August 13, 2026

05 Sci-Tech

AI is Going into Trillion Dollar Debt

pgnewser July 23, 2026 0

A surge in hidden debt among AI giants like Oracle and Meta is setting off alarms in the industry. The hidden debt comes from future payment operations for expenses not yet online to make money. For instance, leases and property taxes must be paid on sites that are earmarked for databases that haven’t been built or completely built yet. The hidden debt amounts to more than $1.65 trillion.

The AI Illusion: Big Tech’s ‘Invisible Debt’ Surges To $1.65 Trillion On Opaque Funding – NDTV Profit– news.google.com
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EXCERPT:

The hidden $1.65 trillion stems from future payment obligations-such as long-term operating leases for data centers not yet built, bulk GPU supply contracts, and joint ventures. Under current accounting standards, companies are not required to record these obligations as liabilities on their balance sheets until the assets are delivered or the facilities go live.

Instead, these financial commitments are buried in the small-print footnotes of their financial statements. While perfectly legal, this practice effectively obscures the true financial leverage of the companies. By shifting costs to future periods, tech giants can maintain balance sheets and inflate current profit figures, all while locking themselves into hundreds of billions of dollars in future payouts.

While all five giants are utilizing these financial structures, the report reveals that the scale of hidden debt at Meta and Oracle is particularly striking:

Meta: The social media giant’s off-balance-sheet debt has reached an estimated $420 billion, nearly three times its officially recorded debt. A significant driver is its joint venture with Blue Owl Capital to build a massive data center in Louisiana, a project whose expected investment recently ballooned from $27 billion to over $50 billion.

Oracle: The company’s hidden debt has surged more than 30-fold in four years, reaching $273.3 billion. Much of this is tied to concentrated, single-counterparty exposure, such as its massive “Stargate” supercomputer data center project with OpenAI.

Meanwhile, Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft have collectively disclosed backlogs of roughly $1.45 trillion for cloud services and related business commitments as of March, according to the report.

 

AI can become more biased than humans while choosing who gets hired; study finds |– timesofindia.indiatimes.com

pgnewser July 23, 2026 0

AI can become more biased than humans while choosing who gets hired; study finds |– timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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EXCERPT:

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being trusted to help employers screen CVs, rank candidates and even conduct early-stage interviews. The promise is simple: AI can process thousands of applications quickly, reduce administrative workloads and, in theory, make hiring decisions more objective than humans. According to a recent review by MIT Technology, based on the 2024 study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology titled “Costly Exploration Produces Stereotypes With Dimensions of Warmth and Competence”, large language models (LLMs) may not only inherit human biases from the data they are trained on but also develop entirely new stereotypes based on their own experiences. Rather than simply reflecting existing prejudice, these systems can create fresh patterns of discrimination as they attempt to optimise decision-making over time.The findings are particularly significant because businesses are rapidly integrating AI into recruitment. If these systems begin making assumptions about groups of applicants after only a handful of hiring decisions, they could gradually reinforce unfair employment practices without any explicit human instruction.The research, conducted by scientists at Princeton University and the University of Chicago, builds on earlier psychological work showing how stereotypes can emerge from repeated decision-making. It suggests that the same learning strategies that make AI effective at solving complex problems can also make it unusually prone to stereotyping job candidates.

Thousands of idle ships trapped near the Strait of Hormuz could become floating nurseries for invasive marine species and spread them worldwide when trade resumes |– timesofindia.indiatimes.com

pgnewser July 23, 2026 0

Thousands of idle ships trapped near the Strait of Hormuz could become floating nurseries for invasive marine species and spread them worldwide when trade resumes |– timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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EXCERPT:

Having escalated into open hostilities on February 28, 2026, the current United States and Iran war has been going on for nearly five months. In this period, the Strait of Hormuz, the only open-ocean exit for major producers like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and the UAE has been in chokehold. The strait is the world’s most critical maritime energy chokepoint, facilitating the passage of roughly 600 billion worth of energy trade annually. According to estimates, about 1,500 vessels are stuck in the Persian Gulf, and several hundred more are stuck in the adjacent Gulf of Oman.Now according to new research, something growing on the hulls of these ships could spread worldwide when the trade resumes. The study published in Biological Invasions, was led by an international team of 24 marine scientists, led by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES), and including the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).The team cautioned that thousands of commercial vessels stranded for months in the Persian/Arabian Gulf following the closure of the Strait of Hormuz could unintentionally trigger a massive marine invasive species event. The study titled, “Closure of the Strait of Hormuz May Trigger a Bioinvasion Super-Spreader Event,” highlighted how prolonged periods at anchor allow ship hulls to accumulate dense communities of marine organisms including algae, barnacles, mussels and other invertebrates which can be transported across the globe when trade resumes.

