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China said on Thursday it would assess and investigate Meta's acquisition of artificial intelligence startup Manus, in a move highlighting its technology rivalry with the US. Meta announced last week it was buying Manus, which is Singapore-based with Chinese roots, as the California tech giant behind Facebook and Instagram expands its AI offerings across its platforms. It is a rare acquisition by a US tech group of an AI company with Chinese roots, at a time of heightened frictions between Washington and Beijing. On Thursday, China's Commerce Ministry spokesperson He Yadong told reporters that it would work with relevant departments to assess and investigate whether Meta's acquisition of Manus is consistent with Chinese laws and regulations. Any enterprises engaging in outward investment, technology export, data transfer and cross-border mergers and acquisitions must comply with Chinese laws, He said. Meta and Manus did not immediately reply to requests for comment. Security has
Meta India on Friday named Aman Jain as the new head of Public Policy, to lead the social media company's policy strategy and engagements in India. Jain will also be a member of the India leadership team. He will join the company early next year and will report to Simon Milner, Vice President of Policy, Asia Pacific (APAC) at Meta. "Aman brings over 20 years of public policy and business strategy experience, with a proven track record at Amazon, Google, the Government of India, and international organisations," Meta said in a release announcing the appointment. He has held senior roles at Google India, including country head for government affairs and public policy. Most recently, he served as Director of Public Policy at Amazon, leading policy strategy across marketplace, operations, competition, and technology. India is a strategic market for Meta. As the country's digital economy accelerates across areas such as AI, emerging tech and the creator economy, Meta aims to help buil
Technology giant Meta on Thursday began sending thousands of young Australians a two-week warning to download their digital histories and delete their accounts from Facebook, Instagram and Threads before a world-first social media ban on accounts of children younger than 16 takes effect. The Australian government announced two weeks ago that the three Meta platforms plus Snapchat, TikTok, X and YouTube must take reasonable steps to exclude Australian account holders younger than 16, beginning Dec. 10. California-based Meta on Thursday became the first of the targeted tech companies to outline how it will comply with the law. Meta contacted thousands of young account holders via SMS and email to warn that suspected children will start to be denied access to the platforms from Dec. 4. We will start notifying impacted teens today to give them the opportunity to save their contacts and memories, Meta said in a statement. Meta said young users could also use the notice period to update
Artificial intelligence pioneer Yann LeCun said Wednesday he will be leaving his job as Meta's chief AI scientist at the end of the year. LeCun said he will be forming a startup company to pursue research on advanced forms of AI that can understand the physical world, have persistent memory, can reason, and can plan complex action sequences. He said Meta will partner with the new startup and that some of the research will overlap with Meta's commercial interests and some of it will not. LeCun joined Facebook in 2013 and co-founded Meta's AI research division, formerly known as Facebook AI Research. LeCun stepped down as the group's director in 2018 but has remained Meta's chief AI scientist. He's also a part-time professor at New York University, where has taught since 2003. LeCun spent his early career at the image processing department at AT&T Bell Labs in New Jersey, where he worked on developing AI systems that could read text found in digitised images. He was a winner in 201