The bond between Gavaskar and Khan transcends the fierce India-Pakistan rivalry. Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar has expressed profound distress over the incarceration conditions and declining health of his longtime friend and legendary rival, Imran Khan
In 2022, when Britain-based Pakistani indie filmmaker Seemab Gul was covering the floods across Pakistan, she came across ‘ghost schools’ in Sindh and Balochistan. A chink in Pakistan’s armour, ‘ghost schools’ are basically either empty and hollow buildings that were never completed or
In the February 12 elections, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) secured a commanding majority. Now, Tarique Rahman took the oath as Prime Minister of the nation. A new dawn in Bangladesh’s politics unfolded on Tuesday as BNP chief Tarique Rahman took oath as Prime Minister of the nation
The coaching staff’s ability to remain composed despite high-pressure scenarios has been a hallmark of Sri Lanka’s campaign. Following a dominant eight-wicket victory that pushed Australia to the edge of tournament elimination, Sri Lanka head coach Sanath Jayasuriya has publicly credited two
India needs to translate its research into tangible products and technology to develop a robust deep tech ecosystem and achieve its long-term goal of becoming a developed nation by 2047, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chairman of Axilor Ventures and cofounder of Infosys
Could Bill Gates and political tussles overshadow AI safety debate in Delhi?
Tech bosses, politicians, scientists, academics and campaigners are meeting at the AI Impact Summit in India this week for top-level discussions about what the world should be doing to try to guide the AI revolution in the right direction.
It has kicked off not just with long queues and confusion for some delegates, but also conflicting reports about whether keynote speaker Bill Gates would appear.
Reports overnight suggested the Microsoft founder - who has faced questions after appearing in the Epstein files - would no longer be addressing the Summit.
But the Gates Foundation has since confirmed his attendance, telling the BBC he will deliver his keynote as scheduled.
It reveals how the aims of this Summit - like others before it - can become overshadowed by other events.
Those who shout the loudest about AI tend to be in the West, notably the US and Europe.
So it's significant that a gathering of powerful leaders is being held in the Global South, a region of the world that runs the risk of being left behind in the AI race.
At last year's AI Action Summit, as it was then known, an ugly power struggle broke out between some Western countries over who should be in charge.
The various Western powers jostled for pole position in Paris, and US vice president JD Vance delivered a blistering speech in which he said America's place at the top of the pack was non-negotiable.
I suspect there may be a more humble vibe this week in Delhi: the capital of a country which has helped to build the foundations that support this mega-powerful new tech - but is not reaping as much reward as the more affluent west.
There are some significant AI hubs in India, including in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Mumbai. It has a large tech workforce, and has attracted some big infrastructure investments from the likes of Google, Nvidia and Amazon.
At the same time, low-paid workers there have long been carrying out the unseen and painstaking task of manually categorising the vast amounts of data used to train the world's AI tools.
In her book Empire of AI, the journalist Karen Hao writes about an unnamed firm in India which was contracted to do content moderation of AI-generated images: she claimed it included workers looking at horrifying ones to decide which should be blocked from being reproduced.
According to the recruitment website Glassdoor, the average salary for an AI data trainer in Chennai is 480,000 rupees - less than £4,000 ($5,000) per year.
It's an essential role, but to put this into perspective OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is valued at over $500bn.
The 2026 International AI Safety Report notes that while "in some countries over 50% of the population uses AI, across much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America adoption rates likely remain below 10%."
The world's biggest US AI chatbots do not work in all of India's 22 official languages - let alone the hundreds of dialects that exist within them. ChatGPT and Claude currently support around half of them. Google's Gemini supports nine.
"Without tech that understands and speaks these languages, millions are excluded from the digital revolution - especially in education, governance, healthcare, and banking," Professor Pushpak Bhattacharyya, from IIT Mumbai, told the BBC last summer.
To counter this, India is building its own sovereign AI platforms - the Indian government calls this the AI Mission - but progress is relatively slow.
While the US products - as well as Chinese ones such as DeepSeek and ByteDance - race ahead with new releases, many of India's remain in development.
The Indian government budget of $1.2bn for this project pales into comparison of the deep pockets of the multi-billion dollar corporations.
Before Christmas, an Indian government official told me, perhaps unsurprisingly, that India has little interest in AI's geopolitical power struggles. The country's focus is on harnessing the tech to drive its own growth.
"For India, this is about more than technology, it is about economic transformation, digital sovereignty and building capability at scale," said Rajan Anandan, managing director at one of India's biggest tech investors Peak XV.
Within the country there is a strong sense of momentum and confidence.
