What are the five pros and cons of artificial intelligence? Share What are the five pros and cons of artificial intelligence? Artificial intelligence has rapidly become a tool used by hundreds of millions of people, but tech leaders are sounding alarms against the rapid advancement of AI that is being seen as a threat to humanity. AI systems can now generate text and images, write computer code, and perform complex analyses that once required a significant amount of time and human input. However, their rapid development has also raised concerns about job losses, the spread of misinformation, and the resources needed to power AI infrastructure.

UK government rejects'kill switch' idea for dangerous AI The UK government has rejected the idea of creating a so-called kill switch to stop a dangerous attack from rogue AI. The proposal to create a legal mechanism for the UK to switch off an AI model in an emergency has been brought to Parliament by lords and MPs in recent weeks as fears grow about the threat the tech poses. But the Cabinet Office - the part of government which leads on AI safety - said the UK cannot simply turn AI off. Blocking access to models in the UK would not prevent them being developed or misused elsewhere, a spokesperson told BBC News. The government's opposition to the legislation does not prevent it from progressing through parliament, but makes it unlikely it will become law.

Google will buy up to half the electricity produced by one of Finland's nuclear power plants as part of a record €13bn (£11bn; $15bn) investment in the country's AI infrastructure, the company announced. The US tech giant said the package would fund three new data centres, expand an existing site and support energy projects to power growing demand for AI services. This is Google's largest single investment in Europe and a testament to Finland's leadership in responsibly building AI infrastructure, the company said on Wednesday. Google's decision is a clear testament to our strengths, Finland's Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said in a statement. As part of the deal, Google signed a 22-year contract with Finnish utility Fortum to buy up to 50% of the output from the Loviisa nuclear power plant.

The signing of the Paris Agreement by 200 countries in 2015 was a rare moment of global unity, and the euphoria was real. To cheers and tears, the international climate treaty was approved by nearly every country in the world. Fundamental to the agreement was a commitment to keeping temperatures from rising beyond 1.5C (2.7F) above the pre-industrial levels of the mid 19th-century. But 11 years on, it is evident that the Earth is soon going to exceed that threshold because of the continued record burning of fossil fuels. A report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, Kenya - called Limiting Overshoot - has found that even under the most optimistic scenario, the Earth will heat up by 1.8C (3.2F) above pre-industrial levels.

AI cancer cures slowed by chip shortage, says UK's biggest tech boss The boss of the biggest UK-headquartered tech firm has said that artifical intelligence will find a cure for cancer that humans cannot in our lifetimes. Rene Haas, chief executive of Cambridge-based chip designer Arm Holdings, said while modelling how a DNA marker is impacted by cancer was currently too complex a problem, computers are going to solve it in the future. Haas also told the BBC that AI would lead to widespread humanoid robots in the next five years, but that its current rapid growth was being held up by a shortage of chips needed to build data centres. However, he was sceptical about the idea chips could be manufactured in the UK in the future. Arm designs the brains or CPUs of microchips already used in hundreds of billions of phones, cars, smartwatches and gadgets across the globe.

Chinese President Xi Jinping's three-day visit to Egypt, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two nations, marked his first trip to the Middle East in four years and the first to Egypt in a decade. The trip caused debate among geopolitical observers over Egypt's diplomatic balancing act between China, one of its largest economic partners, and the United States, a major defence and strategic partner. Xi's visit came at a time when Chinese tech giant Huawei has submitted a tender to build Egypt's AI data centres. The US, meanwhile, is reportedly pulling together an offer to counter Huawei's bid. Whoever wins the contract to build the data centres will also gain an opportunity to strengthen their political and economic ties with Egypt.

AI data centres are booming in Australia - but at what cost? The sheer size and noise of data centres are what people tend to notice first. Some say they sound like a jet plane about to take off, others complain of a high-pitched whine. When Lucy* puts her child to bed, she hears a constant humming. I'll hear it and think, 'What is that?

The European Union and the United States continue to pull in opposite directions on artificial intelligence, with Washington urging other governments to loosen constraints at a recent Group of 20 ministerial meeting. On Tuesday, the US hosted a G20 "innovation" meeting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where it put forward arguments against AI-specific regulations. "Policymakers do not need to approach each innovation in isolation and should not treat every emerging technology as a first-of-its-kind policy problem," Kratsios said. Such appeals are part of Trump's overall approach to making the US "the world leader in artificial intelligence". He has led a campaign to slash regulations, including in AI development.

For communities living around Naivasha, water is not an abstract resource. It sustains families, livestock, farms and schools. That reality has taken on new significance after plans for a major Microsoft-G42 data centre in Olkaria, near Lake Naivasha, stalled in May 2026 over concerns about available power capacity. Microsoft and United Arab Emirates-based artificial intelligence company G42 announced the project in 2024 as part of a $1bn digital investment package for Kenya. The proposed facility was to run on geothermal energy and eventually scale to as much as 1 gigawatt of capacity.

Taiwan's tech titan Foxconn has reported a forecast-busting second-quarter net profit, as exploding demand for artificial intelligence servers needed in data centres powers the company's growth. The world's largest contract electronics maker said on Wednesday that net income rose 35 percent to $59.97 billion New Taiwan dollars ($1.86bn) in the April-June period. "AI infrastructure is driving growth," Foxconn said in its earnings announcement. In an earnings release, Foxconn, Nvidia's biggest server maker and Apple's top iPhone assembler, stuck to its previous forecast of "strong" growth for revenue this year. Governments and tech giants are pouring huge sums into building data centres that can train and run AI tools such as chatbots, image generators and agents that can execute tasks.