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British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak delivers a speech on AI at Royal Society, Carlton House Terrace on Oct. 26, 2023 in London, England.

Peter Nicholls | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday warned of the risks of artificial intelligence, ahead of a summit in which the U.K. hopes to take a global role in shaping how safety around the technology is designed.

Sunak said in a speech that AI “will bring a transformation as far reaching as the industrial revolution, the coming of electricity, or the birth of the internet” — while adding that there are risks attached to that proposition.

The prime minister said that AI could make it easier to build chemical or biological weapons and that criminals could exploit the technology.

“In the most unlikely but extreme cases, there is even the risk that humanity could lose control of AI completely through the kind of AI sometimes referred to as super intelligence,” Sunak said.

Sunak’s speech came as the British government gears up to host the AI Safety Summit next week. The event aims to bring together countries and companies to discuss the risks around AI. It will take place in Bletchley Park — the home of the codebreakers who cracked the code that ended World War II.

On Wednesday, the U.K. government released a report called “Capabilities and risks from frontier AI,” in which it explains frontier AI as “highly capable general-purpose AI models that can perform a wide variety of tasks and match or exceed the capabilities present in today’s most advanced models.”

This definition includes some of the large language models that underpin applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard chatbot.

Sunak announced that the U.K. will set up the world’s first AI safety institute to evaluate and test new types of AI in order understand the risks.

At the AI Safety Summit next week, Sunak said he will propose to set up a “truly global expert panel nominated by the countries and organizations attending to publish a state of AI science report.”

The U.S. and China are broadly seen as the two leaders in AI, serving as home to some of the world’s leading companies in the space. The U.K. has some notable AI firms, such as Alphabet-owned DeepMind, as well as strong tech-geared universities. But Britain is seen as a distant third contender, behind China and the U.S.

Britain is trying to position itself as a leader in the area of AI safety and is trying to lead the charge to police the technology.

Sunak said China has been invited to the summit next week.

“Now, I know there are some who will say that [China] should have been excluded. But there can be no serious strategy for AI without at least trying to engage all of the world’s leading AI powers,” Sunak said.

China and the U.S. has been in engaged in a battle for technology supremacy, with Washington looking to restrict Beijing’s access to key technologies related to AI. Meanwhile, China has been introducing a slew of regulations around AI over the past year and a half, as Beijing looks to keep a close watch on the development of the technology.

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Amazon’s ad business grew 19% in first quarter, topping estimates

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Amazon’s ad business grew 19% in first quarter, topping estimates

A woman cleans the store window of the Amazon house after activists sprayed paint on its logo during a protest on the opening day of the 55th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 20, 2025.

Yves Herman | Reuters


Amazon reported a 19% increase in online ad revenue in the first quarter, beating analysts’ estimates.

Ad sales climbed to $13.92 billion, while analysts on average were expecting $13.74 billion, according to StreetAccount.

The numbers were contained in Amazon’s first-quarter earnings report. The company reported total first-quarter sales of $155.67 billion, compared to Wall Street projections of $155.04 billion.

Although Amazon’s online ad business represents a fraction of overall sales, it has emerged in recent years to become the third-biggest platform in the global digital advertising market, behind only Alphabet and Meta.

Online advertising is a particular area of focus for investors due to economic uncertainty and increasing tensions between the U.S. and China over trade. While President Donald Trump’s China tariffs will likely affect Amazon’s core retail business, the company’s online ad unit could also feel some pain.

So far, tech companies with online ad businesses have reported solid first-quarter earnings, but warned of potentially tougher times later in the year.

Meta reported stronger-than-expected first-quarter earnings this week, but said ad sales in the Asia-Pacific region came in at $8.22 billion for the quarter, trailing analysts’ estimates of $8.42 billion.

The company’s finance chief Susan Li said during an earnings call that “Asia-based e-commerce exporters” have slowed their online ad spending likely due to the de minimis trade loophole ending this Friday.

When Alphabet reported first-quarter earnings last Thursday, it revealed that ad sales grew 8.5% year over year to $66.89 billion and YouTube ad revenue increased 10% to $8.93 billion. But Alphabet executives told analysts that it expects headwinds to its Asia-Pacific-focused advertising business.

Snap on Tuesday said it had “experienced headwinds to start the current quarter,” which resulted in the company saying it would not provide guidance.

Last week, Microsoft reported its latest quarterly earnings and said search and news advertising sales, minus payments to its affiliates, grew 15% year over year to $449 million.

Reddit also reported first-quarter earnings on Thursday that beat on sales and guidance. The company’s first-quarter sales soared 61% year over year to $392 million.

Although Reddit’s second-quarter guidance topped analysts’ projections, CEO Steve Huffman said there is some economic shakiness.

“Ever-shifting macro environments like these create both challenges and opportunities,” Huffman wrote in a letter to shareholders. “We’ve grown through challenging times before — people need connection and information just as much in uncertain times.”

Pinterest reports earnings on May 8.

