分类： technology

The rapid, explosive expansion of artificial intelligence across global industries has generated an unforeseen chance for the world’s two largest economies — the United States and China — to join forces on advancing clean energy development, a partnership that industry leaders argue would deliver widespread benefits to both nations and the entire global economy. As AI adoption accelerates, the global rollout of large-scale data centers and skyrocketing demand for high-performance computing have pushed energy access and grid management to the forefront of constraints limiting further AI growth. Against this shifting landscape, industry observers note that the complementary strengths of the U.S. and Chinese clean energy sectors make cross-border collaboration not just a possible path forward, but a logical one.

Ramkumar Krishnan, a seasoned cleantech entrepreneur and technologist with more than two decades of experience working in clean energy and emerging advanced technologies, shared his perspective with China Daily in San Francisco, emphasizing the universal nature of clean energy innovation. “Technologies and products that are used, whether it’s in the US or in China or in other parts of Asia, they’re all very similar,” Krishnan explained. “There are many ways that I think technology is a connecting piece that brings all nations together, because we all need technology to solve problems.”

China’s enormous scale in power generation gives it a unique edge in global clean energy collaboration, according to official data from China’s National Energy Administration. The country’s annual total power output now exceeds 10 trillion kilowatt-hours — more than double the total annual power production of the United States, and outstripping the combined power consumption of the European Union, Russia, India and Japan. That massive production and deployment footprint has allowed China to build specialized experience and robust energy infrastructure that other nations can draw from, Krishnan said, especially as countries work to build smarter grid management systems capable of meeting the huge, consistent power demands of modern AI data centers.

Krishnan highlighted that renewable energy technologies offer a key advantage in meeting rapidly growing power needs, thanks to their far faster deployment timelines compared to traditional large-scale fossil or nuclear projects. A utility-scale solar farm, for example, can be built and connected to the grid in 18 months or less, while nuclear or large hydropower projects often require a decade or more to reach completion. “Bringing the right portfolio of solutions that can help accelerate the adoption of energy, and bringing new energy, that could be another area that we can address the demand that we have from AI,” Krishnan noted.

For the United States, the primary energy challenge tied to AI growth lies in unlocking greater efficiency from the nation’s existing power generation and transmission capacity. Krishnan pointed out that the U.S. grid currently holds large amounts of excess generation capacity, but much of this capacity remains underutilized, either because it is not consistently available or because surplus capacity is concentrated in specific regional pockets. “How do we actually intelligently manage that? That’s an area of pretty strong interest — how do we model how energy is used, so that we can utilize that excess capacity in different places, whether it’s industries, EV charging stations,” he explained.

Notably, AI itself may hold part of the solution to the energy constraints it has created, Krishnan argued. Advanced AI systems can power far more dynamic, intelligent energy management platforms that are capable of balancing variable renewable energy supply with rapidly shifting demand from data centers and other energy-intensive end users.

One Chinese clean energy firm is already moving to turn this collaborative opportunity into tangible cross-border partnerships. GCL Group, a major Chinese clean energy service provider that has already developed utility-scale power projects across California, Colorado and New York, is actively pursuing partnerships with U.S. artificial intelligence companies to deliver tailored energy solutions for the rapid expansion of global AI infrastructure.

During a recent visit to Silicon Valley, GCL Group chairman Zhu Gongshan outlined the growing urgency for cross-sector collaboration. “Computing demands of generative AI are driving explosive growth in the global AI data center market, while putting mounting pressure on power supplies worldwide,” Zhu said. “As demand for computing capacity surges, energy is emerging as one of the biggest bottlenecks to AI development.”

A violent, targeted incident has rocked the San Francisco Bay Area tech community, after a 20-year-old man was taken into custody following a Molotov cocktail attack on the home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, one of the most high-profile leaders in the global artificial intelligence space. The attack left a perimeter gate at Altman’s property engulfed in flames, according to law enforcement reports.

The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) confirmed that first responders were dispatched to a disturbance call in the city’s upscale North Beach neighborhood in the early hours of Friday. While department officials initially declined to name the target of the attack or the suspect, an OpenAI spokesperson later verified that the targeted residence belonged to Altman, who serves as chief executive of the ChatGPT-developing AI firm. The spokesperson added that the same suspect was linked to a separate incident: threatening actions carried out at OpenAI’s main San Francisco headquarters.

Thankfully, the incident did not result in any injuries to people at either location. “We deeply appreciate how quickly SFPD responded and the support from the city in helping keep our employees safe,” the OpenAI spokesperson said in an official statement Friday.

Police records show that the suspect had fled the scene outside Altman’s residence before officers arrived. Roughly 60 minutes after the initial attack, however, the man reappeared outside an OpenAI office building, where he reportedly threatened to “burn down the building.” Law enforcement officers took the 20-year-old into custody at the site immediately after the threat.

