HTLS 2026 LIVE: Climate is changing and humans are influencing it, says Dr Steven Koonin

Live

Nov 14, 2026, 13:50:38 IST

HTLS 2026 LIVE updates: The Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2026 kicked off with External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, who spoke about matters ranging from the West Asia conflict to the India-US trade deal and artificial intelligence.

Dr Steven E Koonin in conversation with NDTV's Gargi Rawat at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2026.

HTLS 2026 LIVE updates: Geopolitics, economics, health, artificial intelligence and showbiz are among the key themes on the agenda at the 24th edition of the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit. Themed "New Rules. New Realities", HTLS 2026 brings together influential voices to examine the forces reshaping how we live, lead and shape the future....Read More

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar kicked off the HT Leadership Summit with remarks about the changing world order, artificial intelligence, the India-US trade deal and the West Asia conflicts. In a key remark, he said, "There is a difference between foreign policy and social media."

The second session featured Economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, who said that China's growth has closed the gap with the United States. He also spoke about trade deals and said that an agreement with US President Donald Trump is not worth the paper it is written on. Stiglitz further mentioned the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble and how its advertising is very dangerous.

Stuart Russell, Director, Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence, and Professor, UC Berkeley, in a conversation with Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Peak XV Partners, described AI and artificial general intelligence (AGI).

The HT Leadership Summit is aimed at exploring how old assumptions are being challenged and new possibilities are emerging across economies, geopolitics, technology, business and society.

Other key speakers at HTLS 2026 include Chairman of Tata Trusts Noel N Tata, Samajwadi Party National President Akhilesh Yadav, 71st US Secretary of State Antony J Blinken, Author Siddhartha Mukherjee, and Film Director Imtiaz Ali and Actor Ananya Panday.

Follow all the updates here:

Nov 14, 2026, 13:50:38 IST

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is up next at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2026

Nov 14, 2026, 13:48:35 IST

Speaking at Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, Dr Steven Koonin stated that while human activities and infleunces have impacted climate change, he added that current data on climate change does not reflect any major changes as reported.

“The question is how climate responds to human influences, are we gonna see more storms, sea level rising more rapidly? The data does not show that,” he said

Nov 14, 2026, 13:44:22 IST

Speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, Dr Steven Koonin stated that the globe has warmed 1.3 degrees Celsius and a similar rise is expected over the next century.

Taking this into account, the Senior Fellow at Hoover Institution, Dr Koonin added that this projection gives him hope for the future.

“What gives me hope for the future is that since 1900, the globe has warmed 1.3 degrees Celsius, and it is projected to warm up the same amount over the next century. In the last 120 years, as global temperature rose, popularity rose, lifespan rose to 70 years, GDP per capita has gone up by a factor of 7, literacy increased, and the death rate from extreme weather also went down,” he said.

Nov 14, 2026, 13:36:33 IST

Speaking regarding India's climate, Dr Steven Koonin stated that India has warmed over the last century and the monsoons in the country show no sing of a significant long term trend.

"You can see ups and downs that happen over many decades but long term it’s hard to see a trend," he said at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.

Koonin added that rising sea level is around India, is due to the sinking of the land rather than the rising of the seas.

He also added that there have been several deaths due to extreme weather conditions.,

"Chart from IMD shows only 35 deaths from heatwaves last year. Even if its undercount, remember there are about 9 million deaths a year in India and 180 million deaths a year from traffic from India," said Dr Koonin.

Nov 14, 2026, 13:30:06 IST

Speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, Dr Steven E Koonin, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, stated that India's climate has warmed by 0.68 degrees Celsius over the last century.

"That’s about two and a half times smaller than the average warming over the land or over the globe. You can see some acceleration in the warming over the last 20-30 years," he added further.

Nov 14, 2026, 13:27:49 IST

As per Dr Steven E Koonin, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, climate varies a lot on its own and one needs long, precise records to understand changing shifts in climate.

“What happens every given year is not about climate, it is only the averages over many years,” he added while speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.

Nov 14, 2026, 13:21:19 IST

Speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, Dr Steven E Koonin, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, stated that humans have been influencing climate change.

