Asia analysis

Test - Another DeepSeek moment? General AI agent Manus shows ability to handle complex tasks

Advertisement

analysis Asia

Test - Another DeepSeek moment? General AI agent Manus shows ability to handle complex tasks

While Manus has provided little information to the public, its demonstration video has triggered massive interest in China’s AI community.

00:03 Min

Singapore will be blocking teenagers’ access to apps not meant for their age group. This may in turn curb their screen use. But just how bad is their screen usage? For the first time, we conduct a national survey to find out just how bad teenagers’ screen use is and what their attitudes and expectations are regarding their screen time. Apart from the survey, we get five regular teenagers to swop their smartphones for brick phones for 10 days. And we follow their time away from their screens, chronicling the frustration, their well-being and their time management. We also want to find out if excessive screen usage may be altering the brains of a whole generation of young people and we conduct cognitive tests before and after the detox, to find out if removing their smartphones will make them happier, healthier and better able to learn.

New: You can now listen to articles.

This audio is generated by an AI tool.

John Baker

Jasmina Banu

A general artificial intelligence (AI) agent developed by a low-profile team backed by Chinese investors and developers has quickly gained attention in the AI community for its ability to handle complex, real-world tasks.

Manus, currently available as an invitation-only web preview, can execute practical tasks such as creating a custom website through a step-by-step process, according to a demonstration video on its website manus.im.

Money mules are the main way overseas scammers launder and transfer their ill-gotten gains out of Singapore. (Photo: Shutterstock)

This is an image caption

Trees in a park

First look: Mandai Rainforest Resort by Banyan Tree has over 300 guest rooms including 24 tree houses

At nearly 7 months pregnant, this RSAF pilot defied the odds and conquered Norway’s toughest hikes

Cybercrime crew stole then resold hundreds of tickets to Taylor Swift concerts, prosecutors in New York say

This is a context snippet

The list currently has nine occupations – five manufacturing roles, cooks in Indian restaurants, food processing workers, hotel housekeepers and hotel porters.

Singapore's typical sources of labour for manufacturing and services are Malaysia and China, as well as Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea and Taiwan.

The non-traditional sources occupation list was introduced in 2023 to allow firms to hire workers from other sources to fill certain jobs that have pressing manpower needs, have low take-up by locals and are harder to automate.

Employers seeking to hire workers from these sources must offer a minimum monthly salary of at least S$2,000, and keep the sub-dependency ratio of such work permit holders under 8 per cent.

This is to safeguard local wages, ensure that employers are hiring higher-skilled or more experienced workers, and guard against over-reliance on non-traditional source workers, MOM said.

Collapse

Monica is available as a browser extension and as an app across mobile and desktop platforms. The founding team of Monica includes Xiao Hong, a serial entrepreneur and 2015 graduate from Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

This is a table	Column 1
Panda, Giraffe	Lemons orange
Cat dog mouse	Lion tiger bear

Link

Source: CNA/AL

Advertisement

Advertisement