As of Friday afternoon, SFPD representatives declined to share additional details about the suspect’s custody status or potential upcoming criminal charges, noting that the investigation remains active and ongoing. No motive for the attack has been released to the public as of yet.

Altman, a billionaire tech entrepreneur, holds multiple properties across the United States, but his primary place of residence is San Francisco, the city where OpenAI was founded and where its main operations are still based. As the most visible public face of the modern AI boom, Altman rose to global prominence after OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022. The launch of the generative AI chatbot sparked an unprecedented global AI race, triggering hundreds of billions of dollars in annual corporate investment into AI research and product development across the technology industry.

In recent weeks, Altman and OpenAI have become leading voices in the conversation around AI regulation and social impact. The company has openly acknowledged that widespread AI adoption could bring massive social and economic shifts, including widespread workforce displacement as AI systems grow more advanced and become capable of performing tasks across nearly every industry. Earlier this week, OpenAI released a set of policy proposals for governments around the world to mitigate the negative impacts of AI and prioritize human well-being, including expanded job training programs, workforce upskilling for AI-related roles, and higher tax rates for corporations and capital gains to offset shifting labor markets.

For decades, Breanna Olson, a mother of three from Tacoma, Washington, has dedicated her life to dance, training in ballet, contemporary, and jazz styles since early childhood. That identity was shattered two and a half years ago, when she received a devastating diagnosis: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the most common form of motor neurone disease (MND), a progressive, incurable condition that gradually weakens muscles, erodes control over movement, speech, swallowing, and eventually breathing. For Olson, the diagnosis meant losing the ability to do what she loved most — stepping onto a stage to dance.

That changed last December, when Olson made history at Amsterdam’s OBA Theatre, taking part in what organizers call the first live performance of its kind. Through a breakthrough collaboration between Japanese technology firm Dentsu Lab and data company NTT, Olson used a lightweight electroencephalogram (EEG) headset to translate her brain activity into real-time movement for a mixed-reality avatar, allowing her to return to the stage she thought she’d left forever.

The custom-built brain-computer interface developed for the project, called Waves of Will, works by capturing electrical signals from Olson’s brain as she imagines specific dance movements. The system processes these neural patterns and converts them into digital instructions, which control the avatar’s choreography live in front of an audience. After the performance, which earned a standing ovation from the crowd, Olson described the experience as nothing short of transformative.

“It was exhilarating, magical,” Olson told BBC News in an interview following the performance. “I never dreamed that I would be able to dance on stage again. It was just a beautiful and memorable moment I will remember for the rest of my life.”

Olson acknowledged that mastering the technology came with unique challenges. Users must learn to block out external sensory noise, isolate muscle interference, and focus deeply inward to generate clear neural signals for the system to read. But despite the learning curve, the performance allowed Olson to reconnect with the sense of creative expression that her illness had stolen.

“This is a new way of expression,” she said. “To be able to move in a new way and a different way is just freeing.”

Olson’s groundbreaking performance is part of a rapidly growing field of assistive technology development, where researchers and innovators are exploring how neural interfaces and artificial intelligence can restore autonomy, identity, and creative expression for people living with degenerative conditions. Earlier this year, Noland Arbaugh, the first person to receive a brain chip implant from Elon Musk’s Neuralink, reported that the device had allowed him to play chess again after losing motor control. Most recently, 58-year-old Yvonne Johnson, another person living with MND, shared how AI voice reconstruction tools helped her regain her personal voice after losing the ability to speak.

For the Waves of Will team, the project was born out of a gap in existing neural technology research. “There are many brainwave technologies and research all over the world, but most of them are very expensive and not accessible to everyone,” Naoki Tanaka, chief creative officer of Dentsu Lab, told reporters. “This is exactly why we started Waves of Will — to make a new, more accessible brainwave interface.”

Mariko Nakamura of NTT added that the core technology developed for the dance performance could be adapted for far wider uses beyond creative expression, including controlling assistive devices like powered wheelchairs and home remote controls for people with limited mobility.

For Olson, the performance is about more than just her own personal return to dance. She hopes her story will shift public perceptions of people living with disabilities, pushing back against harmful narratives that frame disabled people only through the lens of illness. “I hope people will view us less as sick people or that something is wrong with us, but more like we have value and talents and wisdom,” she said. Looking forward, she wants to use her experience to give other people diagnosed with ALS hope, demonstrating that the human mind is far more capable than many assume. “We can do more than we think we can,” she noted.

As the field of assistive neural technology continues to advance, projects like Waves of Will highlight how innovation can not only restore function for people living with disability, but also reopen doors to creative expression, connection, and participation in community life that many thought were lost forever.

