AI titans meet leaders of the big economies

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1:17Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez. The symbolism is huge. A working lunch at the G7 summit taking place in France. On one side of the metaphorical table, the chief executives of the biggest artificial intelligence companies on the planet, people like Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amadei of Anthropic. On the other, the leaders of the world's biggest economies. On the menu, the future of AI hurtling towards us at light speed, how to rein in its risks and dangers, and who controls access to its powerful world-changing models.

1:56And the big question, who has more power right now, the politicians or the billionaire CEOs? Well, in a moment, we'll hear from someone who was heading to that meeting. But first, let's talk to Dr. Stephanie Hare, co-presenter of Artificial Intelligence Decoded on the BBC. Stephanie, always good to talk to you. Thanks for being with us. The decision at the weekend by the Trump administration to block access to two anthropic models to non-US nationals Well, I mean, that suggests at the very least that politicians are struggling to grapple with all this. Is that fair? Well, we don't want to blame the politicians too much because the AI companies themselves, including Anthropic in this case, have been asking to be regulated and warning that their technology poses an existential threat to humanity on the same level as pandemics and nuclear wars.

2:45That's been for years. And then specifically with the mythos model, Anthropic itself said it was so dangerous it couldn't be released and only shared it with an inner circle of American companies and the United Kingdom, not with the rest of the EU. It has since, of course, widened access to its EU partners. But for a long time, the EU people were shut out. So you can see that the US government in this case is stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, it doesn't want to slow down AI development. But on the other hand, it's being told by the providers themselves that their technology is really dangerous.

3:21Do all the leaders of the AI companies agree on the need for regulation? Presumably some of them want to push back on that. Well, you'll enjoy this. They all sing a very lovely song about how important safety and regulation is. And then anytime anyone tries to pass it, they do everything they can to block it. Right. Right. In terms of making decisions on regulation and dealing with these issues, which are coming up, you know, they're live issues coming up all the time right now as these models develop. Presumably the only way forward, and I guess this is what will have been talked about at the meeting, is to come up with some sort of coordinated approach, at least on either side of the Atlantic.

4:01Yes. Now, we have the EU AI Act. The European Union was actually world leading in coming up with the first comprehensive regulation for AI. And of course, what happened is that everyone, including the US government, complained that this was trying to target US AI companies and indeed hinder innovation. Now, the White House in the United States is singing a very different song, and they themselves are saying we need to be able to vet the most dangerous models. They wanted a 90-day period, three months, an entire financial quarter. And again, the companies pushed back, saying that would hurt their ability to compete on the market.

4:38So they've watered it down to 30 days. So it was under that White House executive order that they just asked Anthropic to turn off the model. So what about China? Is that just doing its own thing and potentially undercutting some of those American companies? At the moment, they are not undercutting. China actually does a lot of AI and indeed wider societal and technological regulation, right? Like censorship is very high there. Government control is very high there. And at the moment, they are not yet threatening US AI companies, but they can't get complacent either. China's tech is very good.

5:18Stephanie, thank you very much indeed. Dr. Stephanie Hare, presenter of Artificial Intelligence Decoder. Well, let's hear from someone at the meeting today. Victor Ripabelli is the CEO and co-founder of Synesthesia. I knew I was going to trip up on that AI based in the UK. So is the US running the show and Europe trying to catch up when it comes to artificial intelligence? A question put to Victor by my colleague, Johnny Diamond. You know, we can't deny the fact that the U.S. is way ahead of the Europe on frontier models, which means the kind of foundational models that almost all AI applications are built on top of.

5:54I think the AI is a strong ally. I hope they'll remain a strong ally. And I think what we're uniquely good at in Europe is not competing on the frontier level of models, but on the application layer. So companies like us who take the models and make our own models and build products and services on top of those. Ultimately, for most companies out there, they're not buying technologies, they're buying solutions to their problems. And I think in Europe, what we're uniquely good and what we should focus more on is the application layer where the field is still wide open. There is a view amongst some that America innovates and Europe regulates.

