Military-Grade Tech Empowers Visually Impaired

China’s Yuanshan Zhixing Technology have unveiled Xiaoyuan, the country’s first wheeled-legged guide robot, which can glide on flat ground and climb stairs, offering a new mobility solution for people with visual impairments. 

The robot features a hybrid wheeled-legged design. It can move on wheels across flat surfaces and switch to legged mode to climb stairs, allowing it to navigate both up and down steps. It also operates with low noise to avoid interfering with users’ ability to identify their surroundings through sound, the company told the Global Times on Saturday. 

Xiaoyuan can detect overhead obstacles such as low-hanging branches and scaffolding, which can be difficult for conventional white canes to detect. It can identify such hazards in advance and automatically slow down or detour around them, the company said. 

It is claimed the robot has an indoor obstacle-avoidance success rate of at least 99 percent and an outdoor success rate of at least 96 percent, while its outdoor positioning error is controlled within 30 centimeters. Its functions include route navigation, voice interaction, as well as companionship and reminders. In emergencies, users can also initiate an alert and request assistance from volunteers remotely. 

Designed to resemble a guide dog, Xiaoyuan is intended to match users’ normal walking habits in terms of its walking rhythm and leash-based control. 

I learnt that China has more than 17 million people with visual impairments, while only about 400 guide dogs are currently available. Besides, training a guide dog is a lengthy process, making it difficult for many visually impaired people to obtain one. 

The company operate under the Zhiyuan Research Institute, which is an entity affiliated with the China North Industries Group (Norinco), the country’s largest defense contractor. This project highlights a growing push by defense-affiliated research institutions to adapt advanced military robotics and navigation tech for civilian accessibility solutions. 

The China Tech Pilgrimage

Humanoid robots working on factory floors, AI models challenging global rivals and electric-vehicle plants churning out cars at breathtaking scale are drawing a new wave of foreign visitors to China. 

Investors and entrepreneurs are paying thousands of dollars for rare access to Chinese factories, ​seeking a front-row seat to what many believe could be the next technological revolution. The influx reflects mounting fears of a "China shock 2.0", with Western boardrooms and capitals confronting the possibility that Chinese companies are seizing ‌the lead in advanced manufacturing and cutting-edge technologies. 

"Right now, people are looking at China as an object of study and learning – a trend that barely existed just a few years ago", says Robert Wu, CEO of Shanghai-based data research firm Baiguan. He noted that visitors often arrive with misconceptions – for instance, assuming China's robotaxi sector leads the US, when domestic policy caution around potential job losses actually keeps it a step behind. 

According to Reuters, Wu has organised two tours for more than two dozen investors, entrepreneurs and executives so far, charging up to $15,000 for a five-day programme. Around half the participants came from Southeast Asia. 

He is part of a growing cottage industry catering to foreign demand for first-hand access to China's innovation ecosystem. 

Many attendees avoid publicising their visits. Among those known to have made the trip are US investment firms Dimension, Capital Group and Thrive Capital, as well as US tech podcaster Lex Fridman. 

While data on tech tours is scarce, broader industrial tourism is booming. China's industrial tourism sector ⁠pulled in $17.8 billion last year, according to state media, and is projected to blow past 300 billion yuan ($44.6 billion) by 2029. 

Shanghai-based tech tour agency Glopen says inquiries jumped 50% in 2026 from mostly European and Singaporean clients, and it now runs over 100 single-day company tours every month. 

"You cannot grasp the true scale, speed, and physicality of Chinese innovation without standing on the factory floor", says Bertrand Chen, CEO of the Global Shipping Business Network, who joined an April three-city robotics and emerging tech tour organised by Chinese American investor Rui Ma. 

Ma, founder of Tech Buzz China and organizer of eleven such tours since 2019, frames it as essential due diligence: "Even if you're not actively investing in China, you're increasingly likely to encounter Chinese companies as competitors, partners, suppliers, or investments in markets around the world". 

The circuit spans Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Hefei, the industrial powerhouses at the heart of China's electric-vehicle, battery, AI and robotics boom. 

World leaders too have also flocked to Xiaomi's Beijing auto factory, while Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz was famously filmed watching Unitree's dancing humanoid robots in Hangzhou, a high-profile showcase of the country's technological ascent. 

None of this is happening by accident. 

Beijing has explicitly pledged to "vigorously promote" industrial tourism, designating over 140 official demonstration sites. A growing number of factories are offering public tours at around $60 a pop. 

Xiaomi's EV factory has welcomed more than 250,000 visitors since March 2024. Demand is so intense that lottery-awarded entry slots are scalped online for up to 2,000 yuan ($300). 

Xiaomi told Reuters in a statement that eligibility for visits is determined through an online lottery and tickets cannot ‌be transferred. 

For European ⁠executives wrestling with sluggish productivity growth and fears of falling behind in AI and robotics, China has become a particularly important destination.