The US, meanwhile, may find itself rather unusually forced into more of a back seat. I imagine it's not going to like that very much.
"The Americans will have less to say with the Summit's proposed bottom-up, Global South approach to AI governance that focuses on people, planet and progress," says Professor Gina Neff, an AI ethics expert from Queen Mary University London.
"We need governments to act together to shape a more inclusive, democratic and people-centred vision of AI in the face of unprecedented corporate power," argues Jeni Tennison, executive director of the think tank Connected by Data.
"As the world's largest 'middle power', India could make that happen," she adds.
AI expert Henry Ajder agrees. "I hope we will see pragmatic efforts to move beyond a legislative patchwork towards meaningful consensus in addressing AI harms, maliciously caused or otherwise," he told me.
Amanda Brock, chief executive of tech industry body OpenUK, thinks the answer is to force the AI companies to share how their products work so that others can build their own versions, make improvements and properly scrutinise the tech.
"For this summit to have any real impact for the Global South, there needs to be access for all to AI and that can only be achieved by opening it up," she argues.
There has been movement in that direction, but many of the AI giants are still keeping key elements, such as what training data they use, confidential.
Some AI experts have told me privately that they are concerned about how far down the agenda safety and responsibility appears to have slipped.
After the first AI Safety Summit, held in the UK in 2023, the word "safety" was quietly dropped from its title. One expert told me they have decided not go to Delhi at all this week as they have little confidence in any meaningful outcomes from it.
British computer scientist Professor Dame Wendy Hall is attending the Summit but told me she shares these concerns. She fears there will be "nothing significant" from the event about how to minimise the dangers posed by AI.
"It's important that we go but my expectations of anything useful coming out of it are very low," she said.
Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world's top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here.
Source: BBC
Related Posts: Venezuela frees 17 political prisoners before amnesty law Bill Gates to visit Andhra on Monday From Gender Debate To Ukraine Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates arrives in Amravati India hosts AI summit as safety concerns grow Bill Gates lands in Andhra Pradesh Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates arrives in Amravati Pak’s political vendetta Supreme Court says political leaders must foster fraternity Microsoft founder Bill Gates to attend India AI Impact Summit 2026
Bill Gates India AI Impact Summit 2026: Bill Gates continues to be listed among the key participants, alongside top technology leaders such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Bill Gates India AI Impact Summit 2026: Microsoft founder Bill Gates will attend the AI Impact Summit
1 minutes ago
In Delhi, monuments are often spoken of as though they were statues — solid, inert, and even complete. Safdarjung Tomb resists that idea. Long before one looks up at the sandstone-and-marble mausoleum, one feels the space around it: the axial paths pulling the eye forward
1 minutes ago
U.S. President Donald Trump denounced a clean energy agreement between the United Kingdom and California Governor Gavin Newsom hours after it was signed on Monday (February 16, 2026), Politico reported. In an interview with the outlet, Mr
1 minutes ago
India’s First AI-powered Smart Glasses Sarvam Kaze: India’s First AI-powered Glass is expected to shift intelligence from traditional screens to the real world, making AI interaction more natural and seamless. India’s First SmartAI-powered Glasses Sarvam Kaze: PM Modi became the first person
1 minutes ago
Jesse Jackson, the revered civil rights leader, dies at the age of 84. This influential Baptist minister and eloquent speaker played a pivotal role in the fight for equality during the 1960s. Washington: Charismatic U.S. civil rights leader Jesse Jackson
1 minutes ago
A viral video circulating on social media shows Pakistan Army chief Asim Munir arriving at an event in Munich, where a security official appears to ask him for identification, prompting speculation and debate online about a possible diplomatic snub
1 minutes ago
Electronic music artist and tech creator Look Mum No Computer has been chosen to represent the UK at this year's Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, the BBC has announced. Look Mum No Computer is a solo artist, songwriter and YouTuber, who is also described as "an inventor of unique musical machines
1 minutes ago
Rashmika Mandanna and Vijay Deverakonda have been rumoured to be dating each other for quite some time now. The duo has neither confirmed nor denied the relationship rumours, but their eagle-eyed fans have spotted them in each other’s vacation pictures in the past
1 minutes ago
Mangaluru: With an aim to further expand its digital banking services, the South Canara District Central Cooperative Bank will launch IMPS (Immediate Payment Service) and UPI facilities. Bank president Dr. M. N. Rajendra Kumar said at a press conference that the services will be officially
1 minutes ago