6:29And I guess one of the things you want to avoid is the impression that Europe is sort of just drooling to regulate AI, which America is pushing ahead with. I totally agree. I think, unfortunately, we have seen the last 10, 15 years that that has been the case. We have not managed to build an anywhere near strong ecosystem in tech as we've seen in the U.S. And it's really important that in the AI era, we don't keep falling behind by focusing on things like regulation rather than innovation. When you look at the US in general, how they regulate, right, is that people build things and services, you put them to the market, and then you figure out where they fail, where they provide harm, and then kind of figure out how to regulate around that.

7:09In Europe and the EU particularly, we have a tendency to try and gather a lot of smart people in a room, predict what the world's going to look like in five years, and then we regulate based off that. Now, if they were able to actually predict the future, maybe that would work. But unfortunately, nobody knows what's actually going to happen, right? And so we have to have an approach which is innovation first and regulatory second. We saw early this week the announcement from the White House that Anthropic would not be allowed to essentially export its newest models beyond the US's borders, such was the concern effectively over national security.

7:46It suggested to a number of people that there were considerable national sovereignty issues now around AI because AI will be so heavily embedded in government functions. If it is all driven by the US and China, then nation states in Europe had a lot to be worried about. Do you share that concern over national sovereignty and AI? I do think that it is something that we should think about, but I guess I take a more practical approach with this, which is just that I don't think we're going to be able to catch up on frontier models. I don't think any amount of government supercomputers or government funding is going to create a model that's going to be anywhere near competitive with models that we're seeing in the US and from China.

8:32Governments have before tried to catch up on these kind of things, and it just doesn't work. That was Victor Ripabelli, one of the tech CEOs at that meeting. Well, let's pick up on some of that with Thomas Rene, who's the European Commission's spokesman for tech sovereignty. So is the EU stifling innovation with its emphasis on regulation? It's true that we have strong legislation in place, but I think that every CEO around the globe will also agree that, of course, AI offers massive benefits for our citizens, consumers, businesses, but it also comes with a number of risks. and the latest models such as Mithos, for example, from Antropic, may pose certain risks to certain of our strategic sectors.

9:15So we need legislation in place. But once you have that legislation in place, we, of course, want to innovate and to ensure proper AI uptake. And that's what the EU is doing. Yeah, he argues, though, it's the wrong way around. The way that the US does it is that it innovates first, see what happens, because no one can predict exactly the future and the way that AI is going, and then look at ways to rein in any risks or excesses. I mean, is he right on that? Is Europe too quick to regulate and then immediately stifling that innovation? Well, I would frame it the other way around. We put our citizens first and the well-being of our citizens comes first.

9:54And how was the beginning of 2026 marked? It was marked by Grok undressing digitally women and creating child pornography. We do not want to wait for harms to occur before starting to legislate and to tackle these harms. No, we do it the other way around. And then if you look at it from another perspective, if you have clear rules, which is the case in the European Union, and I think we all agree on that, clear rules, make sure that you have proper uptake because suddenly citizens have an increased trust in that legislation. So I do believe that, of course, finding the right balance between regulation and innovation is precisely what ensures proper uptake.

10:35But what does that mean for the thing that you're concerned with, which is tech sovereignty? I mean, the argument goes that because the US and indeed China have been able to innovate and their so-called frontier models are so far ahead of anyone else's, that Europe can't compete and therefore it's dependent on other people's technology. There is a part of truth, and this is precisely what we're tackling now from the Commission's point of view. Why? We have just now offered a tech sovereignty package because it's true that in certain strategic sectors, Europe may be behind if we don't take immediate action.

