AI News - March 2026

An overview of interesting AI News for the Yate and Sodbury U3A's monthly AI News meeting held on March 12th 2026 (meetings are second Thursday of month, 1400-1500, St John's Church Centre, Wickwar Road, Chipping Sodbury, UK - all welcome). Note that this is a summary to act as background as the topics are discussed in detail at the meeting itself. We sometimes have extended meetings where we demonstrate other AI products and services.

The 'Introduction to AI' course we run in Chipping Sodbury now uses these News sessions to replace the original classes 5 and 6 as the topics in them (humanoid robots, self driving cars, ethics, futures) are now 'news' not 'distant futures'.

[0] The Future looks interesting

In the film Idiocracy people evolved to become less smart. In the Matrix people were plugged into a virtual world. In the Terminator the robots might kill you. Elon Musk responded "100%" to this diagram.

[1] The AlphaGo 10 year Anniversary

Remembered particularly for the creative 'Move 37' and what it implied for AI's future.

[2a] METR Task Doubling Forecast 129 days

One of the most interesting measures of AI capability is the METR series which basically tracks AI's ability to complete typical human tasks by the length of time humans take to to achieve them. At the moment the best AI might manage a 14 hour task. Now see what happens after a year if that period continues to double every 129 days!

[2b] Software Entrepreneur comments on his company's 'AI Agent' Use

How 'AI Agents' completely change the economics of writing software by both speeding up development and drastically reducing cost.

[2c] Gemini 3.1 Flash is released to give fast results

Speed comes at a price though, in terms of reduced accuracy. The demonstration remains very impressive though, and the improvement over the previous Gemini Flash model is huge in both speed of completion and accuracy.

[3a] Tesla's Cybercab production ramps up - but will they be allowed on the roads

April is the start date for volume production and observers have seen 25 Cybercab vehicles around the factory, being used for testing and crash safety tests. Meanwhile there are a limited number in the field trials. Will Tesla be able to bring very large numbers into use when they come off the production line?

[3b] Figure says this robot is acting autonomously in clearing up a room

You will be able to upgrade your robotic vacuum cleaner to a fully trained humanoid cleaner if Figure succeed in their mission, just one sector they are targetting.

[3c] Investors muse about Tesla and generalised robotics

"The concept of owning the full stack on an infinite labour machine that can rebuild the earth and essentially create new industries from the ground up is probably the biggest theoretical win that any company could have ..." Chris Camillo

[4] Samsung Galaxy now has Perplexity embedded

Apparently "Hey Plex" are the magic words to summon AI Perplexity to help you with whatever you desire.

[5] Anthropic fall out with USA Department of War

Anthropic wished to impose terms that prevented the use of Claude in autonomous drones etc (i.e. no human in the loop situations) and also use for surveillance of civilian populations. Whereas this sounds sensible, those engaged in preparing for warfare hate the idea of having to consult lawyers. Meanwhile OpenAI and X seem to have reached agreement, while Anthropic has seen many cancelled government contracts (and are taking legal action about that).

[6] Google introduce Gemini Nano Banana 2

Ever wanted to make an image that reflects the actual weather in your chosen location? Probably not, but that and other advanced features are now available with Nano Banana 2.

[7] UK Company Wayve raise USD 1.5 Billion for their Autonymous Vehicle solution

There are many auto manufacturers who see that they will need to offer autonymous driving but need someone to do the hard work for them. Wayve offers a potential solution, though the obstacles to integrate it to existing models remain tremendous.

[8] Claude solves problem for mathematician Donald Knuth

There are many reports of AI tools making substantial progress in solving mathematics problems. This one seems significant because of the high reputation of the mathematician crediting Claude.

[9a] Claude capability knocks millions from IBM's value

This was just one of a number of significant falls in the prices of shares of well known software companies as Anthropic released tools for Claude that solved previously difficult problems in software development, in this case rewriting COBOL based software.

[9b] Anthropic chart shows AI capable alreqady of taking over many jobs

These are their findings in a more readable style than the one they used originally.

[10a] Anthropic want to talk to us about where AI is going

They just launched The Anthropic Institute. "... society is shortly going to need to confront many massive challenges. How will powerful AI systems reshape our jobs and economies? ... What kinds of threats will they magnify or introduce?"

[10b] AI researcher says we are 'flying blind'

AI researcher Connor Leahy discusses the perils of our rapid progress in building AI

[10c] AI - What Happens Now?

New York Times writer Exra Klein says we have to switch from "What Happens If" to "What Happens Now"

[11] BBC starts using a live AI Avatar from RunwayML

Runway Characters combine an intelligent AI with a live character avatar. The BBC is using one in a show, though they have carefully avoided anything too lifelike.

[19] OpenClaw runs on a MacMini - PicoClaw on a USD20 chip

Most AI tools of the future will run on small local devices, of which this is an early extreme example.

[20] Humanoids learning how to mimic human expressions

Before long it wil be difficult to tell who is human and who is a humanoid