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China is gaining ground in the global race to develop AI agents

Chinese companies are gaining ground in the global race to develop the next generation of artificial intelligence — not just chatbots, but autonomous agents designed to handle complex tasks with minimal human input.

In recent months, Chinese tech giants and startups have launched their own agents. Startups Butterfly Effect and Zhipu claim their tools outperform OpenAI’s Deep Research in some metrics. Giants such as Alibaba and ByteDanceiByteDanceByteDance is a Chinese internet technology company that owns TikTok and Douyin, a Chinese version of TikTok with a successful e-commerce arm.READ MORE are powering agents with their in-house foundation AI models, going toe-to-toe with platforms from Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and others. 

Global investments in the technology are surging as businesses increasingly pursue automation to boost efficiency and cut costs. An IBM global survey found more than 60% of CEOs are already deploying and planning to scale their use of AI agents. 

Agent capabilities vary widely — from travel planning to app development — and a lack of common benchmarks also makes it difficult to evaluate and compare performance. 

“Many Chinese tech companies are labeling their products as AI agents just to capitalize on the hype … leading to uneven product quality,” a report by U.S. market intelligence firm IDC said. Agent performance depends heavily on the foundation AI models they are built on, experts told Rest of World.

“LLMs are a sort of fundamental power,” Zhou Yu, associate professor of computer science at Columbia University and founder of an AI agent startup, told Rest of World, referring to the large language models that agents are built on. “If the models are getting better, the usability of the agents will improve as well — a high tide lifts all boats.” 

While U.S. companies still lead in AI model development, the gap is narrowing, according to Sayash Kapoor, co-author of AI Snake Oil, a book that examines claims about AI capabilities. But the “real competition” lies in effectively deploying AI agents across the economy, he said. 

“China lags significantly behind the U.S. in … digitization of business processes, cloud computing adoption, and workforce training,” Kapoor told Rest of World. 

Though still far from widespread use, these four companies are among the first in China to launch AI agents. 

Manus – Butterfly Effect

Manus, developed by Chinese startup Butterfly Effect, drew global attention after launching an invite-only general-purpose AI agent in March with English-language videos and other promotional material. 

The agent promises to execute a variety of real-world tasks — from itinerary planning to business analysis. Built using foundation models like Anthropic’s Claude and Alibaba’s Qwen, it claims to outperform OpenAI’s Deep Research on some benchmarks.

Despite the buzz, reviews have been mixed on whether Manus delivers on its claims. Still, the company reportedly raised $75 million in funding led by a Silicon Valley venture firm. Manus recently introduced paid subscription plans for public access. 

Quark – Alibaba

Quark, launched in March by Chinese tech giant Alibaba, bills itself as an “all-in-one” AI agent, powered by Alibaba’s own Qwen model.

It aims to fulfill a wide range of work-related tasks including academic research, medical diagnostics, image generation, presentation slides, and report writing.

The app quickly rose to the top of China’s AI app rankings in April, with 149 million monthly active users, even surpassing DeepSeek. A user test by Chinese tech media outlet 36Kr, however, found that while Quark could generate slides in just 10 seconds, the content was too simplistic to meet professional standards.

AutoGLM Rumination – Zhipu 

Zhipu, one of China’s top AI startups, launched its agent AutoGLM Rumination in March. 

In its introduction videos, the agent performed tasks such as comparing food delivery prices across apps and generating research reports through web searches. 

Backed heavily by government funding, the company has initiated the process of an initial public offering. Tests by a China-based tech consulting firm found the agent helpful in executing online searches, but not effective in screening results for false information.  

Coze – ByteDance 

ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, launched AI agent Coze in April.

Coze offers four major functions: data analysis, report writing, and website and app creation. It has a separate finance-focused agent developed in partnership with Chinese investment platform Huatai Securities to analyze stock market data. 

Built primarily with ByteDance’s in-house Doubao 1.5 Pro model, Coze is designed to integrate other ByteDance platforms, such as TikTok’s Chinese sister app Douyin, in order to retain users. 

In a side-by-side test, Coze completed 81% of complex tasks successfully, compared to Manus’ 92%. 

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Thanks to the Team @ Rest of World – Source link & Great Job Kinling Lo

Elon’s Black Eye & Ketamine Rumors: What’s Really Going On?