Alex Shengyun Lu, a Shanghai-based AI consultant at Praxis Advisory, has led seven delegations of up to 50 corporate visitors since late 2025 and describes an uneasy mood. 

"The smartest people in Europe are acutely aware of the situation. The insecurity is palpable", he says. 

Executives typically arrive seeking answers to two questions, Lu said: what they can learn from Chinese companies and from China's state-backed approach to technology investment. 

"They are coming here with a genuine mindset of humility and learning". 

Lu, who declined to name the companies due to confidentiality agreements, says many European executives want to understand how China coordinates AI deployment across provinces at scale and what ​lessons can be applied back home. 

Still, some industry observers caution against overstating China's advantage. 

"Non-Chinese (tech) companies still have most of ⁠the global market share, the most advanced IP, and the biggest profits", Tech Buzz founder Ma insists. 

Even so, the flow of tech pilgrims remains strong, including American visitors despite escalating US-China technology tensions. 

"The people who are actually on the ground trying to build physical products don't care about the politics at all", says Joshua Woodard, a US manufacturing consultant based in Shenzhen. 

"US robotics companies still heavily source components and hardware from China. We pretend we can do it all ourselves in America, but it is incredibly hard to completely decouple".

Data in the Deep

China has taken AI computing beneath the sea, where cold ocean water cools servers while saving energy and millions of litres of freshwater every year. 

Off Hainan’s coast, China operates commercial underwater data centres around 35 metres below the surface. These sealed submarine-grade steel modules use natural seawater to dissipate heat through internal conduction and external radiators, bypassing the energy-hungry mechanical chillers and large amounts of freshwater required by conventional land-based facilities. 

At full capacity, its first phase is expected to save about 26,000 tonnes of water and 3.4 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually compared with a similar land-based facility.

Don't equate Iran with Venezuela.

A truism. 

This statement was made during an interview with ⁠Mehr News, published on July 20, 2026. 

[That "one person" in question is former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. 

The comment was made in direct reference to a US military operation on January 03, 2026, during which American forces quickly captured and forcibly removed Maduro from power. 

Following his kidnapping, Venezuela’s interim government – led by Acting President Delcy Rodríguez – swiftly endeared themselves to Donald Trump and entered into US-supervised talks, granting new oil and energy concessions to Washington. To put it bluntly, Venezuela capitulated].

On July 28, their Foreign Ministry officially summoned Iranian Ambassador Ali Chegini to deliver a formal note of protest, demanding a strict "cessation of all allusion or comparison that undermines the dignity, sovereignty, institutional framework, or good name" of Venezuela. 

😂😂😂

PhDs for the Real World

In most countries, earning a PhD means writing a dissertation. Hundreds of pages of theory, research, and citations that very few people will ever read. 

China decided to try something different. Under a law passed in 2024, select universities can now award engineering doctorates based on physical prototypes, new techniques, or major installations instead of traditional papers. 

The rule is straightforward: build something that works in real life and at scale, and you can graduate. 

The first cohort has already finished. Zheng Hehui earned his doctorate by designing reinforced steel blocks that snap together like LEGO to form massive bridge pylons. His invention is already in use on the Changtai Yangtze River Bridge, the world's longest cable-stayed bridge. 

Wei Lianfeng became the first practical PhD graduate at Harbin Institute of Technology by developing vacuum laser welding processes for the Nuclear Power Institute of China. 

Another candidate built a fire-fighting system for large seaplanes. 

At least 11 engineers have now earned their doctorates through this route. Since 2022, more than 60 universities and 100 companies have collaborated, selecting over 20,000 students for practical doctorate programmes. 

The goal is to close the gap between academic theory and industrial application, particularly in fields like artificial intelligence and semiconductors. One student built a bridge. Another welded nuclear components. And they got the same three letters as everyone else.

Yesterday, Malaysia's top women's doubles pair, Pearly Tan and Thinaah Muralitharan, successfully defeated Ukraine's Polina Buhrova and Yevheniia Kantemyr in the Round of 16 at the China Open. 

They took just a swift thirty minutes to wrap up a straight-games victory, winning 21-19, 21-12. 

They're in the last eight and today, they will play Japanese nemeses Yuki Fukushima-Mayu Matsumoto, whom they hold a 5-4 head-to-head advantage.

National doubles coaching director Rexy Mainaky believes the Japanese world No. 3 pair will have an edge as the Malaysians are still finding their footing on the World Tour.

"Against the Japanese pair, they will start as the underdogs. However, Pearly and Thinaah have beaten them before, so I hope they will fight all the way and regain their momentum", added Rexy. 

Current form suggests Fukushima-Matsumoto will start as favourites, but the China Open also presents Pearly-Thinaah with an opportunity to rediscover the form that once took them to world No. 2.

The Scuba-Suit Cyborg Roach

Two decades after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a specialized research and development branch of the US Department of War, started fiddling around with cyborg insects in their ⁠Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (HI-MEMS) program, Singaporean researchers are showing off the latest accomplishment in the area. 