11:14And this is the case not only for artificial intelligence, but also for the semiconductor supply chain, for example. There is no digital if you don't have chips. So, of course, there are a certain number of concerns that we have to address. We're doing it. But in other parts of the world, including the two areas that you have just mentioned, in China and the US, they start also to think about tackling risks. And this is something that was already done in Europe. But do you think that Europe has missed the boat? I mean, it's all very well to say, you know, we've got a tech sovereignty package and we're looking at it now.

11:45But the thing is, they are so far ahead that Europe is never going to be able to catch up, is it? No, Europe is not. It's not late. AI is such a new technology. The race has just started. I truly believe that Europe can still win this race. We have 450 million consumers in Europe. At the moment, though, I mean, I don't think you disagree that Europe in many ways has to rely on the US and its AI companies. Is the US a reliable partner, given what we saw happen at the weekend when the Trump administration suddenly announced those restrictions on two anthropic models? Yes, the US has and remains a reliable partner, a trusted partner.

12:26And we truly believe that these risks emerging now with these new super powerful models cannot be tackled in isolation. They have to be tackled with our like-minded partners. And here, Europe and the UK come first. Like-minded partners. I mean, are the EU and the US like-minded partners at this point? Yes, absolutely. We work hand-in-hand with the US. We'll continue doing that. And of course, at the same time, Europe has to wake up. Europe needs to step up and be able to decide on its own terms. Can I just ask you one sort of final, more philosophical question about the future of AI? And I just wonder whether you sit in the debate about whether it's good for humanity or bad for humanity.

13:11I mean, we've had those well-publicized warnings, including from Geoffrey Hinton, often called the godfather of AI. Well, it can write its own code and soon it'll be able to operate autonomously. Does that pose an existential threat to humanity, do you think? No, we're definitely living a new revolution. It's the AI revolution. Today, it's not a question of do we want to fully embrace it or not. I think everyone around the globe will have to live with this technology and it has a lot of benefits to offer. So definitely, we want to use AI, we want to promote AI, we want to encourage AI uptake, but all of this has to be done in a responsible way.

13:51And that was Thomas Renier, the European Commission's spokesman for tech sovereignty. You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.

14:14This is James Menendez for News Out Live from the BBC. Now, even if you can't remember the names of all the seven wonders of the ancient world, and who can, it's enough for us to note for this next interview that five of them have been either partly or wholly brought down by earthquakes. One of them, though, the Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt, has survived tremors and quakes over thousands of years, almost entirely intact, even as other pyramids in the area have suffered damage. So how? Well, scientists have been looking into its remarkable resilience and they think they know why, and it's all to do with vibrations.

14:49Professor Mohamed El-Gabri is a seismologist at Egypt's National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics, part of the team behind the new research. When we are studying how this building has survived the earthquakes, it's important to think about what's the technology at that time. They didn't have our current technologies of modeling and doing designs, but they did their own design. They did a very robust design. So at the beginning, it was choosing the ground which they built on. and it's very interesting to look to when they built. They didn't build near to the Nile where you have the soil.

15:29They built it on a higher plateau with a strong limestone bedrock. They built it as a massive architecture. It's very, very special if you look to the architecture of a pyramid. You don't find buildings with a pyramid style. It's very rare. It has a very wide base and it's thinning out until at the top. it's almost zero. So a wide base which gives it stability and as you say it's built on rock and not on sand or clay or anything that might make it more fragile and what about inside? What about the structure inside? Usually in any building when we measure how this building is vibrating it's when we are going higher levels it means it vibrates more because it's connected from the ground and fix it to the ground.

16:20And when you go higher, it's more free to move. But what was interesting, we found that it's very true. It's increasing in movement until we approached the famously called pressure relief chambers, which is the chambers above the king chamber, which mainly was used to relieve the loads because the king chamber is in one third of the height of the pyramid. So above it is two-thirds of the height. So it has a lot of loads and it was designed in order to relieve this load, to redirect the weight of the stones away from the ceiling of the room. But in addition to that, this pressure room has interestingly decreases the amplifications of ground movement.