The practical examinations for private candidates of CBSE Class 12 will be conducted from February 23 to March 17, 2026, as per the latest guidelines issued by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). The notice comes a day before the commencement of the CBSE Class 10 and 12 theory
1 minutes ago
CBSE Exams 2026: More than 43 lakh students will appear for the CBSE Class 10 and 12 exams 2026. The board exams will be conducted in a single shift from 10:30 am to 1:30 pm. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) Class 10 and Class 12 board examinations will begin today shortly
1 minutes ago
Revanth Reddy's Congress consolidated power in Telangana with 86 mayor/chairperson wins. Know the breakdown of the 2026 civic polls, the BJP's historic Karimnagar victory, and the BRS urban collapse. The 2026 Telangana Municipal Elections have delivered a historic mandate for the ruling Congress
1 minutes ago
Nissan is ready to take the wraps off its newest ‘Nissan Gravite’ in India this evening. It is a compact seven-seater that aims straight at the heart of the country’s value-driven family car segment. Vehicles that measure under four metres in length attract lower taxes and that single rule
1 minutes ago
Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma revealed a past political maneuver. He stated Sonia Gandhi had offered him the choice of his swearing-in date in 2014. However, subsequent phone calls from Rahul Gandhi altered the course of events. Sarma expressed contentment with his current role in the
1 minutes ago
Tarique Rahman, the chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, was sworn in as the prime minister of Bangladesh on Tuesday. President Mohammed Shahabuddin administered the oath of office to Rahman and several members of the Cabinet. Rahman is the son of former President Ziaur Rahman and
1 minutes ago
Tarique Rahman has become Bangladesh's new prime minister. His party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, won a significant victory in the recent general election. This marks a new political era for the nation. The election followed a mass uprising that led to the removal of the previous leader
1 minutes ago
The interim government in Bangladesh on Monday provided compensation in savings certificates worth 2.5 million Bangladeshi taka, or about Rs 18.5 lakh, to the family of Dipu Chandra Das, a Hindu man who was lynched in the country’s Mymensingh district in December, The Indian Express reported
1 minutes ago
India's permanent contribution to the agenda of the international community and that of the United Nations (U.N.) is of “enormous importance for us”, the U.N. chief Antonio Guterres has said, as he pointed to a “positive mega trend” of the increasingly enhanced roles of developing economies
1 minutes ago
Apple is hosting a special event for select media on March 4, 2026 where we could get more details about the iPhone 17e (or not), new Macs, iPads and more. The company seems to be doing a special gathering with the focus on a ‘special Apple experience’ so we might not see the company host an
1 minutes ago
The case was filed in 2023, when BJP was in power in Karnataka, following a "corruption rate card" published by the then opposition Congress to claim large scale irregularities prevailing in the state under the saffron party's rule. Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday quashed the
1 minutes ago
Australia's ICC T20 World Cup campaign ended in disappointment after a group-stage exit. Crucial defeats against Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe, coupled with a rain-abandoned match involving Ireland and Zimbabwe, sealed their fate. Sri Lanka's coaching staff
1 minutes ago
On Day 2 of the India AI Impact Summit 2026 at Bharat Mandapam, healthcare innovation has emerged as a defining theme. From AI-enabled diagnostics and public health infrastructure to affordable medical devices and data-driven disease detection, discussions signal a shift toward scalable
1 minutes ago
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday attacked the Samajwadi Party and Congress and accused them of misleading people in the name of the Constitution and disrespecting the National Song. The Chief Minister added that “opposing" Vande Mataram and making “insulting remarks"
1 minutes ago
Gujarat's legislative assembly has passed a new bill. This amendment allows for longer daily working hours. Women can now work night shifts in shops and commercial establishments. The bill ensures safety and dignity for women workers. Employers must provide transportation and other facilities
1 minutes ago
Five people arrested in connection with the Rohit Shetty shooting incident have been sent back to police custody until February 23. Mumbai: The Mumbai Crime Branch arrested Aditya Gaikki, Siddharth Yenpure, Samarth Pomaji, Swapnil Sakat, and Asaram Fasale from Pune and produced them before the
1 minutes ago
Most users are aware about lockdown modes on their smartphones but with the amount of AI in the open, OpenAI has decided to bring its own version for ChatGPT users. The lockdown mode for ChatGPT guarantees better safety for your data/chats on the AI platform but also alerting them about possible
1 minutes ago
The event has seen a significant surge in popularity among international "bucket list" runners. The Dead Sea Marathon, officially known as the Dead Sea Land Marathon, has solidified its reputation as one of the most surreal athletic challenges on the planet. Held on February 6, 2026
1 minutes ago