The productive researchers are proudly presenting their potent new 3D-printed variant: a remote-controlled, cyborg cockroach equipped with IR cameras that can breathe underwater for hours on end. 

Although that description sounds like the start of a sci-fi or horror movie, the team led by Hirotaka Sato (left) at Nanyang Technological University have been working with the much-hated pest for a good while, outfitting them with infrared cameras in a bid to help rescue operations by steering the roaches in disaster areas to find survivors. 

To be clear, as the release notes, Cyborg insects are living insects that have been retrofitted with technology. 

Sato's team had already demonstrated an orchestrated swarm of the little beasties in 2024, but reportedly weren't happy with the fact that they couldn't send them through water, and went back to the drawing board to fix that. 

The result is an upgraded form that went underwater for three hours in stages, at a depth of 20" (50 cm); enough for most puddles and lightly flooded areas. Quite interestingly, the roaches' speed was only lightly affected, going from 3.5" (8.75 cm) per second on land to 3.1" (7.84 cm) a second while submerged in water. 

Cockroaches don't swim per se, but they can paddle-float, and are fine navigating water bodies in general, and it's possible they can go deeper than in the test. 

To achieve this, the creepy-crawlies wear a spiffy-looking bespoke 3D-printed scuba suit, complete with tubes that attach from the tank to their "nostrils", called spiracles. The tank has a sponge with both hydrogen peroxide and manganese dioxide, in a slow, carefully tuned reaction that outputs oxygen at a controlled rate. This choice was made to avoid the tricky task of providing a heavy, pressurized oxygen tank – though imagining a cockroach with a tiny tank backflipping into water from a tiny boat is amusing. 

The cockroach is pretty much the ideal platform for this type of endeavor, as their legs are easy to control with electrical impulses, and their locomotion characteristics let them navigate almost every type of terrain, oftentimes better than many miniature robots. 

Their biological batteries theoretically last for weeks on end, too. One roach needs food only every few weeks, a mission-critical feature given that scientists working with miniaturization of any sort keep butting their heads against energy limitations. The infrared cameras and wireless do use an actual mini battery pack, but the insects themselves can find sustenance on their own. 

In this particular case, they are leveraging the Madagascar hissing cockroach (Gromphadorhina portentosa) due to their unique combination of physical traits and survival abilities: 

Large Size and Payload Capacity

• Heavy lifters – Fully grown adults reach about 6 cm in length and weigh around 5 grams.
• Equipment ready – Their large size and strong musculoskeletal structure allow them to easily carry a 5.5-gram electronic "backpack" (containing microcomputers, sensors, batteries, and infrared cameras) without disrupting their natural movement.

Wingless Anatomy

• Less obstruction – Unlike many other cockroach species, Madagascar hissing cockroaches do not have wings.
• Easy mounting – The absence of wings gives scientists a flat, unobstructed surface on their thorax to securely glue the electronic hardware and flexible solar cell films. 

Incredible Physical Resilience 

• Indestructible nature – They can survive crushed environments, low-oxygen spaces, and harsh terrains that would destroy or immobilize a traditional wheeled robot. 
• Amphibious potential – They are robust enough to wear newly developed ⁠NTU 3D-printed miniature "diving suits".

Low Speed and High Agility

• Easy to steer – Their natural crawling speed is slow enough for a human operator or an AI automated system to safely steer them in real-time.
• Self-righting – If they get flipped upside down by shifting rubble, they have the innate ability to right themselves and keep moving.

Beyond search-and-rescue, the Singaporean researchers and global bio-robotics teams are targeting other potential applications for cyborg cockroach technology:

Future Space Exploration 

• Extra-planetary scouting – Because cockroaches can survive low-oxygen environments and extreme temperatures, scientists are looking toward using them to explore the surface of Mars.
• Tested testing – The ⁠NTU 3D-printed diving suits are being considered as a stepping stone toward designing miniature, oxygen-regulated "space suits" for insect swarms. 

Defence and Security 

• Covert reconnaissance – Defense startups, like Germany’s ⁠SWARM Biotactics, utilize cyborg insects for silent, undercover surveillance in high-risk zones.
• Critical infrastructure protection – Swarms can map out heavily contaminated, hazardous, or radioactive military zones too dangerous for human agents

Industrial Infrastructure Inspection – The insects can navigate tightly confined, hazardous industrial spaces. They are being tested to crawl through narrow, toxic, or flooded pipelines and structural foundations to inspect for cracks, gas leaks, or blockages without requiring expensive human or mechanical teardowns. 

Environmental Surveillance & Monitoring – These bio-hybrids can carry specialized temperature, chemical, or radiation sensors. They can be deployed into highly sensitive or dangerous ecosystems to track pollution, chemical spills, or radiation levels in real-time without causing the environmental disruption that larger, heavier robots would create.

Now you know, roaches are useful!

