Hi, AI • Tech News

🤖 74% of Physical Work in the US Can Already Be Done by Robots

This work accounts for 34% of all working hours in the economy, according to Anthropic researchers who analyzed around 19,000 job tasks.

Drivers and warehouse packers are most at risk. Of the ten most exposed occupations, nine involve operating vehicles.

The vulnerable worker is usually a man without a college degree. He earns about $30 an hour less than those whose tasks robots cannot yet touch. Nurses, social workers, and nannies are relatively well protected—robots still struggle with fine interpersonal interaction and manual dexterity.

❗️ But today, robots are barely cost-effective anywhere. They are cost-competitive for just 0.3% of tasks. To automate 10% of work, prices would need to fall by about 70%, and at the current pace that would take around 40 years.

Are you afraid a robot will take your job?

❤️ — Yes, I'm already thinking about it
🔥 — No, that's still very far off

@hiaimediaen

❤️ Gene Therapy Cut "Bad" Cholesterol in Half, and the Effect Has Lasted a Year

Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic have published encouraging results from the first stage of a clinical trial of CTX310, an experimental gene-editing therapy designed to lower cholesterol.

Patients received the treatment once through an intravenous infusion, and it edited the DNA of their liver cells. The CRISPR-Cas9 "genetic scissors" switched off the ANGPTL3 gene, which encodes a protein that regulates fats in the blood. As a result, the body maintains lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels without repeated treatments.

One year later, among four participants who received the highest dose, LDL—the so-called "bad" cholesterol—remained an average of 52.5% below baseline, while triglycerides were 47.8% lower.

🔍 So far, the study includes only 15 patients whose lipid disorders were difficult to control with conventional treatment. During the first year, researchers reported no serious adverse effects. However, participants will be monitored for another 15 years, because the DNA edit is permanent and its long-term safety still needs to be established.

@hiaimediaen

📌 GPT-6 Astra Deciphered a Letter From the Napoleonic Era

On March 16, 1809, as France prepared for war with Austria, Napoleon ordered his stepson, Eugène de Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy, to send General Auguste de Marmont an encrypted report detailing the positions of French and allied armies.

The full key did not survive, so the letter remained unread for 217 years-until engineer Carter Church recently came across it. He had never broken a cipher before, but decided to try with AI. His only source was a low-quality scan from a 1969 French military journal: 24 lines of handwritten numbers, letters, and special symbols.

Astra split the image into lines, recognized the symbols, grouped different handwriting variants into 155 distinct signs, and wrote a program to recover the key. The letter contained 1,300 elements in total.

The model did not start from scratch. Cryptography historian Daniel Tant had previously identified the values of 33 symbols, enough to read about one-third of the letter. Astra helped recover the remaining two-thirds.

The full text of the letter:

To General Marmont, from the Viceroy's headquarters, late March 1809

[These letters] contained the orders and instructions that [His Majesty] had charged me with conveying to you. Today I hasten to inform you of the positions of the French and allied armies. The Duke of Danzig, at the head of 40,000 Bavarians, occupies Munich and Passau. Prince Poniatowski, at the head of 30,000 Poles, is encamped on the Vistula, threatening Kraków. The Prince of Pontecorvo commands the Saxon army encamped before Dresden, while the Duke of Auerstädt occupies Bayreuth with 80,000 French troops. The Duke of Rivoli commands 60,000 men quartered in Ulm and Donauwörth. [General] Oudinot, with an elite corps of 40,000 men, is in Augsburg and along the Lech.

The Russians are marching against Austria, and the army [in] Friuli now numbers 80,000 men. Add the Dalmatian corps, not counting the reserves being formed everywhere in the rear, and you will see that Austria will be attacked simultaneously from all sides. It is therefore rushing toward its destruction. When you receive the order to march, you must not allow yourself to be intimidated by a few troops or a gathering of rabble.

I am still eagerly awaiting news from you. The Austrians remain in Ljubljana, Klagenfurt, Villach, and Salzburg and appear to threaten Tyrol through Lienz. However, one might think that they intend to send troops into Galicia to oppose the Russians. This disposition suggests that their campaign plan has already been disrupted before war has even been declared. Nothing is certain yet, however. The militia has been called into active service, and although efforts have been made to stir up the population, it has not yet been shown that these levies will significantly strengthen the army.

