“To some American observers, fixated on the idea that #China might be stealing a march on the West, the fact that Manus is Chinese is especially threatening. But Manus’s success is nowhere near the scale of that of #DeepSeek, a Chinese firm that stunned the world with its cheap ai model.
Any company, be it American, Chinese or otherwise, could produce a similar #agent, provided it used the right off-the-shelf components and had a large enough appetite for risk.
Fortunately, there is little sign yet that Manus has done anything dangerous.
But safety can no longer be just a matter of big labs conducting large-scale testing before release.
Instead, regulators and companies will need to monitor what is already used in the wild, rapidly respond to any harms they spot and, if necessary, pull misbehaving systems out of action entirely. Whether you like it or not, Manus shows that the future of ai development will play out in the open.”
#AI / #software / #agents <https://archive.md/9UvQm> / <https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/03/13/with-manus-ai-experimentation-has-burst-into-the-open> #paywall