Latest news with #Xianyu
The Verge
07-05-2025
- The Verge
Is this the Nintendo Switch 2's CPU?
Everything we know so far about the Nintendo Switch 2 See all Stories Posted May 7, 2025 at 4:45 PM UTC Is this the Nintendo Switch 2's CPU? YouTuber Geekerwan has obtained what appears to be a Switch 2 motherboard component for about $150 on Xianyu, which he describes as a Chinese eBay equivalent. Even without being able to power it up, microscopic evaluation suggests that the 'T239' chip was taped out in 2021 with Nvidia's Ampere tech. Combined with leaked clockspeed specs, they were able to demonstrate some performance estimates on current games, but maybe we'll get even more hardware details soon.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
China has a new 'completely autonomous' AI agent. Here's what to know about Manus
In the past year, artificial intelligence leaders have talked about the advent of agents that can do work autonomously. Now, China says it has developed the world's first. Last week, Chinese researchers launched an early preview of Manus AI, which they said is 'the first general AI agent.' 'This isn't just another chatbot or workflow,' Yichao 'Peak' Ji, chief scientist for Manus AI, said in an introductory video. 'It's a truly autonomous agent that bridges the gap between conception and execution.' While other AI agents are useful for idea generation, Ji said Manus AI 'delivers results' without much human prompting. The agent's name comes from the Latin motto 'Mens et Manus,' which translates to 'Mind and Hand.' 'We see it as the next paradigm of human-machine collaboration, and potentially a glimpse into AGI,' Ji said, referring to artificial general intelligence — the point when AI will be believed to have reached and surpassed human-level intelligence. The agent is currently invitation-only, and access codes were being resold for thousands of dollars on China's reseller app, Xianyu (BABA), TechCrunch (VZ) reported. Manus AI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Quartz. Here's what we know so far about Manus. According to the Manus AI website, the agent can perform real-world tasks such as providing custom travel plans, researching real estate properties for affordability, and performing correlation analyses between stocks. Ji demonstrated Manus screening 15 resumes, then providing its ranking suggestions and evaluation of each candidate. He then instructed the agent to put the information into a spreadsheet. 'Manus has its own knowledge and memory, so I can teach Manus that the next time it handles a similar task, it will deliver a spreadsheet right away,' Ji said Because Manus works asynchronously in the cloud, Ji said, users can close their laptop while it completes tasks. The agent can also receive new instructions while it is working. On the GAIA Benchmark, which evaluates general AI assistants, Ji said Manus has achieved state-of-the-art performance alongside OpenAI's Deep Research agent. The agent is already performing tasks on freelance work platforms such as Upwork (UPWK) and Fiverr (FVRR), Ji said. Ji said the agent's capabilities 'wouldn't be possible without' the open-source community, which means its code, datasets, and parameters are available for anyone to access and build upon. The agent 'operates as a multi-agent system,' and is powered by different AI models, Ji said, adding that the team plans to open-source some of the models later this year. According to Hugging Face, Manus was developed by a Chinese AI startup called which is developing next-generation autonomous agents. However, other reports say Manus was built by a Chinese firm called Butterfly Effect. Dean Ball, an AI research fellow at George Mason University, said in a post on X that it was 'wrong' to compare Manus to China's breakthrough AI moment with DeepSeek earlier this year. 'Deepseek was about replication of capabilities already publicly achieved by American firms,' Ball said. 'Manus is actually advancing the frontier.' Victor Mustar, head of product at Hugging Face, called Manus 'the most impressive AI tool I've ever tried,' in a post on X. Mustar said Manus's 'agentic capabilities are mind-blowing, redefining what's possible.' However, other AI researchers were not so impressed. Alexander Doria, co-founder of French AI lab PlelAs, said in a post on X that despite liking the agent's user-interface, 'it's fundamentally a workflow' and 'not an actual agent (at least nothing really beyond the built-in agentic capacities of Claude).' Professor and researcher Derya Unutmaz said in a post on X that he ran OpenAI's Deep Research alongside Manus. While Deep Research completed Unutmaz's task in under 15 minutes, Manus failed after 50 minutes, and didn't finish all the necessary steps. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
South China Morning Post
07-03-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Was Manus another DeepSeek moment? Chinese AI agent faces doubts after rapid rise to fame
General-purpose artificial intelligence (AI) agent Manus, which was developed by a Chinese team, faces doubts about its technological capabilities, as very few people were able to test the product owing to an apparent shortage of server capacity after a surge in popularity. Advertisement While Manus has gained attention for its claimed ability to handle complex tasks, and is being hailed by investors as another breakthrough following the low-cost AI models from DeepSeek, its availability remains limited a day after launch. The firm's account on social media X was also suspended on Friday. The invitation-only arrangement spurred a scramble among users seeking to access Manus. On China's second-hand online marketplace Xianyu, some vendors were even selling Manus invitation codes or renting out accounts, with some critics accusing the team behind Manus of intentionally deploying scarcity marketing tactics. Ji Yichao, chief scientist of Manus AI, introduces the AI agent in a demonstration video. Photo: Handout 'The current invite-only mechanism is due to genuinely limited server capacity at this stage,' Manus AI's product partner Zhang Tao said in a social media post on Thursday afternoon. Zhang apologised, admitting the team underestimated the enthusiasm of the public response, and initially intended only to share some achievements from the AI agent. Consequently, their server resources were planned to only meet a demonstration level. 'The current version of Manus is still in its infancy, far from what we aim to deliver in our final product,' Zhang added. Meanwhile, the Manus team's official account on X was suspended for violating the platform's rules. 'Peak' Yichao Ji, co-founder and chief scientist of Manus, said the team was 'actively working with X's support team to resolve this matter'. Advertisement The suspension was potentially linked to cryptocurrency scams by unrelated third-party accounts attempting to capitalise on its traffic.
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Jack Ma visits second-hand marketplace Xianyu as Alibaba's AI grabs attention
Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma on Tuesday visited the Hangzhou offices of Xianyu, China's largest online marketplace for second-hand goods, as the technology giant advances its artificial intelligence (AI) agenda. Photos and video clips shared by Xianyu employees showed Ma, 60, sporting a vest emblazoned with the Alibaba logo and smiling broadly. Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post, established Xianyu in 2014 with the aim of creating an entertaining way for Chinese consumers to buy online. Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team. Shoppers under the age of 30 comprised nearly half of the 178 million monthly active users in China's second-hand e-commerce market last year, according to data from analytic firm QuestMobile. Xianyu employees pose for a selfie with Ma. Photo: Handout alt=Xianyu employees pose for a selfie with Ma. Photo: Handout> Alibaba has been using the online flea market as a testing ground for its AI technologies. Xianyu has adopted AI functions, based upon Alibaba's in-house large language model Qwen, to facilitate the presale credit rating of sellers, release of idle goods and after-sales services. Ma, who resigned from all corporate roles at Alibaba but remains a key shareholder, visited Xianyu as the e-commerce giant's AI capabilities gain attention. The latest version of Alibaba's open-source AI model Qwen recently became the top-ranked non-reasoning model from a Chinese developer, according to US benchmarking platform Chatbot Arena. Qwen surpassed V3, the top model from Chinese start-up DeepSeek, which has made global headlines in recent weeks. US computer scientists, including renowned Chinese-American "AI godmother" Li Feifei, had trained a reasoning model for under US$50 based on Alibaba's Qwen, according to a research paper published last week. Alibaba's stock price in Hong Kong remained largely unchanged on Tuesday morning after gaining nearly 7.6 per cent in the US overnight. This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Sign in to access your portfolio