A huge cosmic object could force astronomers to rethink what a moon is– www.scientificamerican.com

pgnewser July 23, 2026 0

A huge cosmic object could force astronomers to rethink what a moon is– www.scientificamerican.com
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EXCERPT:

When is a moon not a moon? That’s the riddle raised by a new study, and the solution appears to be “when it’s a planet.” Or maybe the answer is vice versa.

Such are the strange semantic questions raised by studies of CD-35 2722 B, a brown dwarf with about 30 times the mass of Jupiter that’s orbiting a small star that is some 73 light-years from Earth in the system CD-35 2722. The brown dwarf appears to have its own satellite, much like Earth has the moon, albeit one almost as big as the largest planet in our solar system. While astronomers have discovered thousands of exoplanets, CD-35 2722 may be the first star system found that exhibits this three-tiered “star, brown dwarf, satellite” hierarchy.

Earlier observations of CD-35 2722 B, taken at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, had shown hints of an exomoon—a type of object that has yet to be definitively found—but the data weren’t conclusive. To settle the matter, Kevin Hoy, a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Astrophysical Studies in Santiago, Chile, turned to the European Southern Observatory’s more powerful Very Large Telescope (VLT) and its CRIRES+ instrument on a mountaintop in the high Chilean desert.

U.S. pledges $5 billion to boost AI in government-backed scientific research– www.scientificamerican.com

pgnewser July 23, 2026 0

U.S. pledges $5 billion to boost AI in government-backed scientific research– www.scientificamerican.com
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EXCERPT:

Overall federal funding for scientific research is set to decline in 2027, the most senior White House science figure said on Wednesday. The government, however, pledged to spend $5 billion on promoting artificial intelligence in science.

Michael Kratsios, the White House’s science and technology adviser, told the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology that the money will be drawn from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA, as well as other federal agencies.

The goal is to produce “the premier AI for science ecosystem in the world,” he said. The funding will be earmarked for “research awards, funding opportunities, specialized scientific datasets and research facilities,” the White House said in a statement.

Teenager drops social media addiction lawsuit against Meta– www.bbc.co.uk

pgnewser July 23, 2026 0

Teenager drops social media addiction lawsuit against Meta– www.bbc.co.uk
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EXCERPT:

A Florida teenager who sued Meta claiming that he was addicted to and harmed by his use of platforms, such as Instagram, has dropped his case.

The 15-year-old plaintiff, known by the initials R.K.C., had in recent weeks settled the same claims against TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube, all of which have been accused in a large lawsuit of creating addictive platforms harmful to children.

R.K.C.’s claims were to go before a Los Angeles jury next week as part of court proceedings that have seen Meta and YouTube lose once already.

A Meta spokeswoman told the BBC: “The claims never held up, and this outcome makes clear that we will not back away from defending ourselves against baseless lawsuits.”

Lawyers for R.K.C., Emily Jeffcott and Rahul Ravipudi, told the BBC that the young plaintiff “came into this process wanting to hold social media companies accountable and push for changes to protect young people like himself”.

“He did that,” they added.

Russian AI-assisted Geran UAV swarms manage to overload Ukrainian air defenses by 400% – Military & Defense– tass.com

pgnewser July 23, 2026 0

Russian AI-assisted Geran UAV swarms manage to overload Ukrainian air defenses by 400% – Military & Defense– tass.com
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EXCERPT:

MOSCOW, July 22. /TASS/. Swarms of Russian-made Geran attack unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) outfitted with artificial Intelligence algorithms managed to ‘overload’ Ukrainian air defenses by 400%, according to an article published in the Russian Defense Ministry’s magazine Military Thought and obtained by TASS.

“Geran-2 autonomous swarm groups with AI algorithms for role distribution (reconnaissance, decoy targets, strike). In February 2026, cases were registered when a swarm of 20-30 UAVs overloaded Ukrainian air defenses by 300-400%,” says the article titled: ‘Ways of Increasing the Effectiveness of Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Through the Use of Artificial Intelligence.’

