Manus challenges American AI.

The world's first autonomous AI agent, developed by Chinese startup Manus, continues to raise questions about the US position in the artificial intelligence race.

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Manus AI once again raises questions about America's position in the AI ​​arena. Photo: VCG

Many leading US AI developers are racing to develop AI agents capable of performing complex tasks for users, but without success. However, a small Chinese startup claims to have achieved this.

Manus AI last week released a preview of its general AI Agent tool, capable of scanning candidate profiles, scheduling travel itineraries, and analyzing stocks based on basic user guidance. The company claims its service outperforms OpenAI's DeepResearch in several aspects.

Manus co-founder and chief scientist Yichao Ji in the demo video. Source: Manus AI.

Although some AI agents still require a certain degree of human supervision, Manus co-founder and chief scientist Yichao Ji says this AI is “truly autonomous.” The demo video quickly went viral, leading to a scramble for trial codes of the tool.

The initial hype brought Manus into comparison with DeepSeek, a fellow American startup that surprised Silicon Valley with its low-cost, high-performance AI model back in January.

Similar to DeepSeek, Manus once again raises questions about America's leadership position in the AI ​​arena. This time, it's in a category that American tech companies consider a key area of ​​investment.

However, according to Bloomberg, the reactions of those who have had the opportunity to try Manus are not uniform. Derya Unutmaz, a professor at the Jackson Lab, praised the tool for producing "high-quality results" even though it "takes longer than DeepResearch to perform the task."

Others complained that the service was too slow and sometimes crashed before completing the task, most likely due to Manus's limited computing resources. Some users also discovered that Manus made numerous errors.

Elon Musk's X was attacked.

On March 10th, Elon Musk's social network X suffered a large-scale cyberattack, rendering it inaccessible to users in Asia, Europe, and North America.

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X experienced a malfunction before 6:00 AM on March 10th (local time). Photo: NurPhoto

According to Downdetector, at its peak there were over 40,000 incident reports. Elon Musk suggested that the attack may have been carried out by a nation or an organized group.

In an interview with Fox Business , he revealed that the computers involved in the attack appeared to have IP addresses from the Ukraine region.

"We don't know exactly what happened, but there was a massive cyberattack attempting to bring down System X with IP addresses originating from Ukraine," Elon Musk said.

According to Bloomberg , this isn't the first time Musk has blamed service disruptions on cyberattacks. In 2024, he also said X suffered a "massive" DDoS cyberattack, leading to a postponement of a meeting between him and then-Republican candidate Donald Trump.

The Starship exploded in mid-air.

SpaceX's Starship spacecraft exploded in mid-air shortly after liftoff from Texas.

The launch took place at 5:30 p.m. (local time) on March 6th at SpaceX's Starbase facility in Texas (USA) and is expected to advance Elon Musk's goal of deploying a rocket capable of launching multiple satellites into space simultaneously.

The rocket's first stage, Super Heavy, returned to Earth as planned and was successfully captured by a SpaceX crane.

However, less than 10 minutes after launch, the upper stage of Starship began spinning uncontrollably in space, multiple engines stopped working, and communication with the spacecraft was completely lost.

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The streaks of light in the sky over the Bahamas were caused by the explosion of SpaceX's Starship spacecraft. Photo: X

The Starship exploded, and live television footage captured fiery debris falling into the Caribbean.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a temporary halt to flights at several airports, including Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, and Orlando, due to concerns about debris from the explosion.

SpaceX confirmed the failure of Starship in an official statement. The cause is believed to be a malfunction at the spacecraft's tail, resulting in the loss of several Raptor engines and causing the spacecraft to explode.

(Synthetic)

Underwhelming AI poses a major challenge for Apple . Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggests that the delay in Siri's Apple Intelligence features could continue to impact iPhone 16 and iPhone 17 sales in the coming months.