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Apple has managed tariffs so far, but Cook says it’s tough to predict beyond June

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Apple has managed tariffs so far, but Cook says it's tough to predict beyond June

Apple CEO Tim Cook, after nearly a month of anticipation from investors, on Thursday finally revealed how Apple was navigating the Trump administration’s tariffs.

The company only saw a “limited impact” on tariffs between January and the end of March, Cook told investors on an earnings call for the company’s second quarter results.

For the current quarter which ends in June, Apple is predicting about $900 million in additional costs for those tariffs — assuming nothing changes, Cook said. That surprised analysts who said on the call that they expected the costs to be higher.

The vast majority of Apple’s products are “currently not subject” to Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, Cook said. But beyond June, he didn’t say much.

“I don’t want to predict the future because I’m not sure what will happen with tariffs,” said Cook, adding that “it’s very difficult to predict beyond beyond June.”

Apple doesn’t usually give a lot of details or guidance beyond the current quarter, but investors didn’t like Thursday’s lack of clarity. Apple shares fell as much as 4% in extended trading on Thursday despite the company reporting results that beat Wall Street expectations for revenue and showed strong sales growth for iPads and Mac computers.

“As we look ahead, we remain confident,” Cook said.

Apple’s uncertainty highlights how even a company with a reputation for world-class operations can get whacked by the unpredictability of the Trump administration’s shifting tariff rates and dates.

Cook, who built his reputation in Silicon Valley as Apple’s operations guru, discussed how the company has dealt with the tariffs to minimize their impact so far on Thursday. He praised his old division on a call with analysts.

“‘l’ll just say that the operational team has done an incredible job around optimizing the the supply chain and the inventory,” he said.

Apple is currently sourcing American-bound products from India and Vietnam, Cook said. Those countries currently have 10% tariffs on them, and the company is sourcing Apple computers for rest of the world from China, which the Trump administration has hit with a 145% tariff rate.

Cook also said that Apple had built up inventory ahead of the tariffs, which would be reported as manufacturing purchase obligations in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Cook said there was no “obvious evidence” that consumers were buying more Apple products ahead of tariffs.

“We do expect the majority of iPhones sold in the U.S. will have India as their country of origin,” Cook said. “Vietnam will be the country of origin for almost all iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and AirPods products sold in the U.S.”

Apple will still pay higher 145% tariffs on some Chinese imports for AppleCare, its extended warranty program, and accessories, Cook said.

One issue for forecasting tariffs going forward is that both Vietnam and India are in line to get hit with hefty tariffs on imported goods as soon as July.

Trump previously targeted both countries under his “reciprocal tariffs” on April 2, but a week later, he paused the tariffs for 90 days. Apple expanded its supply chain to those countries in recent years as a hedge for its business, but the Vietnam and India strategy won’t work if Trump’s tariffs ultimately take effect.

Cook also mentioned the possibility that technology products such as semiconductors might receive additional tariffs under a process called a Section 232 Investigation.

Apple is not the only big tech company to get rattled by the Trump administration’s tariffs.

Amazon finance chief Brian Olsavsky said Thursday that Amazon would offer a wider range of guidance because of tariff uncertainty, and he also alluded to the possibility of weakening consumer demand. Microsoft raised Xbox prices on Thursday, despite tariffs coming up just once on the company’s Wednesday earnings call.

Apple didn’t offer guidance for its profitable Services division on Thursday, but offered the same kind of top-line forecast that it has in previous quarters. Apple expects overall revenue to grow “low to mid-single digits” on an annual basis during the current quarter. Apple reported $85.78 billion in sales during the June quarter last year.

And at least during that quarter, Apple investors will know what to expect.

WATCH: Deepwater’s Gene Munster digs into Apple post-earnings

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gets first salary raise in a decade

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gets first salary raise in a decade

Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang delivers his keystone speech ahead of Computex 2024 in Taipei on June 2, 2024. 

Sam Yeh | AFP | Getty Images

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has made tens of billions of dollars in recent years from his stake in the chipmaker, but he’s getting his first salary increase in a decade.

Huang’s base salary rose to $1.5 million, a 49% increase from 2024, according to a proxy filing with the SEC on Thursday. His variable cash also went up by $1 million, or 50%, from the 2024 fiscal year. Stock awards grew to $38.8 million, bringing total pay to $49.9 million.

The compensation committee “believed this was appropriate in consideration of internal pay equity with the base salaries” of other top executives, the filing said, and “it represented Mr. Huang’s first base salary increase in 10 years.”

Nvidia is in the midst of a boom that’s turned it into one of the most valuable companies in the world, thanks to its graphics processing units (GPUs) that power the most powerful artificial intelligence models and workloads. Revenue in the 2025 fiscal year jumped 114% to $130.5 billion, the company reported in February.

The company’s stock price increased more than ninefold between the end of 2022 and the end of last year. Huang’s roughly 3.5% stake is currently worth about $94 billion.

Huang’s 2025 pay also included $3.5 million in residential security and consultation fees and driver services, the company said in the filing. In the previous year, residential security and consultation fees for Huang totaled $2.2 million. 

Google in a recent filing said it paid $8.27 million for CEO Sundar Pichai’s personal security and travel, representing a 22% increase from the year prior.

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