Author: The Conversation

Emerging middle-power countries like South Africa, India and Brazil face growing inequalities. At the same time, everyday lives are becoming more and more digital – from paying bills and reading news to contacting companies and services. Ways need to be found to include everyone in the online world, regardless of how much money they have. Ashraf Patel is an information and communications technology policy specialist who has been researching the G20 for several years. In his chapter from a new open-access book, G20 in Brazil and South Africa: Priorities, Agendas and Voices of the Global South, he discusses how South Africa compares with…

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services has led to a massive demand for computing power. The surge has strained data infrastructure, which requires lots of electricity to operate. A single, medium-sized data centre here on Earth can consume enough electricity to power about 16,500 homes, with even larger facilities using as much as a small city. Over the past few years, tech leaders have increasingly advocated for space-based AI infrastructure as a way to address the power requirements of data centres. In space, sunshine – which solar panels can convert into electricity – is abundant and reliable. On…

For many years, the US company Nvidia shaped the foundations of modern artificial intelligence (AI). Its graphics processing units (GPUs) are a specialised type of computer chip originally designed to handle the processing demands of graphics and animation. But they’re also great for the repetitive calculations required by AI systems. Thus, these chips have powered the rapid rise of large language models – the technology behind AI chatbots – and they have become the familiar engine behind almost every major AI breakthrough. This hardware sat quietly in the background while most of the attention was focused on algorithms and data.…

Microsoft just released its latest small language model that can operate directly on the user’s computer. If you haven’t followed the AI industry closely, you might be asking: what exactly is a small language model (SLM)? As AI becomes increasingly central to how we work, learn and solve problems, understanding the different types of AI models has never been more important. Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and others are in widespread use. But small ones are increasingly important, too. Let’s explore what makes SLMs and LLMs different – and how to choose the right one for your situation. Firstly, what…

When OpenAI’s Sam Altman told reporters in San Francisco earlier this year that the AI sector is in a bubble, the American tech market reacted almost instantly. Combined with the fact that 95 per cent of AI pilot projects fail, traders treated his remark as a broader warning. Although Altman was referring specifically to private startups rather than publicly traded giants, some appear to have interpreted it as an industry-wide assessment. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel sold his Nvidia holdings, for instance, while American investor Michael Burry (of The Big Short fame) has made million-dollar bets that companies like Palantir and Nvidia will drop in value. What Altman’s comment really exposes…

We live in changing times. While we once flippantly threw villains to the lions, now we seek to fire them into the Sun. It sounds easy enough. The Sun is unbelievably massive, with gravity sufficient to keep the planets in their orbits for billions of years. How hard can it be? Well, it may be harder than you think. Fire away The obvious way to fire someone into the Sun is the direct approach, as shown in South Park Season 1. Point a rocket at the Sun and fire. But can that work? For a start, the rocket has to reach…

You might not know it from the headlines, but there is some good news about the global fight against climate change. A decade ago, the cheapest way to meet growing demand for electricity was to build more coal or natural gas power plants. Not anymore. Solar and wind power aren’t just better for the climate; they’re also less expensive today than fossil fuels at the utility scale, and they’re less harmful to people’s health. Yet renewable energy projects face headwinds, including in the world’s fast-growing developing countries. I study energy and climate solutions and their impact on society, and I see ways to…

It’s a common scene on public transport. A parent holds a mobile phone showing noisy cartoons to their young child. The pair is looking at the screen together, laughing. Yet parent and child rarely exchange a gaze or look out across the landscape. While many parents can relate to such moments, this is just an example of how technology (mainly digital screens but also vocal assistants, domestic robots and so on) has become part of our daily routines, changing the way we interact and engage with the world around us and – most importantly – with each other. But how does…

Every year, companies and space agencies launch hundreds of rockets into space – and that number is set to grow dramatically with ambitious missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. But these dreams hinge on one critical challenge: propulsion – the methods used to push rockets and spacecraft forward. To make interplanetary travel faster, safer and more efficient, scientists need breakthroughs in propulsion technology. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one type of technology that has begun to provide some of these necessary breakthroughs. We’re a team of engineers and graduate students who are studying how AI in general, and a subset of AI called machine learning in…

Three years ago, if someone needed to fix a leaky faucet or understand inflation, they usually did one of three things: typed the question into Google, searched YouTube for a how-to video or shouted desperately at Alexa for help. Today, millions of people start with a different approach: They open ChatGPT and just ask. I’m a professor and director of research impact and AI strategy at Mississippi State University Libraries. As a scholar who studies information retrieval, I see that this shift of the tool people reach for first for finding information is at the heart of how ChatGPT has changed…