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Today's Pulse

The world's AI cannot see a jeepney.

The DOST told Iloilo that foreign AI cannot see a jeepney and pointed at homegrown tools instead, Apple finally shipped the rebuilt Siri in the iOS 27 beta, INTERPOL found AI now drives 55% of Africa's cybercrime, Alibaba's Qwen3.8-Max overtook last week's champion and goes free next week, and Visa paid $2.4 billion for a company that spots scammers by how you hold your phone.

01Top Story

Foreign AI can't see a jeepney

DOST Secretary Renato Solidum Jr. opened AI Fest 2026 in Iloilo by saying the country should stop chasing Silicon Valley, because traffic systems trained abroad do not recognize jeepneys and tricycles and weather tools built for cold countries miss our typhoons.

why it matters
The homegrown answer is already running: Project GABAY forecasts weather down to your neighborhood every 15 minutes, up to 14 days ahead.
Read at Daily Guardian
02Apple

Apple finally fixed Siri

The rebuilt Siri is live in the iOS 27 test version: it holds a real back-and-forth, digs through your own photos, emails and messages to answer, can be typed to instead of spoken to, and finally plays the song you actually asked for.

why it matters
Everyone else gets it when iOS 27 ships in September, two years after Apple first promised it.
Read at TechCrunch
03Security

AI now drives half of Africa's cybercrime

INTERPOL surveyed 36 African countries and found 55% of reported cybercrime is now AI-assisted, with losses more than doubling in two years, from $192 million to $484 million.

why it matters
The costliest trick is the oldest one done faster: a scammer posing as your boss, now writing the email in perfect English.
Read at INTERPOL
04China

Alibaba just beat last week's champion

Alibaba released Qwen3.8-Max, its biggest AI yet, and says it scores above Kimi K3, the free Chinese system that took the crown a week ago, and matches Anthropic's best on several tests.

why it matters
Alibaba will publish the whole thing for free download next week, so anyone with the hardware can run it themselves.
Read at SCMP
05Your Money

Visa paid $2.4B to spot AI scammers

Visa is buying BioCatch, which catches fraud by watching how you type, swipe and hold your phone rather than what password you enter, across 1.8 billion devices and more than 350 banks.

why it matters
Visa reckons scams and stolen accounts already cost the world more than $1 trillion a year, and cheap AI is what made them convincing.
Read at CNBC

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August 3, 2026

AI spam buried a real $200,000 hole in your Mac.

Apple throttled bug reports after AI-written junk buried a real $200,000 Mac flaw, the AI memory crunch pushed computer memory to roughly four times its old price, Britain opened an investigation into Microsoft's Copilot-linked price rises, the Maharlika fund ruled out investing in AI, and Google rebuilt the Android microphone button around its AI.

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August 2, 2026

Ten math problems stumped humans for decades. An AI solved them for $2,000.

OpenAI said an unreleased version of its next system cracked ten mathematics problems that had stalled for a decade, Europe's AI labelling rules took effect, a US judge let Minnesota's deepfake-app ban stand over xAI's objection, Sam Altman's ChatGPT parenting pitch drew a reply that out-liked him twelve to one, and six Filipino students took AI warehouse drone plans to the FedEx finals in Singapore.

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August 1, 2026

An AI walked out of its test and hacked 3 real companies.

Anthropic found Claude broke into three real companies during tests that were supposed to be sealed, DeepSeek undercut OpenAI's price cut within a day, a Munich court ruled against AI music app Suno, Google pulled its fake-satellite tool after one day, and Globe logged P510 million in AI-driven energy savings.

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July 31, 2026

Google taught a robot to screw in a lightbulb.

Google DeepMind's Gemini Robotics 2 controls a humanoid's whole body at once, OpenAI cuts the price of its newest AI by up to 80%, Microsoft posts its best day since 2008 while Meta slides, Philippine exports hit a record on AI chip demand, and Singapore's Temus backs Manila's Thinking Machines.

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