India Hosts Inaugural Global AI Impact Summit in New Delhi
The India AI Impact Summit 2026 has commenced in New Delhi, marking the first global AI summit to be hosted in the Global South. The five-day event, held at Bharat Mandapam, brings together global leaders, policymakers, technology companies, and researchers to discuss the future of artificial intelligence with a focus on inclusion and responsible development. Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the expo, which features 600 startups and 13 country pavilions, underscoring India’s ambition to become a global AI hub. The summit is anchored on three foundational pillars: ‘People, Planet and Progress’. The event aims to foster international collaboration and shape a future where AI serves humanity, drives inclusive growth, and promotes sustainable development.
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OpenAI vs. Anthropic: A Look at New ‘Fast Modes’ for LLM Inference
OpenAI and Anthropic have both announced ‘fast modes’ for their large language models, offering significantly higher inference speeds through different technical approaches. OpenAI’s fast mode provides a more than 15x speed increase, reaching over 1000 tokens per second, by utilizing specialized Cerebras chips. However, this speed comes at the cost of using a less capable, distilled model called GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark, rather than the full model. In contrast, Anthropic’s fast mode delivers a 2.5x speed boost by reducing the batch size during inference, allowing users to interact with their actual, full-capability model, Opus 4.6. The trade-off is between OpenAI’s significantly faster but less capable inference and Anthropic’s more modest speed increase that retains full model quality.
SS&C Blue Prism Pushes Beyond RPA with Agentic AI for Enterprise Automation
SS&C Blue Prism is championing the move from traditional Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to more advanced ‘agentic automation’ for enterprises. This next evolution of AI, termed agentic AI, involves intelligent agents that can perform tasks, think, adapt, and collaborate within complex business ecosystems with a degree of autonomy. Unlike traditional RPA which follows predefined rules, agentic AI is designed for more non-deterministic and adaptive automation, capable of handling unstructured data and decision-making. SS&C Blue Prism’s WorkHQ platform unifies human, digital, and AI-driven work, providing a control center for managing these AI agents. The platform includes an AI Gateway to ensure governance, security, and provide detailed audit logs for all agent actions.
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Waymo Robotaxi Safety Under Fire After Illegally Passing School Buses in Austin
The safety of autonomous vehicles around schools has become a significant concern following multiple incidents in Austin, Texas, where Waymo robotaxis were documented illegally passing stopped school buses. At least 24 violations were recorded between the start of the school year and mid-January, with vehicles ignoring flashing red lights and extended stop arms. These events have highlighted the challenges AI-driven perception systems face in understanding contextual cues, such as those in school zones, prompting discussions among manufacturers, regulators, and school districts. In response to similar issues, Tesla has released software patches for its Full Self-Driving (FSD) system to improve the detection of school bus signals. The incidents underscore the need for continued collaboration to ensure the safety of vulnerable road users as autonomous technology becomes more widespread.
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Bria.ai Integrates Visual Generative AI into Photoshop, Nuke, and More
Bria.ai, a visual generative AI platform designed for enterprise use, has announced its expanded availability across major creative production platforms. Bria’s models are now integrated into Comfy, Houdini, Nuke, and Photoshop, bringing professional-grade visual AI tools directly into the workflows of creative teams. This development is aimed at providing professional creators with the precision, consistency, and legal certainty required in their creative processes. The company’s platform is built on foundation models trained exclusively on licensed data, ensuring legal compliance and proper attribution to artists and data owners. Bria has also been named a finalist in the HPA Awards for Innovation in Pre-Production for its Attribution Technology.
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HCLTech and Cisco Unveil AI-Powered Fluid Contact Center Solution
HCLTech and Cisco have jointly launched an updated version of their Fluid Contact Center solution, a unified platform aimed at improving customer engagement and operational efficiency. The platform now incorporates AI and generative AI tools to automate interactions, assist agents, and summarize conversations across various channels including voice, chat, and digital. A key feature is the move towards proactive customer service, using predictive monitoring and analytics to identify and address potential issues before they impact the customer. The solution also includes a conversational IVR for more natural language understanding, removing the need for rigid menu selections. This collaboration combines Cisco’s cloud-native Webex Contact Center with HCLTech’s expertise in digital transformation to offer a modernized customer engagement platform.
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Wiz Named a Leader in Forrester Wave for Cloud Native Application Protection
Wiz has been named a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Cloud Native Application Protection Solutions for Q1 2026. The company is recognized for its ability to provide context that helps organizations operationalize cloud security and prioritize remediation of their most critical issues. Wiz reports that 50% of its customers have achieved ‘Zero Criticals Club’ status, indicating they have no outstanding critical cloud misconfigurations, compliance violations, or vulnerabilities in their production environments. The company emphasizes its continued efforts to increase visibility across multi-cloud environments, connecting insights from code and CI/CD pipelines through to the live production runtime environment.
Penn State and Delta Gold Partner on $3M Gold-Based Quantum Materials Research
Delta Gold Technologies and Penn State University have entered into a $3 million strategic partnership to advance the research of gold nanoclusters as a new class of quantum materials. These “super atoms” have the potential to offer a more easily manufacturable and scalable foundation for future quantum processors compared to other methods. The research will focus on the high-performance spin properties of these gold-based materials. By controlling the molecules around the gold core, researchers aim to achieve tunable spin polarization, a key factor for creating stable qubits. This collaboration and licensing agreement represents a significant investment in exploring novel materials for building the next generation of quantum computers.
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