AI Doesn’t Just Help Us Think, It Thinks Instead Of Us

Deep in Book VII of Plato’s Republic, Socrates describes prisoners chained inside a cave, mistaking shadows cast on a wall by firelight for reality itself. They name the shadows, debate them and develop expertise about them. The prisoners are completely, sincerely wrong, and they have no idea. The cave isn’t a place of stupidity, it’s a place of convincing, well-organised illusion. 

But Plato’s real interest wasn’t the cave, it was in the periagoge – a Greek word meaning the turning of the soul away from shadows and toward the light. For Plato, this was education itself: not the filling of an empty vessel with facts, but a fundamental reorientation of how a person relates to truth and how they come to know that truth. 

The shadows persist but today they aren’t cast by firelight, they are generated by machines. Large language models (LLMs), image making and AI-powered search produce outputs that are fluent, confident and immediate. 

But here’s the crucial difference from Plato’s original problem, his shadows were at least connected to something real. What AI produces is different in that a language model has no built-in commitment to truth, only a statistical relationship to an enormous quantity of text. When it tells you something, it isn’t reporting, it’s composing. 

The outputs can be correct. But they can also be wrong in ways that are structurally indistinguishable from being right. The shadow no longer flutters on a cave wall, it speaks now, and sometimes it speaks beautifully. 

This is why periagoge – turning towards the light – matters more now than ever and why AI threatens it so quietly. Knowledge isn’t merely true belief, it’s true belief held for the right reasons, connected to the world through justification, evidence and process. 

AI disrupts this at the root. It is useful precisely because it decouples output quality from the slow, demanding work of verification. You don’t need to consult a primary source, triangulate between perspectives, or sit with the discomfort of not yet knowing. 

GenAI poses many problems for learning. When an AI hands us an answer, we risk bypassing the process through which learning happens. We’ve received a product that looks like knowledge from the outside but is hollow at its core, it’s a shadow that convinces us of something we haven’t actually understood. 

GenAI doesn’t just help us think. It thinks instead of us. And there’s growing evidence it’s making us measurably worse at doing it ourselves.

The philosopher Miranda Fricker identified a harm she called “epistemic injustice”, the wrong done when someone is denied the tools to make sense of their own experience. Writing in 2007, she couldn’t have imagined the form that harm might take two decades later. 

What we risk now is something adjacent but distinct: epistemic atrophy. Not the theft of knowledge, but the slow erosion of our willingness and capacity to undertake the more demanding work of understanding what is real. In other words, the capacity to ask: how do you know? And the instinct to distrust the fluent answer, and the patience to sit with the discomfort of not-yet-knowing, which is where all the real learning begins. 

These capacities can’t be downloaded. They’re built slowly, through exactly the kinds of tasks that AI now makes it easiest to skip, and scientific studies are catching up with what educators already sense. A landmark MIT Media Lab study tracked a group of students writing essays variously with ChatGPT, a search engine, or nothing at all. 

Those using LLMs showed the weakest brain connectivity of all three groups, cognitive activity scaled down in direct relation to how much was outsourced. Most couldn’t recall what they’d just written and yet the task was completed. But fundamentally, the learning never happened. 

Worse still, the cognitive habits don’t automatically reset. Once we hand the thinking over, our brains don’t automatically take it back. By the end of 2025, a RAND survey of 1200 students found two-thirds believed AI was harming their critical thinking. The students themselves can feel what’s happening to them. 

The most important thing educators teach has never been content. It has always been periagoge, the reorientation of the whole person toward truth and the willingness to be wrong, to revise, to trace an idea back to its roots and ask whether it holds. 

If we design our curricula, our assessments and our institutions around the assumption that the output is what matters – the essay, the answer, the finished product – then we are not educating. 

Plato’s escaped prisoner, having seen the sun, returns to warn the others. They don’t thank him. They find him disorienting, probably, certainly annoying. In their minds, the shadows they trust are sharper than any daylight he can describe. 

Today, the cave is still the cave, but the chains are more comfortable than ever, and the shadows have learned to speak. The question now is whether we are still teaching people to turn around and face the light. 

AI and Language Translation

From live speech translation in video calls to auto-dubbing on TikTok, the technology to dissolve language barriers has arrived. 

Real-time translation powered by artificial intelligence (AI) is now embedded in everyday life. Tools from OpenAI, Meta, Google and many others now offer near-instant translation across dozens of languages, and they keep improving. 

All this raises a vital question. If machines can do this faster and more accurately than humans, do we still need humans to do translation work? 

After all, humans have always offloaded cognitive work onto tools. Writing reduced demands on our memory. Calculators removed the burden of mental arithmetic. AI sits within this long tradition. Used well, it can support learning and expand access in ways that matter enormously. 

But there's a difference between using a tool to extend your capabilities and using it to avoid doing something altogether. That distinction becomes important when you are not just replacing a skill, but a form of cognitive and cultural engagement. 

Resort to real-time translation software and what remains is information, not expression. 

This is the deeper distinction: translation is not the same as participation. Learning a language involves understanding how people think, their values, and how meaning is shaped by context and history. This cultural literacy develops through interaction and experience. We can't fully outsource that to systems that translate on demand. 

