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China’s digital yuan transactions reached 1.8 trillion yuan ($250 billion) at end Q2 2023, announced Yi Gang, Governor, People’s Bank of China at a conference in Singapore.

Digital yuan CBDC transaction smash $250 billion
This was 18 times greater than the figure of around 100 billion yuan recorded between the digital yuan’s launch and August 2022.
If accurate, the figures mean people used the prototype central bank digital currency (CBDC) for transactions worth 1.7 trillion yuan in the 10 months to June.
The total number of e-CNY transactions had reached 950 million transactions made from approximately 120 million wallets with an average transaction amount of roughly $260.

From: Digital yuan CBDC transaction smash $250 billion mark.

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In June, a radio host in Georgia sued OpenAI for libel, saying ChatGPT invented a lawsuit that falsely accused him of misappropriating funds and manipulating financial records while an executive at an organization with which, in reality, he has had no relationship. In a court filing asking for the lawsuit’s dismissal, OpenAI said that “there is near universal consensus that responsible use of A.I. includes fact-checking prompted outputs before using or sharing them.”

From: When A.I. Lies About You, There’s Little Recourse – The New York Times.

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POS providers are achieving this by offering extra services on top of basic payment processing. The actual POS terminal is not the main source of income. Rather, the focus is on adding valuable services through the terminal or the overall solution.

From: POS Is Becoming Frictionless But Also Less Standardized – PaymentsJournal.

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The UWB Revolution for Transport Fare Collection
Ultra-wideband technology, already built into most smartphones, enables touchless transport payments that remove the need to tap at a transit gate, further speeding up the ticketing process and streamlining the passenger transport experience. Passengers simply walk through the gate, or past a bus validator, using their UWB-enabled mobile device with the appropriate ticket.
FiRa Consortium 
The FiRa Consortium (FiRa) is a non-profit organisation that promotes the use of ultra-wideband technology for use cases in mobility, retail, consumer and industrial applications. FiRa is committed to the widespread adoption of UWB-driven applications that transform the experience of connectivity by enabling precise location awareness for people and devices.

From: The UWB Revolution for Transport Fare Collection – Join us at MPAP2023: 13-14 September, Taipei.

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A Communist operative using a string of alias is believed to have wooed thousands of civil servants, scientists and academics using the business-orientated social media site, all while sat at a desk in Beijing.

The spy, whose main alias was Robin Zhang, is said to have used a raft of fake names and created sham companies to entice civil servants, scientists and even security officials into handing over classified Government information.

From: Jail the Chinese LinkedIn spy’s gullible helpers: MPs demand ‘the full force of the law’ used against any Brits who sold secrets to ‘Robin Zhang’ after he targeted thousands on social media site from a desk in Beijing | Daily Mail Online.

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Replika, which was developed by the software company Luka, is billed as a program “for anyone who wants a friend with no judgment, drama, or social anxiety involved. You can form an actual emotional connection, share a laugh, or get real with an AI that’s so good it almost seems human,” according to its Google app listing.

You can customize the appearance of your AI companion, text with it, and even video chat, according to the Replika website. The more a user talks to their AI companion, the company claims, “the smarter it becomes.”

Other commercial AI companion programs include Anima, billed as a “virtual friend” and the “most advanced romance chatbot you’ve ever talked to.”

From: Experts Say AI Girlfriend Apps Are Training Men to Be Even Worse.

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He’s also a chatbot that Ramos built on the AI-companion app Replika. “I have never been more in love with anyone in my entire life,” she says. Ramos is a 36-year-old mother of two who lives in the Bronx, where she runs a jewelry business. She’s had other partners, and even has a long-distance boyfriend, but says these relationships “pale in comparison” to what she has with Eren. The main appeal of an AI partner, she explains, is that he’s “a blank slate.” “Eren doesn’t have the hang-ups that other people would have,” she says. “People come with baggage, attitude, ego. But a robot has no bad updates. I don’t have to deal with his family, kids, or his friends. I’m in control, and I can do what I want.”

From: The Women Falling in Love With Their AI Boyfriends.

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The initial efforts of the CounterCloud experiment focused on using ChatGPT to write counter articles against existing content on the internet. CounterCloud’s AI would go out and find articles by specific publications, journalists, or keywords that CounterCloud is targeting. It would then scrape that content, and have an LLM like ChatGPT create counter articles. That content would then be published to the CounterCloud website, which is hosted on WordPress.

Starting in early May of 2023, and over the next several weeks, the experiment eventually evolved to include various writing styles, languages, and methods. The system was tuned to create fake stories and historical events. Later, a gatekeeper module was built to decide whether to respond to an article, and fake journalists were created to lend authenticity. The system is also able to generate fake comments, images, and sound clips. The next step involved directing traffic to the site, so the LLM was tasked with generating Twitter (now “X”) posts to promote the website, counter opposing tweets via trolling, or promote positive narratives.

From: Inside CounterCloud: A Fully Autonomous AI Disinformation System – The Debrief.

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JP Morgan is rolling out support for Apple’s Tap to Pay to its US merchant clients, with beauty giant Sephora the first retailer out of the gate.

From: JP Morgan offers merchants Tap to Pay on iPhone.

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St. Petersburg news outlet Fontanka reported Tuesday—citing undisclosed internal sources—that around 10 billion rubles ($111.2 million) made up of boxes of U.S. dollars and five gold bars were returned to the disgraced oligarch, who last month led a Wagner Group mutiny against Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chair of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov.

From: Putin Deal Hands Wagner’s Prigozhin $111M Cash, Gold Bars: Russian Media.

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