Author: The Conversation

South Africa experienced unprecedented electricity shortages in 2023 as ageing coal plants became increasingly prone to breakdowns. The country urgently needs to develop new electricity generation facilities and reduce reliance on coal power. In the first week of 2024, the South African energy minister, Gwede Mantashe, released a proposed roadmap for the future of electricity in South Africa. Unfortunately, the draft Integrated Resource Plan is a major disappointment. Described by some analysts as “shoddy”, the plan contains, among many flaws, huge errors in costing the different future energy scenarios. Firstly, the plan’s costing estimates aren’t credible. It does not even consider the most inexpensive combination…

What is the universe made of? This question has driven astronomers for hundreds of years. For the past quarter of a century, scientists have believed “normal” stuff like atoms and molecules that make up you, me, Earth, and nearly everything we can see only accounts for 5% of the universe. Another 25% is “dark matter”, an unknown substance we can’t see but which we can detect through how it affects normal matter via gravity. The remaining 70% of the cosmos is made of “dark energy”. Discovered in 1998, this is an unknown form of energy believed to be making the…

You are walking back home. Suddenly the ground seems to open and a security drone emerges, blocking your way to verify your identity. This might sound far-fetched but it is based on an existing technology – a drone system made by the AI company Sunflower Labs. As part of an international project looking at the impact of AI on cities, we recently “broke ground” on a new field of research called AI urbanism. This is different from the concept of a “smart city”. Smart cities gather information from technology, such as sensor systems, and use it to manage operations and run services more…

ChatGPT has repeatedly made headlines since its release late last year, with various scholars and professionals exploring its potential applications in both work and education settings. However, one area receiving less attention is the tool’s usefulness as a conversationalist and – dare we say – as a potential friend. Some chatbots have left an unsettling impression. Microsoft’s Bing chatbot alarmed users earlier this year when it threatened and attempted to blackmail them. Watch as Sydney/Bing threatens me then deletes its message pic.twitter.com/ZaIKGjrzqT — Seth Lazar (@sethlazar) February 16, 2023 Yet pop culture has long conjured visions of autonomous systems living with us as social companions, whether…

Microsoft recently launched a new version of all of its software with the addition of an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant that can do a variety of tasks for you. Copilot can summarise verbal conversations on Teams online meetings, present arguments for or against a particular point based on verbal discussions and answer a portion of your emails. It can even write computer code. This quickly developing technology appears to take us even closer to a future where AI makes our lives easier and takes away all of the boring and repetitive things we have to do as humans. But while these advancements are all very impressive…

Two commercial spacecraft are scheduled to launch to the Moon early in 2024 under a NASA initiative called the Commercial Lunar Payload Service CLPS. This programme is intended to kickstart a commercial transportation service that can deliver NASA experiments and other payloads to the lunar surface. If successful, these missions will represent the first landings on the Moon by spacecraft designed and flown by private companies. They could potentially open up a new era of commercial lunar exploration and science. CLPS was inaugurated by Nasa in 2018. An initial pool of nine companies received an invitation to join the programme.…

While self-driving vehicles are being deployed in numerous cities globally, persistent controversies continue to challenge their deployment. Recently, Tesla recalled more than two million cars after the US regulator found problems with its driver assistance system. Tesla did not agree with the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) analysis but agreed to add new features. Tesla’s autopilot system is not fully autonomous, since a human driver has to be present at all times. But autonomous, self-driving cars have already been deployed as driverless taxis, or “robotaxis”, in several US cities, including San Francisco and Phoenix. Cruise, the robotaxi company owned…

The legal profession has already been using artificial intelligence (AI) for several years, to automate reviews and predict outcomes, among other functions. However, these tools have mostly been used by large, well established firms. In effect, certain law firms have already deployed AI tools to assist their employed solicitors with day-to-day work. By 2022, three quarters of the largest solicitor’s law firms were utilising AI. However, this trend has now started to encompass small and medium firms too, signalling a shift of such technological tools towards mainstream utilisation. This technology could be enormously beneficial both to people in the legal profession and clients.…

2023 was an inflection point in the evolution of artificial intelligence and its role in society. The year saw the emergence of generative AI, which moved the technology from the shadows to centre stage in the public imagination. It also saw boardroom drama in an AI startup dominate the news cycle for several days. And it saw the Biden administration issue an executive order and the European Union pass a law aimed at regulating AI, moves perhaps best described as attempting to bridle a horse that’s already galloping along. We’ve assembled a panel of AI scholars to look ahead to 2024 and describe the issues AI…

Future historians may well regard 2023 as a landmark in the advent of artificial intelligence (AI). But whether that future will prove utopian, apocalyptic or somewhere in between is anyone’s guess. In February, ChatGPT set the record as the fastest app to reach 100 million users. It was followed by similar “large language” AI models from Google, Amazon, Meta and other big tech firms, which collectively look poised to transform education, healthcare and many other knowledge-intensive fields. However, AI’s potential for harm was underscored in May by an ominous statement signed by leading researchers: Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other…