“Artificial intelligence (AI) will be unleashed across the UK to deliver a decade of national renewal” , has announced the UK government. Data centres, the energy-hungry, water-guzzling facilities powering AI, have sprung up at an unprecedented pace across the country. The UK now ranks third globally for data centres, behind only the US and Germany.… Continue reading Britain’s Data Centre Frenzy amid the Climate Emergency
Recently, we have been hearing everything about AI: from its impact on the planet and the environment to the jobs it may or may not substitute one day. While designers and artists fight the impeccable designs of AI, another question arises: when someone needs human contact, will AI be able to respond? A close source… Continue reading If you needed someone to talk to, would you talk to AI?
An AI-powered “brain decoder” can now read your thoughts with surprising accuracy. Scientists from the University of Texas at Austin have achieved a groundbreaking feat: translating people’s brain activity, including their unspoken thoughts, into actual speech. This development, detailed in a study published in Nature, marks a significant advancement in brain-computer interface (BCI) technology. Traditionally,… Continue reading Mind-reading technology has arrived
The New Financial Union of 3 Tech Giants Michael Burry of ‘Big Short’ fame has made a $845 million bet against the American AI industry. The question is, why? Well, for a number of years, analysts have alleged that the AI industry is vastly overvalued and exists in a financial bubble, and this month has… Continue reading AI Bubble Hits Apex as Michael Burry Shorts the Industry
In the age of digital assistants, chatbots, and generative AI, we’ve all had the occasional encounter with a machine that seems almost human—until it inevitably messes up your grocery list or misinterprets your sarcasm. But here’s a question you might not have considered: should we treat these non-sentient entities with the same manners we use… Continue reading Should you say please and thank you to AI?
Try talking to yourself without opening your mouth, by simply saying words internally. What if you could search the internet like that—and get an answer back? In the first live public demo of his new technology, TED Fellow Arnav Kapur introduces AlterEgo: a wearable AI device with the potential to let you silently talk to… Continue reading AlterEgo: a device that lets you speak with your mind
A group of researchers studied 15 months of human mobility movement data taken from 1.5 million people and concluded that just four points in space and time were sufficient to identify 95% of them, even when the data weren’t of excellent quality. That was back in 2013. Nearly ten years on, surveillance technologies permeate all aspects of… Continue reading Not Big Brother, but close: a surveillance expert explains some of the ways we’re all being watched, all the time
The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Anxious Generation delivers an urgent call for action. Haidt argues that the evidence is in. Teenagers’ widespread use of smartphones is causing a mental health crisis. Individual, collective and legislative action is required to limit their smartphone access. Haidt begins his book with an allegory. Imagine someone… Continue reading Have smartphones created an ‘anxious generation’? Jonathan Haidt sounds the alarm
Electric vehicles are often seen as the panacea to cutting emissions – and air pollution – from transport. Is this view correct? Yes – but only once uptake accelerates. Despite the recent boom in EV purchases, they’re still a tiny minority of the cars on the road. We would get more immediate benefit by focusing on electrifying… Continue reading Electric vehicles will start to cut emissions and improve air quality in our cities – but only once they’re common
Fake photography is nothing new. In the 1910s, British author Arthur Conan Doyle was famously deceived by two school-aged sisters who had produced photographs of elegant fairies cavorting in their garden. Today it is hard to believe these photos could have fooled anybody, but it was not until the 1980s an expert named Geoffrey Crawley… Continue reading AI image generation is advancing at astronomical speeds. Can we still tell if a picture is fake?
