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Days after Meagan Brazil-Sheehan’s 6-year-old son was diagnosed with leukemia, they were walking down the halls of UMass Memorial Children’s Medical Center when they ran into Robin the Robot.“Luca, how are you?” it asked in a high-pitched voice programmed to sound like a 7-year-old girl. “It’s been awhile.”Brazil-Sheehan said they had only met the 4-foot-tall (1.2-meter-tall) robot with a large screen displaying cartoonlike features once before after they were admitted several days earlier.“His face lit up,” she said about the interaction in June in Worcester, Massachusetts. “It was so special because she remembered him.”Robin is an artificial intelligence-powered therapeutic robot programed to act like a little girl as it provides emotional support at nursing homes and hospital pediatric units while helping combat staffing shortages. Five years after launching in the U.S., it has become a familiar face in 30 health care facilities in California, Massachusetts, New York and Indiana.“Nurses and medical staff are really overworked, under a lot of pressure, and unfortunately, a lot of times they don’t have capacity to provide engagement and connection to patients,” said Karen Khachikyan, CEO of Expper Technologies, which developed the robot. “Robin helps to alleviate that part from them.”As AI increasingly becomes a part of daily life, it’s found a foothold in medical care providing everything from note-taking during exams to electronic nurses. While heralded by some for the efficiency it brings, others worry about its impact on patient care.Robin is about 30% autonomous, while a team of operators working remotely controls the rest under the watchful eyes of clinical staff. Khachikyan said that with each interaction, they’re able to collect more data while still complying with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA and get closer to it being able to function independently.“Imagine a pure emotional intelligence like WALL-E. We’re trying to create that,” he said, referencing the 2008 animated film. Making its rounds On a recent Friday, a staff member at HealthBridge Children’s Hospital in Orange County, California, read off a list of patients she needed Robin to visit, along with the amount of time to spend with each one.The robot with a sleek white triangle-shaped frame that Khachikyan said was designed for hugging, rolled into a room with a teenager injured in a car accident. The robot played what it described as his favorite song “No Fear” by DeJ Loaf and he danced along. In the hallway, Robin cracked up a young child held by her mother when it put on a series of silly glasses and a big red nose. In another room, the robot played a simplified version of tic-tac-toe with a patient.Samantha da Silva, speech language pathologist at the hospital, said patients light up when Robin comes into their room and not only remembers their names but their favorite music.“She brings joy to everyone,” da Silva said. “She walks down the halls, everyone loves to chat with her, say hello.”Robin mirrors the emotions of the person it is talking with, explained Khachikyan. If the patient is laughing then the robot laughs along, but if they’re sharing something difficult, its face reflects sadness and empathy.In nursing homes, Robin plays memory games with people suffering from dementia, takes them through breathing exercises on difficult days and offers them a form of companionship that resembles a grandchild with a grandparent.Khachikyan recalled a moment last year at a facility in Los Angeles where a woman was having a panic attack and asked specifically for the robot. Robin played songs by her favorite musician and videos of her favorite animal Elvis Presley and puppies until she had calmed down.But with the Association of American Medical Colleges projecting that the U.S. will face a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians in the next 11 years, Khachikyan’s vision for Robin goes far beyond this type of support.He said they’re working to make the robot able to measure patients’ vitals and check to see how they’re doing and then send that information to their medical team. Longer term plans include designing Robin to help elderly patients change their clothes and go to the bathroom.“Our goal is to design the next evolution of Robin; that Robin will take more and more responsibilities and become even more essential part of care delivery,” Khachikyan said.He clarified that it’s not about replacing health care workers but about filling in the gaps in the workforce.At UMass, the robot is very much a part of a team of support for patients. When Luca needed an IV after not getting one in a while, Micaela Cotas, a certified child life specialist came in with the robot and showed him an IV and what was about to happen, and then Robin played a cartoon of it getting an IV put in.“It just kind of helps show that Robin has gone through those procedures as well, just like a peer,” Cotas said. Finding its niche Robin was developed by Khachikyan while he was getting his Ph.D. He said growing up in a single-parent household in Armenia had been lonely, so years later he wanted to build a type of robot that could act as a person’s friend.Developers tested it in a variety of industries before an investor suggested that pediatric hospitals would be a good fit because of the stress and loneliness children often feel.“That was kind of an aha moment,” he said. “We decided, OK let’s try it.”They had success introducing it at a pediatric hospital in Armenia and by 2020 launched a pilot program at UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital.Since Robin was created, its personality and character have changed significantly based on the responses from people it interacts with.Khachikyan gave the example of Robin’s answer to the question: “What is your favorite animal.” Initially they tried having the robot respond with dog. They also tried cat. But when they tried chicken, the children cracked up. So they stuck with it.“We created Robin’s personality by really taking users into the equation,” he said. “So we often say that Robin was designed by users.” Associated Press journalist Damian Dovarganes contributed to this report. Hallie Golden, Associated Press
