India's Bharti Airtel launches cloud services for telecom operators
The company said it also entered a partnership with Singtel (STEL.SI), opens new tab, Airtel Africa and Globe Telecom (GLO.PS), opens new tab for a newly launched AI platform.
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Reuters
26 minutes ago
- Reuters
US criticizes use of AI to personalize airline ticket prices, would investigate
Aug 5 (Reuters) - U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Tuesday the department has concerns about the use of AI to set personalized airline ticket prices and will investigate if anyone does so. Last week, Delta Air Lines (DAL.N), opens new tab told lawmakers it will not and has not used AI to set prices for individual consumers. "To try to individualize pricing on seats based on how much you make or don't make or who you are, I can guarantee you that we will investigate if anyone does that," Duffy said. "We would engage very strongly if any company tries to use AI to individually price their seating." Duffy noted Delta clarified that it would not use AI for pricing individual tickets, "and I'll take them at face value." Late last month, Democratic Senators Ruben Gallego, Mark Warner and Richard Blumenthal said they believed the Atlanta-based airline would use AI to set individual prices, which would "likely mean fare price increases up to each individual consumer's personal 'pain point.'" Delta previously said it plans to deploy AI-based revenue management technology across 20% of its domestic network by the end of 2025 in partnership with Fetcherr, an AI pricing company. Fetcherr on its website says its technology is "trusted by the world's leading airlines," and lists Delta, Westjet, Virgin Atlantic, Viva and Azul. American Airlines (AAL.O), opens new tab CEO Robert Isom said last month using AI to set ticket prices could hurt consumer trust. Democratic lawmakers Greg Casar and Rashida Tlaib have introduced legislation to bar companies from using AI to set prices or wages based on Americans' personal data and would specifically ban airlines raising individual prices after seeing a search for a family obituary. Delta said airlines have used dynamic pricing for more than three decades, in which pricing fluctuates based on a variety of factors like overall customer demand, fuel prices and competition, but not a specific consumer's personal information.
Telegraph
26 minutes ago
- Telegraph
The tech company winning big from Trump's presidency
Alex Karp, the chief executive of Palantir Technologies, was in no mood to be humble as the US tech giant revealed its results on Monday. 'I have been cautioned to be a little modest about our bombastic numbers,' Karp said. Yet in a note to shareholders, he said the company's current growth rate was 'without precedent or comparison'. Palantir, which develops artificial intelligence (AI) and data mining technology, reported a 48pc jump in its quarterly revenues to a record $1bn (£753m). Dan Ives, a technology analyst, said Palantir had 'blown away' expectations. Growth has been delivered in part thanks to the company's close ties to Washington and the US defence establishment, with US government sales up 52pc. Since Donald Trump's election victory in November, Palantir's stock has risen by almost 300pc. 'This is the perfect time for Palantir,' Karp told investors on a call. Palantir and Karp, a one-time Democratic Party donor and supporter of Kamala Harris, are well-placed to benefit from the Trump White House's focus on defence, homeland security and securing its borders. Last week, the US army signed a deal with Palantir worth up to $10bn over the next decade. Its work with the US military includes developing AI-powered mobile command trucks and a high-tech targeting system called Maven, which can do the work of a regiment of soldiers with just 20 people. Founded in 2003 by Karp and Peter Thiel, the outspoken Republican donor, Palantir's tools can synthesise vast pools of data for analysis or business decision-making. Its early work included contracts with the CIA and other intelligence services. The business and its leaders have always been outspoken believers in America's role as the bulwark of Western civilisation. In a military context, for instance, Palantir can gather information from an army's databases, satellites and drones, then combine it with publicly available information to help commanders make tactical decisions. However, it is not just military and intelligence chiefs who covet Palantir's technology. Its services have also been hotly sought after by corporations and the public sector. It is also a major supplier to the NHS. One relationship that has been under intense recent scrutiny is Palantir's work with the US immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) agency. Its technology has been deployed on the US border and Palantir has worked with Ice since 2014, largely on tools to aid criminal investigations. A deal signed in 2022 to extend this work was worth $95m. Its border work most recently expanded with a $30m deal in April to build an 'ImmigrationOS'. This, according to a federal contract, will help track known criminals, identify people overstaying their visas, and track deportation data. 