Latest news with #Xing
South China Morning Post
26-05-2025
- Automotive
- South China Morning Post
China couple choose bicycles over limousines for wedding, get community blessings
A young man and woman in China who swapped traditional luxury bridal cars for a bicycle on their wedding day has captivated mainland social media. The couple, whose nuptials was held on May 13 in Luohe, Henan province in central China, were showered with blessings along the 20-minute bike ride, Hunan Daily reported. Chinese families normally use luxury cars for the bride pickup ritual on the big day, the vehicles often being borrowed from friends or rented from wedding organising companies. The happy couple turned heads along the wedding route with their unusual choice of transport. Photo: But the Henan bride, known as Xing, preferred that her husband used a bicycle to pick her up from her parents' home and take her to the house of his parents. The decision came as a result of her hobby of bicycle riding and her admiration for the simple love of her parents' generation, said Xing. 'I love riding, so I would like to add this element into my wedding to make it different from others,' Xing was quoted as saying. The bride dismounts the traditional-style bicycle onto a red carpet at the end of the journey. Photo: The bike her husband rode for the journey was an old-fashioned, big-sized model.
Straits Times
23-05-2025
- Business
- Straits Times
UAE's AI Uuniversity aims to become Stanford of the Gulf
The UAE is on a mission to become a global player in AI. PHOTO: REUTERS UAE's AI Uuniversity aims to become Stanford of the Gulf A few weeks before US President Donald Trump announced plans to lift semiconductor restrictions on the United Arab Emirates, a move with the potential to supercharge the region's AI development, Eric Xing sat in his office in Abu Dhabi and discussed what the future might look like. Mr Xing, a computer scientist who previously taught at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon, is president of Mohamed bin Zayed University of AI, a six-year-old institution uniquely positioned to shape the coming AI boom. During an interview with Bloomberg, Mr Xing repeatedly mentioned his ambition of making MBZUAI the Stanford of the Gulf, pointing to the California school's role in nurturing a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship whose effects have rippled far beyond Silicon Valley. The UAE is on a mission to become a global player in AI. The country appointed the world's first AI minister back in 2017, and mandated this month that all primary schools add AI-based topics like algorithmic bias and prompt engineering to their curriculums. With MBZUAI, named after the UAE leader, it is taking things further: the school is aiming to be a feeder for Emirati companies, which now mostly hire engineers from abroad; an incubator for homegrown startups; and an AI research and development arm for the UAE. While the UAE has poured billions into building AI, MBZUAI wants to make the country less dependent on foreign talent and companies. Its role, in Mr Xing's words, is 'train the people who can carry out the work'. Mr Trump may have just given the school a leg up in these ambitions. On his recent trip to the region, the US president framed a potential 'US-UAE AI Acceleration Partnership' as a way to strengthen business ties between the two countries, and to solidify the US lead in the field. Under the terms of the agreement, the UAE would be allowed to import 500,000 of the most advanced chips every year between now and 2027, with a fifth set aside for G42, the country's all-purpose AI company. That's a notable break with previous US strategy, said Kristin Diwan, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, DC. Over the past two decades, as the country has strengthened its ties with China, US administrations responded by restricting UAE access to semiconductors and sensitive technologies. Last year, G42 agreed to divest from China upon entering a partnership with Microsoft. By contrast, this latest proposal does not demand any Emirati concessions on ties with China. Ms Diwan described that as 'a massive win for the UAE's ambitions to become a central hub in the global tech economy'. Just under a fifth of the nearly 400 graduate students at MBZUAI come from the Emirates. The rest mostly hail from China, India, Kazakhstan and Egypt, which increasingly have trouble sending students to study in the US and UK. Backed by full scholarships from the UAE, MBZUAI students can pursue degrees in robotics, computer vision and other fields, with programs in decision science and digital public health launching soon. So far, the school has granted 211 master's degrees and eight doctorates and will welcome its first undergraduate class in the fall. This week, it opened its first US outpost: a research lab in Sunnyvale, near Google's headquarters, focused on advanced AI foundation models. Designed by British architect Norman Foster, the MBZUAI campus is new, sleek and expensive, with students zipping around on electric golf carts and gathering at cafes and communal prayer rooms. Ikboljon Sobirov, a graduate from Uzbekistan, said the university offered 'quite generous' academic and administrative support, including securing him a golden visa for long-term residency in the UAE. Ariana Venegas, a former analytics manager at Uber in Costa Rica, chose to study computer vision at MBZUAI over programs in Europe and Canada, where financial support was less certain. 