17:11So when we measured, it was increasing until the king's chamber. And inside these rooms, it has degraded rapidly. So it dampens the vibrations. And you tested this by what? Looking at the way vibrations affected different parts of the pyramid. Is that how you work this out? Exactly. Was this intentional by the Egyptians that built the pyramid? Did they know what they were doing? Or was it just a happy accident, do you think? We cannot say they didn't know what they are doing because they did a very magnificent structure. But if we are thinking whether they were doing this in purpose for earthquake resilience, I don't think so.

17:50But what I believe, they wanted to build a building that it survives a time, survive any hazards. So they built it very strong. They built it robustly. They used all their knowledge or their trials, because it's very important to think that Ufuh Pyramid is not the first pyramid. We have many pyramids before this pyramid, which has some sort of partial failing. So they tested their designs several times until they came to the optimum design, which we can see today. It's fascinating to wonder whether the builders of the pyramid, I mean, what they would think if you were able to tell them, look, your pyramid is going to be still standing in nearly 5 ,000 years.

18:36It's really amazing. They would be amazed, wouldn't they, I think? Yeah, yeah, I believe so. Professor Mohamed Al-Gabri of Egypt's National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics. How has America shaped the world? I'm Asma Khalid, host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. As the United States marks its 250-year anniversary, we've been exploring the surprising and often hidden ways the US has shaped the modern world. And today on the show, we answer your questions about this moment and what to expect in the years to come. From the BBC, it's the United States at 250. Listen to the global story on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

19:24Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. But what policy changes should investors be watching. Washington Wise is an original podcast from Charles Schwab that unpacks the stories making news in Washington right now and how they may affect your finances and portfolio. Listen at schwab.com slash Washington Wise. That's schwab.com slash Washington Wise.

19:54Welcome back to NewsHour, to the Football World Cup now. There was disappointment for Iraq who were making only their second World Cup appearance 40 years after their first. They lost 4-1 to Norway. But despite the result, the country's fans were still filled with pride. The BBC's Sarah Menai has been speaking to US-based Iraqi fan Stephen Nabil. Despite the score, we are defeated as soccer fans we lost. However, as Iraqis, we have won. To see the Iraqi national team finally join the World Cup after four decades of absence, It was a great moment. It was a healing moment for Iraqis. The Iraqi crowds numbered in thousands and thousands came from all across America and Canada and even Europe.

20:40I've met so many Iraqis today that came from Iraq directly. We finally made the news for our goalie saves, for our scores and goals and shots, not for bullets and weapons and politics and wars and sanctions. We finally made the global news for something that unites the Iraqis, something the Iraqis love. You've said it, Stephen. Iraqis traveled from afar to watch this first game, including yourself. I flew from California, which is six hours across directly. So it was definitely a long flight. And it was joyful because half of our plane was filled with Iraqi fans to the point that the airlines welcomed the Iraqi fans and cheered for us.

21:23There were moments, there was so many kids that were from Iraqi origins, that were born in Canada and America, that today was the first time they experienced being in Iraq. They were super happy. They were super excited. They wore the jerseys with their parents. They celebrated with their fellow countrymen from all over the world. And it was a joyful moment. I was really happy because I wanted such kids, and including my son, he's only five, George, I wanted them to have the first memory of Iraq, a memory of sports, memory of competition, of something peaceful, not the memories that their parents and grandparents had escaped or had lived through, which were wars and destruction and things like that.

22:06So definitely it was a joyful moment to start a new chapter for the generation that experienced national unity, national symbolism, and it was beautiful. And speaking of that generation, many on the pitch, many of these Iraqi players were born during the US occupation of the country. How important And was it for them as well, you think, to come here to the US and to represent their country on the biggest stage of all? We're people that love to dance and sing and act and play sports. And finally, we get to write our own chapter to say to the world, this is who we are. We're beautiful, wonderful people that want to dance with you, talk to you, give you a hug, share the world with you.