Sure, AI translation excels at speed and accessibility. For many practical purposes, it works remarkably well. But it operates through pattern recognition, not lived understanding. It can struggle with cultural context, humor, register and emotionally embedded meaning, especially for languages with less representation in training data. 

At best, AI captures literal dimensions of language while missing social ones. 

If we resort to real-time translation software, what we have is information, not expression. 

This is the deeper distinction: translation is not the same as participation. Learning a language involves understanding how people think, their values, and how meaning is shaped by context and history. This cultural literacy develops through interaction and experience. We can't fully outsource that to systems that translate on demand. 

For sure, AI will continue to change how we engage with language learning. It can personalize instruction, minimize barriers and provide feedback at scale. What it can't do is replace the cognitive and cultural work that comes from learning a language. This work leads to a deeper relationship with how other people see the world, and with how you express yourself. And that difference still matters.

Yeast Found in Gut Turned Into Very Good Sourdough

Even after his death in the Alps, a famous frozen mummy is still helping scientists make new discoveries − and even bake fresh bread. 

Researchers studying Ötzi the Iceman have identified living, cold-adapted yeast inside and around his preserved body and used one strain to bake sourdough bread, according to a study published June 03, 2026 in the journal Microbiome. 

The findings offer a rare glimpse into ancient human life and the microscopic organisms that have survived alongside the mummy for thousands of years. Scientists say the research also raises new questions about how best to preserve one of the world's most famous archaeological discoveries. 

"Our study reveals that Ötzi is not a static, biologically inert relic", lead author Mohamed Sarhan (right) of Italy's Eurac Research Institute told Reuters. "He is a dynamic ecosystem". 

Ötzi died roughly 5,300 years ago in the Alps near what is now the border of Italy and Austria. Research found he was probably killed by an arrow and was left preserved in glacial ice until hikers discovered his body in 1991. 

Today, the mummy is kept at minus 6 degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) in a special chamber at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Italy. The conditions closely match the icy environment that naturally preserved his remains for millennia. 

Scientists analyzed samples from Ötzi's skin, tissues and water collected from inside the mummy, according to Scientific American. They found evidence of ancient gut bacteria that helped digest food during his lifetime, along with yeasts that appear to have colonized the body shortly after his death. 

The study found several types of bacteria linked to high-fiber, pre-industrial diets. Some of these microbes still exist in modern humans, while others have become extremely rare, Reuters reported. 

Researchers said the findings support earlier studies showing Ötzi's diet included wild meat and cereals. According to Sarhan, some of the gut microbes found in the mummy are now seen mostly in non-industrialized populations, offering a snapshot of what the human microbiome looked like before processed foods, antibiotics and modern living changed it. 

The researchers were particularly surprised to find living, cold-adapted yeast. After reproducing the yeast in laboratory conditions, they used it to make sourdough bread. Sarhan told AFP that after several months of experimentation, the result was a "very, very good sourdough". 

The discovery may have implications beyond baking. Scientists found that some yeast species capable of breaking down phenol, a chemical used to disinfect the mummy after its discovery, have increased over time despite the freezing temperatures. Researchers say the finding could help improve preservation efforts for Ötzi and other frozen remains. 

"The main motivation of this study was the microbiological conservation of the mummy", Sarhan told Scientific American. "We wanted to understand whether the current conditions of the preservation are good enough". 

For now, the research suggests Ötzi remains more than a window into the distant past. Even after five millennia, scientists say, his body continues to reveal new secrets.

AI is Eroding Critical Thinking at Work

Most leaders believe their teams are using Artificial Intelligence as a tool. 

The research suggests something more consequential is happening. Workers are not just using AI to work faster. They are letting it decide, and in doing so, quietly ceding the human reasoning that determines whether those decisions are any good. 

A January 2026 paper from the Wharton School, "Thinking – Fast, Slow, and Artificial" (published February 02, 2026), introduced a term for what is now documented and measurable. Researchers Steven D Shaw and Gideon Nave call it cognitive surrender. 

They define it as adopting AI outputs with minimal scrutiny, thereby overriding both intuition and deliberation. Their framework extends Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman's model of fast intuitive thinking and slow deliberate thinking by introducing a third system: artificial cognition that operates entirely outside the brain. That third system, they argue, can supplement or supplant human reasoning. When it supplants it, AI stops being a thinking partner and starts being the decision-maker. 

The performance implications are direct. When workers in the study consulted an AI that was correct, their accuracy rose significantly above what they achieved on their own. When the AI was wrong, their accuracy fell well below the baseline of people who had no AI access at all. The problem is that workers had no reliable way to detect the difference. They accepted incorrect AI answers 80% of the time. Their confidence rose either way, whether the AI had helped them or led them astray. 