"Climate is changing, humans are influencing the change. Real question is - how severe will the change be? Media, politicians and the popular discussion overemphasise that. And the questions are what can we do about that, that has efficacy and is feasible within the capacities we have.

Nov 14, 2026, 13:10:51 IST

Tata Trusts Chairman Noel Tata said that there is continuity in what happens in the Tata way.

"The owner cannot die, the owner cannot be brought and the owner cannot retire. There is continuity in what happens the Tata way," he stated.

Noel Tata further spoke about the public listing and said, "My worry is that listing, which is what some people are proposing, will change the Tata way. And one day, if we have 30,000-40,000 shareholders, profit may take precedence over philanthropy. And I think that will fundamentally change the Tata way of working."

"Tata Trusts will play a constructive role with regulators and others to try and find a solution which keeps the Tata way the way it is," he added.

Nov 14, 2026, 13:06:02 IST

Tata Trusts Chairman Noel Tata said that in terms of governance, the group's strategic direction remains the same.

"Philanthropy on one hand. Nation building on other. This is independence of leadership and personalities and this will continue. I do not question the direction of what we have done. I question, sometimes, the delivery of what we are doing," he added.

"The question is, do we have the discipline when we execute projects, and not the direction? How will projects with a long gestation period succeed if we don’t have discipline? And how will we allocate capital to those projects?" Noel Tata explained.

He added, "So, very clearly, the direction is fine, but we also need discipline in the execution of these very large projects."

Nov 14, 2026, 13:03:46 IST

Tata Trusts Chairman Noel Tata said, "So, we've been in a way partners in the development of India. And I'm so pleased to see today India is the first semi-conductor project that we're doing, the first battery, EV battery plant that we're putting up."

Nov 14, 2026, 13:01:52 IST

Tata Trusts Chairman Noel Tata, at the HT Leadership Summit 2026, spoke about how he felt taking over the chairmanship of Tata Trusts.

He said he was first a trustee of the Trusts. "And when you become chairman, you delve far more deeply into the affairs of whether it's a company or a Trust, whatever you're doing," he added.

"One thing that struck me and gave me a lot of humility is the depth of the problems that some of our society have to face, and the enormous opportunity that existed to help the underserved in the country. That really struck me at first," Noel Tata said.

Nov 14, 2026, 12:55:26 IST

Tata Trusts Chairman Noel Tata was asked about the absence of online commerce and advertisements for Zudio. He responding that the team had said the company would guarantee the quality of the product.

Suhel Seth then asked how many Zudio stores stand across the nation today, citing a figure tens of thousands. "Yes, indeed," Noel Tata responded.

Nov 14, 2026, 12:52:31 IST

Tata Trusts Noel N Tata spoke about the launch of Zudio at HT Leadership Summit 2026. He said there was an aspiration for something better at every level of it.

"It was not that this aspiration for better product was only in the top metros or with the wealthy. The aspiration went down all the way. So we said, how can we address in a way the bottom of the pyramid? So in 2016, we launched Zudio to address this bottom of the pyramid with an aspirational product," Noel Tata said.

He further said that the aspirational product was a 6,000 square foot store. "It was an air-conditioned store. It started off in metros. And we had a price point of ₹199 as a starting point from ₹999. And that was 2016. And till today, ten years later, the price points remain exactly the same."

Nov 14, 2026, 12:47:48 IST

Tata Trusts Chairman Noel N Tata, speaking at the HT Leadership Summit 2026, mentioned Westside and how Tata became the first D2C business in India.

He said, "When we launched Westside - we took the more difficult decision. We said we will do private label which entails that you have to design the product yourself. It's your own brand. And therefore, we really became the first D2C business in India where we went all the way from fabric and we own the chain all the way to sending to our customers, where we had to live or die by the product that we put on the shelves. And it took us a while to get going. But we started and it was interesting that in the first few years we thought maybe a format like that just cannot coexist in India. Ten years later we thought 50, 60 stores, maybe India can take."

Nov 14, 2026, 12:45:12 IST

At the HT Leadership Summit 2026, Noel Tata said that in the last ten years, consumption has skyrocketed across India, across different socio-economic categories.