22:50and this is who we are. Let us show you who we are, not what somebody else painted about us falsely or negatively. And yesterday we were dancing in the streets with the Scottish fans. It was beautiful to see the Iraqis and Scots dancing together and that's what football does. It unites the world and truly that's what's happening right now. Iraqi fan Stephen Nabil there. You're listening to the BBC.

23:24This is the BBC World Service in London. You're listening to NewsHour and I'm James Menendez. Now, we were talking on the programme yesterday about the threat to the UK from Russia in light of the revelations that Russia was behind a series of arson attacks on property belonging to the Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Well, against that backdrop, imagine then that it's Tuesday lunchtime. You're in a small leisure yacht making your way through the channel off the south coast of England and a Russian warship hoves into view through the fog. There is perhaps a danger of a collision and the warship ends up firing a series of warning shots at the yacht to make it change course.

24:01Well, that was the alarming scenario facing retired British couple Alan and Jane Kelvey yesterday, who've been telling us the story of their alarming encounter. We were sailing from Limington to Cherbourg and as we were coming about halfway across the channel, we saw in the distance a vessel it wasn't showing on our AIS so it didn't we couldn't identify it and as we got closer we saw that it was a warship and as we got closer still we saw it had credit lettering along the side we were about five three four or five four or five hundred meters off it was on our starboard side it was motionless it was not adrift and it was holding station we were sailing as we approached they gave out five blasts on their horn which means have you seen us we immediately turned two degrees to port so that they could see we'd made a deliberate change of course which meant we had seen them and then a minute or so later they gave another five blasts on their horn immediately followed by four to five small arms fire that was wasn't aimed at us it was a warning fire that went up in the air we believe were you afraid what did you do alan had to stay on the helm because he was he was steering i crouched down on the floor and tried to get my lovely canvas hood to protect me we didn't really do a lot we didn't figure that we were likely to actually get shot at but we did we oh as soon as the warning shots came on we put the engine on and went 90 degrees to port and got way out of it yeah but so how close were you to this warship and you could see it was a warship yes we could see it was a warship we could see the credit letters it had no flag it wasn't showing on ais which is which is the automate automatic id system yes but normally when you're sailing across a channel If a convoy of warships goes past, you get a message on VHS saying, give a one nautical mile exclusion zone or something like that.

26:16But there was nothing. They didn't radio us. They could have seen us coming from miles off because we were displaying our AIS. Alan and Jane Kelvey. Well, the Russian Defence Ministry says the Admiral Grigorovich, the frigate that fired those warning shots, was acting correctly. a pre-emptive salver it said because the bright future the yacht was on a dangerous course efforts to establish radio contact had failed kevin rowlands is with the british defense and security think tank russies a former head of the royal navy's strategic studies center how alarming does he think this incident was of course anytime shots are fired at sea or on land it is alarming it would be especially alarming if you're on the receiving end and weren't expecting it however However, this kind of thing is standard practice for warships around the world if they feel threatened or if a vessel is coming towards them.

27:08I mean, the couple on the yacht said they turned away to make it clear that they had seen the warship and that they were not on a collision course. Why was that not enough? When we're at sea, we have these things called the rules of the road. So it's like the highway code for ships at sea. And any situation, one ship would be the stand-on vessel, so they would have to maintain the course and speed. And the other ship, the other vessel, would be the give way vessel, and they would need to turn to avoid collision. Now, I haven't seen the exact layout of the ships and the yacht, but I did read a report from the couple that said that they turned about two degrees.

27:46Now, for a ship, two degrees is nothing. I would expect a turn to be very bold and very obvious to anyone watching on a different ship, and that may be 30, 60, 90 degrees. I mean, we're looking at the incident in isolation, but does it look different when you look at the context of the last few days? British troops boarding a tanker belonging to Russia's shadow fleet. We've also had the story that we covered on the programme yesterday about arson attacks on the property of the prime minister. Given all that, is it possible that these shots were also designed to send some sort of signal? I think absolutely.