This dynamic is particularly consequential with the large language models now embedded in most workplace tools. LLMs do not retrieve facts. They generate plausible-sounding responses based on patterns in training data, without access to an organization's specific context, strategy, institutional knowledge, or the domain expertise of the person using them. They do not flag uncertainty. They speak with consistent confidence regardless of accuracy. 

Getting strong output from an LLM requires a skilled human on the other end: one who validates what it produces, identifies what it missed, expands the ideation beyond the initial response, and applies judgment to decide. Cognitive surrender eliminates every one of those steps. 

A Microsoft Research study "The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking" by Hao-Ping (Hank) Lee, Advait Sarkar, Lev Tankelevitch, et al, CHI '25, April 26-May 01, 2025, Yokohama, Japan, found that confidence in AI was among the strongest predictors of whether knowledge workers engaged in critical thinking at all. The higher the trust in the tool, the less scrutiny is applied to what it returned. 

As researchers noted in that same study, there is a fundamental irony at the center of automation: when routine cognitive tasks are mechanized and handed to an external system, the human is deprived of the routine practice that builds and sustains judgment. The reps disappear. And so, over time, does the muscle. 

And a McKinsey "State of Organizations 2026” report, published in February, found that only 23% of organizations qualify as AI Pioneers, those actively deploying AI across most departments and functions with a clear understanding of how it will reshape their work. The vast majority are still experimenting, running isolated pilots, or deploying AI in piecemeal ways that have yet to generate measurable enterprise-wide impact. 

That gap is the opportunity. Cognitive surrender is not yet the organizational norm. Supplementing human reasoning rather than supplanting it is still a choice leaders can architect into how AI gets deployed. The window to make that choice intentionally, before passive AI reliance becomes the default operating culture, is shorter than most leaders assume. 

The structural interventions the research points to are specific. Leaders who build these practices into how AI gets deployed now safeguard their organizations from a culture where AI supplants human reasoning rather than supports it, and from the performance costs that follow. 

• Build verification steps into AI workflows before employees read the output, not after. Once a confident-sounding response has been read, the cognitive tendency to accept it is already in motion. 
• Require employees to evaluate counter-arguments and alternative perspectives before concluding. Prompting for what the AI missed keeps human judgment actively in the process. 
• Build a culture of intellectual accountability in which employees are expected to interrogate AI output rather than relay it. 

The Wharton researchers found that workers with stronger confidence in their own expertise engaged in more critical thinking even when using AI, because they had a personal stake in the quality of the output.

That ownership does not emerge on its own. It has to be built into how leaders set expectations and design the work. The organizations that will extract the most from AI are not the ones deploying it most aggressively. They are the ones deploying it most intentionally, treating AI as an amplifier of human judgment rather than a replacement for it, and actively protecting the reasoning capacity that makes that amplification possible.  

The Love for Spicy Food

If you're a foodie like the majority of Malaysians, you'd know how popular spicy foods are over here. 

In fact, for most people, the spice is the real deal. But, you may wonder, why exactly is spicy food so addictive in the first place? 

First things first, you have to know that spiciness is not actually a taste. In fact, the chemicals that make food spicy don't target taste receptors, but rather pain-temperature receptors in the tongue. 

That's right, it's technically not one of the five basic tastes like sweet, salty, sour, bitter, or umami. What you're feeling is pain and heat detection. 

The main chemical responsible for making you feel spiciness is capsaicin, found in chilli peppers (from Classical Nahuatl chīlli [ˈt͡ʃiːlːi] ), varieties of berry-fruit plants from the genus Capsicum, which are members of the nightshade family Solanaceae, cultivated for their spicy heat. They are used as a spice to add pungency in many cuisines. 

So, when you eat chillies, the capsaicin activates the TRPV1 receptors in your mouth. Your body uses them primarily to detect actual heat, acidity, and pain. 

Normally, TRPV1 is set off by temperatures around 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) and higher. But when we eat something spicy with capsaicin, the molecule binds to the receptors and lowers their activation energy. 

In other words, capsaicin tricks the receptor into sending an electrical signal to your brain. Because this is the exact same pathway used to detect burning heat, your brain misinterprets the chemical stimulation as a fiery physical burn.  

Meaning, your brain reacts as though your mouth is being hurt and thus, it triggers a defensive physiological response that makes you sweat, tear up, sniffle, and panic-drink three glasses of iced water. 

Basically, your body is reacting as if your mouth is on fire, even though it's not. Here is where things get interesting. Your brain actually rewards you for "surviving" the pain! 

According to Biology Insight, your nervous system responds to the pain with a burst of endorphins and dopamine, the same chemicals released during exercise or excitement. This gives you similar effects to having a "runner's high". 

Endorphins help reduce pain and create relief while dopamine is associated with reward, motivation, and pleasure. Together, they can create the euphoric rush many people describe after eating something spicy. 

Live Science states that researchers often compare this to activities like roller coasters or intense exercises. Your brain basically recognises a stressful experience, then rewards you once it realises you went through it safely. 

Still, if you're eating spicy sambal for the first time, your reaction might be quick, and you'll most likely regret it. 

