Residents and council say creating affordable housing is more urgent than ‘high-frequency trading’ in nearby CityCampaigners in east London are opposing plans for a datacentre in Brick Lane that they say will worsen the area’s housing crisis and drive long-term residents away.The road, famed for its curry houses and 24-hour bagel shops, is the latest flashpoint in the rapid rollout of datacentres across the UK that aims to meet demand created by artificial intelligence. Continue reading...
From Xi’an’s immersive heritage experiences to Dubai’s smart tourism ambitions, Shaanxi’s blend of 5G-Advanced networks, generative AI and digital cultural preservation offers a blueprint for the future of destination experiences
As Scottish National Party council passes a motion for Scotland datacentre moratorium, Andy Burnham’s avowed ‘power to the regions’ views face strain in light of critical national infrastructure designation
Minister said the government will make Capita pay for the government resources used to support it on pension administration scheme
The Sultanate is leveraging subsea cables, lower costs and regulatory stability to position itself alongside regional AI giants, but a large ecosystem scale gap remains
VMware integration with third-party backup software improves performance and reduces admin. Alternative hypervisors are often less well-integrated
Why the modern technology era demands a flatter, networked approach to business evolution
Marks & Spencer joins the likes of Accenture, Microsoft and Vodafone by committing to take practical steps to improve cyber standards through the government’s voluntary Cyber Resilience Pledge
In this week’s Computer Weekly, we announce the 16th annual UKtech50 list of the most influential people in UK technology. We examine how this year’s winner – Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis – has helped establish the UK’s AI reputation worldwide. And our latest buyer’s guide looks at the role of AI in supply chain management. Read the issue now.
Researchers say small changes in drafting could spread rapidly and create long-term shifts in public opinionAI 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. Continue reading...
Exclusive: Government and developers privately acknowledged Lanarkshire datacentre site had power provision ‘issue’‘It’s smoke and mirrors’: hope turns to fear in Scottish village chosen for AI datacentreWhat are Britain’s AI growth zones and are the plans feasible or ‘complete bunk’?A landmark AI development billed as delivering jobs and prosperity has misrepresented its plans to channel a nuclear reactor’s worth of power to a site in rural Scotland, a Guardian investigation has found.When it was announced in January, the government promised that an £8.2bn AI datacentre complex in Lanarkshire – built by the US firm CoreWeave and the Scottish company DataVita – would be powered entirely from on-site renewables and built by 2030. Continue reading...
Race to develop ‘embodied AI’ focuses on creating dextrous hands to transform humanoid robots from gimmicks into useful productsHuman hands – nimble, nerve-filled appendages that are the most flexible part of the human skeleton – are exceptionally complex. Many tasks that most people can do largely without thinking, from tying a pair of shoelaces to buttoning up a shirt, in fact require a complex set of neurological instructions and precise choreography. In thousands of years of human history, no machine has been able to truly replicate human’s greatest tool.But now, as artificial intelligence (AI) races forwards, some companies think they are close to surpassing this final but most difficult hurdle in robotics. Most of them are in China. Continue reading...
Update in England expected to reach about 200,000 patients over the next year as part of £10bn package to overhaul NHS systemsThe NHS will begin using AI on its app to direct patients to the appropriate services, it has been announced.The tool will be used to triage patients and to ascertain if they should be allocated a GP appointment. Some may be advised to attend a pharmacy or their local A&E department instead, depending on the severity of their condition. Continue reading...
Exclusive: £20bn of ‘potential’ £30bn AI investment touted by UK ministers appears to have been hypotheticalIt was to be the biggest undertaking in Britain for OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Stargate UK – a multibillion-pound UK datacentre project – would represent “a major step forward in the US-UK technology partnership”.But the plans were paused in April, with an OpenAI spokesperson citing concerns over regulation and high energy costs. Continue reading...
As allegations of LLM use rock the literary and media worlds, linguists explain what really distinguishes human and machine writing, while novelists including Jennifer Egan and Jeanette Winterson reflect on the future of fiction in an age of ChatGPTThree paragraphs, from three different hotel reviews. Can you tell which, if any, were AI‑generated?“The hotel is in a great location for everything. Lots of places to eat and drink. The hotel itself is always abuzz. The tavern located on the ground floor is definitely a must. Food, service, prices and atmosphere were great.” Continue reading...
Exclusive: National Crime Agency and safety watchdog issue guidance amid rise in explicit material onlineAI prey: why watchdogs are telling parents to protect children from nudification appsParents should not put photos of their children on public display online, according to landmark guidance issued to tackle the rise of AI-generated sexual abuse material.The recommendation has come from the National Crime Agency and the Internet Watch Foundation, which fear that most people are unaware of the dangers posed by paedophiles and criminal networks. They suggest that parents and guardians make their social media accounts private or share pictures of their children through a “close friends” group. The NCA and the IWF stressed they were not telling parents how to behave online, but said they should be aware of the problem and how to tackle it. Continue reading...