Flash News

TREE NEWS reports: Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Thomas Barkin said he does not believe the current rise in productivity is mainly driven by artificial intelligence. The remark pushes back on the view that AI adoption is already lifting US output per worker. Barkin spoke on the productivity question without giving a date for the comments.

TREE NEWS reports: Non-human traffic now accounts for the majority of all web traffic for the first time, a shift the company says is breaking the ad-based business model that funds most of the internet. Will Papper, Cloudflare’s Director of Product and a ConstitutionDAO co-builder, discussed the implications in an interview.

TREE NEWS reports: Meta Platforms is testing a “human concierge” feature for its new AI personal assistant Muse, in which real customer service staff quietly answer some calls placed through the digital assistant. The company briefed employees on the test last week, shortly after publicly launching Muse’s calling function.

TREE NEWS update: OpenAI plans to allow third-party organizations to review its AI models for safety risks at an early stage of the development cycle. The move is part of the company’s ongoing efforts to address growing external concern over the potential harms of the technology. No timeline or named review partners were given.

TREE NEWS update: Anthropic released Claude Opus 5.5 across AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, priced at $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens. Because the model costs less than Opus 5, five-hour and weekly usage limits rise 25%, and five-hour Opus 5.5 limits for all subscription plans increase 20%. Anthropic said Opus 5.5 matches Claude Opus 5.1 on most tasks at roughly 40% lower running cost, with Claude Sonnet 5.5 and Claude Haiku 5.5 due in coming weeks.

TREE NEWS update: US Treasury Secretary Bessent said he will speak out if artificial intelligence triggers a national security event. The remark, made without further detail on timing or mechanism, places the Treasury chief at the center of any US government response should an AI-related security incident occur. No specific incident, policy measure or agency action was cited.

TREE NEWS update: SpaceXAI’s Grok Bot agent has surpassed 400,000 users one month after its launch, the company said. The AI agent reached the milestone in its first month of availability.

TREE NEWS update: PayPal shares extended gains to 3.7%, hitting a session high, after the company formed a partnership with Meta that will let shoppers use the latter’s Muse AI agent. The tie-up links PayPal’s payments rails with Meta’s AI-driven shopping assistant. No financial terms of the partnership were disclosed.

TREE NEWS update: US President Donald Trump said all American documents will use “superintelligence,” adding that the administration will encourage the technology rather than restrict it. The statement, made without further specifics on scope, agencies or timing, marks the president’s latest public position on artificial intelligence policy. No implementation details or effective date were given.

TREE NEWS update: Chinese AI startup DeepSeek will brief the UN Security Council this week on the risks posed by artificial intelligence. The Council is scheduled to meet on September 23 local time to discuss AI and international security, weeks after AI industry leaders called for a coordinated slowdown in developing increasingly powerful systems, warning they could soon self-improve beyond human control.

TREE NEWS reports: Chinese regulators are investigating domestic large-model developers DeepSeek and Moonshot to determine whether their cooperation or exchanges with US AI company Anthropic posed a risk of leaking user data or sensitive information. The probe, reported on September 22, targets two of China’s most prominent AI model makers over their US ties.

TREE NEWS update: ByteDance’s Doubao is reducing its General Session team by roughly half, from about 50 people. The team, once the largest within Doubao, handled the chatbot’s conversation product, including strategy and evaluation. Some affected staff will transfer to Doubao commercialization and Feishu teams, while the rest will be laid off.

TREE NEWS update: UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for stronger international AI regulation, warning of a dystopian future marked by excessive corporate power and ‘killer robots.’ He said frontier AI models are shifting power from governments to a handful of private companies and individuals, and that AI is advancing faster than the world’s ability to grasp its consequences. Guterres urged an international agreement on new AI safety safeguards.

TREE NEWS update: Shanghai’s Cyberspace Administration, together with the municipal economic and IT commission, the Shanghai branch of the CSRC and the Shanghai Stock Exchange, held a multi-party symposium on the afternoon of September 21 on online information governance for the city’s pioneer industries. Authorities said they will build more communication channels and step up network governance, lawfully handling illegal information, self-media accounts and MCN agencies to support high-quality development of integrated circuits, AI and biomedicine.

TREE NEWS update: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres used his final address to world leaders at the General Assembly to warn that AI is developing faster than the world can grasp its consequences, saying power is shifting from governments to a handful of private companies and individuals. He called on the international community to agree on new AI safety safeguards, citing the risk of corporate power slipping out of control and “killer robots.”

TREE NEWS update: Alibaba Cloud unveiled its next-generation Cloud Parallel File Storage (CPFS) at the 2026 Yunqi Conference, offering throughput in the hundreds of TB/s and billions of IOPS, with single-file-system scale raised fivefold to 100 PiB. In training, the system cuts average model startup time by 50%, lifts peak compute utilization by 30% and reduces AI storage costs by 69%, doubling workload capacity.

TREE NEWS update: Qwen Office, Alibaba’s office AI unit, unveiled QwenNote, an AI Agent hardware product, at the 2026 Yunqi Conference, alongside its first device, the QwenNote A2. The A2 lets users invoke Qwen Office work tasks by voice and captures offline conversations as external context for the agent. It is priced at 1,199 yuan and goes on sale September 22 at the Qwen Office Tmall flagship store.

TREE NEWS update: XPeng Group held its first robot supply chain partner conference, with leading suppliers of core components including joint modules, actuators and precision structural parts attending. The company had previously signed designation agreements with supply chain firms and is now advancing production line scheduling.

TREE NEWS reports: Yan Wentao, formerly a partner at Hillhouse Venture Capital, has joined AI company DeepSeek as chief financial officer, people familiar with the venture industry said. Word of the appointment circulated among venture investors last week, with several attributing it to possible future fundraising and listing plans. DeepSeek has not confirmed the move.

TREE NEWS update: Apple released new Mac mini and Mac Studio models on September 22. The Mac mini ships with M6 or M5 Pro chips, priced from $899 and $1,699 respectively; the Mac Studio carries M5 Max or M5 Ultra chips, starting at $2,499 and $5,499.