Excessive heat, pollution and making climate change worse just so you can ask the computer to draw a funny dancing cabbage
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They suck up energy and water, and blast out heat. Just who is better off from all this investment – aside from tech bros?
The two great existential threats of our time – the climate crisis and AI – come hurtling together in the explosion of datacentres across Australia and around the world.
You can hardly avoid hearing about them these days, either with awed reverence of the promised benefits to humankind or with fear and anger given the implications for the climate, inflation, jobs and even housing affordability.
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Scottish government to consider SNP national council motion for moratorium on all new datacentres
The Scottish government is about to consider a sweeping moratorium on building new datacentres, putting a key plank of the UK’s AI strategy at risk.
Last Sunday the Scottish National party (SNP)’s national council passed a motion to freeze all new datacentres in Scotland. That motion has been sent to the Scottish government to consider.
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Researchers say small changes in drafting could spread rapidly and create long-term shifts in public opinion
AI tools are twisting online messages on sensitive political topics about everything from abortion to climate change in ways that could snowball to reshape long-term public opinion, experts have said.
As tech companies push AI tools as convenient ways to redraft and summarise the massive influx of daily messages, many inject their own political biases – some leaning distinctly rightwing, others more liberal, according to a study from Oxford and Potsdam universities.
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LSE analysis highlights litigation linked to energy sources, water consumption and air pollution
The proliferation of datacentres and AI is increasingly at the forefront of environmental litigation around the world from Chile to Ireland, a report has found.
In an analysis of about 3,600 climate-related lawsuits filed since 2015, the latest annual review of climate litigation by the London School of Economics (LSE) found a growing number of cases challenging the energy sources, water consumption and air pollution of datacentres, all of which have related climate implications.
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A burgeoning genre of fictional AI doomsday scenarios says lagging behind on the technology could threaten the continent’s sovereignty
It’s 2031 and the US and China are about to tear Europe into pieces.
The US ploughed vast sums into datacentres and the EU did not. China built robots and Europe did not. American companies “restructured” their workflows around AI and fired people, while EU workers went on long lunch breaks and handed over administrative tasks to the AI model Claude.
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Extreme weather at the World Cup highlights climate change's impact on global events, posing risks to player safety and economic investments.
The post World Cup kicks off amid extreme heat and thunderstorms in North America appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Telecoms company CEO says tech firms are buying up memory chips to power datacentres relied on by AI
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BT has said that the cost of smartphones could rise as technology companies buy up semiconductor chips due to the boom in artificial intelligence (AI), putting pressure on supply chains.
The telecoms company’s chief executive, Allison Kirkby, said she was anticipating shortages as tech firms bought large quantities of memory chips to power the datacentres relied on by AI.
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Climate change is pushing starving grey whales to San Francisco Bay, where ship strikes led to 40% of 21 deaths
Ferries, cargo ships and tankers cut through choppy waters in the San Francisco Bay Tuesday as a whale surfaced nearby, its spout barely visible against the white caps. Until now, whales could easily go unnoticed by mariners, but an AI-powered detection network launched this week is designed to track them day and night.
The system, called WhaleSpotter, scans the bay around the clock for whale blows and heat signatures up to 2 nautical miles away, alerting mariners to slow down or reroute when whales are nearby.
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