Future of work Archives | Page 21 of 223 | Digital Watch Observatory

Gemini 3.1 Pro brings advanced logic to developers and consumers

Google has launched Gemini 3.1 Pro, an upgraded AI model for solving complex science, research, and engineering challenges. Following the Gemini 3 Deep Think release, the update adds enhanced core reasoning for consumer, developer, and enterprise applications.

Developers can access 3.1 Pro in preview via the Gemini API, Google AI Studio, Gemini CLI, Antigravity, and Android Studio, while enterprise users can use it through Vertex AI and Gemini Enterprise.

Consumers can now try the upgrade through the Gemini app and NotebookLM, with higher limits for Google AI Pro and Ultra plan users.

Benchmarks show significant improvements in logic and problem-solving. On the ARC-AGI-2 benchmark, 3.1 Pro scored 77.1%, more than doubling the reasoning performance of its predecessor.

The upgrade is intended to make AI reasoning more practical, offering tools to visualise complex topics, synthesise data, and enhance creative projects.

Feedback from Gemini 3 Pro users has driven the rapid development of 3.1 Pro. The preview release allows Google to validate improvements and continue refining advanced agentic workflows before the model becomes widely available.

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Summit in India hears call for safe AI

The UN Secretary General has warned that AI must augment human potential rather than replace it, speaking at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. Addressing leaders at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi, he urged investment in workers so that technology strengthens, rather than displaces, human capacity.

In New Delhi, he cautioned that AI could deepen inequality, amplify bias and fuel harm if left unchecked. He called for stronger safeguards to protect people from exploitation and insisted that no child should be exposed to unregulated AI systems.

Environmental concerns also featured prominently in New Delhi, with Guterres highlighting rising energy and water demands from data centres. He urged a shift to clean power and warned against transferring environmental costs to vulnerable communities.

The UN chief proposed a $3 billion Global Fund on AI to build skills, data access and affordable computing worldwide. In New Delhi, he argued that broader access is essential to prevent countries from being excluded from the AI age and to ensure AI supports sustainable development goals.

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Microsoft outlines challenges in verifying AI-generated media

In an era of deepfakes and AI-manipulated content, determining what is real online has become increasingly complex. Microsoft’s report Media Integrity and Authentication reviews current verification methods, their limits, and ways to boost trust in digital media.

The study emphasises that no single solution can prevent digital deception. Techniques such as provenance tracking, watermarking, and digital fingerprinting can provide useful context about a media file’s origin, creation tools, and whether it has been altered.

Microsoft has pioneered these technologies, cofounding the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA) to standardise media authentication globally.

The report also addresses the risks of sociotechnical attacks, where even subtle edits can manipulate authentication results to mislead the public.

Researchers explored how provenance information can remain durable and reliable across different environments, from high-security systems to offline devices, highlighting the challenge of maintaining consistent verification.

As AI-generated or edited content becomes commonplace, secure media provenance is increasingly important for news outlets, public figures, governments, and businesses.

Reliable provenance helps audiences spot manipulated content, with ongoing research guiding clearer, practical verification displays for the public.

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Reload launches Epic to bring shared memory and structure to AI agents

Founders of the Reload platform say AI is moving from simple automation toward something closer to teamwork.

Newton Asare and Kiran Das noticed that AI agents were completing tasks normally handled by employees, which pushed them to design a system that treats digital workers as part of a company’s structure instead of disposable tools.

Their platform, Reload, offers a way for organisations to manage these agents across departments, assign responsibilities and monitor performance. The firm has secured 2.275 million dollars in new funding led by Anthemis with several other investors joining the round.

The shift toward agent-driven development exposed a recurring limitation. Most agents retain only short-term memory, which means they often lose context about a product or forget why a task matters.

Reload’s answer is Epic, a new product built on its platform that acts as an architect alongside coding agents. Epic defines requirements and constraints at the start of a project, then continuously preserves the shared understanding that agents need as software evolves.

Epic integrates with popular AI-assisted code editors such as Cursor and Windsurf, allowing developers to keep a consistent system memory without changing their workflow.

The tool generates key project artefacts from the outset, including data models and technical decisions, then carries them forward even when teams switch agents. It creates a single source of truth so that engineers and digital workers develop against the same structure.

Competing systems such as LongChain and CrewAI also offer support for managing agents, but Reload argues that Epic’s ability to maintain project-level context sets it apart.

Asare and Das, who already built and sold a previous company together, plan to use the fresh capital to grow their team and expand the infrastructure needed for a future in which human workers manage AI employees instead of the other way around.

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Greece positions itself as a global AI bridge

The PM of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, took part in the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi as part of a two-day visit that highlighted the country’s ambition to deepen its presence in global technology governance.

A gathering that focuses on creating a coherent international approach to AI under the theme ‘People-Planet-Progress’, with an emphasis on practical outcomes instead of abstract commitments.

Greece presents itself as a link between Europe and the Global South, seeking a larger role in debates over AI policy and geoeconomic strategy.

Mitsotakis is joined by Minister of Digital Governance Dimitris Papastergiou, underscoring Athens’ intention to strengthen partnerships that support technological development.

During the visit, Mitsotakis attended an official dinner hosted by Narendra Modi.

On Thursday, he will address the summit at Bharat Mandapam before holding a scheduled meeting with his Indian counterpart, reinforcing efforts to expand cooperation between Greece and India in emerging technologies.