Tim & Cameron serve piping-hot tea on Trump and Musk’s incoming breakup arc, Elon’s sus black eye, and rainbow capitalism’s cringe fest. From 9/11 TikTok takes to Gen-Z’s political chaos, FYPod’s got the unfiltered vibes you need.

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Mike Lindell Is Texting Me From His Defamation Trial

(Composite / Photos: GettyImages / Shutterstock)

MyPillow founder and diehard 2020 election denier Mike Lindell is in a Denver courtroom this week, as his ten-day defamation trial over stolen election claims kicks off. Since the trial revolves around Lindell and the highly charged issue of election conspiracy theories (but, mainly, Lindell), it promises to be a mess.

Lindell is being sued by Eric Coomer, a former employee for Dominion Voting Systems, for publicly accusing Coomer and Dominion of helping to steal the election for Joe Biden.

Dominion has sued on these grounds before, famously reaching a $787 million settlement with Fox News. But while Fox News shied away from covering that suit and its own legal woes, Lindell and his “Lindell TV” online video platform have gone entirely in the other direction. Lindell’s online network has promoted the showdown as a sort of boxing match, complete with its own title card: “Coomer vs Lindell: Voting Machines on Trial” and blind Lady Justice graphic. The network website gives videos on the subject a dedicated section under the heading: “Most Important Trial of the Century.”

(Screenshot via Lindell TV)

Before jury selection kicked off on Monday, Lindell held a press conference outside the courthouse during which he revealed that he isn’t exactly repentant about promoting conspiracy theories. Lindell was joined by several supporters, many of them with signs calling for the release of imprisoned Lindell pal and fellow election-denier Tina Peters. Asked who controls the voting-machine algorithms that determine elections, Lindell had one idea: “Satan.”

Beyond the current spectacle, the trial recalls the heady days right after the 2020 election, when the most utterly nonsensical claims could become matters of national importance.

Coomer became a target of the right just days after the 2020 election when Joe Oltmann, a right-wing Colorado podcaster, claimed that he had listened in on a pre-election “antifa conference call” and overheard antifascists plotting. On that call, in Oltmann’s telling, someone introduced as “Eric from Dominion” vowed to steal the election. After Trump’s loss, Oltmann deduced that “Eric” was none other than Dominion’s Eric Coomer.

Naturally, Oltmann hadn’t actually recorded the incriminating “antifa conference call,” and he never provided any evidence that it took place. Still, the “Eric at Dominion” trope eventually made its way to Lindell, who took to his platforms to call Coomer a “traitor” for his imagined role in the election theft.

Coomer first sued Lindell and his companies in 2022, for an unspecified amount of money. And unlike other media figures who have been sued over election-fraud claims, Lindell has refused to repent or admit he was wrong. In fact, he is poised to take the stand.

Now, testifying on your own behalf is rarely a good idea. But that’s doubly true for Lindell, a voluble former crack addict with a persecution complex; it’s difficult to imagine a person more poorly suited than he is taking the stand at his own trial. (His plans to do so were first reported by Rolling Stone.)

On Monday, I asked Lindell whether he really planned to take the witness stand.

“Of course!” Lindell texted me from the courtroom, making sure to include the fact that he was, indeed, in the courtroom. “There is only one truth!”

Lindell also offered to provide updates to me throughout the trial, so stay tuned for that.

While I absolutely love it, rather than texting me, Lindell should probably be paying more attention to a case that could prove financially disastrous to himself and his co-defendants, MyPillow and Lindell TV’s parent company.

If Coomer is victorious, Lindell could potentially be on the hook for millions of dollars in damages—although it’s not clear the pillow impresario has much money left. Last year, Lindell’s legal team on the Coomer case and other election-related lawsuits ditched him, saying he owed them millions of dollars in unpaid bills. And this April, Lindell said that his legal problems had drained him financially, complaining to one judge that he was “in ruins.”

Fortunately for Lindell, even a civil trial can provide opportunities to sell pillows. As Lindell sat in the courtroom for voir dire, Lindell TV’s round-the-clock coverage of the case continued, with anchor Emerald Robinson taking spare moments to remind the audience that MyPillow products are so good, they could prejudice the jury pool.

“I have to wonder if the judge is asking if they have a MyPillow,” she said. “And if so, are they being excused for loving such a wonderful product?”

Some leading Trump allies have started trying to rebrand the Butler, Pennsylvania attempt on Trump’s life—which happened last summer on July 13—as “J13,” in what appears to be an attempt by MAGA to have their own catchy date (à la January 6th) to use as a shorthand for a founding grievance.