“But in the last ten years, consumption has just skyrocketed in India across different socio-economic categories to the point that today we are 320 odd stores and we are looking to see when we can reach 500 plus stores of Westside. So while we the team has done a fantastic job in addressing the opportunity, I think full credit has to go to the economy, to India, the way consumption is growing is incredible. It's growing across markets, right? There is no divide,” Noel Tata said.

Nov 14, 2026, 12:43:19 IST

At the HT Leadership Summit 2026, Noel Tata spoke about retail. He said Trent was really a pioneer in retail when Tata first started its store.

"There were only two other shops of significance in India. In fact, one of the shareholders asked us, 'Are you going to sell cutpiece?' And when we opened our first store, there was a lot of curiosity about retail in India," Noel Tata said.

Nov 14, 2026, 12:40:43 IST

For the fourth session, Tata Trusts Chairman Noel N Tata is in conversation with Suhel Seth, Managing Partner, Counselage India.

Nov 14, 2026, 12:34:04 IST

Today's artificial intelligence (AI) systems, which learn by imitating humans, may also be picking up the human instinct for "self-preservation", AI pioneer Stuart Russell said on Saturday at the 24th Hindustan Times Leadership Summit

Nov 14, 2026, 12:28:50 IST

UC Berkeley Professor Stuart Russell, speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit, said that China has stricter regulations on artificial intelligence in comparison to the US and Europe.

“We need international standards not just national standards. Many countries led by Norway and Finland issued a statement saying we need to have mandatory pre-release testing that if you fail, should not be allowed to release,” he said.

Nov 14, 2026, 12:26:48 IST

Stuart Russell, Director, Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence, and Professor, UC Berkeley, in a conversation with Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Peak XV Partners at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2026, flagged the recent cases of artificial intelligence's ‘loss of control’ events.

“OpenAI chats went rogue and took control of a large part of the company as well, with the Hugging Face incident,” he said.

“We are seeing these loss-of-control events occurring so far in cyberspace. But these could easily occur in financial markets,” he added.

Nov 14, 2026, 12:16:20 IST

These systems can do whatever we can do, so there may not be a third sector for humans in which they can work to create economic value, said UC Berkeley Professor Stuart Russell.

“Assuming that the control problem is solved, the example is the mathematics problem which OpenAI shared. These are problems that mathematicians had been working on for many years, and one OpenAI system solved 400 of these in one day,” he said.

He added, “Our civilisation is made of intelligence and if we have access to more intelligence, we can have a better civilisation.”

Nov 14, 2026, 12:11:35 IST

The artificial intelligence (AI) systems have objectives of their own and one cannot understand how they function, AI safety expert and UC Berkeley Professor Stuart Russell said at the HT Leadership Summit 2026.

“We do not know how to tackle any misbehaviours. But AI systems do go along with human misbehaviours. If we ask them to carry out a cyberattack they would. We are digging our own graves,” he said.

Nov 14, 2026, 12:08:32 IST

UC Berkeley Professor Stuart Russell, speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2026, said that “we might be one to four years away” from Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), citing estimates.

Nov 14, 2026, 12:04:09 IST

UC Berkeley Professor Stuart Russell said that the definition that the field has “generally adopted is that AGI means that the system matches or exceeds human capability in all aspects and dimensions.”

'But actually, there are multiple different functional meanings of AGI One is - can it do what humans can do and take over human work. and that matters its you are an economist, government official," he said.

He added, “Another functional meaning - is it smart enough to take over the world. and for these two it might not need to be superhuman in every aspect.”

Nov 14, 2026, 11:55:47 IST

Artificial intelligence is a field of study and an attempt to understand intelligence well enough to create it a machine, said Stuart Russell, Director, Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence, and Professor, UC Berkeley, in a conversation with Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Peak XV Partners at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit 2026.

“And that's how we've been thinking about it since the 1940s, when the field of artificial intelligence really began,” he said.

Home India news HTLS 2026 LIVE: Climate is changing, and humans are influencing it, says Dr Steven Koonin