designed to get around compute scarcity. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago

China is training a robot future — one folded shirt at a time

Localized, low-cost data harvested in homes and factories gives China a scaling edge over the research-heavy and outsourced U.S. approach. | Continue reading


@restofworld.org | 2 months ago