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U.S. chip designer Nvidia has signed a letter of intent for a possible $500 million investment in the next funding round at Britain’s Wayve, the autonomous driving technology group said on Thursday. The development comes after Britain and the United States signed a technology pact aimed at boosting ties in artificial intelligence and other fields. Founded in 2017, Wayve raised over $1 billion last year, led by SoftBank Group and supported by Nvidia. Ride-hailing platform Uber had also made a separate investment in the firm in 2024, for an undisclosed sum. Wayve’s technology, unlike conventional systems that rely on detailed digital maps and coding, uses machine learning with camera sensors mounted on the vehicles to learn from traffic patterns and driver behaviour. Its autonomous driving platforms have been powered by a partnership with Nvidia, whose chips are now bolstering a global AI boom. The London-based Wayve currently operates in Britain and the U.S. and has been expanding testing and development to wider markets like Germany and Japan. On Thursday, Nvidia had also pledged 2 billion pounds ($2.70 billion) in investments in the British AI startup ecosystem. ($1 = 0.7411 pounds) Raechel Thankam Job, Reuters
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U.S. President Donald Trump is talking with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Friday in a push to finalize a deal to allow the popular social media app TikTok to keep operating in the United States.The call between the two leaders began around 8 a.m. Washington time, according to a White House official and China’s Xinhua News Agency.The call may offer clues about whether the two leaders might meet in person to hash out a final agreement to end their trade war and provide clarity on where relations between the world’s two superpowers may be headed.This is the second call with Xi since Trump returned to the White House and launched sky-high tariffs on China, triggering back-and-forth trade restrictions that strained ties between the two largest economies. But Trump, a Republican, has expressed willingness to negotiate trade deals with Beijing, notably for TikTok, which faces a U.S. ban unless its Chinese parent company sells its controlling stake. Another call for Trump and Xi over trade tensions The two men also spoke in June to defuse tensions over China’s restrictions on the export of rare earth elements, used in everything from smartphones to fighter jets.“I’m speaking with President Xi, as you know, on Friday, having to do with TikTok and also trade,” Trump said Thursday. “And we’re very close to deals on all of it.”He said his relationship with China is “very good” but noted that Russia’s war in Ukraine could end if European countries put higher tariffs on China. Trump didn’t say if he planned to raise tariffs on Beijing over its purchase of Moscow’s oil, as he has done with India.The Chinese Embassy in Washington on Thursday didn’t confirm any upcoming summit between the leaders, but spokesperson Liu Pengyu said “heads-of-state diplomacy plays an irreplaceable role in providing strategic guidance for China-U.S. relations.”Sun Yun, director of the China program at the Washington-based think tank Stimson Center, predicted a positive discussion.“Both sides have strong desire for the leadership summit to happen, while the details lie in the trade deal and what can be achieved for both sides from the summit,” Sun said. Efforts to finalize the TikTok deal Following a U.S.-China trade meeting earlier this week in Madrid, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the sides reached a framework deal on TikTok’s ownership but Trump and Xi likely would finalize it Friday.Trump, who has credited the app with helping him win another term, several times has extended a deadline for the app to be spun off from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. It is a requirement to allow TikTok to keep operating in the U.S. under a law passed last year seeking to address data privacy and national security concerns.Trump said TikTok “has tremendous value” and the U.S. “has that value in its hand because we’re the ones that have to approve it.”U.S. officials have been concerned about ByteDance’s roots and ownership, pointing to laws in China that require Chinese companies to hand over data requested by the government. Another concern is the proprietary algorithm that populates what users see on TikTok.Chinese officials said Monday that a consensus was reached on authorization of the “use of intellectual property rights,” including the algorithm, and that the two sides agreed on entrusting a partner with handling U.S. user data and content security.Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, says TikTok’s data and algorithm must be “truly in American hands” to comply with the law. More trade issues on the table Top U.S. and Chinese officials have held four rounds of trade talks between May and September, with another likely in the coming weeks. Both sides have paused sky-high tariffs and pulled back from harsh export controls, but many issues remain unresolved.Trump in the call would likely “seek to make it appear that the United States has the upper hand in trade negotiations,” said Ali Wyne, senior research and advocacy adviser on U.S.-China issues at the International Crisis Group.Xi would likely “seek to underscore China’s economic leverage and warn that continued progress in bilateral relations will hinge on an easing of U.S. tariffs, sanctions and export controls,” Wyne said.No deals have been announced on tech export restrictions, Chinese purchases of U.S. agricultural products or fentanyl. The Trump administration has imposed additional 20% tariffs on Chinese goods linked to allegations that Beijing has failed to stem the flow to the U.S. of the chemicals used to make opioids.Trump’s second-term trade war with Beijing has cost U.S. farmers one of their top markets. From January through July, American farm exports to China fell 53% compared with the same period last year. The damage was even greater in some commodities: U.S. sorghum sales to China, for instance, were down 97%.Josh Gackle, chairman of the American Soybean Association, said he would be following the outcome of Friday’s call because China, the biggest foreign buyer of U.S. beans, has paused purchases for this year’s new crop.“There’s still time. It’s encouraging that the two countries continue to talk,” Gackle said. “I think there’s frustration growing at the farmer level that they haven’t been able to reach a deal yet.” Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Paul Wiseman contributed to the report. Didi Tang, Associated Press
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