When it comes to curating playlists for different settings, most people stick to unwritten rules: high-energy techno for gym sessions, groovy disco for nightclubs, and upbeat pop for cross-country road trips. But what does the perfect playlist look like 240,000 miles from Earth, orbiting the moon? For the four-person crew of NASA’s Artemis II mission, that question has an answer that mixes modern pop, hip-hop, classic rock, and deeply personal meaning — and the world is getting a glimpse of how music connects isolated astronauts to the home they left behind.

One of the biggest breakout names from the Artemis II wake-up playlist is American rapper Denzel Curry, whose collaborative track *Tokyo Drifting* (with Glass Animals) has become one of the crew’s daily morning greetings. Curry told BBC Newsbeat he was shocked and thrilled to see his work reach such unprecedented heights. A lifelong fan of space-focused media, Curry said he would jump at the chance to meet the Artemis II crew to thank them for including his track, and he has already set a bold new career goal: becoming the first rapper to perform live from space. He hopes the cosmic placement will give his track a new wave of popularity among listeners back on Earth.

Curry is far from the first artist whose work has made the journey to orbit, and the tradition of waking up astronauts with custom-picked songs stretches back more than 60 years. Retired British astronaut Tim Peake, who became the first Briton to walk on the International Space Station (ISS) in 2015, says music is far more than just entertainment in the isolated environment of space. As he prepared for his launch, Peake hand-picked three tracks to accompany him: Queen’s *Don’t Stop Me Now*, U2’s *Beautiful Day*, and Coldplay’s *A Sky Full of Stars*. “It gives you a connection back to Earth,” Peake explained. “It reminds you of times in your life when you’ve heard that music, of friends and family waiting for you back home.” The experience of listening to familiar music while floating above Earth, a “lovely, beautiful blue, green, white marble in the blackness of space,” is deeply surreal, he added, and that emotional connection makes the soundtrack an essential part of any space mission.

Antonia Jaramillo, a NASA mission control team member based in Houston, echoed that sentiment, noting that the daily routine of wake-up music helps ground astronauts during high-stakes missions far from home. “They are by themselves, going around the moon,” Jaramillo said. “We all have our morning wake-up routine back on Earth, a soundtrack that gets you in the right headspace for the day. It’s a very similar thing we’re doing for our crew.” The process of getting the custom playlist to the crew is simpler than many might think: tracks are downloaded ahead of time, and flight controllers at mission control broadcast the songs to the capsule just like any other communication with the crew. For Artemis II, the full nine-song playlist was curated by the crew themselves, with input from their friends and family members, blending personal favorite tracks with songs that carry special meaning for the historic moon mission.

Space researchers say the longstanding marriage of music and space exploration is no accident. Dr. Eleanor Armstrong, a space researcher at the University of Leicester, explained that the morning wake-up song tradition dates all the way back to NASA’s 1960s Gemini program, drawing on a long history of military organizations like the U.S. Navy using music to structure the start of a work day. That tradition has included many iconic moments beyond pre-planned playlists: during the 1965 Gemini 6A mission, astronauts Thomas Stafford and Wally Schirra smuggled a harmonica and set of small bells on board to celebrate the first successful space rendezvous, surprising mission control with a live performance of *Jingle Bells*. Those first instruments played in space are now on permanent display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.

Music has also been woven into uncrewed exploration missions: NASA’s 1977 Voyager 1 probe, now traveling through interstellar space beyond the edges of our solar system, carries a golden record filled with songs and sounds that represent the diversity of human life on Earth. More recently, the Tesla Roadster that SpaceX launched into orbit in 2018 is programmed to play David Bowie’s *Space Oddity* on an endless loop.

Artemis II crew member Christina Koch, who has long been fascinated by the intersection of music and space, has carried on that tradition in her own career. Koch famously located the original cassette tape used to play music during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, and played it from the ISS during the 50th anniversary of the historic moon landing. During her 2019-2020 ISS mission, she even learned to play a keyboard song for her husband as a surprise for their wedding anniversary, and the pair collaboratively build playlists for her missions, so they can share the experience of her journey even when separated by hundreds of thousands of miles.

Koch told Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney earlier this week that the Artemis II wake-up playlist is “absolute perfection,” though she joked she was disappointed that Chappell Roan’s *Pink Pony Club* was cut off right before the iconic chorus — adding that she sang the track to herself all day after the partial play. For other crew members, the songs carry equally personal meaning: Commander Reid Wiseman said *Tokyo Drifting* reminds him of annual family vacations to Florida, where he and his daughters listen to the track on the road. Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen’s family picked Queen and Bowie’s *Under Pressure* for his wake-up, while NASA astronaut Victor Glover said his wife surprised him by swapping one of his planned picks for Mandisa’s *Good Morning*, a pleasant start to his days in orbit.

