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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday pitched India as a central player in the global artificial intelligence ecosystem, saying the country aims to build technology at home while deploying it worldwide.“Design and develop in India. Deliver to the world. Deliver to humanity,” Modi told a gathering of some world leaders, technology executives and policymakers at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi.Modi’s remarks came as India one of the fastest-growing digital markets seeks to leverage its experience in building large-scale digital public infrastructure and to present itself as a cost-effective hub for AI innovation.The summit was also addressed by French President Emmanuel Macron, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who called for a $3 billion fund to help poorer countries build basic AI capacity, including skills, data access and affordable computing power.“The future of AI cannot be decided by a handful of countries, or left to the whims of a few billionaires,” Guterres said, stressing that AI must “belong to everyone.” India aims to ramp up its AI scale India is using the summit to position itself as a bridge between advanced economies and the Global South. Indian officials cite the country’s digital ID and online payments systems as a model for deploying AI at low cost, particularly in developing countries.“We must democratize AI. It must become a tool for inclusion and empowerment, particularly for the Global South,” Modi said.With nearly 1 billion internet users, India has become a key market for global technology companies expanding their AI businesses.Last December, Microsoft announced a $17.5 billion investment over four years to expand cloud and AI infrastructure in India. It followed Google’s $15 billion investment over five years, including plans for its first AI hub in the country. Amazon has also pledged $35 billion by 2030, targeting AI-driven digitization.India is also seeking up to $200 billion in data center investment in the coming years.The country, however, lags in developing its own large-scale AI model like U.S.-based OpenAI or China’s DeepSeek, highlighting challenges such as limited access to advanced semiconductor chips, data centers and hundreds of local languages to learn from. The summit has faced troubles The summit opened Monday with organizational glitches, as attendees and exhibitors reported long lines and delays, and some complained on social media that personal belongings and display items had been stolen. Organizers later said the items were recovered.Problems resurfaced Wednesday when a private Indian university was expelled from the summit after a staff member showcased a commercially available Chinese-made robotic dog while claiming it as the institution’s own innovation.The setbacks continued Thursday when Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates withdrew from a scheduled keynote address. No reason was given, though the Gates Foundation said the move was intended “to ensure the focus remains on the AI Summit’s key priorities.”Gates is facing questions over his ties to late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Associated Press
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E-Commerce
The social media trial brought by a 20-year-old Californian plaintiff known as Kaley or KGM, putting Meta and YouTube in front of a jury, has captured the worlds attention. The bellwether trial is a test case for the liability of social media platforms and how much they could be on the hook financially if found to have caused harm to their users. KGM, for her part, alleges that she faced anxiety, depression, and body image issues after using Instagram. The proceedings could establish the first real legal boundaries for what has been up to now largely unregulated algorithmic design, determining whether amplifying harmful content amounts to negligence. A verdict against Meta or YouTube in this bellwether case could open the door to other suits, and finally force disclosure of internal research that has so far remained confidential. The first day that Mark Zuckerberg, Metas CEO, was on the stand on February 18 was a major momentnot necessarily for what Zuckerberg said, but for the fact the case has gotten this far. This is a significant moment in terms of these platforms finally being seen to be held to account by their own users, says Steven Buckley, lecturer in media digital and sociology at City St Georges, University of London. While Zuckerberg withstood rigorous questioning from Mark Lanier, the lawyer representing Kaley GM, the fact that he was there at all and the case got to trial is a significant happening. As Fast Company has previously reported, 2026 is the year that the world is getting tough on online safety, particularly for kids. And this trial is notable because it managed to sidestep the usual way social networks swerve liability: Claiming Section 230 protections, which have been in place since the mid-1990s and insulate platforms from bearing responsibility for the actions of their users. If jurors agree that product design, rather than user behavior, is the root cause of harm, big techs decades-long legal shield could begin to fracture. That possibility alone has Silicon Valley watching nervously, with billions in potential damages on the line. Prior to the trial beginning, Snap and TikTok settled with the claimant without admission of liability, leaving YouTube and Meta to fight the trial. A Meta spokesperson tells Fast Company the firm strongly disagree with these allegations and are confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people,” adding that the evidence will show she faced many significant, difficult challenges well before she ever used social media. YouTube spokesperson José Castaneda tells Fast Company: The allegations in these complaints are simply not true. Its not particularly surprising that these large platforms are finally facing some legal repercussions from their actual users, says Buckley. A steady drumbeat of reporting, alongside other smaller legal cases, have revealed information that suggests social media can be harmful to younger users. This case is