From left: India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, with the chief executives of OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Anthropic, Dario Amodei, at the AI Impact summit in Delhi. From left: India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, with the chief executives of OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Anthropic, Dario Amodei, at the AI Impact summit in Delhi. AI hit: India hungry to harness US tech giants' technology at Delhi summit Narendra Modi's thirst to supercharge economic growth is matched by US desire to inject AI into world's biggest democracy I ndia celebrates 80 years of independence from the UK in August 2027. At about that same moment, "early versions of true super intelligence" could emerge, Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, said this week. It's a looming coincidence that raised a charged question at the AI Impact summit in Delhi, hosted by India's prime minister, Narendra Modi: can India avoid returning to the status of a vassal state when it imports AI to raise the prospects of its 1.4 billion people? Modi's hunger to harness AI's capability is great.

How the'confident authority' of Google AI Overviews is putting public health at risk Experts say tool can give'completely wrong' medical advice which could put users at risk of serious harm Do I have the flu or Covid? Why do I wake up feeling tired? What is causing the pain in my chest? For more than two decades, typing medical questions into the world's most popular search engine has served up a list of links to websites with the answers. Google those health queries today and the response will likely be written by artificial intelligence.

'What Elon [Musk] was ginning up was controversy, eyeballs, engagement and users,' CCDH's chief executive said. 'What Elon [Musk] was ginning up was controversy, eyeballs, engagement and users,' CCDH's chief executive said. Estimate made by Center for Countering Digital Hate after Elon Musk's AI image generation tool sparked outrage Grok AI generated about 3m sexualised images in less than two weeks, including 23,000 that appear to depict children, according to researchers who said it "became an industrial-scale machine for the production of sexual abuse material". The estimate has been made by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) after Elon Musk's AI image generation tool sparked international outrage when it allowed users to upload photographs of strangers and celebrities, digitally strip them to their underwear or into bikinis, put them in provocative poses and post the images on X. The trend went viral over the new year, peaking on 2 January with 199,612 individual requests, according to analysis conducted by Peryton Intelligence, a digital intelligence company specialising in online hate.

OpenAI could be valued at $1tn if it launches an initial public offering, Reuters said. OpenAI could be valued at $1tn if it launches an initial public offering, Reuters said. The year of the'hectocorn': the $100bn tech companies that could float in 2026 Y ou've probably heard of "unicorns" - technology startups valued at more than $1bn - but 2026 is shaping up to be the year of the " hectocorn ", with several US and European companies potentially floating on stock markets at valuations over $100bn (£75bn). OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX and Stripe are among the big names said to be considering an initial public offering (IPO) this year. The success of their flotations - whether the shares maintain their value, rise or fall - could shape concerns about the AI race and whether the resulting market mania is a bubble .

Elon Musk has suggested he could buy Ryanair and called for its chief executive to be fired amid a deepening spat between the pair. The budget airline on Tuesday branded the Tesla chief executive an idiot, and used the extraordinary row to promote its January sale. Musk and Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary have been trading insults over the past week after O'Leary rejected the idea of using Musk's Starlink technology to provide wi-fi on flights. The two are among the world's most outspoken business chiefs, with Musk the world's richest man with an estimated net worth of $769bn (£573bn), and O'Leary running Europe's busiest airline. A statement on Ryanair's X account on Tuesday evening said: Perhaps Musk needs a break?? Ryanair is launching a Great Idiots seat sale especially for Elon and any other idiots on'X'.

Children take part in an extracurricular club about coding and AI in Cambridge. Children take part in an extracurricular club about coding and AI in Cambridge. Generation AI: fears of'social divide' unless all children learn computing skills In a Cambridge classroom, Joseph, 10, trained his AI model to discern between drawings of apples and drawings of smiles. "AI gets lots of things wrong," he said, as it mistakenly identified a fruit as a face. He set about retraining it and, in a flash, he had it back on track - instinctively understanding the inner nature of artificial intelligence and machine learning in a way few adults do.

In a building in central Berkeley, not far from the university campus, a group of modern-day Cassandras are looking into concerns around the latest AI models. In a building in central Berkeley, not far from the university campus, a group of modern-day Cassandras are looking into concerns around the latest AI models. The office block where AI'doomers' gather to predict the apocalypse On the other side of San Francisco bay from Silicon Valley, where the world's biggest technology companies tear towards superhuman artificial intelligence, looms a tower from which fearful warnings emerge. At 2150 Shattuck Avenue, in the heart of Berkeley, is the home of a group of modern-day Cassandras who rummage under the hood of cutting-edge AI models and predict what calamities may be unleashed on humanity - from AI dictatorships to robot coups. Here you can hear an AI expert express sympathy with an unnerving idea: San Francisco may be the new Wuhan, the Chinese city where Covid originated and wreaked havoc on the world.

Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang, has been on an energetic world tour as the company's share price has soared. Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang, has been on an energetic world tour as the company's share price has soared. Nvidia insists it isn't Enron, but its AI deals are testing investor faith The chipmaker's sprawling partnerships are driving extraordinary growth but also bank its future on the AI boom paying off quickly N vidia is, in crucial ways, nothing like Enron - the Houston energy giant that imploded through multibillion-dollar accounting fraud in 2001. Nor is it similar to companies such as Lucent or Worldcom that folded during the dotcom bubble. But the fact that it needs to reiterate this to its investors is less than ideal. Now worth more than $4tn (£3tn), Nvidia makes the specialised technology that powers the world's AI surge: silicon chips and software packages that train and host systems such as ChatGPT.

W hen the billionaire chief executive of AI chipmaker Nvidia threw a party in central London for Donald Trump's state visit in September, the power imbalance between Silicon Valley and British politicians was vividly exposed. Jensen Huang hastened to the stage after meetings at Chequers and rallied his hundreds of guests to cheer on the power of AI. In front of a huge Nvidia logo, he urged the venture capitalists before him to herald "a new industrial revolution", announced billions of pounds in AI investments and, like Willy Wonka handing out golden tickets, singled out some lucky recipients in the room. "If you want to get rich, this is where you want to be," he declared. But his biggest party trick was a surprise guest waiting in the wings.

Musicians are deeply concerned about AI. So why are the major labels embracing it? Companies such as Udio, Suno and Klay will let you use AI to make new music based on existing artists' work. T his was the year that AI-generated music went from jokey curiosity to mainstream force. Velvet Sundown, a wholly AI act, generated millions of streams; AI-created tracks topped Spotify's viral chart and one of the US Billboard country charts; AI "artist" Xania Monet "signed" a record deal. BBC Introducing is usually a platform for flesh-and-blood artists trying to make it big, but an AI-generated song by Papi Lamour was recently played on the West Midlands show.