The full Artemis II wake-up playlist is now available to stream on Spotify, giving listeners on Earth the chance to hear the same soundtrack that’s greeted the crew during their history-making lunar orbit. The nine-track list includes *Sleepyhead* by Young & Sick, *Green Light* by John Legend and André 3000, *In a Daydream* by the Freddy Jones Band, *Pink Pony Club* by Chappell Roan, *Working Class Heroes* by CeeLo Green, *Good Morning* by Mandisa and TobyMac, *Tokyo Drifting* by Glass Animals and Denzel Curry, *Under Pressure* by Queen and David Bowie, and *Lonesome Drifter* by Charley Crockett.

Ahead of one of the most anticipated milestones in modern space exploration, the BBC has been granted an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of a full-scale model of NASA’s Orion spacecraft, the vehicle that will carry the Artemis II crew safely back to Earth following their groundbreaking lunar mission. Scheduled for re-entry and splashdown on April 10, the upcoming return marks a critical juncture for NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to reestablish human presence on the moon and lay the groundwork for future deep space missions to Mars.

Starting May 20, 2026, Amazon will permanently cease software and connectivity support for all Kindle and Kindle Fire devices released in 2012 or earlier, a policy change that has left thousands of long-time device owners angry and concerned over planned obsolescence and unnecessary electronic waste.

In direct email notifications sent to affected customers recently, the e-commerce and tech giant thanked users for their loyalty over decades, but confirmed that older models would no longer receive any future updates, nor would they retain access to the Kindle Store. This means owners of affected devices — which include iconic early models such as the 2007 first-generation Kindle, 2011’s Kindle Touch, and the first line of Kindle Fire tablets, as well as the 2012 first-generation Kindle Paperwhite — will no longer be able to purchase, borrow, or download new e-books to their devices.

Already downloaded e-books will remain accessible for offline reading on the outdated hardware, and users will still be able to access their full Kindle Library via Amazon’s mobile and desktop reading apps. Amazon has also issued a critical warning: completing a factory reset on any affected device will render it completely unusable, as the device will be unable to reconnected to Amazon servers to restore content or core functionality.

To ease the transition, Amazon says it has offered exclusive discounts on newer Kindle models to active users of the affected devices. Still, the announcement has drawn sharp criticism from long-time customers who argue their older devices still work perfectly well for their core purpose of displaying e-books. Many took to social media platform X to voice their frustration, with one user noting their 2013 Kindle Touch functioned flawlessly and had only recently been used to purchase a new book before the announcement. Others pointed out that basic e-readers require minimal updates, questioning why Amazon needed to cut off support entirely for devices that serve their core function with no performance issues. Kay Aaronricks, a 46-year-old Kindle owner from the UK, told reporters she felt unexpected grief at the thought of losing full use of her 14-year-old device, which has become a staple of her work and travel routine.

“I love paper books like anyone does, but the Kindle is more practical,” Aaronricks said, adding she is also concerned about the embedded advertising that comes standard on many of Amazon’s lower-priced newer Kindles. For her, the ad-free reading experience of her older device is a key part of the enjoyment, allowing her to disconnect from marketing and digital distractions that dominate daily life.

Industry analysts have offered mixed perspectives on Amazon’s decision. Paolo Pescatore, a veteran tech industry analyst, noted that the move is understandable from security and operational support standpoints. These devices were designed more than 14 years ago, he explained, for a different era of digital services, and their aging hardware cannot support modern, more resource-intensive connectivity and security features. Maintaining ongoing support for such a small, declining user base would require disproportionate time and resources that Amazon cannot justify long-term. Still, Pescatore acknowledged that cutting off access to the Kindle Store will turn fully functional devices into limited offline-only tools, a disappointing outcome for attached users.

Critics of the policy frame it as a clear example of planned obsolescence that will generate unnecessary electronic waste. Ugo Vallauri, co-director of the Restart Project, a non-profit that advocates for electronic device repair and extended product lifecycles, said manufacturers have a long history of framing the phase-out of older devices as a push toward better performance, but that argument does not hold water for devices that still work as intended.

“However, that’s hardly a good reason for soft-bricking millions of still functioning devices,” Vallauri said. While Amazon notes that the change only impacts around 3% of its active Kindle user base, independent estimates suggest that this could add up to 2 million devices being rendered prematurely obsolete. Vallauri calculated that this would generate more than 624 tons of additional e-waste, as many users will discard their still-functional devices rather than keep them as limited offline readers.

A full list of affected devices includes: 1st Generation Kindle (2007), Kindle DX and DX Graphite (2009, 2010), Kindle Keyboard (2010), Kindle 4 (2011), Kindle Touch (2011), Kindle 5 (2012), 1st Generation Kindle Paperwhite (2012), 1st Generation Kindle Fire (2011), 2nd Generation Kindle Fire (2012), Kindle Fire HD 7 (2012), and Kindle Fire HD 8.9 (2012).