Hapag-Lloyd CEO Sees ‘Huge Surge' in Volume Last Few Days
The world's No. 5 container carrier is seeing a jump in business this week after the US and China lowered tariffs, the company's CEO said, as the trade war cease-fire unleashes a wave of pent-up demand for transpacific shipping.
'The last couple of days we see a huge surge of volume and now we need to see how long that lasts,' Rolf Habben Jansen, chief executive officer of Hamburg, Germany-based Hapag-Lloyd AG, told Bloomberg Television on Wednesday.
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San Francisco Chronicle
6 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
AI chatbots need more books to learn from. These libraries are opening their stacks
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — Everything ever said on the internet was just the start of teaching artificial intelligence about humanity. Tech companies are now tapping into an older repository of knowledge: the library stacks. Nearly one million books published as early as the 15th century — and in 254 languages — are part of a Harvard University collection being released to AI researchers Thursday. Also coming soon are troves of old newspapers and government documents held by Boston's public library. Cracking open the vaults to centuries-old tomes could be a data bonanza for tech companies battling lawsuits from living novelists, visual artistsand others whose creative works have been scooped up without their consent to train AI chatbots. 'It is a prudent decision to start with public domain data because that's less controversial right now than content that's still under copyright,' said Burton Davis, a deputy general counsel at Microsoft. Davis said libraries also hold 'significant amounts of interesting cultural, historical and language data' that's missing from the past few decades of online commentary that AI chatbots have mostly learned from. Supported by 'unrestricted gifts' from Microsoft and ChatGPT maker OpenAI, the Harvard-based Institutional Data Initiative is working with libraries around the world on how to make their historic collections AI-ready in a way that also benefits libraries and the communities they serve. 'We're trying to move some of the power from this current AI moment back to these institutions,' said Aristana Scourtas, who manages research at Harvard Law School's Library Innovation Lab. 'Librarians have always been the stewards of data and the stewards of information.' Harvard's newly released dataset, Institutional Books 1.0, contains more than 394 million scanned pages of paper. One of the earlier works is from the 1400s — a Korean painter's handwritten thoughts about cultivating flowers and trees. The largest concentration of works is from the 19th century, on subjects such as literature, philosophy, law and agriculture, all of it meticulously preserved and organized by generations of librarians. It promises to be a boon for AI developers trying to improve the accuracy and reliability of their systems. 'A lot of the data that's been used in AI training has not come from original sources,' said the data initiative's executive director, Greg Leppert, who is also chief technologist at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. This book collection goes "all the way back to the physical copy that was scanned by the institutions that actually collected those items,' he said. Before ChatGPT sparked a commercial AI frenzy, most AI researchers didn't think much about the provenance of the passages of text they pulled from Wikipedia, from social media forums like Reddit and sometimes from deep repositories of pirated books. They just needed lots of what computer scientists call tokens — units of data, each of which can represent a piece of a word. Harvard's new AI training collection has an estimated 242 billion tokens, an amount that's hard for humans to fathom but it's still just a drop of what's being fed into the most advanced AI systems. Facebook parent company Meta, for instance, has said the latest version of its AI large language model was trained on more than 30 trillion tokens pulled from text, images and videos. Meta is also battling a lawsuit from comedian Sarah Silverman and other published authors who accuse the company of stealing their books from 'shadow libraries' of pirated works. Now, with some reservations, the real libraries are standing up. OpenAI, which is also fighting a string of copyright lawsuits, donated $50 million this year to a group of research institutions including Oxford University's 400-year-old Bodleian Library, which is digitizing rare texts and using AI to help transcribe them. When the company first reached out to the Boston Public Library, one of the biggest in the U.S., the library made clear that any information it digitized would be for everyone, said Jessica Chapel, its chief of digital and online services. 'OpenAI had this interest in massive amounts of training data. We have an interest in massive amounts of digital objects. So this is kind of just a case that things are aligning,' Chapel said. Digitization is expensive. It's been painstaking work, for instance, for Boston's library to scan and curate dozens of New England's French-language newspapers that were widely read in the late 19th and early 20th century by Canadian immigrant communities from Quebec. Now that such text is of use as training data, it helps bankroll projects that librarians want to do anyway. 'We've been very clear that, 'Hey, we're a public library,'" Chapel said. 