'I prefer something more stable,' she said. According to MBZUAI, up to 70 per cent of graduates stay in the country. Many end up at G42, as well as TII, a government-funded research institute, and the Emirati defense company Edge. MBZUAI is designed to prepare graduates for the tech workforce. Business accounting and product management classes are required alongside computer science coursework, and Provost Timothy Baldwin has been recruiting rank-and-file engineers from Silicon Valley companies as guest lecturers. According to an internal presentation, MBZUAI hopes to add another 225 faculty members within the next five years. To lure AI talent, the school offers pay packages that are 'more favourable' than those at top-tier schools, said Elizabeth Churchill, who left Google last year to start the human-computer interaction department. She mentioned MBZUAI's interest in breaking with 'dominant' English-language culture as a point of appeal. Two years ago, the institution debuted what it described as 'the world's most advanced Arabic large language model.' Michael Bronstein, the DeepMind Professor of AI at Oxford University, praised the academics that MBZUAI has attracted. He also noted, with admiration, how quickly the university was established, calling it 'probably the best thing that can happen to the region.' At the same time, despite all its resources and promise, there are steep challenges ahead. Compared to 140-year-old Stanford, which has more than 17,000 students and 150 graduate programs, MBZUAI is building everything from scratch, doesn't yet have name recognition, and is reliant on government funding that doesn't come with any permanent guarantees. Some tech practitioners and scholars may also be reluctant to move to the UAE, where it is forbidden to criticise the country's government or leaders and acts of dissent carry a minimum sentence of five years in prison. That is not unique – China, for instance, enforces similar laws– but it does contradict the image that the UAE is trying to present to the world. The country 'doesn't invite criticism,' said Melissa Nisbett, a reader at King's College London who studies cultural politics. 'In fact, it clamps down on it.' Moreover, she added, should research fall outside the boundaries of what's seen as acceptable, that could lead to trouble. 'You think of the world's first AI university as something boundary-pushing and exploratory,' Ms Nisbett said. So far, this hasn't been an issue. Both Mr Baldwin and Ms Churchill described free expression as a 'core value' of the school, rejecting the notion that censorship might be an problem. 'This is a clean slate,' Mr Baldwin said of the MBZUAI approach. 'Are there boundaries?' Ms Churchill said from a roomy campus lounge arrayed, like many places in the country, with portraits of Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed and his late father, the UAE's founder. 'Yes,' she said, 'but there are everywhere.' BLOOMBERG Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
AsiaOne
23-05-2025
- Business
- AsiaOne
$4.6m fine: 2 contractors taken to task for rigging tender bids of upgrading works at PA community clubs, Singapore News
Two engineering and construction contractors have been fined over $4.6 million collectively for rigging bids in tender exercises for the upgrading of three community clubs. Trust-Build Engineering & Construction was slapped with a penalty of $4,295,059, and Hunan Fengtian Construction Group fined $349,350. The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (CCCS) said on Friday (May 23), the two firms had rigged three tenders called by the People's Association (PA) in August and September 2022 for construction and major upgrading works at Bukit Batok, Cheng San and Eunos Community Clubs. The works involved pilling and finishing, scaffolding, installation of doors and windows. Each affected tender was valued at between $17 million and $21 million, and the three had a value of about $56 million in total. At the time when the PA called for bids, Hunan Fengtian and Trust-Build were registered with the Building & Construction Authority to undertake high-value contracts of up to $50 million for the former and $105 million for the latter. Bid rigging is done when one contractor provides information about the bids to another, which would then typically submit a higher bid price to give the first company a better chance of winning. In this case, both contractors had colluded with each other to make Trust-Build the "winner" of the PA tenders. At a media conference on Friday, CCCS deputy director Caleb Tan said the general manager of Hunan Fengtian, Xing Hongyun, and the director of Trust-Build, Wang Jianjun, knew each other through industry contacts. Xing had rigged the PA tender bids for Trust-Build as a means to secure future business from them for his own company. He hence prepared tender bid prices and submissions for Wang to submit to the PA, and bid for the same tenders with the same submissions but at higher prices, to make Trust-Build's bids look more attractive. But before the tenders were awarded, PA noticed that the submissions of both contractors had the same words, diagrams and pictures. It flagged the potential bid-rigging activities to CCCS. Hunan Fengtian and Trust-Build were later excluded from tender evaluations. CCCS started investigating in July 2023 after receiving information and raided the businesses in November 2023, securing evidence such as documents and information from employees of both firms. They also secured evidence in the form of WhatsApp chats between Xing and Wang, who had discussed bid prices there. The competition watchdog then issued a Proposed Infringement Decision to Hunan Fengtian and Trust-Build on Oct 25, 2024. Both companies later submitted their respective representations to CCCS. On the financial penalties imposed, CCCS said it takes into account each firm's relevant turnover in the year the infringement took place and the turnover in the year the infringement decision is issued. Trust-Build has a higher turnover as a larger company. Chief executive of CCCS Alvin Koh said bid-rigging undermines fair competition, distorts the regular operation of market forces, and prevents customers from obtaining genuine and competitive offers. "In the context of public procurement where public funds are used, taxpayers are the ones who ultimately pay the price of such infringing conduct. "In line with our mission to make Singapore markets work well, we will continue to take a more active enforcement stance and take decisive and firm action against businesses which are found to have engaged in anti-competitive conduct." He added that persons with information on cartel activity can receive monetary rewards of up to $120,000 if they report it. [[nid:701218]]
