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Finland has ordered a pause on Google's AI data centre expansion, citing environmental concerns. The facilities were described by Google as its largest investment in Europe, making this a significant setback. It signals that governments are increasingly willing to pump the brakes on AI infrastructure when ecological costs come into question.
Shifting to a story with real corporate espionage overtones, researchers at Swarmchasers have identified a fleet of AI agents, likely connected to Chinese tech giant Tencent, that spent more than a week scraping data from rival Alibaba's mapping service Amap. At peak activity, the fleet executed over one thousand eight hundred URL scans in a single day, raising serious questions about how AI agents are being deployed in competitive intelligence operations.
And on a lighter note, IKEA has launched a free second-hand marketplace in the United Kingdom, letting buyers and sellers trade pre-loved IKEA furniture directly with one another. Already live in seven other countries including Sweden, the platform positions itself as a circular economy play, and a genuine competitor to the likes of Facebook Marketplace for flat-pack fans.
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