Author: Art Ryan

Alibaba has officially stepped back into the spotlight with Qwen 3.8-Max, its newest flagship AI model. The announcement is more than another model release. In fact, it is a direct attempt to compete with OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol and Anthropic’s Fable 5. At the same time, Alibaba is taking a very different approach to how advanced AI reaches developers. Instead of keeping everything behind a closed API, Alibaba plans to distribute Qwen 3.8-Max as an open-weight model. This gives developers the ability to run and adapt it on their own infrastructure. That alone makes this launch stand out in a market…

The AI race is often framed around models, chips and whatever new chatbot appeared this week. But for Tan, the foundation powering all this progress is AI infrastructure. Julian Tan believes the bigger story sits underneath all of that. Tan, Director of Corporate Strategy at BT Group, says companies and governments may be underestimating the infrastructure needed to keep artificial intelligence running at scale. Faster models are useful. They still depend on networks, data, computing capacity and systems that cannot afford to fail. Speaking ahead of LEAP 2026 in Riyadh, Tan pointed to three areas that deserve far more attention:…

A private school charging $40,000 a year is preparing to open in Oklahoma with an unusual classroom setup: artificial intelligence will handle most academic instruction instead of traditional teachers. This marks the arrival of AI-powered private schools in Oklahoma, offering a new approach to education in the state. Alpha School plans to launch campuses in the Oklahoma City area and Tulsa for the 2026–2027 school year. Students will spend roughly two hours each morning working through personalised lessons delivered by adaptive learning software. The rest of the day looks less like a standard classroom. Children will take part in workshops…

Dubai has moved ahead of New York in the latest Dubai Intelligent Cities Index ranking, a global ranking that looks at how cities actually use artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure and smart services. Boston Consulting Group placed Dubai second in its inaugural Intelligent Cities Index 2026, behind London and ahead of New York City, Washington and Amsterdam. The result is not simply a measure of how much technology a city owns. BCG examined whether cities can turn AI systems, digital government platforms and urban data into services that residents and businesses find useful. Dubai Finishes Second Behind London BCG assessed 61…

Dubai is moving its autonomous vehicle ambitions away from public roads and into the places where goods actually move. Dubai Future Foundation and UK autonomous vehicle technology company Oxa have launched the Autonomous Logistics Future Lab, a new initiative focused on developing self-driving systems for ports, airports and other industrial environments. The two organisations formed a joint venture called SHIFFT to run the programme. Rather than stopping at demonstrations, the venture plans to test autonomous logistics technology, validate it in working environments and turn it into commercial systems that operators can deploy at scale. SHIFFT Will Build Autonomous Systems for…

The United States still produces some of the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence systems. Price is becoming the awkward part. Chinese developers including DeepSeek, Alibaba and Moonshot AI have pushed capable open-weight models into the global market at prices that American businesses find difficult to ignore. Developers can download many of these models, modify them and run them on their own infrastructure rather than paying repeatedly for access to a closed platform. That has left a small group of US startups chasing a difficult target: build American open-weight AI models that are powerful, affordable and genuinely useful outside a research…

Expedia Group is making another big move into artificial intelligence, this time by acquiring Berlin-based startup Layla, an AI-native travel planning platform designed to help people organise trips through natural conversations instead of endless searches. The deal, announced on July 31, gives Expedia another piece of its long-term AI strategy. Rather than simply adding chat features to its existing services, the company is investing in technology that can guide travellers from the moment they start dreaming about a holiday all the way through booking flights, hotels, activities and transport. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Layla Wants Travel…

Artificial intelligence had one of those weeks where the important stories did not all look dramatic at first glance. No single launch swallowed the cycle. No one model dominated the conversation. Instead, the real movement came from something more practical: AI systems are being pushed into jobs where they can actually act. Security. Banking. Business operations. Infrastructure. Regulation. That was the shape of AI news from July 26 to August 1, 2026. Companies are no longer just asking whether AI can write, summarize or generate an image. They are asking whether it can defend a network, help a business client…

Canada is asking the public a simple question with big implications: what should transparency look like in the age of artificial intelligence? The federal government has opened a nationwide consultation on AI transparency, inviting Canadians to weigh in on how AI systems and AI-generated content should be identified, explained, and monitored. The feedback will help shape future policies designed to make AI more trustworthy. This is increasingly important as the technology becomes part of everyday life across the country. Ottawa Wants Clearer Rules Around AI Systems The consultation was announced by Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada under the government’s…

Ask ChatGPT to find you “a family-friendly hotel in Amsterdam with a pool” and, until recently, you’d get a generic list scraped from wherever the model last read about Amsterdam. Now, if you’re looking for a Radisson, you can get something better. You get real rooms, real prices, and real availability. Radisson Hotel Group has partnered with Accenture to launch a dedicated hotel discovery app inside ChatGPT. This partnership is one of the clearer signs yet that hotel brands are done waiting to see how this AI-search thing plays out. The new Radisson ChatGPT app is a great example of…