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Microsoft and OpenAI fund UK AI alignment project

OpenAI and Microsoft have joined the UK’s AI Security Institute, pledging funding to its Alignment Project, an international effort focused on ensuring advanced AI systems are safe, secure, and act as intended.

Their contributions bring total funding to over £27 million, supporting some 60 research projects across eight countries.

AI alignment aims to steer AI systems to behave predictably and prevent unintended or harmful outcomes. The project provides grants, computing resources, and mentorship, boosting public trust in AI while supporting productivity, medical progress, and new job opportunities.

UK Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy and AI Minister Kanishka Narayan highlighted the importance of safe AI adoption. Lammy said strong safety foundations help the UK harness AI’s benefits, while Narayan stressed that public confidence is key to unlocking its full potential.

The Alignment Project operates with a global coalition including the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Amazon Web Services, Anthropic, and other partners.

By combining independent research teams, grant funding, and access to infrastructure, the initiative aims to keep increasingly capable AI systems reliable and controllable as they are deployed worldwide.

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Universities in India partner with OpenAI to scale AI education

OpenAI is expanding its footprint in India by partnering with leading higher-education institutions to integrate AI into teaching and research. The initiative aims to reach more than 100,000 students, faculty, and staff over the next year as India seeks to scale domestic AI skills.

Six public and private institutions, spanning engineering, management, medicine, anfd design, will participate in the first phase. Partners include the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.

The programme focuses on embedding AI into core academic workflows rather than consumer experimentation. Campus-wide access to ChatGPT Edu, faculty training, and responsible-use frameworks will support applications in coding, research, analytics, and case analysis.

Two institutions will introduce OpenAI-backed certifications, while ed-tech platforms including Physics Wallah, upGrad, and HCL GUVI will extend structured AI training beyond campuses. The move coincides with broader investment by global AI firms as India hosts the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi.

With India now OpenAI’s second-largest user base after the US, the company is positioning universities as a long-term channel for adoption. The expansion reflects a wider contest over who shapes how AI is taught, governed, and embedded across one of the world’s largest education systems.

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Reliance and OpenAI bring AI search to JioHotstar

OpenAI has joined forces with Reliance Industries to introduce conversational search into JioHotstar.

The integration uses OpenAI’s API so viewers can look for films, series, and live sports through multilingual text or voice prompts, receiving recommendations shaped by their viewing patterns instead of basic keyword results.

A collaboration that extends beyond the platform itself, with plans to surface JioHotstar suggestions directly inside ChatGPT.

The approach presents a two-way discovery layer that links entertainment browsing with conversational queries, pointing toward a new model for how audiences engage with streaming catalogues.

OpenAI is strengthening its footprint in India, where more than 100 million people now use ChatGPT weekly. The company intends to open offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru to support the expansion, adding to its site in New Delhi.

The partnership was announced at the India AI Impact Summit, where Sam Altman appeared alongside industry figures such as Dario Amodei and Sundar Pichai.

A move that aligns with a broader ‘OpenAI for India’ strategy that includes work on data centres with the Tata Group and further collaborations with companies such as Pine Labs, Eternal, and MakeMyTrip.

Executives from both sides said conversational interfaces will reshape how people find and follow programming, helping users navigate entertainment in a more natural way instead of relying on conventional menus.

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AI agent autonomy rises as users gain trust in Anthropic’s Claude Code

A new study from Anthropic offers an early picture of how people allow AI agents to work independently in real conditions.

By examining millions of interactions across its public API and its coding agent Claude Code, the company explored how long agents operate without supervision and how users change their behaviour as they gain experience.

The analysis shows a sharp rise in the longest autonomous sessions, with top users permitting the agent to work for more than forty minutes instead of cutting tasks short.

Experienced users appear more comfortable letting the AI agent proceed on its own, shifting towards auto-approve instead of checking each action.

At the same time, these users interrupt more often when something seems unusual, which suggests that trust develops alongside a more refined sense of when oversight is required.

The agent also demonstrates its own form of caution by pausing to ask for clarification more frequently than humans interrupt it as tasks become more complex.

The research identifies a broad spread of domains that rely on agents, with software engineering dominating usage but early signs of adoption emerging in healthcare, cybersecurity and finance.

Most actions remain low-risk and reversible, supported by safeguards such as restricted permissions or human involvement instead of fully automated execution. Only a tiny fraction of actions reveal irreversible consequences such as sending messages to external recipients.

Anthropic notes that real-world autonomy remains far below the potential suggested by external capability evaluations, including those by METR.

The company argues that safer deployment will depend on stronger post-deployment monitoring systems and better design for human-AI cooperation so that autonomy is managed jointly rather than granted blindly.

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Macron calls Europe safe space for AI

French President Emmanuel Macron told the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi that Europe would remain a safe space for AI innovation and investment. Speaking in New Delhi, he said the European Union would continue shaping global AI rules alongside partners such as India.

Macron pointed to the EU AI Act, adopted in 2024, as evidence that Europe can regulate emerging technologies and AI while encouraging growth. In New Delhi, he claims that oversight would not stifle innovation but ensure responsible development, but not much evidence to back it up.

The French leader said that France is doubling the number of AI scientists and engineers it trains, with startups creating tens of thousands of jobs. He added in New Delhi that Europe aims to combine competitiveness with strong guardrails.

Macron also highlighted child protection as a G7 priority, arguing in New Delhi that children must be shielded from AI driven digital abuse. Europe, he said, intends to protect society while remaining open to investment and cooperation with India.

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