DeBriefed 18 October 2024: IEA projects solar surge; US counts cost of hurricanes; Is global warming ‘accelerating’?
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Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change. This week Energy outlook DEMAND SURGING: The International Energy Agency (IEA) published its annual World Energy Outlook report – a “comprehensive” summary of global energy trends – the New York Times reported. The outlet said, over the next decade, […]
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Babak Hodjat, CTO of AI at Cognizant – Interview Series
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Babak Hodjat is Vice President of Evolutionary AI at Cognizant, and former co-founder and CEO of Sentient. He is responsible for the core technology behind the world’s largest distributed artificial intelligence system. Babak was also the founder of the world’s first AI-driven hedge fund, Sentient Investment Management. He is a serial entrepreneur, having started a […]
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DeepMind’s Michelangelo Benchmark: Revealing the Limits of Long-Context LLMs
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As Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to advance, the ability to process and understand long sequences of information is becoming more vital. AI systems are now used for complex tasks like analyzing long documents, keeping up with extended conversations, and processing large amounts of data. However, many current models struggle with long-context reasoning. As inputs get […]
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China Briefing 17 October 2024: China’s electrification to disrupt oil; High-level environment meeting; Aligning China’s population and climate policies
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing. China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here. Key developments China to play major role in global energy shift ELECTRIFICATION: As the world moves into the “age of electricity”, China’s per-capita demand for electricity will grow […]
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Major change to what residents can recycle in Greater Manchester
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Residents in Bury, Bolton, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside and Trafford will now be able to recycle a wider range of plastic items in their household mixed recycling bin, says Greater Manchester Combined Authority, following changes to its recycling facilities and to the recent contract extension with SUEZ Recycling and Recovery UK. This week […]
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Massive global growth of renewables to 2030 predicted by IEA report
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Renewables are on course to meet almost half of global electricity demand by the end of this decade, according to a new IEA report, with solar as the leading approach. Due to supportive policies and favourable economics, the world’s renewable power capacity is expected to surge over the rest of this decade, with global additions […]
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Revolutionizing Customer Relationships with AI: Key Lessons from Krishna Raj Raja’s Book ‘Support Experience’
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In Support Experience: How Innovative Companies Use Artificial Intelligence to Win the Hearts, Minds, and Wallets of Customers, author Krishna Raj Raja introduces a fresh approach to customer relationships powered by AI. The book highlights how leading companies are turning customer support into a proactive, strategic tool that boosts long-term business success. Raja, the CEO […]
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Combining next-token prediction and video diffusion in computer vision and robotics
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In the current AI zeitgeist, sequence models have skyrocketed in popularity for their ability to analyze data and predict what to do next. For instance, you’ve likely used next-token prediction models like ChatGPT, which anticipate each word (token) in a sequence to form answers to users’ queries. There are also full-sequence diffusion models like Sora, […]
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Emily Popson, Vice President of Growth Marketing at CallRail – Interview Series
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Emily Popson is the Vice President of Growth Marketing at CallRail, where she leads demand generation, website optimization, customer marketing, and content marketing teams. Having previously been a small business owner herself, Popson is passionate about making modern marketing analytics tools accessible to even the smallest teams and companies. Can you share more about your professional […]
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Bridging Knowledge Gaps in AI with RAG: Techniques and Strategies for Enhanced Performance
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized how we interact with technology, leading to the rise of virtual assistants, chatbots, and other automated systems capable of handling complex tasks. Despite this progress, even the most advanced AI systems encounter significant limitations known as knowledge gaps. For instance, when one asks a virtual assistant about the latest government […]
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The Evolving Legal Landscape for Geologic Carbon Sequestration in the United States
Stephen Hui, Pembina Institute. Geologic carbon sequestration—i.e., the storage of carbon dioxide in underground rock formations—has been the subject of much debate in recent years. Many see it as an important tool for combatting climate change. It is, after all, a necessary component of point-source carbon capture and storage (“CCS”) systems that seek to […]
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Interactive: Tracking negotiating texts at the UN’s COP16 biodiversity summit
Delegates are descending on Cali, Colombia for the first set of biodiversity negotiations since the world’s nations agreed a landmark deal in 2022 to “halt and reverse” nature loss by the end of the decade. Over the course of hundreds of hours throughout the next fortnight, negotiators from 196 parties will confer – and sometimes […]
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Leveraging Human Attention Can Improve AI-Generated Images
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New research from China has proposed a method for improving the quality of images generated by Latent Diffusion Models (LDMs) models such as Stable Diffusion. The method focuses on optimizing the salient regions of an image – areas most likely to attract human attention. The new research has found that saliency maps (fourth column from […]
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Adaptability of trees persists after millions of years of climate change
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Pascal Milesi, Associate Professor of Plant Ecology and Evolution, Uppsala University (image credit: Märta Gross Hulth). Seven of the most common forest trees in Europe have been shown to be able to shelter their genetic diversity from major shifts in environmental conditions. This is despite their ranges having shrunk and the number of trees having […]
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Research and innovation will futureproof water, says Northumbrian Water chief
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Mottram addressed the event in London on 3 October. Northumbrian Water chief executive Heidi Mottram has told delegates to the UKWIR Annual Conference 2024 that research and innovation will improve outcomes for the water industry in the long-term. “Innovation is more than bringing in new technologies, it’s about changing the way we think, it’s about […]
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The Future of Green Shipping: Why It Matters for Our Planet
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As our planet faces the pressing challenge of climate change, the shipping sector finds itself at a pivotal moment. Responsible for roughly 2–3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, conventional shipping practices are under increasing scrutiny due to their environmental effects. The future of green shipping offers a sustainable logistics framework aimed at minimizing emissions and […]
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Equipping doctors with AI co-pilots
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Most doctors go into medicine because they want to help patients. But today’s health care system requires that doctors spend hours each day on other work — searching through electronic health records (EHRs), writing documentation, coding and billing, prior authorization, and utilization management — often surpassing the time they spend caring for patients. The situation leads to […]
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Beyond Chain-of-Thought: How Thought Preference Optimization is Advancing LLMs
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A groundbreaking new technique, developed by a team of researchers from Meta, UC Berkeley, and NYU, promises to enhance how AI systems approach general tasks. Known as “Thought Preference Optimization” (TPO), this method aims to make large language models (LLMs) more thoughtful and deliberate in their responses. The collaborative effort behind TPO brings together expertise […]