Power grid operators in the United States are warning that a dangerous heatwave could put more strain on an electric grid already under pressure from surging energy consumption. A stretch of extreme heat is expected to intensify across much of the central and eastern parts of the country this week, peaking from Tuesday through Thursday. Temperatures this week are forecasted to climb above 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) from Boston to Washington, DC, pushing up demand for air conditioning. The heatwave coincides with two major events on the US calendar. Saturday's holiday marks the 250th anniversary of the US's independence, and millions are expected to gather for barbecues, parades and fireworks.

South Korea has laid out a sweeping industrial strategy focused on semiconductor chips and artificial intelligence projects as President Lee Jae Myung pledges to cement overwhelming industry leadership with investments of hundreds of billions of dollars over several years. Flanked by the heads of the world's two biggest memory chipmakers, Lee cast the initiative on Monday as a "great leap forward" centred on the "triple axis" of semiconductors, physical AI and data centres. The world's two largest memory chipmakers, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, will invest 800 trillion won ($518bn) with suppliers to build two new chip fabrication sites each in South Korea's southwest, Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan said. Lee said the country's southwestern city of Gwangju and South Jeolla province will also invest 5 trillion to 20 trillion won ($3.2bn to $13bn) in the projects. Kim said a further 81 trillion won ($52.5bn) is expected to be invested for a chip-packaging cluster in the Chungcheong area near Seoul.

South Korea has unveiled plans for about $1tn (£760bn) of investments to build out the country's chip manufacturing and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities in the coming years. It is part of the country's so-called Three Mega Projects to develop new chip production hubs, data centres and robotics technology. The plan is aimed at rejuvenating the economies of areas outside the capital Seoul, President Lee Jae-myung said on Monday. It comes as regional rivals like Taiwan, China and Japan are investing heavily in chip factories and other technologies as the AI boom pushes up demand for semiconductors. We must secure the core elements of AI faster than any other country, Lee said.

For years, buyers of tech could rely on a familiar trend - that older devices would get cheaper over time. That now seems to have stopped, or in some cases, completely reversed. Apple and Microsoft's Xbox have joined the firms hiking prices for devices and games consoles which are years old. They and other tech companies have pointed to the rising cost of crucial components needed to build their machines, laying the blame on AI. Compute-hungry data centres, which power AI, need more and more chips to keep up with demand from AI companies - which means the demand for them is far outstripping supply.

Who will control Africa's AI infrastructure, and at what cost? In April, African Union ministers gathered in Tangier, Morocco, to discuss artificial intelligence at a moment when governments across the continent are racing to develop AI strategies, attract investment and expand digital infrastructure. Beneath the enthusiasm, however, sits a more fundamental question. As foreign technology companies invest in data centres, cloud services and AI systems across Africa, how much control will African countries ultimately have over the infrastructure on which those technologies depend? The debate reflects a broader shift in how policymakers are thinking about AI.

Oracle shed about 21,000 roles globally in the last year as the US technology giant reshapes its business around artificial intelligence (AI), the firm's latest annual report shows. The software and cloud computing firm says it had around 141,000 full-time employees as of 31 May 2026, down from about 162,000 workers at the same time last year. The deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce, the report says. The cuts, which amount to about 13% of Oracle's workforce, are part of a wider trend among tech firms as they spend hundreds of billions of dollars on building AI infrastructure like data centres. Amazon and Facebook-owner Meta have cut thousands of job in recent months as they invest heavily in AI.

Dozens of students walked out of their Stanford University graduation ceremony as Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage to deliver a keynote address. Video filmed by the BBC shows the students protesting against the company's controversial work with the US government. A group named Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine encouraged the walkout. This follows other recent campus protests against tech leaders, but those have largely focused on artificial intelligence and concerns about jobs. Pichai largely sidestepped the issue of AI in his remarks, though he appeared to make light of the expected protests.

Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK. The world's largest data centre (62sq miles) has been approved in Utah, but there is growing opposition towards the project. At twice the size of Manhattan with promises to create thousands of jobs, we look at the bi partisan opposition against it. In this episode, Justin and Anthony discuss the enormous buildings being built across rural America, to house the huge amounts of data that A.I companies work with. Tech bosses say the centres are essential to the growth of Artificial Intelligence.

China-based actors are likely behind the use of ChatGPT for "covert influence operations" aimed at stoking opposition to data centres in the United States, OpenAI has said. In a research report released on Wednesday, the company behind the world's most popular AI chatbot said it had banned a cluster of accounts likely based in China for attempting to "manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI". Among other content, the accounts generated a comic strip showing a cigar-chomping businessman holding bags marked with dollar signs as a family reacted in shock to their electricity bill, according to the San Francisco-based company. OpenAI said a second cluster of accounts had generated content casting US tariffs as an effort to "dominate technological competition" with China, and specified that the material should not mention Chinese leader Xi Jinping. While the campaign sought to "exploit and amplify existing public concerns" about energy prices, OpenAI found no evidence that it had a "meaningful" influence, the company said.

ChatGPT now processes around 2.5 billion queries every day UN researchers are urging people to be less polite to artificial intelligences after a report found that cutting words from prompts could reduce ChatGPT's energy consumption by up to 25 per cent. Removing "please", "thank you" and other unnecessary words from AI prompts could save 87 to 98 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, the report from the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) found. That is the equivalent of the annual residential electricity use of up to 760,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa. 'Flashes of brilliance and frustration': I let an AI agent run my day To reduce their energy consumption and carbon footprint, people should write concise prompts, avoid getting sucked into conversation loops and refrain from starting relationships with AI, the researchers said. "We are not saying be rude to your AI. But don't fall into the interaction trap and don't go falling in love with it either," says Kaveh Madani at UNU-INWEH.