One part of the report said that "the Russians are marching against Austria." Other letters from Napoleon suggest he had no evidence that this was true: the emperor himself had ordered such information to be spread even though he did not know where the Russian troops were.

🔍 Church spent several evenings on the project, while Astra ran for about six hours in total. According to the engineer, a specialist could have solved the cipher as early as 1970-but it would have taken weeks.

@hiaimediaen

👨 Japanese Court Says Voices Should Be Protected From AI Cloning

The Tokyo District Court has ruled that a voice is protected by the "right of publicity"—just like one's physical appearance and name—and therefore cannot be cloned for profit without permission.

"The human voice is a symbol of an individual's personality, just like an image," Judge Aya Takahashi noted in the ruling.

📌 The case began when anime voice actor Kenjiro Tsuda sued TikTok over an anonymous account that used an AI-generated version of his distinctive "deep, velvety baritone" to narrate videos about urban legends and conspiracy theories.

Tsuda's lawyers argued that the AI voice copied his vocal tone and timbre. They also pointed to comments under the videos from viewers who said they recognized their favorite actor. According to his legal team, the account was making at least $3,200 a month from the content. TikTok argued that it was simply a "generic male voice" created using the voice of the account owner's friend.

Tsuda sued TikTok because the account owner could not be identified. He wanted the platform to remove the videos.

🔄 However, the case took nearly a year to hear and was ultimately dismissed on procedural grounds. All 188 disputed videos had been deleted during the proceedings, leading the judge to rule that the primary claim was no longer relevant.

Should your voice be legally protected from being copied?

❤️ — Yes, it's deeply personal
🔥 — No, lots of people have similar voices

@hiaimediaen

💰 AI Sets Prices at McDonald's

McDonald's is using AI to set burger prices in the US and some other countries. The company says franchisees can set their own prices, but store owners interviewed by Reuters say that, in practice, the corporation is pushing AI prices on them.

"You don't really have much of a choice anymore," says former franchisee Karen King.

The algorithms estimate how much customers at a specific location are willing to pay, based on transaction data and competitor prices. According to franchisees, this has made prices vary more even within the same area: in one example cited by Reuters, the difference reaches 21% between restaurants two miles apart.

🔍 McDonald's calls the claims that it forces AI prices on franchisees speculation. At the same time, in recent months the algorithm has increasingly advised holding prices steady or even lowering them, and this is reportedly what frustrates franchisees, whose costs are rising and profits are falling.

Is this fair business?

❤️ — Yes, it's just smart pricing
🔥 — No, it's ripping off customers

@hiaimediaen

🎓 Brain Injuries Could Be Treated by Compressing a Leg Bone

Chinese researchers tested an unusual experimental therapy in animals that may help treat traumatic brain injuries and aid recovery after a stroke.

✏️ Doctors have long noticed that bones throughout the body sometimes heal much faster after a head injury. Researchers wondered whether the connection might work in reverse. They fitted animals with a device that rhythmically compressed the tibia for five days.

In mice with traumatic brain injuries, the stimulation accelerated the growth of new neurons and reduced inflammation. Regular bone compression increased the survival rate among mice with severe injuries from 20% to 90%. And just one week after a stroke, the animals performed five times better on memory tests. Similar effects were observed in pigs.

💡 The researchers believe the effect comes from bone cells—osteocytes. When exposed to mechanical pressure, these cells release a mix of protective signaling proteins into the bloodstream. Those same proteins appear to trigger brain neuron repair.

If the results hold up in human clinical trials, the researchers hope to develop a simple wearable device that patients could use at home during rehabilitation.

@hiaimediaen

👨‍💻 Could Chinese AI Catch Up With the U.S. Within a Year?

69% of experts surveyed by the World Economic Forum in September believe the gap between the most advanced U.S. and Chinese AI models could disappear within the next 12 months.

At the beginning of 2026, Epoch AI estimated Chinese models were, on average, about seven months behind U.S. counterparts. By midyear, that gap had shrunk to 4.5–5 months.

✅ For example, China's Kimi K3, released in July, ranks higher on Epoch AI's leaderboard than GPT-5.3 Codex, released in February, though it still trails GPT-5.4 Pro from March.

Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index shows a similar gap. Xiaomi's MiMo-V2.6-Pro, currently the highest-scoring Chinese model, has 46 points—putting it on par with GPT-6 Astra in its lowest-reasoning mode and Grok 4.7. The top U.S. model, Claude Opus 5.5, scores 58.

👍 China is already ahead in AI patents: six of the 10 top genAI patent applicants are Chinese.

Will China catch up with the U.S. in AI within a year?

❤️ — Yes, and it'll pull ahead
🔥 — No, it'll remain behind

@hiaimediaen

💡 Nanoparticles Helped Blind Mice Respond to Light Again

Researchers at Aarhus University in Denmark have developed a method that can make a blind eye respond to light again. Nanoparticles are injected into the eye, where they respond to light and activate surviving retinal neurons, bypassing dead photoreceptors. The researchers see the technology as a potential "injectable retinal prosthesis."

In some eye diseases, photoreceptors-the cells that convert light into neural signals-gradually disappear. But the neurons that normally carry those signals to the brain can remain intact.

The researchers found a way to reconnect them with light. They created hollow carbon nitride nanoparticles about 300 nm in diameter, with a structure inspired by chloroplasts-the parts of plant cells that capture light. After injection, the particles settle on the retina near surviving neurons and help activate them when exposed to blue light.

🔍 The team tested the approach in blind mice. One month after the injection, 3 of 7 mice began preferring the dark side of their enclosure, similar to healthy mice. The control animals showed no such preference. The researchers also detected light-triggered activity in the visual cortex in 5 of 14 treated eyes, compared with 1 of 14 control eyes. With such a small sample, however, the difference was not statistically significant.

The effect was also demonstrated in isolated pig retina: after the nanoparticles were added, light increased the firing rate of retinal neurons almost sixfold.

✅ The researchers now want to deliver the nanoparticles beneath the retina and make them responsive to red and infrared light. If the technology can be developed further, it could eventually offer a much simpler alternative to surgically implanted electronic retinal prostheses.

@hiaimediaen

❗️ Could AI cause a catastrophe?

If powerful AI falls into the wrong hands, it could cause enormous loss of life, Bill Gates warned in an NBC interview.

"AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths. Even though it's pretty hard to get to 100%, there's never been a weapon as powerful as the combination of people with ill intent using the latest AI tools," Gates said.

💡 Gates is describing a risk, not predicting a catastrophe. He also argues that AI companies cannot be left to police themselves. Lawmakers and law enforcement, he says, should help establish mandatory safeguards and oversight.

Should governments require AI companies to follow safety rules?

❤️ — Yes, oversight is needed
🔥 — No, companies can manage the risks themselves

@hiaimediaen

🎓 Tutoring Centers Are Giving In to AI

The Australian Dymocks is closing five Sydney tutoring centers after struggling to compete with AI. Company director Mark Buckland says the technology has made the business model unsustainable.

"Most of our customers would be better off using their hard-earned cash on cheaper solutions rather than simply paying for overpriced tutoring," Buckland frankly admits.

An AI subscription costs around $20–30 a month, while a human tutor can cost hundreds of dollars per subject each term. Dymocks still believes a real teacher provides a better learning experience than a chatbot, but for many families, that difference no longer justifies the cost.

✈️ Students themselves are also increasingly choosing AI tutors. In the U.S. alone, the share of high school and college students using AI to help with homework rose from 48% to 62% between May and December 2025.

Dymocks appears to be one of the first to accept these irreversible changes in education.

Will AI replace human tutors?

❤️ — Yes, it already is
🔥 — No, students still need human teachers

@hiaimediaen

❤️ AI Helps Find Lost Cats

Since 2025, Kazakhstan has been running a project called loCATor.

Volunteers fit their outdoor cats with a camera and a GPS tracker. The camera films every cat they meet along the way, and an AI compares them with a database of missing pets. If there's a match, the owner gets a notification in the Telegram bot with the coordinates where their cat was spotted.

The bot was originally built for ordinary passers-by to send in photos. Now they have help from "scout" cats, who can squeeze into places people can hardly reach.

🌐 The project was launched by creative agencies Ogency and JAM together with Whiskas. Whiskas also monitors the database in real time. When a new missing pet appears, its photo is shown on digital billboards in the same area, since cats rarely wander more than 500–800 meters from home. Photos of lost cats are also printed on cat food packs.

@hiaimediaen