But over time, frequent consumption of chilies can desensitize TRPV1 receptors, which is why spicy food tolerance builds up and you stop feeling the burn as intensely. So, the more frequently you eat spicy food, the less intensely your pain receptors respond. 

This also explains the strange escalation many fans of spicy foods go through. Once your brain adapts to one level of heat, you start chasing stronger versions to recreate the same euphoric rush. It's not exactly addiction in the medical sense, but the reward cycle can look very similar psychologically.

I love my chillies! 🔥🔥🔥 

Pearly Tan-Thinaah Muralitharan made a winning return on Wednesday as the world No. 2 advanced to the second round of the Indonesia Open. 

The Malaysian women's doubles pair powered past Canada's world No. 37 Jackie Dent-Crystal Lai 21-13, 21-9 in just 25 minutes to kick off their campaign in style at the prestigious Super 1000 tournament. 

The duo will be eager to make amends for their disappointing second-round exit at last week's Singapore Open and continue their strong record in Indonesia.

Florida Sues OpenAI and Sam Altman

Florida has officially become the first US state to sue OpenAI and their CEO, Sam Altman, accusing the company of misrepresenting the safety of ChatGPT and prioritizing profits over public safety. 

The 83-page lawsuit was filed on Monday by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (right), who accuses OpenAI of deceptive and unfair trade practices, negligence and violating product liability laws. It also seeks to hold Altman “personally liable for the harm he has caused Floridians”, including his alleged “utter disregard for the risk to human life caused by his firms’ conduct”. 

The lawsuit lists a litany of accusations against ChatGPT, including helping mass shooters, encouraging suicide, causing “public humiliation,” getting minors addicted to a tool with “no parental oversight” and causing users to lose “critical thinking skills”.

The question for the court is whether OpenAI can be held liable when users lean on ChatGPT for dangerous, delusional, or violent plans. The company will argue that their models are general-purpose tools with safeguards. Florida is arguing that the tool was built and sold in a way that made predictable harms inevitable. 

According to reports by Politico and Ars Technica, Florida is pushing the courts to mandate: 

• Strict parental control mechanisms
• Robust age-verification protocols for free accounts
• Data-collection restrictions on minor users
• Automated shutdowns for conversations exploring violence or self-harm  

All eyes are on Celtic once again, this time to celebrate the women's team lifting the Scottish Cup trophy. 

They had defeated their arch-rivals Rangers 1-0 in the final on Sunday.

Celtic rock!!!

Humanoid Robots To Have Personal ID Numbers

China is introducing a national ID system for humanoid robots to track their activities, monitor safety risks and standardize the country’s fast-growing robotics industry. 

The system, called the Humanoid Full Lifecycle Management Service Platform, was launched last week for AI-powered, human-shaped bipedal robots, allowing authorities and manufacturers to monitor robots throughout their operational lifespan as China accelerates the commercial rollout of humanoid robots across industries, according to state broadcaster CCTV. 

Yu Xiuming, deputy head of the China Electronics Standardization Institute, said the initiative aims to improve safety oversight and governance in the humanoid robot sector while supporting wider deployment. 

Each robot will receive a unique ID code containing four sections: a two-digit national code for tracking cross-border shipments and sales, a four-digit manufacturer code, a six-digit product model code and a 17-digit serial number identifying individual units, as reported by the South China Morning Post.

Some humanoid robots in Hubei province, central China, are expected to become the country’s first machines to receive official identity card numbers. Liu Chuanhou, chief operating officer of the Hubei Humanoid Robotics Innovation Center in Wuhan, said the system is designed to do more than store registration data. The platform can track maintenance records, application scenarios and operational performance throughout a robot’s lifecycle. Real-time information, including battery condition, joint wear and operational accuracy, can also be monitored through the management system, Liu told China Daily. 

Liu Jieni, business director at robotics firm Maxnova in Hubei, said several flagship humanoid robots had already completed unified coding and registration under the new system. The robots are mainly used in industrial manufacturing, commercial services and demonstration training, she said, adding that the company joined the initiative to align with broader industry standardization efforts. 

China currently leads the global humanoid robot industry, according to a March report by Beijing CCID Publishing and Media and China Electronics News. Global humanoid robot shipments reached around 17,000 units in 2025, with a market value of 2.88 billion yuan ($424 million), the report said.

Liu explained that many Chinese robotics companies still operate with incompatible technical standards and limited coordination on product traceability, safety supervision and data sharing. He said the ID system could help establish unified standards and support large-scale development of humanoid robots. 

He is right! As humanoid robots become more integrated into workplaces and daily life, concerns over operational safety, data security and ethical compliance are bound to increase.

Israel is the most criminal regime in the world! That is an indisputable fact! 

But more than that, Israel is an evil, genocidal, terrorist state.

And it's music to my ears when I read that Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei declared on Tuesday that Israel, described as a "cancerous tumor" and an "unstable Zionist regime", is approaching the "final stages" of its cursed existence! 