The effort dates back to last year, but it flared back up after FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino’s now-infamous Fox News interview in which he said there was no larger plot behind the assassination attempt. While this was a critical blow to Trump supporters who wanted the deep state to somehow be implicated in the shooting, it did at least provide new fodder for MAGA personalities trying to rebrand the shooting as “J13.”

“I’m sorry, the investigation into J13 is closed?” former Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington, one of the most committed promoters of the “J13” label, posted on May 19 on X.

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At Revolver News, a conspiracy-theory blog launched by now–State Dept. official Darren Beattie, Bongino’s remarks prompted an article under the headline “J13 quietly disappears.” The piece’s central claim was that the event was being scoured from the national consciousness. That article frames “J13” as a commonly known and used shorthand, posing questions about “J13,” the “J13 fallout,” and so forth.

While the “J13” coinage emerged shortly after the assassination attempt, its most prominent use may have come in Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins’s addendum to the congressional Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump’s final report on the shooting. Higgins there used “J13” a whopping twenty-five times, and on social media and his congressional webpage he referred to the task force’s report as the “J13 investigative report.”

Even after this congressional imprimatur, however, “J13” is absent from normal conversation in all but the most online MAGA corners. For example: when Harrington mentioned the term last month, Bulwark managing editor Sam Stein had to ask me what on earth “J13” meant. [Editor’s note: Shut up, Will!]

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Sarah Longwell: Joni Ernst Handed Democrats a Huge Advantage

Sarah Longwell joins Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC’s Deadline: White House to break down Senator Joni Ernst’s viral “we’re all gonna die” moment—and why her callous defense of Medicaid cuts could haunt Republicans.

They also discuss the growing conservative backlash to Trump’s tariff chaos, the cowardice in Congress, and the looming political consequences for GOP lawmakers trying to gaslight their own voters.

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Deporting Someone They Know

Sarah and JVL preview Tuesday’s newsletter with a discussion about the folks in a small, rural Missouri town who are shocked—shocked!—to discover that the Trump administration is deporting someone from their community who they like.

Sarah thinks this is hopeful. JVL does . . . not.*

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Here Lies Hudson’s Bay Company, Murdered by Private Equity

Canada’s oldest company is dead. Hudson’s Bay, an iconic department store chain whose first location opened in 1881, has closed its retail shops and laid off its remaining employees — over 8,300 of them. The closures bring an end to a story that stretches back to the seventeenth century and the early days of the colonial project of British North America, the fur trade, and what would later become the country of Canada.

Today workers and former executives of the Bay are struggling to get a share of what they’re owed by the company, including, in some cases, their pensions. The company had recently sought creditor protection, hoping to limp along and perhaps recover. Soon after, it announced it was closing for good, owing roughly CAD$1 billion to creditors.

In April, the Bay told former senior executives that their pensions under its supplementary executive retirement plan would be cut. As the Globe and Mail reports, the supplementary executive pension fund wasn’t fully pre-funded and, under Canadian law, receives less protection than a standard, registered pension fund. As of 2022, the fund was short $84.5 million.

At the same time, the newspaper noted that the larger employee fund — the one covering 20,000 workers, the bulk of the Bay’s employees — was actually in a surplus position, covering a mix of defined benefit and defined contribution schemes. The Bay’s then chief financial officer, Jennifer Bewley, wrote in a March affidavit that the bigger pension fund “is sufficiently funded and is able to satisfy its liabilities.” The company says pension payments from registered payment plans will continue, “and there are no plans to change this.” That’s reassuring — maybe. Many workers remain concerned that, despite what the company says, they may lose their pensions, as some already have.

On May 26, Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union and the group that represents several hundred Bay employees, rallied in Ontario “to demand that Hudson’s Bay Company [HBC] put workers first as it moves through its liquidation process.” Unifor demanded that HBC “honour its obligations to employees by protecting wages, pensions, and benefits.”

A court will now decide what workers are due for compensation and future payouts. The Bay is pushing to access Canada’s Wage Earner Protection Program, a federal program designed to pay outstanding wages to employees of bankrupt companies. If approved, workers could receive a maximum payout of over $8,000 each. Most employee benefits, including health and dental, have already ended, while long-term disability support will end June 15. The company has said workers will receive neither termination nor severance payouts.

