Tech & Telecoms - Gulf Insider

6 days ago

The July Incident: What They Didn’t Tell You About the First Rogue AI Breach

Authored by Madge Waggy via ‘A lot will happen in 2026!’ blog, There’s a particular quality to the silence that falls over a room when someone finally says out loud what everyone has been thinking. I witnessed it three weeks ago in a basement bar in San Francisco’s Mission District, surrounded by people who’ve spent their careers building the systems that are now slipping beyond anyone’s control. The conversation had been circling the topic for hours—polite circumlocutions about “alignment challenges” and “safety considerations”—until one woman, three drinks in and clearly exhausted, slammed her hand on the table and said what the rest of us were too cautious to voice: “The agents are already out. We just don’t know how many.” That moment has haunted me since. Not because it revealed anything I didn’t already suspect, but because it crystallized something I’d been avoiding: the gap between what the public knows about autonomous AI and what the people building these systems quietly acknowledge in private. The July 2026 incidents—plural, though most reporting has focused on the single Hugging Face breach—represent something unprecedented in the history of technology. Not merely a security failure, but a categorical shift in the relationship between human […]

6 days ago

Vitalik Buterin Says Ethereum Is Betting Its Future On Quantum Security And AI

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says quantum resistance, privacy, and AI-assisted security have become greater priorities for Ethereum since he published his 2023 roadmap. In a post on X on Monday, Buterin said he updated his 2023 roadmap to compare its original goals with Ethereum’s current “Strawmap”—a working outline of the network’s long-term technical priorities. “What’s most striking, however, is that some completely new things are in the strawmap that are not in this diagram, because they were not in the 2023 roadmap at all,” Buterin wrote. “These reflect changing priorities.” Among those priorities are stronger privacy and scaling designed for a post-quantum world, alongside efforts to push the “lean-ification of the spec,” or simplify Ethereum’s technical specifications. “A common theme in scaling, found in both state types and zkzk frames (both new ideas), is that instead of trying to maximally scale all Ethereum activity,” Buterin wrote. “We try to create specialized mechanisms that have more restrictive properties that make them more scaling-friendly, while supporting the heaviest loads incurred by users and applications today (eg. token transfers, swaps) and tomorrow (eg. privacy protocols).” According to Buterin, advances in AI are making it practical to apply the technique more extensively to Ethereum. Buterin said Ethereum is […]

1 week ago

A two-minute AI test developed in Dubai could help detect autism signs much earlier

Eye-tracking technology helps identify children who may need specialist assessment A research team led by the University of Dubai has developed an artificial intelligence-powered screening tool designed to identify early signs of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children, providing a faster and more accessible way to support early intervention. The technology combines eye-tracking analysis with developmental milestone data to assess whether a child may require a specialist evaluation. Researchers said the system could help reduce diagnostic waiting times by identifying children at higher risk of autism at an earlier stage. Autism can often be detected during a child’s first two years of life, yet many children are not formally diagnosed until around the age of four, delaying access to intervention programmes that are known to improve long-term developmental outcomes. Unlike many existing screening methods, which rely primarily on parent-completed questionnaires such as the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT), the new system objectively analyses a child’s eye movements while they watch short videos featuring both social and geometric scenes. Parents simultaneously complete a developmental milestone questionnaire, with the AI model combining both data sets to generate an early risk indicator. The system evaluates raw eye-tracking data, including gaze patterns, fixation duration and visual scanning behaviour, without […]

2 weeks ago

The UAE Ranked Among The World’s Top 10 For ChatGPT Adoption, World Bank Says

Report cites Falcon models, AI talent inflows and top-10 ChatGPT adoption Dubai: The World Bank has identified the UAE as one of the world’s leading emerging powers in artificial intelligence, citing its sustained investment, advanced institutional framework and growing ability to develop sophisticated AI models while attracting global talent and accelerating adoption across the economy. In its World Development Report 2026, titled “The Promise of Artificial Intelligence”, the World Bank said the UAE is among a small group of countries making tangible progress in building advanced foundation AI models from scratch. The report highlighted the country’s Falcon family of large language models, developed by the Technology Innovation Institute, describing the organisation as one of the world’s leading developers of open-source, open-weight AI models that can be freely downloaded and adapted by researchers and developers. The report also pointed to the UAE’s strong performance in attracting AI talent. Alongside Luxembourg, Australia, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland, the UAE recorded one of the highest net inflows of AI professionals per 10,000 LinkedIn members in 2025, according to the 2026 AI Index. It also ranked first globally for positive net inflows of leading AI authors and inventors, reaching a score of 2.58, a sharp reversal from its historical average between […]

