Japan Consumer Inflation Eases in Relief for BOJ
Core consumer inflation, which excludes volatile fresh food prices, rose 3.3% from a year earlier, compared with May's 3.7% rise, government data showed Friday. That matched the forecast in a poll of economists by data provider Quick.
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On GPS: Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes on how to make markets work for all Americans
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China is betting on a real-world use of AI to challenge U.S. control
SHANGHAI - As the United States and China vie for control over the future of artificial intelligence, Beijing has embarked on an all-out drive to transform the technology from a remote concept to a newfangled reality, with applications on factory floors and in hospitals and government offices. China does not have access to the most advanced chips required to power cutting-edge models due to restrictions from Washington and is still largely playing catch-up with Silicon Valley giants like OpenAI. But experts say Beijing is pursuing an alternative playbook in an attempt to bridge the gap: aggressively pushing for the adoption of AI across the government and private sector. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.) Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. 'In China, there's definitely stronger government support for applications and a clear mandate from the central government to diffuse the technology through society,' said Scott Singer, an expert on China's AI sector at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. By contrast, the U.S. has been more focused on developing the most advanced AI models while 'the application layer has been totally ignored,' he said. China's push was on full display in Shanghai at its World Artificial Intelligence Conference, which ran until Tuesday. Themed 'Global Solidarity in the AI Era,' the expo is one part of Beijing's bid to establish itself as a responsible AI leader for the international community. This pitch was bolstered by the presence of international heavyweights like Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, and Geoffrey Hinton, a renowned AI researcher often called the 'Godfather of AI.' During the event, Beijing announced an international organization for AI regulation and a 13-point action plan aimed at fostering global cooperation to ensure the technology's beneficial and responsible development. 'China attaches great importance to global AI governance,' Li Qiang, China's premier, said at the opening ceremony on Saturday. It 'is willing to share its AI development experience and technological products to help countries around the world - especially those in the Global South,' he said, according to an official readout. Just last week, President Donald Trump announced a competing plan in a bid to boost American AI competitiveness by reducing regulation and promoting global exports of U.S. AI technology. Washington has moved in recent years to restrict China's access to chips necessary for AI development, in part due to concerns about potential military applications of such models and degrading U.S. tech leadership. The Trump administration's approach to chip policy, however, has been mixed. Earlier this month, the White House reversed a previous ban on specific AI chips made by U.S. tech giant Nvidia being exported to China. This shift occurred amid trade negotiations between the world's two largest economies, which have been locked in an escalating tariff and export control war since Trump returned to the Oval Office earlier this year. There was nothing but excitement about AI in the vast expo center in Shanghai's skyscraper-rich Pudong district, where crowds entered gates controlled by facial recognition. Inside, thousands of attendees listened to panels stacked with Chinese government officials, entrepreneurs and international researchers, or watched demonstrations on using AI to create video games, control robotic movements and respond in real time to conversations via smartglasses. Chinese giants like Huawei and Alibaba and newer Chinese tech darlings like Unitree Robotics were there. DeepSeek was not present, but its name was spoken everywhere. The Hangzhou-based upstart has been at the forefront of Beijing's attempt to push the government use of AI since it released a chatbot model in January, prompting a global craze and driving home China's rapid AI advances. DeepSeek has been put to work over the last six months on a wide variety of government tasks. Procurement documents show military hospitals in Shaanxi and Guangxi provinces specifically requesting DeepSeek to build online consultation and health record systems. Local government websites describe state organs using DeepSeek for things like diverting calls from the public and streamlining police work. DeepSeek helps 'quickly discover case clues and predict crime trends,' which 'greatly improves the accuracy and timeliness of crime fighting,' a city government in China's Inner Mongolia region explained in a February social media post. Anti-corruption investigations - long a priority for Chinese leader Xi Jinping - are another frequent DeepSeek application, in which models are deployed to comb through dry spreadsheets to find suspicious irregularities. In April, China's main anti-graft agency even included a book called 'Efficiently Using DeepSeek' on its official book recommendation list. China's new AI action plan underscores this push, declaring that the 'public sector should take the lead in deploying applications' by embedding AI in education, transportation and health care. It also emphasizes a mandate to use AI 'to empower the real economy' and praises open-source models - which are more easily shared - as an egalitarian method of AI development. Alfred Wu, an expert on China's public governance at the National University of Singapore, said Beijing has disseminated a 'top-down' directive to local governments to use AI. This is motivated, Wu said, by a desire to improve China's AI prowess amid a fierce rivalry with Washington by providing models access to vast stores of government data. But not everyone is convinced that China has the winning hand, even as it attempts to push AI application nationwide. For one, China's sluggish economy will impact the AI industry's ability to grow and access funding, said Singer, who was attending the conference. Beijing has struggled to manage persistent deflation and a property crisis, which has taken a toll on the finances of many families across the country. 'So much of China's AI policy is shaped by the state of the economy. The economy has been struggling for a few years now, and applications are one way of catalyzing much-needed growth,' he said. 