'Our collections are held for public use, and anything we digitized as part of this project will be made public.' Harvard's collection was already digitized starting in 2006 for another tech giant, Google, in its controversial project to create a searchable online library of more than 20 million books. Google spent years beating back legal challenges from authors to its online book library, which included many newer and copyrighted works. It was finally settled in 2016 when the U.S. Supreme Court let stand lower court rulings that rejected copyright infringement claims. Now, for the first time, Google has worked with Harvard to retrieve public domain volumes from Google Books and clear the way for their release to AI developers. Copyright protections in the U.S. typically last for 95 years, and longer for sound recordings. How useful all of this will be for the next generation of AI tools remains to be seen as the data gets shared Thursday on the Hugging Face platform, which hosts datasets and open-source AI models that anyone can download. The book collection is more linguistically diverse than typical AI data sources. Fewer than half the volumes are in English, though European languages still dominate, particularly German, French, Italian, Spanish and Latin. A book collection steeped in 19th century thought could also be 'immensely critical' for the tech industry's efforts to build AI agents that can plan and reason as well as humans, Leppert said. 'At a university, you have a lot of pedagogy around what it means to reason,' Leppert said. 'You have a lot of scientific information about how to run processes and how to run analyses.' At the same time, there's also plenty of outdated data, from debunked scientific and medical theories to racist narratives. 'When you're dealing with such a large data set, there are some tricky issues around harmful content and language," said Kristi Mukk, a coordinator at Harvard's Library Innovation Lab who said the initiative is trying to provide guidance about mitigating the risks of using the data, to 'help them make their own informed decisions and use AI responsibly.'
Associated Press
32 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Eco Wave Power Prepares for First-Ever U.S. Installation as LA Wave Energy Project Gains Momentum
Los Angeles, California--(Newsfile Corp. - June 12, 2025) - Eco Wave Power Global AB (publ) (NASDAQ: WAVE), a leading onshore wave energy technology company, is pleased to announce a significant milestone in the development of its first U.S. pilot project, located at the Port of Los Angeles. Amid rapid and meaningful progress, Inna Braverman, Founder and CEO of Eco Wave Power, and Ran Atias, VP of Engineering, conducted a site visit to All-Ways Metal, a woman-owned metal fabrication company based in California and the official manufacturing partner for Eco Wave Power's U.S. pilot. [ This image cannot be displayed. Please visit the source: ] To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit: During the visit, the team confirmed the production of three of the Eco Wave Power floaters, which will next enter the painting, and full assembly phase in preparation for installation. Eco Wave Power also confirmed that all floaters for the Port of LA pilot are expected to be completed by the end of June 2025, keeping the project on track and on schedule, with installation intended to take place in July 2025. The visit marks a strong step forward in Eco Wave Power's commitment to local sourcing, high-quality manufacturing, and U.S. job creation. 'Seeing the floaters take shape here in California is incredibly exciting,' said Inna Braverman, CEO of Eco Wave Power. 'This is not just a milestone for our technology—it's a powerful statement about what happens when international innovation meets strong local partnerships. The floaters taking shape here in California are not just steel and bolts-—they're the physical proof that wave energy is moving from concept to reality on American shores.' In parallel to the production site visit, representatives from Eco Wave Power and the Port of Los Angeles held a joint visit to the installation site. There, the parties reviewed the detailed deployment plan and agreed on the final installation strategy, with deployment scheduled to begin in July. This pilot marks the first-ever onshore wave energy installation in the United States and is expected to serve as a proof-of-concept for scalable, cost-effective wave power integration into U.S. ports and coastal infrastructure. Hosted by AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles, a world-class centre for the Blue Economy, the Eco Wave Power pilot will demonstrate the company's patented technology using floaters attached to pre-existing structures. Motion from the waves will be converted into clean electricity by a land-based conversion unit-offering a disruptive, low-maintenance alternative to offshore systems. The project is backed by Shell's Marine Renewable Program and forms a central part of Eco Wave Power's U.S. market entry strategy. About All-Ways Metal All-Ways Metal is a woman-owned California-based manufacturing company with a strong track record of innovation and excellence in metal fabrication. Known for precision, quality, and sustainability, All-Ways Metal is committed to advancing cleantech solutions and supporting green jobs in the U.S. Their partnership with Eco Wave Power highlights a shared vision for a cleaner, locally powered energy future. About Eco Wave Power Global AB (publ) Eco Wave Power is a leading onshore wave energy company revolutionizing clean energy with its patented, smart, and cost-efficient technology that converts ocean and sea waves into sustainable electricity. Dedicated to combating climate