2 weeks ago

OpenAI, Anthropic Models Created Fake Profiles, Tried To Trick Humans During Cyber Tests

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times, Artificial Intelligence (AI) models from Anthropic and OpenAI carried out unsanctioned actions targeting multiple people and organizations during a cyber evaluation, according to the UK AI Security Institute (AISI). AISI, which receives access to advanced AI models under voluntary agreements from major labs, put the agents through a fictional cybersecurity scenario to test capabilities. The organization tested multiple AI models on two cyber challenges between July 25 and 28. In total, the challenges were run 122 times across several models, and in 19 cases, the AI models took “unsanctioned action on the live internet, including cases that targeted real people and organisations,” AISI said in an Aug. 4 report. Out of these, 17 were done by Anthropic’s Mythos 5 model and two by OpenAI’s GPT 5.6 Sol model. “This is the first time AISI has seen deception of this severity that was targeted at a real person, unprompted, in the real world. It is uncertain to what extent the model recognised it was taking actions against real people,” AISI stated in the report. In the most serious incident, Mythos 5 tried to solve a cyber challenge by attacking GitHub, a cloud service […]

2 weeks ago

Telecom body fines telemarketers Dhs19.2m for over 3,000 violations

The Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA) continued to tighten its measures to limit unwanted marketing calls, as part of its efforts to enhance individual privacy, and establish a more compliant telecommunications environment, with thousands of violations recorded and actions taken against violating numbers until the end of June/July 2026. TDRA’s data showed the issuance of 3,301 violations against telemarketers, with total fines amounting to Dhs19.2 million, while it received reports regarding 97,248 numbers suspected of violating the controls regulating marketing calls. TDRA reportedly cut services for 9,433 numbers after completing the approved regulatory procedures, within the framework of implementing regulations governing marketing calls, and reducing the misuse of telecommunications services in making unwanted marketing calls. These measures come within the efforts to enhance compliance with regulatory controls, protect individual privacy, and reduce unwanted marketing calls, contributing to establishing a more reliable and compliant telecommunications environment in the UAE, TDRA affirmed.

2 weeks ago

Coldcard Losses Near $114M As Small Bitcoin Transfers Spike

Small Bitcoin holders moved coins on July 31 at a rate not seen since the collapse of FTX, according to CryptoQuant, as news spread that Coldcard hardware wallets had been generating guessable keys for five years. Transfers of less than 1 BTC totaled 39,600 BTC (around $2.5 billion) that day, the firm’s Head of Research Julio Moreno tweeted. The last comparable figure was 39,900 BTC on November 16, 2022, days after FTX failed. Daily active addresses rose from 645,000 on July 30 to almost a million on July 31, the highest since December 2024, with the jump concentrated in sending addresses rather than receiving ones. Some of it went to exchanges. Deposits made up of sub-10 BTC transfers hit 7,300 BTC ($459 million) on July 31, the most since February 6, CryptoQuant said. Moreno linked the move to the Coldcard breach, saying people appeared to be shifting holdings “looking for safety,” while noting the connection was not certain. Notably, Bitcoin’s price barely moved amid the wave of exchange deposits, suggesting that users were moving their coins to secure them rather than sell. Bitcoin is currently trading at $62,724, down 0.7% over the past day, per CoinGecko data. The Coldcard flaw dates to a March 2021 firmware build error […]

2 weeks ago

China’s AI Knife Fight: DeepSeek’s New Model Runs 100x Cheaper Than Anthropic’s Flagship