'The venture capital ecosystem in AI in China has gone dry.' Others point out that local governments trumpeting their usage of DeepSeek is more about signaling than real technology uptake. Shen Yang, a professor at Tsinghua University's school of artificial intelligence, said DeepSeek is not being used at scale in anti-corruption work, for example, because the cases involve sensitive information and deploying new tools in these investigations requires long and complex approval processes. He also pointed out that AI is still a developing technology with lots of kinks. 'AI hallucinations still exist,' he said, using a term for the technology's generation of false or misleading information. 'If it's wrong, who takes responsibility?' These concerns, however, felt far away in the expo's humming hallways. At one booth, Carter Hou, the co-founder of Halliday, a smartglasses company, explained how the lenses project a tiny black screen at the top of a user's field of vision. The screen can provide translation, recordings and summaries of any conversation, and even deploy 'proactive AI,' which anticipates questions based on a user's interactions and provides information preemptively. 'For example, if you ask me a difficult question that is fact related,' Hou said, wearing the trendy black frames, 'all I need to do is look at it and use that information and pretend I'm a very knowledgeable person.' Asked about the event's geopolitical backdrop, Hou said he was eager to steer clear of diplomatic third rails. 'People talk a lot about the differences between the United States and China,' he said. 'But I try to stay out of it as much as possible, because all we want to do is just to build good products for our customers. That's what we think is most important.' Kiki Lei, a Shanghai resident who started an AI video company and attended the conference on Sunday, seemed to agree with this goal. She said that Chinese AI products are easier to use than U.S. products because companies here really 'know how to create new applications' and excel at catering to, and learning from, the large pool of Chinese technology users. Robots, perhaps the most obvious application of AI in the real world, were everywhere at the conference - on model factory floors and in convenience stores retrieving soda cans, shaking disbelieving kids' hands, or just roaming the packed halls. At the booth for ModelBest, another Beijing-based AI start-up, a young student from China's prestigious Tsinghua University, who was interning at the company, demonstrated how a robot could engage with its surroundings - and charm its human interlocutors. Looking directly at the student, the robot described his nondescript clothing. 'The outfit is both stylish and elegant,' the robot continued. 'You have a confident and friendly demeanor, which makes you very attractive.' - - - Pei-Lin Wu in Taiwan contributed to this report. --- Video Embed Code Video: Robots ruled at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, where China displayed its latest tech and AI innovation. Washington Post China correspondent Katrina Northrop reported from the event on July 26.(c) 2025 , The Washington Post Embed code: Related Content Pets are being abandoned, surrendered amid Trump's immigration crackdown The Post exposed this farmer's struggle. Then the USDA called. Kamala Harris will not run for California governor, opening door for 2028 run Solve the daily Crossword
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3 hours ago
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Fox News anchor caught off guard when confronted with Fox's bad poll numbers for Trump on inflation
Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner was seemingly caught flatfooted Thursday when a Democratic guest referenced her own network's polling to show that the vast majority of Americans disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling inflation. Instead, Faulkner heaped praise on the president over his handling of the economy while parroting Trump's own false boasts about inflation plummeting, prompting her guest to point out that recent data shows that prices have been on the rise in recent months. During Thursday's broadcast of The Faulkner Focus, the veteran anchor welcomed former Kamala Harris adviser Mike Nellis to her program to discuss Harris' decision to forego a California gubernatorial run next year, which has sparked speculation that the former vice president may try for another White House run in 2028. Toward the end of the discussion, which also included National Review writer Caroline Downey, Faulkner pointed out that the Democratic presidential field in the next election would be 'crowded' before asking Nellis who he thought would become the frontrunner. 'Who do you think this really does come down to having to impress the American people right now? Because your party, Mike, you guys aren't all moving in concert with one another,' she declared. Acknowledging that the Democrats are 'having tough conversations' after losing the 2024 election, Nellis went on to say 'both political parties are out of touch with the day-to-day lives of most Americans' before bringing up poor approval numbers for the president on economic issues. 'There's a lot of polling out in the last couple of weeks talking about how frustrated people are with inflation and pricing and housing and things like that,' Nellis continued, prompting Faulkner to cut him off to insist that the economy is booming. 'Inflation's at 2 percent! The GDP just popped,' she exclaimed. Nellis, meanwhile, retorted that inflation is actually 'at 2.9 percent,' referencing the 'core' inflation index that was released earlier this month. The Consumer Price Index, meanwhile, rose 2.7 percent year-over-year, and prices were up 0.3 percent over the course of the month. 'The GDP just popped to three percent! I mean, we haven't seen that in a very long time,' a flustered Faulkner proclaimed, apparently unaware that the United States had two straight quarters of at least three percent growth last year – and had exceeded that mark in four of five quarters heading into the 2024 election. 'If I could point you to Fox's own polling, Trump is negative 30 percent on pricing and inflation and is as unpopular as Joe Biden ever was,' Nellis shot back. 'So the American people are frustrated with where their lives are right now.' With the Democratic strategist also highlighting other surveys that Americans feel they are worse off than they were six months ago, Faulkner interjected to let Downey get the final word and to bring the segment to an end. 'President Trump is rapidly delivering on his economic promises,' Downey said before Faulkner wrapped things up. Nellis, meanwhile, did appear to slightly exaggerate how poorly Trump fared in the latest Fox News survey – a survey that recently led the president to once again rage about the network's polling division. Though he claimed that the president is negative 30 points on his handling of inflation, the network's most recent poll finds that Trump is actually only down 26 points, as 36 percent of Americans approve of the way he's dealing with the issue, compared to 62 percent who do not.
