Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has reached India to attend the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, where he will give the keynote address on February 20. After landing, Pichai shared a message on X saying, “Nice to be back in India for the AI Impact Summit.” The five-day event began on February 16 at Bharat Mandapam and is organised under the IndiaAI Mission and the Ministry of Electronics and IT. The summit focuses on responsible and inclusive use of artificial intelligence. Several global tech leaders and policymakers are taking part. Pichai said Google wants to be a long-term AI partner for India. (PC: HT)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared India's bold ambition to become one of the top three AI superpowers globally at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi marking the first global AI convening hosted in the Global South. Themed "Sarvajan Hitay, Sarvajan Sukhaye" (Welfare for All, Happiness for All), the summit unites world leaders and tech stakeholders around inclusive, human-centric AI. Modi highlighted AI's transformative role across healthcare, education, agriculture, and heritage preservation, linking it directly to India's Viksit Bharat 2047 vision. He also announced robust safety frameworks including AI watermarking rules and the IndiaAI Safety Institute, stressing that human oversight must always govern AI decision-making.

India is providing 33% more data to ChatGPT than the United States, former NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said at the AI Summit 2026 in New Delhi. Speaking on Day 2 of the event, Kant said India plays a key role in the global AI space. He stressed that artificial intelligence must not create inequality. He warned that AI could lead to an unequal society if benefits are limited to a few. Kant said strong Digital Public Infrastructure is needed to ensure inclusive growth. He added that AI will create new jobs and improve sectors like healthcare and public services.

Social media platform X faced a widespread outage on Monday, with users across India and several other countries reporting access issues. Many said the app failed to load feeds, searches, and posts. Outage tracker Downdetector showed 3,357 reports from India around 7:30 pm IST. Globally, more than 42,000 users flagged problems, including in the United States and the UK. Downdetector data showed 53 per cent users had trouble with the app, 22 per cent could not refresh feeds, and 16 per cent faced website errors. The Elon Musk-owned platform did not issue an immediate statement. The cause of the disruption was not confirmed. (PC: HT)

Arinox AI and KOGO have introduced what they call India’s first sovereign “AI in a box” system for enterprises at the AI Impact Summit 2026. The product, named CommandCORE, is built to run AI locally without internet dependence. The companies say this helps protect sensitive data and reduce cloud costs. The system uses Nvidia hardware and supports agent-based AI tools for business tasks. “The future of AI is private,” said KOGO CEO Raj K Gopalakrishnan. He added that firms must keep their intelligence in-house. Pricing starts at ₹10 lakh and targets sectors like banking, government and defence. (PC: HT)

Tech billionaire Vinod Khosla said IT and BPO services will “almost completely disappear” within five years due to artificial intelligence. Speaking before the AI Summit 2026, he warned that most expertise-based jobs may vanish in 15 years.   He said AI workers will replace accountants, doctors and lawyers. “AI will be better than most humans at most things,” he said. Robotics will also replace manual labour.   Khosla added that AI could make healthcare and education almost free. He urged India to build its own AI models. “India should try and win that race,” he said. (PC: Getty Images)

India began one of the world’s biggest AI summits in New Delhi on Monday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi aims to boost India’s role in the global AI race. Tech leaders like Sundar Pichai, Sam Altman and others are attending. French President Emmanuel Macron will give the keynote speech.   India plans to build low-cost AI models in many Indian languages. BharatGen will launch Param2, a 17-billion parameter model. Sarvam AI will also unveil a new voice-first system.   The government wants AI to help in education, health care and farming. Experts say India must invest more in research to compete with the US and China.

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced raising $30 billion at a $380 billion post-money valuation, making it the third most valuable private firm globally behind OpenAI ($500 billion) and SpaceX. The funding, led by Singapore's GIC and Coatue, will support research, product innovation, and infrastructure expansion for its Claude chatbot. Elon Musk criticized Anthropic on X, calling it "misanthropic and evil," claiming the AI discriminates against certain demographics. His remarks coincide with restructuring at his own AI startup, xAI, ahead of a planned IPO following its SpaceX merger. Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic projects $14 billion in annual sales despite not yet being profitable.

Days after Anthropic AI safety lead Mrinank Sharma resigned warning "the world is in peril," OpenAI engineer Hieu Pham publicly expressed feeling AI's "existential threat," stating its disruptive impact on jobs, society, and human relevance is "when, not if." Pham, currently on OpenAI's technical staff with previous experience at xAI, Augment Code, and Google Brain, questioned what remains for humans when AI "becomes overly good and disrupts everything." His concerns echo rising alarm within Silicon Valley as companies accelerate AI development. Geoffrey Hinton, the "AI godfather," previously warned advanced systems could become uncontrollable if more intelligent than humans without shared goals, expressing regret about rapid advancement speed. (PC: India Today)

Mrinank Sharma, an Indian-origin AI safety engineer at Anthropic, has resigned after two years, citing global "interconnected crises" beyond just AI threats. In his farewell message, he expressed gratitude for meaningful work including studying AI sycophancy, developing safeguards against AI-assisted bioterrorism, and writing early AI safety cases. Sharma highlighted his pride in promoting internal transparency and examining how AI assistants might diminish human authenticity. He warned the world approaches a threshold requiring wisdom to match technological capacity, noting pressures within organizations and society to compromise core values. Without a fixed next role, Sharma plans exploring writing and academic pursuits beyond engineering.