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The handshake refusal heard around the AI world

PLUS: Google's Gemini 3.1 Pro doubles up on reasoning

Zach Mink

February 20, 2026

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. India rolled out the red carpet for the world's AI leaders this week, hoping for a show of unity. What it got instead was Sam Altman and Dario Amodei turning a photo op into an awkward viral moment.

The duo’s hand-hold dodge is peak tech-world absurdity, but underneath the meme is a rivalry between two of the most powerful AI labs that shows no sign of slowing down.

In today’s AI rundown:

The handshake refusal heard around the AI world
Google's Gemini 3.1 Pro doubles up on reasoning
Write viral YouTube scripts with NotebookLM
Corporate giant Accenture ties AI usage to promotions
4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI & ANTHROPIC

🤝 The handshake refusal heard around the AI world

Image source: India AI Impact Summit

The Rundown: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei seemingly refused to hold hands during a group photo with Indian PM Narendra Modi at the India AI Impact Summit — a viral moment symbolizing the clash between the two AI giants.

The details:

Modi pulled tech leaders on stage for a hand-linked chain, lifting arms with Altman and Pichai — with Altman and Amodei awkwardly raising fists instead.
Altman later downplayed the moment, telling reporters he was "confused" when Modi grabbed his hand and he "wasn't sure what was happening.”
The moment follows Anthropic's Super Bowl ad campaign mocking OAI's decision to put ads in ChatGPT, which Altman called "clearly dishonest”.
OAI also hired the creator of AI agent OpenClaw last week, a potential source of contention given Anthropic’s issues with the original OpenClawd name.

Why it matters: If you’ve never seen the series ‘Silicon Valley’, it’s worth a watch to show how prescient it was on the ridiculousness of the tech world. While the moment makes for a viral meme, it also shows the state of affairs between top AI labs — far from the collaboration hoped for from leaders of the most important tech of our time.

TOGETHER WITH AIRIA

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GOOGLE

🧠 Google's Gemini 3.1 Pro doubles up on reasoning

Image source: Google

The Rundown: Google just released Gemini 3.1 Pro, bringing a massive reasoning upgrade, benchmark-topping performance, and overall SOTA capabilities while keeping API pricing identical to its predecessor.

The details:

3.1 Pro scored 77.1% on the ARC-AGI-2 reasoning benchmark, up from 31.1% on Gemini 3 Pro and passing both Opus 4.6 (68.8%) and GPT-5.2 (52.9%).
The model also takes the top spot on benchmarks for science, competitive coding, MCP use, agentic search, and more.
Google positions 3.1 as the core intelligence behind last week's big Deep Think update, now available across the Gemini app, NotebookLM, and dev tools.
Pricing is identical to 3 Pro with the same 1M token context window, coming in cheaper than frontier model options from Anthropic and OpenAI.

Why it matters: After letting Anthropic and OpenAI control the headlines in 2026 so far, Google has answered back in a big way over the past few weeks — first with Deep Think and now sliding back into the ‘world’s top model’ conversation with an impressive 3.1 Pro launch. We expect a counter answer from OpenAI sooner rather than later.

AI TRAINING

✏️ Write viral YouTube scripts with NotebookLM

The Rundown: In this guide, you will learn to use NotebookLM to “watch” YouTube videos for you, then turn them into ideas and scripts for your own videos.

Step-by-step:

Find a long-form YouTube video that you like the structure of. Go to NotebookLM > Create new > Add sources > Websites and paste the link in
Once NotebookLM analyzes it, make sure it’s selected, and prompt: “Reverse engineer the structure of this video. Give me a video outline and 4 video concepts with the same structure for my brand, [brand]”
Select the video concept you like best and instruct GoogleLM to generate a script for that idea. Click Save to note > click the three dots > Export to Docs
Now you have a script in Google Docs that’s ready to record

Pro tip: You can save your best scripts as sources to give NotebookLM a better idea of what you like.

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AI AT WORK

👀 Corporate giant Accenture ties AI usage to promotions

Image source: Lovart / The Rundown

The Rundown: Consulting giant Accenture is now reportedly monitoring weekly AI tool usage for senior employees and tying adoption directly to leadership promotions, in an attempt to bring veteran staff on board with the tech’s rising use in the workplace.

The details:

Three consulting execs told FT that getting senior partners to adopt AI is far harder than with junior staff, a firmwide seniority problem across the industry.
Associate directors aiming for promotions will now have AI tool logins tracked weekly, with usage flagged as a "visible input" to leadership reviews.
Accenture says 550K+ of its 780K staff have gone through AI training, though employees called the AI tools used in-house “broken slop generators”.
CEO Julie Sweet made headlines last year when she said on an earnings call that the firm would “exit” staff who don’t reskill for AI’s rise.

Why it matters: There is some irony in the senior employees being unwilling to adapt to the AI boom at the same time the tech is eating entry-level positions. But the wave of job transformation is here, and not learning AI will be a far more rapid equivalent of resisting the internet when it comes to competing and succeeding at work.

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📰 Everything else in AI today

OpenAI is reportedly nearing a record $100B+ funding round backed by Amazon, SoftBank, Nvidia, and Microsoft, potentially lifting its valuation to over $850B.

Reddit is piloting an AI-powered shopping feature that converts community product recommendations into buyable carousels with pricing and retailer links.

ElevenLabs obtained the first-ever insurance policy covering AI voice agents, with its platform earning a certification that lets enterprises insure AI actions.

AMC Theatres is refusing to screen an AI-created film during its previews, pulling the contest-winning short from its preview lineup before the planned two-week run.

AI industrial startup Emanate launched out of stealth with autonomous revenue agents targeting the U.S.’ $5T industrial supply chain.

COMMUNITY

🤝 Community AI workflows

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader Nic C. in Edinburgh, Scotland:

"I am a teacher at an excellent online school. We use Canvas to deliver our curriculum. I have started to use Gemini to write code for canvas pages so that I can write a lesson in slides, share that with Gemini, and then let the AI build the HTML page.

What is really helpful is that the AI can take info from the presentation and make sure that I am producing a page that ticks all of the school’s prerequisites for Canvas pages or assignments based on the school rubrics."

How do you use AI? Tell us here.