Our daily tour around the world

🇵🇭🇺🇸 The Philippines and US held their largest-ever joint military drills yesterday. The combat exercises, which included a combined 17,000 military personnel, also involved a live-fire ship-sinking for the first time. Although the drills were held in the South China Sea near Taiwan, and occurred right after the Chinese military held a three-day simulated invasion of the self-governing island, US and Filipino officials said the joint exercise should not be viewed as a response to recent developments surrounding Taiwan.

🇨🇳🤖 Chinese tech giant Alibaba announced plans to incorporate a new ChatGPT-style AI chatbot across its suite of products. The AI chatbot, called Tongyi Qianwen, is capable of working in English as well as Chinese. Alibaba said Tongyi Qianwen will be able to perform a number of different tasks such as writing emails, turning conversations into written notes, and drafting business proposals. Separately, China’s top internet regulator proposed a new law yesterday that would require domestic AI-makers to undergo gov’t assessments to ensure their products reflect the country’s “core socialist values,” and don’t encourage subversion of state power.

🇬🇧🤝🇮🇪 The UK and Ireland just celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. The 1998 peace deal saw the Irish government relinquish its claim on Northern Ireland, and the UK government acknowledge that a majority of Ireland wanted a unified country. It brought an end to more than three decades of sectarian violence that was known as “The Troubles,” which saw more than 3,500 people killed in total (dive deeper).