'Palantir is the only source that can provide the required capabilities and prototype of ImmigrationOS without causing unacceptable delays,' a US tender document says. The contract was single sourced, meaning it was not offered in a competitive process. The Trump White House has already claimed victory over immigration and illegal border crossings. In a post on X, the White House claimed to have achieved the 'first negative net migration for the first time in 50 years'. Trump has hailed a dramatic fall in illegal border crossings as evidence that his policies of tougher border security and mass deportations of immigrants, shackled in chains and handcuffs, are working. However, the president's uncompromising approach to the issue has led to criticism of Palantir by association. Its offices have been targeted by 'Purge Palantir' demonstrators, mirroring the earlier 'Tesla Takedown' protests against Elon Musk's car business. Former staff, meanwhile, signed an open letter claiming Palantir executives were enabling a 'dangerous expansions of executive power' through their work for Trump. The company has previously admitted employees have 'left over disagreements on our work, now and in the past, and we pride ourselves on a culture of fierce internal dialogue'. Karp has repeatedly dismissed criticism from the 'haters' (although in one rebuke, Palantir published an over 4,000 word response to an article in the New York Times that interrogated its US government deals). 'Palantir gets attacked just because we help make this country even better,' Karp told investors on Monday. 'The people who think we are wrong have to be a little jealous.' Palantir is not the only tech company benefiting from the second Trump presidency. The 'big beautiful bill' earmarked a total of $6bn for border security technology, including AI-powered surveillance towers. These are likely to be designed by Anduril, another US defence technology start-up backed by Thiel, Palantir's founder. In fact, according to news organisation The Intercept, Anduril is a shoo-in. The law states that the towers must be certified by the US border patrol to get the funding – and only Anduril's technology meets that requirement. The bill has also given Ice a budget larger than many global militaries, climbing from $8bn to almost $28bn. Palantir pointed out in its financial results that its commercial sales have also soared as businesses have sought to use tools originally designed for the world's security agencies. Its US business sales climbed 93pc. 'The growth rate of our business has accelerated radically, after years of investment on our part and derision by some,' Karp wrote in a letter to investors on Monday. 'The sceptics are admittedly fewer now, having been defanged and bent into a kind of submission. Yet we see no reason to pause, to relent, here.'
Reuters
26 minutes ago
- Reuters
Orange to use OpenAI's latest models to work with African languages
STOCKHOLM, Aug 5 (Reuters) - French mobile operator Orange ( opens new tab said on Tuesday it plans to use OpenAI's latest AI models with African languages. The benefits of AI models have largely bypassed African languages, numbering over 2,000, due to challenges such as lack of data and limited computational resources, according to researchers, opens new tab at Cornell University in the United States and a report by journal Nature. Orange, which provides telecom services in 18 African countries, signed a deal with OpenAI last year to get access to its pre-release AI models and fine-tune large language models to translate regional African languages. It said it started working with African languages this year using OpenAI's Whisper speech model, but the new models can extend this work to far more complex uses. OpenAI's first open-weight models have trained parameters, or weights, which are publicly accessible and can be used by developers such as Orange to tweak the models for specific tasks without requiring original training data. Orange plans to fine-tune the models with its collected samples of African regional languages and deploy them locally. "We plan to provide the fine-tuned models for free to local governments and public authorities," Orange's Chief AI Officer Steve Jarrett told Reuters. "We see this initiative as a blueprint for how AI can help bridge the digital divide: by collaborating with local startups and communities, Orange and OpenAI hope to catalyze an ecosystem where African languages are first-class citizens in the AI realm," Jarrett said.