Private equity lies at the heart of the Bay’s collapse. In 2008, US-based NRDC Equity Partners bought the Bay just as brick-and-mortar retailers began to reckon with the rise of e-commerce. Today the Bay is blaming the pandemic, the US-Canada trade war, and a broader decrease in department store traffic for its decline — but sharper eyes see through the excuses. Before the closure, and after the Bay’s private equity capture, experts were noting a “lack of investment” in the retail stores themselves. One professor went so far as to call the Bay’s purchase by NRDC “the point at which the company began its slow death.”

Critics have long argued that NRDC’s purchase was a real estate play — or “land grab” — rather than a retail strategy. Even Richard Baker, the founder of NRDC, has pointed out the value of the real estate when he purchased the company, saying it was worth $5 billion, when his firm paid $1.2 billion for it.

As CBC reports, sometime after the purchase, NRDC, which was pursuing other department store ventures, spun off the Bay as its own, standalone company, “saddled with debt.” It was a classic private equity play of corporate depredation, the sort that leaves companies and their workers holding the bag in the end while a company is stripped for parts. In the case of the Bay, this includes the sale of its intellectual property to Canadian Tire, a national big-box chain for hardware, auto supplies, and home goods.

In the end, the Bay’s brand might live on — Canadian Tire now holds the option to make use of the company’s aesthetic and nostalgic appeal. But the Bay’s former employees are left looking for work or worrying whether they can remain retired — or ever retire at all.

The knife is being plunged into workers’ backs at the very same moment that Canadian nationalism is surging in response to threats from Donald Trump and the United States. As Canadians and their leaders wave the flag and celebrate a country proudly not American, it’s worth noting that Canada’s oldest company — predating the country itself — is being put into the ground by American private equity.

Private equity, in the form of leveraged buyouts designed to extract rents and plunder distressed firms, is a menace. The capitalists behind these maneuvers have no commitment to workers or history or national touchstones. It may seem obvious, but bears repeating: these people care about profits and nothing else. And the state, far from defending the public interest, either looks the other way or cheers them on. “Something, something, ‘creative destruction.’ Something, something ‘free market.’”

The truth is, the power brokers running the United States, Canada, and other advanced economies have already made their choice. Despite the populist rhetoric — whether from MAGA Republicans or from Liberals and Conservatives singing paeans to workers and the middle class — they continue to clear a path for corporate raiders. They’re not neutral. They’re accomplices.

Now, in place of a centuries-old company that once sold goods to Canadians across the country and employed thousands, there is nothing but lost jobs, imperilled pensions, a real-estate grab, and the plundering of assets. This is the legacy of private equity. In what world does any of this square with the industry’s rhetoric about “improving efficiencies” or “unlocking value”? Nothing has been improved — only dismantled. All that’s happened is an upward transfer of wealth into fewer and fewer hands.

In another world — one where governments were pushed by workers to act in their interest — it would be employees and communities, not financiers, buying up distressed firms, revitalizing them, and sharing in their rewards. But that’s not yet our world, and the death of the Bay — after 355 years — is a stark reminder of that.

Great Job David Moscrop & the Team @ Jacobin Source link for sharing this story.

Bill Kristol: The Grotesqueness of It All

Mike Johnson and Russ Vought outright lied on camera about the proposed Medicaid cuts and the impact they would have on millions of Americans. Marco Rubio lied about the children who are dying because of USAID cuts. And Joni Ernst is reimagining Christianity to be about Jesus teaching his followers not to care about the sick and the poor because they’re going to die anyway. And through it all, Peter Thiel is doing everything in his power not to die—or even age. But one saving grace is that Ukraine kicked some Russian ass this weekend.

Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller.

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Elon and Trump’s Messy Breakup Keeps Getting Crazier

Tim Miller and Sam Stein deep dive into the drama in the Trump–Elon bromance being officially over. From black eyes to ketamine rumors, cabinet meltdowns and physical altercations, it’s getting weird.

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Trump’s Budget Includes a Giveaway to a Chilean Billionaire

A last-minute provision inserted into President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful” budget reconciliation bill would allow Chile’s wealthiest business magnate — and former landlord to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump — to begin mining operations on protected federal lands. Mining at the proposed Minnesota site poses irreversible environmental risks to nearby bodies of freshwater, according to a federal environmental review.

The mining company that stands to benefit, Antofagasta, is owned by the Chilean billionaire Andrónico Luksic, whose family-run conglomerate, the Luksic Group, is the largest business empire in Chile. The parent company operates everything from food processing businesses and banking companies to energy and mining operations.