TECHx
21-05-2025
- Business
- TECHx
Huawei Digital Power Reveals AI Data Center Roadmap
Home » Emerging technologies » Artificial Intelligence » Huawei Digital Power Reveals AI Data Center Roadmap for Uzbekistan Huawei Digital Power has announced its strategic roadmap for advanced data centers to support Uzbekistan's artificial intelligence initiatives. The company revealed this during the Huawei Middle East & Central Asia Technology Carnival and Partner Conference. Alex Xing, President of Huawei Digital Power Middle East and Central Asia, presented the RASTM framework. This framework aims to build next-generation AI infrastructure aligned with Uzbekistan's $1.5 billion AI development plan. Uzbekistan's Artificial Intelligence Development Strategy 2030, signed by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev in October 2024, outlines key ambitions. It focuses on developing AI software and services worth $1.5 billion. The plan also includes establishing ten specialized AI research labs nationwide. Furthermore, the strategy calls for high-performance servers designed to handle big data processing needs. Global AI infrastructure investment is expected to exceed $400 billion by 2027. In addition, AI data centers are projected to surpass 100 GW in capacity by 2028, according to IDC. Xing highlighted three challenges facing AI data centers: higher reliability, faster deployment, and greater energy demand. To tackle these, Huawei's RASTM framework focuses on: Architectural innovation for system stability and lifecycle reliability Modular construction to reduce time-to-market by up to 50% Energy efficiency through AI-driven management and renewable energy integration, achieving over 30% energy savings Xing emphasized that the AI era demands significantly more power, storage, and efficiency. Huawei's innovations aim to meet these while ensuring reliability, agility, and sustainability. Huawei continues to invest over $140 million annually in AI data center research and development. The company operates a 70,000 m² AI data center laboratory to advance its technology. With over 1,000 data centers deployed in more than 170 countries, Huawei brings extensive global experience to Uzbekistan's National Data Center. This 2.1 MW facility uses dual-layer prefabricated modules and features low Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) infrastructure. Finally, Xing called for collaboration, stating that data centers are national assets powering innovation and progress. Huawei Digital Power aims to build the digital foundation for evolving industries, governments, and societies based on its RASTM principles of reliability, agility, and sustainability.
Broadcast Pro
21-05-2025
- Science
- Broadcast Pro
MBZUAI strengthens research ties with France's École Polytechnique
Speaking about the collaboration, Professor Eric Xing, President and University Professor, MBZUAI, said: 'Our partnerships and presence in France are critical to the continued growth and innovation of our research capabilities at MBZUAI and we're excited to expand our relationship with École Polytechnique in support of these efforts. Our expanded agreement represents a blueprint for global research collaboration to advance the field of AI and share in the benefits collectively across France and the UAE.' In February, MBZUAI signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with École Polytechnique (L'X) to foster collaboration on joint initiatives in education, research, and innovation in artificial intelligence. The agreement was formalised on the sidelines of the AI Action Summit in France, where Professor Xing delivered a keynote address on AI, Science, and Society. Building on this partnership, the two institutions signed the Scholars Exchange Programme Agreement in April, enabling the exchange of students and researchers between MBZUAI and École Polytechnique. Laura Chaubard, Director General of École Polytechnique, added: 'I'm delighted to be moving forward with our strategic research partnership with MBZUAI. The scientific synergies are numerous, in the fields of AI for health, safety, and environmental sustainability, as well as in large language models and foundation models for reasoning. I'm sure that these synergies will give rise to rich collaborations in the future.' This strategic partnership represents a significant milestone in accelerating joint research efforts and supporting the next generation of researchers and innovators in the field of AI. MBZUAI's research ties with France are also supported by the growing presence of the MBZUAI France Lab in Paris. Among their achievements to date, researchers at this satellite lab have developed a family of open-source large language models (LLMs) called Atlas-Chat, focusing on the Moroccan Arabic dialect (Darija). The team has released two language models: Atlas-Chat-2B, designed for efficient generation of fluent Darija text, and Atlas-Chat-9B, offering more nuanced, context-rich output for advanced tasks. The France Lab will also be a focal point for MBZUAI's soon-to-be-unveiled Institute of Foundation Models (IFM) a bold, global initiative uniting AI talent across Abu Dhabi, Silicon Valley and Paris. The France Lab will be one of three centres in each of these AI hubs designed to advance the next generation of foundation models and deliver their benefits to communities worldwide.
