Firm says its RTX Spark PC chip for Microsoft Windows will let AI agents replace the mouse and keyboard
A new front has opened up in the battle for dominance in AI chips, as Nvidia said its latest development could replace the mouse and keyboard in how people use computers.
The $5tn (£3.7tn) US semiconductor company has launched a “superchip” that puts AI capabilities into laptops and desktop computers, a move that will pit it against Intel, Apple, Qualcomm and AMD.
Continue reading...Datacentres used 22% of country’s electricity last year, pushing up household bills, study suggests
Energy demand by datacentres in Ireland has added hundreds of euros to household electricity bills in a pattern that could be replicated across Europe, according to a report.
Ireland’s growing number of datacentres last year used 22% of the country’s electricity, more than all urban homes combined, according to the Central Statistics Office. The equivalent figure in the US and UK is 6%.
Continue reading...Agreement averts strike and shows latest impact of AI boom as two more chipmakers join $1tn club
Employees at Samsung Electronics’ memory chip division are to receive bonuses averaging about £310,000 each through a landmark profit-sharing agreement, as the AI boom drives up chipmakers’ profits.
Fears of a strike at Samsung were averted on Wednesday after two unions for the world’s largest memory chipmaker said 74% of the 62,616 workers who cast their votes had backed the deal.
Continue reading...The US president’s reversal on calling for a safety review of new AI models is a green light for tech’s unchecked power
Only hours before Donald Trump was set to sign a long-awaited executive order on Thursday that would have called for a government safety review of new artificial intelligence models before their release, the president abruptly backed out. Despite growing public backlash to the technology and experts warning new models will pose critical security risks, Trump vowed the US government would not slow down the AI race.
During a meeting with reporters on Thursday, Trump cited both American dominance and competition with China and as his reasoning behind the reversal.
Continue reading...Case attracts widespread attention as example of China balancing enthusiastic adoption of AI with job security
A court in China has ruled in favour of a worker whose company replaced him with artificial intelligence (AI), awarding him more than £28,000 in compensation.
The worker, whose surname is Zhou, joined a tech company in the eastern city of Hangzhou in 2022 as a quality assurance supervisor overseeing large language models used in AI products.
Continue reading...Horticulturalists express alarm after award-winning Matt Keightley launches app that can automate designs
With glasses of champagne sipped among the peonies, Chelsea flower show is generally a friendly and genteel occasion. But this year, the secateurs have been drawn as gardeners clash over the use of AI in designing the exhibits.
Matt Keightley, an award-winning designer who has created gardens for figures including Prince Harry, is using artificial intelligence to design his garden for the prestigious show, held at the Royal Hospital gardens in Chelsea, London, next week.
Continue reading...Revised figures increase fears about how the energy-intensive sites could worsen the climate emergency
The UK government vastly underestimated the climate impact of artificial intelligence, it has emerged, after officials raised their estimate of carbon emissions from the technology by a factor of more than 100.
According to new data quietly published this week, energy use by AI datacentres in the UK could cause the emission of up to 123m tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO₂) – about as much as generated by 2.7 million people – over the next 10 years.
Continue reading...Cursor is aSilicon Valley startup using AI to automate coding as Elon Musk’s firm seeks foothold in the AI market
SpaceX said it has secured an option to either acquire code-generation startup Cursor for $60bn later this year, or pay $10bn for their new partnership, as it pushes deeper into the lucrative market for AI developer tools.
Along with OpenAI and Anthropic, Cursor is one of several Silicon Valley startups that has drawn waves of developers by using artificial intelligence to automate coding, a business where AI companies have found early commercial traction.
Continue reading...AI company says purpose of its Claude Mythos model is to bolster defenses against hacking in common applications
Anthropic on Tuesday said its yet-to-be-released artificial intelligence model called Claude Mythos has proven keenly adept at exposing software weaknesses.
Mythos has laid bare thousands of vulnerabilities in commonly used applications for which no patch or fix exists, prompting the San Francisco-based AI startup to form an alliance with cybersecurity specialists to bolster defenses against hacking and withhold wide distribution.
Continue reading...Alan Turing Institute told by funder to offer better strategy and more value for money after board was reminded of legal duties by watchdog
The UK’s leading AI research institute has been told to make “significant” changes by its main source of taxpayer funding.
The Guardian revealed last week that the board of the Alan Turing Institute was reminded of its legal duties by the charity watchdog after a whistleblower complaint.
Continue reading...Mediahuis suspends Peter Vandermeersch, who says he ‘fell into trap of hallucinations’, after investigation by newspaper where he was once editor-in-chief
The publisher of the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf and the Irish Independent has suspended one of its senior journalists after he admitted using AI to “wrongly put words into people’s mouths”.
Peter Vandermeersch, the former head of the Irish operations at Mediahuis, said he “fell into the trap of hallucinations” – the term for AI-generated errors – when using the technology.
