Climate Change

The globe’s growing AI infrastructure requires huge amounts of electricity, possibly more than power providers can generate responsibly. Could AI models suck energy resources dry?

Major AI companies plan to meet the growing demand with nuclear energy.

The AI boom is taxing power grids and pushing builders of data centers to rethink their sources of electricity.

How can AI help to fight climate change? A new report evaluates progress so far and explores options for the future. The Innovation for Cool Earth Forum, a conference of climate researchers hosted by Japan...

Stanford’s sixth annual AI Index takes stock of a rapidly growing field. The sprawling, 386-page report from the Institute for Human-Centered AI presents the past year’s developments in AI based on a wide variety of sources including benchmarks, papers, market research, job listings, and polls.

Adults in the United States tend to view AI’s medical applications favorably but are leery of text and image generation. Pew Research Center polled 11,004 U.S. adults for their opinions of AI in science, healthcare, and media.

You can reduce your model’s carbon emissions by being choosy about when and where you train it.

Computer vision systems are scanning satellite photos to track construction on the Earth’s surface — an exercise in behavior recognition on a global scale.

An autonomous research ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean — with a few pit stops to address challenges along the way. Built by IBM and marine research nonprofit ProMare, the Mayflower Autonomous Ship 400 (MAS400) last week completed a voyage from Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Machine learning is making wind power more predictable. Engie SA, a multinational energy utility based in France, is the first customer for an AI-powered tool from Google that predicts the energy output of wind farms.

Nuclear fusion technology, long touted as an unlimited source of safe, clean energy, took a step toward reality with a machine learning algorithm that molds the fuel in a reactor’s core.

Amazon reported long-term success using machine learning to shrink its environmental footprint. The online retailer developed a system that fuses product descriptions, images, and structured data to decide how an item should be packed for shipping.

There’s a reason why artificial intelligence is sometimes referred to as “software 2.0”: It represents the most significant technological advance in decades. Like any groundbreaking invention, it raises concerns about the future, and much of the media focus is on the threats it brings.

DeepMind released three papers that push the boundaries — and examine the issues — of large language models.

Startups are predicting how climate change will affect global commerce. Companies that specialize in climate analytics are training neural networks to help businesses manage risks posed by a warming globe,