Research & Development news

• Sam Altman Calls AI Water Usage Claims ‘Totally Insane’

  23-02-2026 21:59 via eweek.com
  The chief executive of OpenAI is pushing back hard against claims that artificial intelligence is draining the planet’s resources.Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit during an interview hosted by The Indian Express, Altman dismissed viral claims that using ChatGPT consumes massive amounts of water.“We used to do evaporative cooling in data centres, but now that we don’t do that. You see these like things on the internet, where ‘don’t use ChatGPT, it’s 17 ga
  
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• Japan Eyes Plan to Mass Produce Humanoid Robots By 2027

  23-02-2026 21:28 via eweek.com
  Humanoid robots might soon clock in alongside workers in Japan. Manufacturers are watching closely to see if those machines could eventually find customers beyond the country’s borders. A coalition of universities, chipmakers, and robotics firms is building domestic models it hopes to mass-produce by 2027, starting with factory floors and disaster-response sites at home. The production target comes as major Japanese companies and policymakers increase investment in robotics and a
  
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• Walmart: ‘Sparky’ AI Chatbot Is Lifting Spend, Engagement

  23-02-2026 19:49 via eweek.com
  Walmart is reaping early rewards from its AI chatbot Sparky, which has attracted millions of users and lifted average spend among shoppers who engage with it.Launched in June 2025, the chatbot is designed to help users discover products, receive personalised recommendations, and automate shopping tasks. It is one of the first AI chatbots introduced by a traditional retailer and forms part of Walmart’s broader push to reposition itself from a pure retail player into a tech-enabled commerce
  
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• Samsung Upgrades Bixby With Natural Language AI, Perplexity Integration

  23-02-2026 17:54 via eweek.com
  Gemini gains a serious challenger as Samsung reinvents Bixby. According to 9to5Google, Samsung is taking yet another swing at Bixby, and this reinvention represents the company’s most serious attempt to make its assistant a genuine alternative to Gemini on Samsung hardware.The upgrade adds natural language processing to Bixby’s established device-control capabilities. It allows the assistant to understand user pain points and act on them directly. With a broad portfolio of Googl
  
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• xAI’s Grok 4.20 Turns AI Into a Debate Team

  23-02-2026 17:35 via eweek.com
  You know how the best decisions usually happen when smart people debate each other? Elon Musk’s xAI just built that into an AI.Grok 4.20 dropped on Monday, and it’s operating on a fundamentally different architecture. Instead of one AI generating your answer, four specialized agents work simultaneously, debate each other in real time, and then hand you the consensus.Meet the team
  Grok (the coordinator): Breaks down your question, assigns tasks, resolves disagreements, and delivers th
  
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• New Harvard 3D-Printing Method Lets Robots Move Like Muscles

  23-02-2026 17:22 via eweek.com
  Soft robots just got a lot more lifelike. Harvard engineers have developed a 3D printing method that produces flexible machines capable of bending and moving on command, much like real muscle. In a study published in Advanced Materials, the team describes a fabrication approach that embeds motion directly into soft structures during printing.Where rotation becomes instructionThe breakthrough centers on the printer head. Instead of depositing a single material, a rotating dual-material nozzl
  
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• AI Engineer Warning: Computer Jobs Face Painful Change

  23-02-2026 16:32 via eweek.com
  Your job isn’t disappearing overnight.But changes are definitely coming.An Anthropic engineer says AI agents are about to reshape most work done on computers, and he expects the transition to be “painful” for a lot of people. According to a Business Insider report, Boris Cherny argues that software that can operate a computer on your behalf will spread beyond coding into the broader knowledge economy.AI agents are already nudging work from “doing the task” to &
  
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• OpenAI’s First AI Device Could Be a Smart Speaker That ‘Sees and Hears’

  23-02-2026 14:44 via eweek.com
  OpenAI is preparing to step into living rooms. According to The Information, the ChatGPT-maker is building its first consumer device: an AI-powered smart speaker built to see, listen, and respond in more proactive ways. If released, the camera-enabled speaker would serve as OpenAI’s hardware debut, extending the company’s reach beyond software.The team and the timelineThe project has grown into a sizable internal effort. Roughly 200 employees are working on the device, reflectin
  
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• Nvidia’s Next PC Play Is an AI Laptop Chip, Not Just a Faster GPU

  23-02-2026 11:49 via eweek.com
  Nvidia wants back inside your laptop.Not as the graphics add-on, but as the chip that sets the rules.
  The PC market is shifting toward on-device AI. Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC guidance puts real weight behind dedicated NPUs (40+ TOPS) for Windows AI features, and that tilt rewards tightly integrated silicon over the old mix-and-match approach.
  The Wall Street Journal reports Nvidia is positioning new laptop processors as systems on a chip, combining a CPU with Nvidia’s GPU and AI streng
  
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