Continue reading...Countries across the continent have spent more than $2bn on Chinese tracking technology that is not ‘necessary or proportionate’, new report finds
The rapid expansion of AI-powered mass-surveillance systems across Africa is violating citizens’ right to privacy and having a chilling effect on society, according to experts on human rights and emerging technologies.
At least $2bn (£1.5bn) has been spent by 11 African governments on Chinese-built surveillance technology that recognises faces and monitors movements, according to a new report by the Institute of Development Studies, which warns that national security is being used to justify implementing these systems with little regulation.
Continue reading...Tech equity campaigners compare move to ‘inviting in foxes to consult on the future of the henhouse’
Ministers have called in Tony Blair’s thinktank and private tech companies to guide them on deploying AI across the UK government in a move campaigners compared to “inviting in foxes to consult on the future of the henhouse”.
James Murray, chief secretary to the Treasury, chaired a meeting on Wednesday with the director of AI at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), the chair of IBM and senior executives at AI companies including Faculty AI, now part of Accenture, and Dex Hunter-Torricke, a former communications adviser at Google, Facebook and Elon Musk’s Space X.
Continue reading...The voices of the Oscar-winning actors can now be used to create AI-generated versions in a new deal with ElevenLabs
Oscar-winning actors Matthew McConaughey and Michael Caine have both signed a deal with the AI audio company ElevenLabs.
The New York-based company can now create AI-generated versions of their voices as part of a bid to solve a “key ethical challenge” in the artificial intelligence industry’s alliance with Hollywood.
Continue reading...An expert describes how communities in some of the world’s driest areas are demanding transparency as secretive governments court billions in foreign investment
This Q&A originally appeared as part of The Guardian’s TechScape newsletter. Sign up for this weekly newsletter here.
The data centers that power the artificial intelligence boom are beyond enormous. Their financials, their physical scale, and the amount of information contained within are so massive that the idea of stopping their construction can seem like opposing an avalanche in progress.
Continue reading...Tech giant reports earnings of $3.72 per share day after deal with OpenAI pushed value of company to more than $4tn
Microsoft blew off concerns of overspending on AI on Wednesday, reporting elevated earnings even as it faced an outage of its cloud computing service, Azure, and its office software suite, 365. The strong earnings report comes a day after a deal with OpenAI pushed the value of tech giant to more than $4tn.
After its Xbox and investor relations pages went down, the company issued a statement that said: “We are working to address an issue affecting Azure Front Door that is impacting the availability of some services.”
Continue reading...Strong demand for ads and cloud services powered tech giant’s growth as it makes multibillion-dollar AI investment
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, displayed steady growth in its core advertising business and cloud computing division as it reported third-quarter earnings on Wednesday, beating Wall Street estimates as it reported its first quarter of $100bn in revenue.
The company thrilled Wall Street – shares rose in after-hours trading – even as it announced that it would spend billions more than previously predicted. Alphabet raised its capital expenditure guidance in financial filings, declaring it would spend between $91bn and $93bn in the upcoming year, nearly all of it on infrastructure like datacenters to support artificial intelligence products, which are becoming an integral part of the company’s business. That estimate is up from an original declaration of $75bn in February and a revised figure of $85bn announced in July.
Continue reading...Jean Laprade ordered to pay $3,500 in legal saga of ‘hijacked planes’, Interpol red alerts and ‘inappropriate use’ of AI
A Quebec man has been ordered to pay C$5,000 (US$3,562) for submitting artificial intelligence hallucinations as part of his legal defense, a move the judge warned was “highly reprehensible” and threatened to undermine integrity in the legal system.
Justice Luc Morin of Quebec superior court levied the fine on Jean Laprade in a decision released on 1 October, capping a legal saga the judge said “contains several elements worthy of a successful movie script”, including a “hijacked plane passing through several complacent airports”, Interpol red alerts and the “inappropriate use of artificial intelligence” by Laprade.
Continue reading...Deal gives Intel a lifeline as firms team up on AI data centers and PC chips after Trump stake sparks market surge
Nvidia, the world’s leading chipmaker, announced plans to invest $5bn in Intel and collaborate with the struggling semiconductor company on products.
One month after the Trump administration confirmed it had taken a 10% stake in Intel – the latest extraordinary intervention by the White House in corporate America – Nvidia said it would team up with the firm to work on custom data centers that form the backbone of artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, as well as personal computer products.
Continue reading...Legislation limits child access and imposes prison terms for damaging use of artificial intelligence
Italy has become the first country in the EU to approve a comprehensive law regulating the use of artificial intelligence, including imposing prison terms on those who use the technology to cause harm, such as generating deepfakes, and limiting child access.
Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing government said the legislation, which aligns with the EU’s landmark AI Act, is a decisive move in influencing how AI is used across Italy.
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