therefore a potential watershed because the plaintiffs argue that Instagram’s and YouTube’s underlying product designfeatures like the infinite scroll, autoplay, and recommendation algorithms that serve up progressively more engaging contentconstitutes a defective product. But most of those other cases havent received as much attention because theyve not gotten as far as this one hasnor have been as likely to succeed in some way. Zuckerberg did not come across as someone with children’s best interests at heart, says Tama Leaver, professor of internet studies at Curtin University in Australia. Leaver contrasts Zuckerbergs performance in court with Adam Mosseri’s a few days earlier, who the researcher says had the tenacity to argue that the term addiction is being misused. In contrast, Zuckerberg didn’t feel like someone who’d done their homework, but rather someone who was surprised they had to turn up and answer these questions, Leaver explains. If his job was to convince the listening world that he could be a trusted figure in the lives of teens and young people, then he failed. Despite that poor performance by Zuckerberg, and despite the strength of the case in comparison to others that have gone before, some think that a decision against the social media firmsor a general movement to recognize the issues inherent with social mediacould backfire. One concern I have is that people will think that the simple solution to many of the issues raised in these lawsuits is to simply ban under-16s from using the platforms, says Buckley. This is a woefully misguided reaction. The scientific evidence regarding the link between social media use at a young age and addiction is still not well established. Whether the jury agrees with that assessment or not, the trial has already achieved something that years of congressional hearings and regulatory hand-wringing havent: putting the people who designed these systems under oath and making them answer difficult questionsthen be responsible for the consequences of what they say. One of the reasons I think we have gotten to this stage is that some people have come to the conclusion that their governments are not going to do anything meaningful to hold these companies to account and so have felt compelled to take them on themselves, says Buckley. The rest of the tech industry will be watching closely to see what comes next.
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E-Commerce
Tariffs paid by midsized U.S. businesses tripled over the course of last year, new research tied to one of America’s leading banks showed on Thursday more evidence that President Donald Trump’s push to charge higher taxes on imports is causing economic disruption.The additional taxes have meant that companies that employ a combined 48 million people in the U.S. the kinds of businesses that Trump had promised to revive have had to find ways to absorb the new expense, by passing it along to customers in the form of higher prices, employing fewer workers or accepting lower profits.“That’s a big change in their cost of doing business,” said Chi Mac, business research director of the JPMorganChase Institute, which published the analysis on Thursday. “We also see some indications that they may be shifting away from transacting with China and maybe toward some other regions in Asia.”The research doesn’t say how the additional costs are flowing through the economy, but it indicates that tariffs are being paid by U.S. firms. It’s part of a growing body of economic analyses that counter the administration’s claims that foreigners pay the tariffs.The JPMorganChase Institute report used payments data to look at businesses that might lack the pricing power of large multinational companies to offset tariffs, but may be small enough to quickly change supply chains to minimize exposure to the tax increases. The companies tended to have revenues between $10 million and $1 billion with fewer than 500 employees, a category known as “middle market.”The analysis suggests that the Trump administration’s goal of becoming less directly reliant on Chinese manufacturers has been occurring. Payments to China by these companies were 20% below their October 2024 levels, but it’s unclear whether that means China is simply routing its goods through other countries or if supply chains have moved.The authors of the analysis emphasized in an interview that companies are still adjusting to the tariffs and said they plan to continue studying the issue.The Trump administration has been adamant that the tariffs are a boon for the economy, businesses, and workers. Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, lashed out on Wednesday at research by the New York Federal Reserve showing that nearly 90% of the burden for Trump’s tariffs fell on U.S. companies and consumers.“The paper is an embarrassment,” Hassett told CNBC. “It’s, I think, the worst paper I’ve ever seen in the history of the Federal Reserve system. The people associated with this paper should presumably be disciplined.”Trump increased the average tariff rate to 13% from 2.6% last year, according to the New York Fed researchers. He declared that tariffs on some items like steel, kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities were in the national security interest of the country and declared an economic emergency to bypass Congress and impose a baseline tax on goods from much of the world last April at an event he called “Liberation Day.”The high rates provoked a financial market panic, prompting Trump to walk back his rates and then engage in talks with multiple countries that led to a set of new trade frameworks. The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on whether Trump surpassed his legal authority by declaring an economic emergency.Trump was elected in 2024 on his promise to tame inflation, but his tariffs have contributed to voter frustration over affordability. While inflation has not spiked during Trump’s term thus far, hiring slowed sharply and a team of academic economists estimate that consumer prices were roughly 0.8 percentage points higher than they would otherwise be. Josh Boak, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
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