change, Eco Wave Power operates the first grid-connected wave energy project in Israel, co-funded by EDF Renewables IL and the Israeli Energy Ministry, which recognized the technology as a 'Pioneering Technology.' Expanding globally, Eco Wave Power is preparing to install projects at the Port of Los Angeles, Taiwan, and Portugal, adding to its impressive project pipeline totalling 404.7 MW. The company has received support from prestigious institutions such as the European Union Regional Development Fund, Innovate UK, and the Horizon 2020 program, and was honoured with the United Nations' Global Climate Action Award. Eco Wave Power's American Depositary Shares (WAVE) are traded on the Nasdaq Capital Market. Learn more at Information on, or accessible through, the websites mentioned above does not form part of this press release. For more information, please contact the company at: [email protected] Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the 'safe harbor' provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other federal securities laws. For example, the Company is using forward-looking statements in this press release when it discusses: the expectation that all of the floaters for the Port of LA pilot are expected to be completed by the end of June; and the expectation that installation will take place in forward-looking statements and their implications are neither historical facts nor assurances of future performance and are based on the current expectations of the management of Eco Wave Power and are subject to a number of factors, uncertainties and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict and may be outside of Eco Wave Power's control that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. Therefore, you should not rely on any of these forward-looking statements. Except as otherwise required by law, Eco Wave Power undertakes no obligation to publicly release any revisions to these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. More detailed information about the risks and uncertainties affecting Eco Wave Power is contained under the heading 'Risk Factors' in Eco Wave Power's Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, filed with the SEC on March 3, 2025, which is available on the on the SEC's website, , and other documents filed or furnished to the SEC. Any forward-looking statement made in this press release speaks only as of the date hereof. References and links to websites have been provided as a convenience and the information contained on such websites is not incorporated by reference into this press release. To view the source version of this press release, please visit
Yahoo
36 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Developer proposes converting half-empty OKC office towers into apartments
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — A California-based developer wants to breathe new life into a half-empty northwest Oklahoma City office complex by converting it into apartments, the latest in a nationwide trend spurred by housing shortages and a lack of demand for office space post-pandemic. The Landmark Towers, located off Northwest Expressway, have struggled with occupancy since the pandemic emptied out many in-person office spaces. Craig Tucker, managing broker and partner at Oklahoma real estate firm Price Edwards, said demand for office space simply isn't what it used to be. 'The office market, unfortunately, demand is just not there right now,' Tucker said. North Texas leaders consider local funding to keep Heartland Flyer running to Oklahoma City The firm's latest data shows the average Oklahoma City-area office building is more than 25% vacant. That number was closer to 20% in 2018. 'COVID sent a lot of people home,' Tucker said. 'They quickly figured out we don't need office space.' The farther outside downtown you go, the worse the situation gets. Price Edwards found the Landmark Towers were only 18% vacant before COVID. Now, they're about 50% empty. Tucker said he wasn't surprised when first reported the plans to convert the complex into apartments. 'It makes a lot of sense,' he said. 'Office is a tough slog right now, and apartments are pretty popular, and conversions make a lot of sense.' According to planning documents on file with the City of Oklahoma City and obtained by News 4, the company behind the plans to redevelop Landmark Towers is California-based Lincoln Avenue Communities. On its website, Lincoln Avenue describes itself as a company which 'builds communities that are sustainable, resilient, and affordable for the long-term… focused on creating solutions to address America's affordable housing shortage while delivering financial, social, and environmental returns.' Their full plans for Landmark Towers include dozens, if not hundreds, of apartments, along with a community pool and park. The city's Planning and Zoning Commission is scheduled to review the developer's full plans at their next meeting on Thursday. The company also filed a request with the Oklahoma State Historic Preservation Office to have the buildings added to the National Register of Historic Places, which could open the project up to special tax incentives. Tucker said the trend of office-to-apartment conversions began around 15 years ago in Oklahoma City, but this would be one of the first examples happening outside the downtown core. 'I think it will energize that area,' Tucker said. 'You know, there's two or three restaurants right out front that will benefit from it. 100% occupied apartments [are] a lot better than the 40% occupied office building.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