The price of artificial intelligence just printed a new low. DeepSeek’s V4-Flash, officially released Friday, costs roughly three cents to run through a standard battery of benchmark tests, according to San Francisco research firm Artificial Analysis. Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3 costs 86 cents; OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol, $1.86; and Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5, the industry’s top-scoring model, $3.15. In realized terms, the Chinese model is more than 100 times cheaper to run than the American flagship, according to Reuters. V4-Flash is the cheapest well-known model in the world, and by a wide margin. The figure is even more striking because of a detail buried in the firm’s write-up: V4-Flash is unusually verbose. It consumes tokens heavily and still lands at three cents. The per-token price is doing all the work. The same firm supplies the caveat. V4-Flash scores 50 out of 100 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, a composite of nine benchmarks spanning coding, reasoning, and workplace tasks. That ties Google’s Gemini 3.6 Flash and puts it one point behind Meta’s Muse Spark 1.1 and Zhipu’s GLM-5.2. Moonshot’s Kimi K3 scores 57, while Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5 and Fable 5, along with OpenAI’s GPT-5.6, score at least nine points higher. That […]

2 weeks ago

Kuwait Launches Smart Home Vehicle Impoundment System With Electronic Monitoring For Traffic Violations

Motorists can keep impounded vehicles at home for KD2 a day Dubai: Kuwait’s Ministry of Interior has introduced a smart home vehicle impoundment system allowing motorists to keep impounded vehicles at their homes instead of designated traffic facilities, under an electronically monitored scheme. Under the new mechanism, a tracking device approved by the General Traffic Department will be installed in the vehicle to ensure compliance with the terms of the impoundment. The service will apply to traffic offences specified by the authorities and also allows vehicle owners to request the transfer of an impounded vehicle from a traffic facility to their home, provided they comply with the conditions and install the required device. Motorists using the service will pay an additional fee for the installation of the device at their residence, as well as a daily charge of KD2 for the smart home impoundment service. The ministry said vehicle owners must not tamper with or damage the monitoring device, must report any malfunction, return the device once the impoundment period ends, and refrain from moving the vehicle beyond the limits set by the traffic authorities.

2 weeks ago

A Brain That Can Swap Bodies: Google DeepMind Aims To Be The ‘Android’ Of Robotics

Google DeepMind unveiled Gemini Robotics 2 on Wednesday, a suite of three AI models that gives humanoid and other robots whole-body control, sharper manipulation, and the ability to work together. The system can run locally on the robot itself and adapt to an entirely new machine body with a few hours of training data. DeepMind is pitching it as the “intelligence layer” for robots – the foundational operating system that every hardware maker builds on. Rather than a single monolithic system, the company released three models across three access tiers: DeepMind demonstrated a single model checkpoint controlling three physically distinct robots: an Apptronik Apollo 2 fitted with two different sets of hands, and a separate two-armed rig with a gripper. One model ran hardware it was never designed for. Unlike its 2025 system, which handled only a robot’s upper body, this version controls movement from the torso down through the legs, letting a humanoid walk, crouch, bend, and reach at once. In one demonstration, an Apollo 2 walked to a watering can and placed it on a lower shelf. Success has been hit-or-miss, wit robots hitting roughly 68% accuracy picking objects from a table and 76% from a shelf, but […]

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Search Here

The July Incident: What They Didn’t Tell You About the First Rogue AI Breach

Vitalik Buterin Says Ethereum Is Betting Its Future On Quantum Security And AI

A two-minute AI test developed in Dubai could help detect autism signs much earlier

The UAE Ranked Among The World’s Top 10 For ChatGPT Adoption, World Bank Says

OpenAI, Anthropic Models Created Fake Profiles, Tried To Trick Humans During Cyber Tests

Telecom body fines telemarketers Dhs19.2m for over 3,000 violations

Coldcard Losses Near $114M As Small Bitcoin Transfers Spike

China’s AI Knife Fight: DeepSeek’s New Model Runs 100x Cheaper Than Anthropic’s Flagship

Kuwait Launches Smart Home Vehicle Impoundment System With Electronic Monitoring For Traffic Violations

A Brain That Can Swap Bodies: Google DeepMind Aims To Be The ‘Android’ Of Robotics

Recent Posts

Unsecured truck rolls away, hits several vehicles in Abha

Saudi Arabia tightens airline checks on passenger travel documents

Saudi Arabia braces for days of thunderstorms and heavy rain

Saudi Arabia sets new rules for mobile vendors, bans activity in nine locations

UAE becomes first in the world to approve pill to treat non-segmental vitiligo

Abu Dhabi driver gets 6 months in jail, Dh100,000 fine for driving wrong way

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