#Artificial Intelligence

#Artificial Intelligence

An analysis of two paintings in museums in the US and Italy by the 15th-century Flemish artist Jan van Eyck has raised a profound question: what if neither were by Van Eyck? Saint Francis of Assisi Receiving the Stigmata, the name given to near-identical unsigned paintings hanging in the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Royal Museums of Turin, represent two of the small number of surviving works by one of western art's greatest masters, revered for his naturalistic portraits and religious subjects.

Somewhere between six and seven million years ago, our ancestors began walking upright, and the advantages were considerable: Freed from locomotion, upper limbs could grasp, manipulate, eventually craft, and the opposable thumb became the hinge on which human civilization would turn. We are, above all else, tool users-fire, the wheel, writing, the printing press, the transistor-each tool reshaping not only what we could do but who we became.

Now, marking its most comprehensive technology initiative since that seminal report, the LSC has released a new report, The Next Frontier: Harnessing Technology to Close the Justice Gap, which represents the findings of an extensive two-year Technology Summit process that kicked off with LSC's 50th anniversary in 2024. Like its predecessor, this new report offers an ambitious roadmap for leveraging technology to narrow America's justice gap.

In 2023, Australia abandoned its expensive and bureaucratic scholar-led research-assessment programme. New Zealand followed suit soon after. The hope, according to a transition plan unveiled by the Australian federal government's Department of Education and the research sector, was to find a "more modern, data-driven approach". In the United Kingdom, where financial pressures on universities are especially acute, there are similar calls to reform the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the country's performance-based research-funding system.

The monthly purchasing managers' index showed employment numbers fell more sharply in January compared with December, continuing a trend that started in October 2024. The PMI survey, which is considered to be one of the most reliable indicators of how a sector is performing, said this was the longest period of job shedding in the UK services sector in 16 years, with firms also choosing not to replace voluntary leavers.

Baidu has reportedly invested 20 billion RMB ($2.9 billion) in research and development in recent years, with the majority of this money going to AI. Last year alone, Baidu allocated $200 million to AI and AR development through its Baidu Research arm, which includes dedicated research divisions the Big Data Lab, Silicon Valley Lab, Institute of Deep Learning, and the Augmented Reality Lab, which it launched in February.

Looking at the largest NYC startup funding rounds from January 2026, leveraging data from CrunchBase, we've analyzed the most significant venture capital deals that kicked off the new year in New York's tech ecosystem. This month's analysis provides comprehensive insights into each company's industry focus, founding team, business model, investor relationships, and total funding history, offering deeper context about the NYC-based ventures that attracted the largest investments as we enter 2026.

When Justin Harrison got the call in 2022 telling him that his mother would likely die within the day, he didn't panic. He got on a plane to Singapore, where he was scheduled to present at a conference about his start-up, You, Only Virtual, a platform on which users can chat with AI versions of their dead loved ones, and which Justin believes can ultimately eliminate grief as a human experience. He learned about his mother's death while flying over the Pacific.

The competitive bid process, which launched Friday, will allow B.C. Hydro to manage the grid appropriately when it comes to the fast growing high-load sectors including AI and data centres, according to Energy Minister Adrian Dix at a news conference Friday. Charlotte Mitha, B.C. Hydro's president and CEO, said that without a structured process, the power utility could easily be overwhelmed by power-intensive requests from AI and data centres.

Mark Zuckerberg changed his company's name to Meta in October 2021 because he believed the future was virtual. Not just sort-of virtual, like Instagram filters or Zoom calls, but capital-V Virtual: immersive 3D worlds where you'd work, socialize, and live a parallel digital life through a VR headset. Four years and roughly $70 billion in cumulative Reality Labs losses later, Meta is quietly dismantling that vision.

Bull has been officially launched as an independent brand for high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. The historic technology brand, which has been part of Atos for many years, is making a comeback. The reintroduction of Bull, originally founded in 1931 to manufacture tabulating machines, comes after the signing of a share purchase agreement with the French state on July 31, 2025.

The Wall Street investment giant reported that QTS, the data center developer and operator it took private in 2021, was the single largest driver of gains in the company's $1.3 trillion portfolio in 2025. The results were a clear sign that Blackstone's bets on digital infrastructure amid the artificial intelligence boom have reaped returns as other segments of its business, including real estate and private credit, have run into headwinds.

While we are waiting for the final decision from Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia, I want to present some thoughts on the least resolved of the case's many issues, the hard parts the judge will be pondering. Actually, one hard part: trust. But I need to tell you a little about the case to make the trust issue clear.