Technology

➚ MOVE FAST: Bargains. China’s Unitree has unveiled a humanoid robot it will sell for under $6,000, a steal compared to similar products that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Making the machines relatively affordable is critical to mass adoption. The R1 model has 26 joints and boasts multimodal AI capabilities, with voice and image recognition.

➘ BREAK THINGS: Blank checks. Intel is cutting more jobs and slashing investment in its foundry business, as CEO Lip-Bu Tan vows “no more blank checks.” He announced the move as the struggling chipmaker reported steeper-than-expected losses last quarter, leading to a more drastic overhaul of the company.

Vegans, you can skip this one. California-based Shinkei Systems has built a robot that utilizes the Japanese ike jime method of killing fish, widely considered the most humane way to harvest the animal while producing the best quality meat. The process involves inserting a spike into the fish’s brain soon after it is caught — killing it instantly, and reducing stress that can cause the fish to spoil more quickly. While many Japanese fishers are trained in ike jime, the practice isn’t widely adopted in the US — and growing demand for humane harvesting techniques and high-quality seafood could generate appetite for the fish-killing robot.

Shinkei’s refrigerator-sized machine, called Poseidon, is operational on three fishing vessels off the US West Coast. The fish is inserted into the robot, which then uses computer vision to identify the species and its anatomical information, spiking the brain and making the subsequent cuts in seven seconds. Shinkei, which provides the robot to fishing crews for free, then purchases the seafood and sells it across the US, including to Michelin-starred restaurants. Two fillets, or 12 ounces of fish, retail for roughly $20.

“We’ve been fishing for 40,000 years and the tools haven’t really changed,” co-founder Reed Ginsberg, a former SpaceX engineer, told Semafor. “We’re still using hooks and lines and nets,” he said, adding that fishers could use advanced tools that also improve quality.

Japanese firm Nichimo sells a device that stuns the fish to help humans perform ike jime, but no machine to automate the process. Several startups in Norway, a top seafood exporter, are also developing robotic systems to more humanely kill and process fish.

Shinkei, which raised $22 million in Series A funding last month but didn’t offer a valuation, trained its computer vision system on various fish dissections done in its lab. Because the boats operate in remote locations, each machine is equipped with Starlink internet that transmits data to continue training the model in real time.

Trump’s “AI Action Plan” included some unexpected support for open-source and open-weight models, despite concern from members of the administration that China is benefiting from the US’ shared knowledge. The framework suggests that a strong American open-source AI network has “geostrategic value” because it could underpin businesses and academic research globally, becoming the dominant technology. “While the decision of whether and how to release an open or closed model is fundamentally up to the developer, the Federal government should create a supportive environment for open models,” the document said.

The Biden administration was seen as less friendly to such setups, leading companies like Meta to launch publicity campaigns promoting the benefits of open-source models. But some policymakers were also critical of Mark Zuckerberg’s company, amid reports that Chinese researchers developed military AI applications using Meta’s partially open-source Llama. The use of DeepSeek’s open-source model by American startups has also disturbed US officials.

To encourage an open AI ecosystem, the White House recommends improving the financial market for compute in a framework that could look similar to spot and forward prices for commodities. After looking like the current administration would follow Biden’s policies limiting US technology to contain China, its latest plan is now embracing a “more the merrier” approach to advancing AI on American terms.

Scott Galloway has built a modern media empire, and he’s quickly becoming a leading voice for young men on the left. This week, Ben and Max talk to the Pivot co-host about how he turned a career in marketing into a new kind of media stardom, how much money his podcasts make, and why he’s so vocal about masculinity. They also talk about whether podcasts will become the new target for political campaigns and which Democrats are calling him up in anticipation of the 2028 election.

The World Artificial Intelligence Conference, China’s marquee AI confab, kicks off this weekend as the global race around the technology intensifies. Top executives from ByteDance, Tencent, Alibaba, and other firms are expected to speak at the event, where one of the underlying themes will likely be which hot startup will produce China’s next DeepSeek moment. Elon Musk attended the gathering last year and showed off a Cybertruck, but he isn’t included on the attendee list this time around. US representation will be sparse, but former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Geoffrey Hinton — the “godfather of AI” — and Canadian scientist Yoshua Bengio are expected to make an appearance.

— Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a memo to employees on Thursday, noting that overall headcount is relatively unchanged and the company’s work has been lauded, but the firm has still undergone layoffs.

A small but growing number of students in US universities is looking to Abu Dhabi as a destination to study artificial intelligence, a sign of the increasing global competition for AI talent, Semafor’s Kelsey Warner reported.

One in four participants in a monthlong internship hosted at the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) came from US campuses. Many applicants came from top computer science programs like Georgia Institute of Technology, University of California, and University of Illinois.