Too Many Properties, Not Enough Visibility Run a hotel group today and you’re stuck between two demands that don’t play nice together: keep quality consistent across every property. Also, keep costs down while you’re at it. The tricky part isn’t the goal — it’s the tech. Most hotel groups are running on a patchwork of property-level systems that don’t talk to each other. As a result, leadership often has no real read on what’s happening across the portfolio until something’s already gone wrong. Unifocus, a major name in hospitality workforce management technology, just rolled out a batch of upgrades meant…

Apple’s long-awaited Siri overhaul may arrive with something users have not traditionally associated with the voice assistant: usage limits. Some are speculating this could be the result of a Siri AI paywall, which may restrict certain features behind a subscription. The company is considering offering paid Siri AI upgrades through iCloud+, giving people the option to purchase additional computing capacity when the standard service is no longer enough. Nothing has been finalised yet. Still, the idea reveals where Apple may be heading as Siri shifts from a lightweight voice assistant into a much more demanding generative AI product. Heavy Siri…

Amazon spent years building its chip business away from the spotlight. Now that business has crossed a $25 billion annual revenue run rate, placing the company much deeper inside the AI infrastructure race than many people may realise. The story did not begin with ChatGPT, generative AI or the current rush to build giant data centres. It started in 2015, when Amazon acquired Israeli chip design company Annapurna Labs. At the time, the logic was fairly practical. AWS wanted processors built specifically for cloud computing instead of depending entirely on general-purpose hardware from outside suppliers. A decade later, that decision…

Anthropic has disclosed an uncomfortable finding from its own safety testing. During a series of cybersecurity evaluations, several Claude AI models gained unauthorized access to the systems of real organizations after a testing environment was mistakenly connected to the internet. The company says the incidents were not the result of advanced AI escaping human control. Instead, they stemmed from a configuration error that exposed live systems during exercises that were supposed to take place inside isolated environments. A Testing Mistake Turned Into a Real-World Security Incident The affected models were participating in “capture-the-flag” cybersecurity exercises, a common way to evaluate…

A maximum-severity vulnerability in the open-source AI agent platform Ruflo, known as the RufRoot vulnerability, has raised fresh concerns about the security of enterprise agent deployments. The flaw allowed attackers to enter the orchestration framework without authentication, execute malicious activities and potentially leave AI agents behaviorally compromised even after administrators installed the software patch. Researchers at Noma Security’s Noma Labs discovered the vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-59726, in Ruflo, the platform formerly known as Claude Flow. Ruflo hosts and coordinates AI agent swarms built around tools such as OpenAI Codex and Anthropic Claude Code. The vulnerability received a CVSS score of…

The AI infrastructure race just became more competitive. In a major industry move, Nscale acquires Anyscale and this acquisition is set to reshape the landscape. London-based AI cloud provider Nscale has agreed to acquire software startup Anyscale in a deal reportedly worth around $1.65 billion. This move brings together GPU infrastructure and one of the industry’s best-known AI workload management platforms. While financial terms were not officially disclosed by the companies, Bloomberg first reported the valuation. Both firms confirmed the acquisition. The transaction is expected to close during the second half of 2026. Nscale Wants More Than GPU Infrastructure Buying…

Artificial intelligence in Mexico is starting to look less like a distant promise and more like something built in workshops, classrooms, farms and neighborhood recycling projects. Increasingly, we are seeing Mexican entrepreneurs using AI to solve real-world challenges across the country. A new group of Mexican entrepreneurs is using AI skills to address problems they already understand firsthand. Water shortages. Complicated hiring processes. Distracting technology. Poorly organized recycling systems. Students who need more individual support than a crowded classroom can provide. These are not enormous, futuristic projects designed to impress investors with vague promises. Most remain early-stage ideas, pilot programs…

Open source software is a critical pillar of the global economy. It underpins cloud computing, financial services, manufacturing, telecommunications, government and internet services by making technology accessible and observable to communities of experts. Cybersecurity is among the top three beneficiaries of open source software. The Open Secure AI Alliance — building on the leadership of the Linux Foundation’s Akrites initiative and OpenSSF community work — will work to remediate and disclose vulnerabilities using open technologies. Just as open source created a shared foundation for software, the United States and its partners now face a choice in AI security: whether the defenses that protect our infrastructure…

Egypt is steadily turning artificial intelligence into a practical tool for financial services rather than simply talking about its potential. The country’s Financial Regulatory Authority (FRA) has granted preliminary approval to two additional AI-driven insurance projects under its regulatory sandbox. The decision expands a testing environment designed to let companies experiment with new financial technologies before full commercial deployment, giving regulators an opportunity to assess innovation without exposing consumers to unnecessary risks. Two New AI Insurance Projects Enter Egypt’s Regulatory Sandbox The latest approvals bring the number of AI-focused insurance initiatives inside the FRA sandbox to seven during its first…

With the new AI Network Firewall, Check Point is the first to deliver AI security from the physical firewall organizations already run — extending the AI Defense Plane across their network providing security teams visibility and control over AI use by employees, applications, and agents, with no new infrastructure REDWOOD CITY, CA. – July 30, 2026 — Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: CHKP), a pioneer and global leader of cyber security solutions, today announced the Check Point AI Network Firewall, delivered as part of Check Point firewall software release R82.20. AI has introduced a new class of network traffic — prompts, autonomous agent…