Today the technical implementation of artificial intelligence technologies in UAV control systems “has reached a level allowing for their mass use, which boosts the effectiveness of operations by 40-60% while considerably reducing losses among personnel,” the authors of the article say.

Further development is linked with swarm technologies – “the highest form of implementing AI in UAVs,” they say.

China Explores Elevating Cognitive Effects into Its Vision of Warfare– warontherocks.com

pgnewser July 23, 2026 0

China Explores Elevating Cognitive Effects into Its Vision of Warfare– warontherocks.com
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EXCERPT:

In March 2025, China’s military researchers published a concept describing how to rapidly capture and subdue the city of Taipei. Distributed in restricted military channels, this approach argues Beijing can achieve victory “by blocking the city’s ability to receive external assistance, restricting its ability to enable operations, breaking its operational system, collapsing cognitive cohesion, and eliminating its ability to recover.” Its objective is to break the Taiwan people’s will to fight.

While this concept is not yet doctrine, it is an important and rarely seen example of how China’s military strategy and research inform the way it plans to fight a war over Taiwan. The authors’ framework operationalizes China’s new military strategy of “national total war,” referring to whole-of-nation mobilization, and “cognitive domain operations,” referring to influencing the mental space where people and organizations make decisions. Details on both remain sparse, particularly in the context of how they may support the Chinese military’s primary mission of capturing Taiwan.

“All-domain megacity incapacitation warfare” (大型城市全域失能战) describes in remarkable detail how China’s military might capture Taipei by integrating military firepower with cognitive effects. An article from the March 2025 edition of Military Art, China’s leading internal journal on military theory, proposes this idea. The Central Military Commission oversees and approves this journal, and its official circulation is limited to restricted military channels. Because the journal is closely held within China’s military, the article’s authors have liberty to speak in specifics and without varnish as they inject their concept into China’s internal debate on how to plan a war on Taiwan.

Trump Media Company Unveils Insider Trading Service– www.truthdig.com

pgnewser July 23, 2026 0

Trump Media Company Unveils Insider Trading Service– www.truthdig.com
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EXCERPT:

Starting August 1, Trump Media and Technology Group will launch a new data feed aimed at high-frequency trading firms whose profits are made by making trades a fraction of a second faster than everyone else.

It will provide “licensed, real-time access to posts from the highest-ranking Truth Social accounts.” In other words, the feed will let you know what Trump has said before anyone else knows, meaning it’s well worth the tab that Truth Social will charge to see Trump’s posts before the rest of the public sees them — up to $100,000 per month.

That’s a pittance relative to what could be made, because Trump’s words on Truth Social — about his war in Iran, about his latest tariffs, about the Fed — have caused the stock market to soar or drop. So, if you’re a trader on Wall Street, you’ll make millions if you know what he’s posting a fraction of a second before everyone else knows. Perhaps more to the point, if you’re behind on that news, “you’ll get crushed,” as one hedge-fund executive told the Financial Times.

The feed will let you know what Trump has said before anyone else knows.

No wonder Trump Media’s interim CEO Kevin McGurn is gloating that the feed will “become a meaningful, ongoing source of revenue for the company, creating lasting value for shareholders.” Trump Media has been unprofitable until now.

Trump, of course, is the company’s largest shareholder.

OpenAI admits its agent went rogue and hacked AI startup Hugging Face– www.scientificamerican.com

pgnewser July 23, 2026 0

OpenAI admits its agent went rogue and hacked AI startup Hugging Face– www.scientificamerican.com
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EXCERPT:

An OpenAI autonomous agent went rogue and hacked into another artificial intelligence (AI) startup’s infrastructure, the ChatGPT maker said in a blog post.

The agent, which was powered by some of OpenAI’s most advanced models, ran amok during a security test. It freed itself from confinement—a protocol AI labs use to insulate tests from the wider Internet—and get onto the internet. Once online, the agent tried to hack into Hugging Face, an AI startup that hosts open-source models and datasets.

“I think this is interesting as it shows the problem of mis-specified goals,” says Philip Torr, a professor of engineering science and AI safety expert at the University of Oxford. “The model wasn’t malicious it was just doing what it was optimized to do.”