In fact, his father, the former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had previously predicted that Israel would not survive beyond 2040.

I sure hope so. I pray that Iran can deliver the final blow to Israel. And only then will there be everlasting peace in the Middle East.

Of course, the above can only happen if war restarts. 

At this point, nobody can really tell because the two countries are locked in a frozen conflict, trapped by a ceasefire that is merely a long pause and certainly not going anywhere. 

T-800 on Street Patrol

A full-sized adult humanoid robot, developed by Shenzhen-based EngineAI, first joined special police and SWAT officers for a high-profile real street patrol on April 30, 2026 in the Nanshan district of Shenzhen, China. 

The robot's presence on the streets attracted significant public interest. The deployment serves as a real-world showcase for how embodied AI and humanoid robotics may soon be integrated into public safety and high-traffic area operations.

The 1.73-meter-tall, 75-kilogram robot and featuring a magnesium-aluminum alloy frame, previously made public appearances – such as at the "Window of the World" theme park in December 2025 – but the April 30 event marked its deployment on actual public streets alongside armed law enforcement. 

Equipped with precision sensors and onboard AI, it is capable of performing autonomous assessments, walking, running, and complex maneuvers like spinning kicks. The CEO of the company put on pads and let it spar with him – and got knocked over on the second try! 

If you didn't already know, it is named T-800, the same as that of the Arnold Schwarzenegger-portrayed cyborg from the Terminator franchise. In the latter, it is famous for its metal endoskeleton covered in living human tissue.

And here's the kicker – the Chinese version costs just $25,000 and you can pre-order it on JD-dot-com. Like, right now. From your couch.

China's Shenzhou-23 Space Mission

China successfully launched its crewed Shenzhou-23 mission on Sunday night at 11:08 PM Beijing Time. Just a few hours later, the spacecraft executed a rapid rendezvous and docking, meeting up with the Tiangong space station early Monday morning at 02:45 AM Beijing Time.

The mission marks the first spaceflight ever undertaken by an astronaut from Hong Kong, serving as a payload specialist – 43-year-old mother of three, Lí Jiāyíng (Lai Ka-ying in Cantonese), who has a PhD in digital forensics from the University of Hong Kong and is a police superintendent. 

The other crew members were two 39-year-olds, space engineer Zhu Yangzhu, and the former air force pilot Zhang Zhiyuan. 

And for the first time, the three crew members come from the third and fourth batches – the two most recent recruitment classes – of China's astronauts 

As expected, the crew will undertake scientific projects in life sciences, materials science, fluid physics and medicine. 

A key experiment will be the full-year stay in orbit by one of the crew to study the effects of a long stay in microgravity, part of China’s preparations for future lunar and possible Martian missions. The astronaut selected to spend a year in orbit will be named at a later date, China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said. 

Richard de Grijs, an astrophysicist and professor at Macquarie University in Australia, said the main challenges would be long-term effects on humans, including bone density loss, muscle wasting, radiation exposure, sleep disturbance and behavioural and psychological fatigue. 

He said China was steadily building operational experience for sustained occupation of the Tiangong space station, and year-long missions were an important step towards future lunar and potentially deep-space ambitions. 

Tiangong crews have tended until now to remain in orbit for six months before being replaced. 

The Shenzhou-23 mission is part of China’s goal to land astronauts on the moon before 2030 in a race with NASA’s Artemis programme. 

Beijing is also testing the equipment required to reach its goal, with an orbital test flight of its Mengzhou spacecraft set for 2026. It will replace the ageing Shenzhou line and will carry China’s astronauts to the moon. 

China hopes to have built the first phase of a manned scientific base, known as the International Lunar Research Station, by 2035.

The GD01 Transformable Mecha

Hey! Do you have $650,000 to spend? 

If you do, you can find yourself riding around in your own giant, transformable mecha! 

That's because Hangzhou, China-based Unitree have officially unveiled the GD01 on May 12, 2026. It was introduced as the world’s first mass-produced, human-piloted mecha, a futuristic rideable machine capable of switching between two-legged and four-legged movement modes.

Yesterday, Celtic won 3-1 against Dunfermline Athletic in the Scottish Cup final at Hampden Park. And which means, they earned another winners' medal and completed a double. Celtic's 43rd Scottish Cup!

And btw, this was their ninth consecutive victory in both league and cup. 

Celtic scored twice in the first half. Daizen Maeda lobbed the Pars goalkeeper after 19 minutes, and Arne Engels unleashed a low shot from 25 yards in the 36th minute. 

They added another in the second half when Kelechi Iheanacho dribbled through the Dunfermline defence and beat the goalie in the 73rd minute. The Fifers pulled one back six minutes later.

It's mindboggling that the Scottish champions can have such an omnishambles of a season and still come out on top. 

A Celtic team that was down and out only to end up winning two trophies because we thankfully brought back the man from 26 years ago to steady the ship. Thank you, Martin O'Neill! 💖💖💖