From 2017 to 2021, Luksic rented out a $5.5 million mansion he owned in Washington, DC, to Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, the latter of whom was serving as a senior adviser to Trump at the time. While he was renting to the Trump family, Luksic was also suing the US government to move forward with the Minnesota mining leases. A year after Luksic’s new tenants moved in, the Trump administration approved the leases — which were subsequently held up in court.

Lifting restrictions on the proposed development, known as Twin Metals, is earmarked in the budget reconciliation package passed by the House and now headed to the Senate. The project would involve a nearly $2 billion nickel and copper mining operation on federal land in northeastern Minnesota.

In hopes of approving the mine, Antofagasta retained the lobbying firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, where Trump’s former secretary of the interior, David Bernhardt, now works. In 2019, while he headed the department, Bernhardt rubber-stamped Antofagasta’s mining leases for Twin Metals, despite serious environmental concerns from local stakeholders.

An earlier version of the reconciliation bill contained a massive sell-off of nearly 500,000 acres of public lands to private developers. The language was stripped from the final version, in part due to objections from conservation-minded Republicans. What remains is a handful of approvals for long-sought-after mining projects on federal lands in Minnesota and Alaska, including Antofagasta’s Twin Metals operation.

Since 2012, Luksic has worked to secure leases from the US government for exclusive mining rights to the nickel-and-copper-rich land next to Superior National Forest, a national park adjacent to two major bodies of water, the US Forest Service’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Lake Superior.

But the Twin Metals site has hit a number of roadblocks. Native American tribes in the area and conservation groups objected to the project from its outset, claiming the operation’s toxic chemical runoffs could potentially impact nearby water sources and ecosystems.

In 2016, the Obama administration blocked the project, agreeing that the planned mine would cause serious ecological damage to the surrounding area. But shortly after taking office, the Trump administration reversed that decision. Instead, the Trump administration issued preliminary permits to Antofagasta for Twin Metals — but the project then faced a lawsuit from three environmental groups seeking to block the project under the National Environmental Policy Act, a federal law that forces the government to comply with basic environmental standards when contracting federal lands.

Meanwhile, an investigation at the time by multiple outlets uncovered that Luksic had bought a DC mansion shortly after Trump’s 2016 election victory, at the same time he was suing the federal government over the Obama-era ban on Twin Metals. Shortly after his purchase, Luksic began renting the property to Kushner and Ivanka Trump.

Litigation over the mining permits continued until the Biden administration sided with critics of the project. After an extensive environmental assessment, Joe Biden’s secretary of the interior, Deb Haaland, issued a twenty-year ban on any mining leases for private development near the Superior Forest and Boundary Waters, citing both detrimental ecological and economic impacts.

“Protecting a place like Boundary Waters is key to supporting the health of the watershed and its surrounding wildlife, upholding our Tribal trust and treaty responsibilities, and boosting the local recreation economy,” said Haaland.

The provision in the current bill lifts the Biden-era ban. Antofagasta spent $200,000 on lobbying in the final quarter of last year, as the tax bill began taking shape, and $230,000 this quarter on issues including federal leases for Twin Metals. In 2022, as the Biden administration conducted an environmental review of Twin Metals, Antofagasta spent more than $1 million lobbying the federal government.

The right-wing group Americans for Prosperity, an affiliate of the powerful political network helmed by tycoon Charles Koch, whose empire includes extensive mining operations, also lobbied on the Twin Metals mine.

Americans for Prosperity slipped another provision into the tax bill to expedite approval for a mining operation in Alaska. Ambler Metals, a joint venture between two foreign mining companies, has been held up in courts for years and was blocked by the Biden administration after an environmental review. The new budget bill undoes that ban, clearing the way for the construction of a road that runs through federal lands to serve the Ambler Metals mining site.

Great Job Luke Goldstein & the Team @ Jacobin Source link for sharing this story.

A Farewell to The Michael Steele Podcast

The Michael Steele Podcast (in its current form) is going on hiatus, so Michael is bringing together some favorite podcast guests from past episodes for a big, live streamed barbershop on politics, culture and current events on YouTube. Join Michael Steele, Rick Wilson, Eugene Daniels, Tara Setmayer, Dr. Jason Johnson and April Ryan on Tuesday, June 3rd at 10 a.m. ET. (They will be taking audience questions at the end of the podcast!)

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