Future of work Archives | Page 33 of 234 | Digital Watch Observatory

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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UK law firm rolls out AI chatbot to support job interview preparation

A law firm in the United Kingdom has deployed an AI-driven chatbot that allows jobseekers, particularly those applying to the firm, to practise job interview scenarios in a realistic, conversational format.

The tool simulates interviewer questions and provides tailored feedback to users on their responses, helping them prepare for real interviews by improving confidence, clarity and topical awareness.

The chatbot leverages generative AI to generate context-appropriate questions and evaluate answer quality, offering suggestions for improvement and highlighting areas such as communication strengths or gaps in key competencies.

The initiative aims to lower barriers to effective interview readiness, especially for early-career candidates who may lack formal coaching or guidance.

Firm representatives say the technology is not intended to replace human mentoring but to complement traditional preparation, enabling candidates to hone their skills at their own pace.

Observers note that such AI tools are increasingly appearing in HR and recruitment workflows, from CV review and candidate screening to training simulations, though they caution about ensuring fairness, data privacy and avoidance of algorithmic bias in evaluative feedback.

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Google plans $15bn AI push in India

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi that he never imagined Visakhapatnam would become a global AI hub. Speaking in New Delhi, he recalled passing through the coastal city as a student and described its transformation as remarkable.

In New Delhi, Pichai announced that Google will establish a full-stack AI hub in Visakhapatnam as part of a $15 billion investment in India. The facility is expected to include gigawatt-scale compute capacity and a new international subsea cable gateway.

The project in Visakhapatnam is set to generate jobs and deliver advanced AI services to businesses and communities across India. Authorities in Andhra Pradesh have allotted more than 600 acres of land near the port city for the proposed hyperscale AI data centre.

Reacting in New Delhi, Andhra Pradesh IT and HRD Minister Nara Lokesh welcomed the announcement and thanked Pichai for expressing confidence in Visakhapatnam. The development positions Visakhapatnam as a major AI infrastructure hub within India’s expanding technology sector.

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India hosts AI Impact Summit as UN chief urges shared AI rules

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the India AI Impact Summit 2026 that the future of AI must not be determined by a small group of nations or controlled by powerful private actors. He praised India’s leadership in hosting what he described as the first AI summit in the Global South.

Guterres said AI is transforming economies, societies, and governance at unprecedented speed. Inclusive and globally representative governance frameworks are essential to ensure equitable access and responsible deployment, he added.

‘The future of AI cannot be decided by a handful of countries or left to the whims of a few billionaires,’ he said, urging multilateral cooperation. Real impact, he added, means technology that improves lives and protects the planet.

United Nations officials say AI could help accelerate progress on nearly 80 per cent of the Sustainable Development Goals. Potential applications include reducing inequalities, strengthening public services, and enhancing climate action.

The UN has committed to a proactive, human rights-based approach to AI adoption within its own system. Agencies are deploying AI tools to address bias in data models, improve analytics, support innovation, and safeguard ethical standards.

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Anthropic seeks deeper AI cooperation with India

The chief executive of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, has said India can play a central role in guiding global responses to the security and economic risks linked to AI.

Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, he argued that the world’s largest democracy is well placed to become a partner and leader in shaping the responsible development of advanced systems.

Amodei explained that Anthropic hopes to work with India on the testing and evaluation of models for safety and security. He stressed growing concern over autonomous behaviours that may emerge in advanced systems and noted the possibility of misuse by individuals or governments.

He pointed to the work of international and national AI safety institutes as a foundation for joint efforts and added that the economic effect of AI will be significant and that India and the wider Global South could benefit if policymakers prepare early.

Through its Economic Futures programme and Economic Index, Anthropic studies how AI reshapes jobs and labour markets.

He said the company intends to expand information sharing with Indian authorities and bring economists, labour groups, and officials into regular discussions to guide evidence-based policy instead of relying on assumptions.

Amodei said AI is set to increase economic output and that India is positioned to influence emerging global frameworks. He signalled a strong interest in long-term cooperation that supports safety, security, and sustainable growth.

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AWS scales AI with inference-focused systems

AI assistants deliver answers in seconds, but the process behind the scenes, called inference, is complex. Inference lets trained AI models generate responses, recommendations, or images, accounting for up to 90% of AI computing power.

AWS has built infrastructure to handle these fast, high-volume operations reliably and efficiently.

Inference involves four main stages: tokenisation, prefill, decoding, and detokenisation. Each step converts human input into machine-readable tokens, builds context, generates responses token by token, and converts output back to readable text.

AWS custom Trainium chips speed up the process while reducing costs. AI agents add complexity by chaining multiple inferences for multi-step tasks.

AWS uses its Bedrock platform, Project Mantle engine, and Journal tool to manage long-running requests, prioritise urgent tasks, and maintain low latency. Unified networking ensures efficiency and fairness across users.

By focusing on inference-first infrastructure, AWS lowers AI costs while enabling more advanced applications. Instant responses from AI assistants are the result of years of engineering, billions in investment, and systems built to scale globally.

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PostFinance expands digital asset range to 22 cryptocurrencies

Swiss lender PostFinance has broadened its digital-asset offering to 22 cryptocurrencies, adding Algorand, Arbitrum, NEAR Protocol, Stellar, USDC, and Sui to its platform. The expansion strengthens its position as one of the most comprehensive retail crypto offerings among Swiss banks.

Direct cryptocurrency access was introduced in early 2024, making the institution the first systemically important bank in Switzerland to provide such services. Further additions followed mid-year, reflecting growing client demand for regulated exposure to digital assets.

More than 36,000 custody accounts have been opened since launch, generating over 565,000 trades. According to Alexander Thoma, the bank continues to broaden its selection as customers increasingly prefer to manage crypto through their primary banking provider.

Trading is available via e-finance and the PostFinance app, with a minimum entry level of $50 for both savings plans and individual orders, a move aimed at lowering barriers and widening retail participation.

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