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10 Feb 2026

DuckDuckGo Launches Private AI Voice Chat on Duck.ai With Encrypted Audio Streaming

DuckDuckGo has rolled out AI voice chat capabilities for Duck.ai, its private AI chatbot platform. The feature enables real-time voice conversations with large language models while maintaining strict privacy protections. Audio streams are encrypted and not stored by DuckDuckGo or OpenAI, addressing growing concerns about data collection in AI applications.

3 Sources

Square launches AI assistant in UK to help SMEs turn data into smarter business decisions

Square has launched Square AI in the UK and Ireland, a free conversational AI assistant integrated into its commerce platform. The tool addresses a critical gap: while 53% of UK SMEs have experimented with AI, only 30% use it regularly. Square AI enables business owners to query sales, customer, and labour data in plain language, helping them combine instinct with insight without manual analysis.

3 Sources

Cisco unveils Silicon One G300 chip to challenge Broadcom and Nvidia in AI networking race

Cisco launched its Silicon One G300, a 102.4Tbps switching chip designed to compete with Broadcom and Nvidia in the booming AI infrastructure market. The chip features advanced congestion management and can support deployments of up to 128,000 GPUs using just 750 switches. Cisco claims its implementation achieves 33% better link utilization and can cut training times by up to 28%.

8 Sources

Vitalik Buterin Rejects 'Race to AGI,' Proposes Ethereum-Led Alternative for Safer AI Development

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is challenging Silicon Valley's AGI acceleration narrative, calling the 'race to AGI' a flawed framework that prioritizes status over safety. In a detailed post on X, he outlined a four-part roadmap positioning Ethereum as infrastructure for private, verifiable AI interactions, an economic layer for AI agents, and enhanced governance systems—offering a decentralized alternative to centralized AI development.

4 Sources

AI Safety Concerns Drive Wave of Resignations as Researchers Warn of Existential Threats

Mrinank Sharma, head of Anthropic's safeguards research team, resigned citing concerns about AI safety and company values. His departure joins a growing exodus from major AI labs including OpenAI and xAI, with researchers warning about existential threats, ethical concerns, and the rapid advancement of AI systems capable of self-improvement.

13 Sources

John Carmack proposes fiber optic cache to replace DRAM for streaming AI model weights

John Carmack, cofounder of id Software, has proposed using 200km fiber optic loops as a cache alternative to traditional DRAM for AI workloads. The concept leverages 256 Tb/s data rates to keep 32GB of data continuously streaming to AI accelerators, potentially offering significant power savings and addressing the ongoing memory crisis affecting AI development and consumer hardware costs.

3 Sources

Samsung and Micron begin shipping HBM4 memory as race for AI acceleration hardware intensifies

Samsung and Micron have started mass production and shipping of HBM4 memory, the next-generation high-bandwidth memory critical for AI acceleration hardware. Samsung claims industry-first status with 11.7Gbps speeds and up to 3.3TB/s bandwidth, while Micron confirms it delivered product a quarter ahead of schedule. The development signals readiness for Nvidia's upcoming Vera Rubin accelerators launching in Q2 2026.

15 Sources

AI scams escalate as criminal networks use cheap tools to evade crackdown and dupe more victims

Criminal scam centers across Southeast Asia are deploying inexpensive AI tools to target victims at unprecedented speed, even as governments intensify crackdowns. Interpol officials report that scammers now use large language models, voice cloning, and deepfake technology to create sophisticated cons that are nearly impossible to detect. The global scam economy is estimated to steal $64 billion annually.

3 Sources

Andrej Karpathy coins 'agentic engineering' as AI coding enters professional development era

OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy has introduced 'agentic engineering' to describe the next phase of AI coding, where AI agents independently write code rather than simply assisting developers. The term marks a shift from last year's viral 'vibe coding' concept, emphasizing disciplined engineering practice over casual experimentation as AI-powered development tools gain traction in professional settings.

2 Sources

09 Feb 2026

Databricks CEO says AI will make SaaS irrelevant as natural language replaces user interfaces

Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi argues that AI won't kill SaaS companies, but it will make their traditional interfaces obsolete. As his company hits a $5.4 billion revenue run-rate with 80% of databases now built by AI agents, Ghodsi warns that millions of SaaS specialists trained on complex user interfaces face an uncertain future as natural language becomes the new interface.

3 Sources

Ring Search Party AI feature sparks privacy concerns after Super Bowl ad reveals surveillance scope

Amazon's Ring unveiled its Search Party feature during the Super Bowl, marketing it as a way to find lost pets using AI-powered pet recognition. But the ad backfired, sparking widespread alarm about AI surveillance and privacy as users learned their cameras form a network scanning for animals. The feature is enabled by default, raising questions about consent and law enforcement data access.

4 Sources

Discord rolls out AI age verification globally after data breach exposed 70,000 government IDs

Discord announced a global age verification system starting March, defaulting all users to teen mode. Users must verify with face scans or IDs to access adult content, sparking backlash after hackers stole 70,000 government IDs from a third-party vendor in October. The company now partners with k-ID for on-device verification.

10 Sources

ByteDance's Seedance 2.0 AI video tool impresses audiences but raises deepfake concerns

ByteDance released Seedance 2.0, an AI video generation model that many consider more advanced than OpenAI's Sora 2. The tool generates 2K video 30% faster with multimodal input capabilities, combining text, images, audio, and video prompts. While it's driving up Chinese AI firms' stock prices and impressing users with realistic output, questions remain about US availability and copyright protections.

10 Sources

Takeda inks $1.7 billion Iambic deal to accelerate AI drug discovery for cancer treatments

Japan's Takeda Pharmaceutical has partnered with AI startup Iambic in a deal exceeding $1.7 billion to design small-molecule drugs targeting cancer and gastrointestinal diseases. The collaboration leverages Iambic's NeuralPLexer model to predict protein binding, potentially compressing traditional six-year drug discovery timelines to less than two years through AI predictions and automated laboratories.

3 Sources

Bhashini migrates to Yotta's sovereign AI cloud, gains 40% performance boost and 30% cost cut

India's AI-powered multilingual translation platform Bhashini has completed its migration from a global hyperscaler to Yotta Data Services' domestic sovereign AI cloud. The transition delivered nearly 40% performance improvement and up to 30% cost reduction while ensuring critical AI workloads and data remain within India's jurisdiction.

2 Sources

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