The global switch to renewable energy has passed a "positive tipping point", and solar and wind power will become even cheaper and more widespread, according to two reports. Last year, 74 percent of the growth in electricity generated worldwide was from wind, solar and other green sources, according to a report compiled by multiple United Nations agencies called Seizing the Moment of Opportunity. It was published on Tuesday. It found that 92.5 percent of all new electricity capacity added to the grid worldwide in 2024 came from renewables. Meanwhile, sales of electric vehicles were up from 500,000 in 2015 to more than 17 million in 2024.

Much of the conversation around the new handset will likely centre around its power, with Apple electing to use the same A18 chip behind its more expensive devices. This means the 16e will be capable of playing the same games and running the same apps as other iPhones - though AI is likely at the heart of this decision. Apple boss Tim Cook said in the announcement the new model featured "the performance, intelligence and privacy" Apple fans "expect" from the firm. And he said the Apple Intelligence features on the device would "help you save time, quickly get more things done, and express yourself in new ways". The firm introduced its spin on the tech - Apple Intelligence - with this series of devices, which includes new tools for writing and incorporating OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT into Siri.

Artificial intelligence can appear to be many different things--a whole host of programs with seemingly little common ground. Sometimes AI is a conversation partner, an illustrator, a math tutor, a facial-recognition tool. But in every incarnation, it is always, always a machine, demanding almost unfathomable amounts of data and energy to function. AI systems such as ChatGPT operate out of buildings stuffed with silicon computer chips. To build bigger machines--as Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, and other tech companies would like to do--you need more resources.

Investor excitement over artificial intelligence reached a new peak this week when better-than-expected results from chipmaker Nvidia drove stock markets in three continents to record highs. The rally began on Thursday and continued into Friday, as Nvidia overtook Google's parent group, Alphabet, to become the third most valuable company in the US. Its market capitalisation hit 2tn ( 1.58tn), surpassed only by Microsoft and Apple. The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has raised many questions, not least over safety and the impact on jobs, but there are also concerns that it might be driving unsustainable market exuberance. Here we look at the latest share price rise and whether it can be maintained.

OpenAI plans to introduce major updates for developers next month to make it cheaper and faster to build software applications based on its artificial intelligence models, as the ChatGPT maker tries to court more companies to use its technology, sources briefed on the plans said. The updates include the addition of memory storage to its developer tools for using AI models. This could theoretically slash costs for application makers by as much as 20-times, addressing a major concern for partners whose cost of using OpenAI's powerful models could pile up quickly, as they try to build sustainable businesses by developing and selling AI software. The company also plans to unveil new tools such as vision capabilities that will enable developers to build applications with the ability to analyze images and describe them, with potential use cases in fields from entertainment to medicine.

Midjourney is one of the leading drivers of the emerging technology of using artificial intelligence (AI) to create visual imagery from text prompts. The San Francisco-based startup recently made news as the engine behind the artwork that won an award in a Colorado state fair competition, and that's unlikely to be the last complicated issue that AI art will face in the coming years. Midjourney differentiates from others in the space by emphasizing the painterly aesthetics in the images it produces. The platform is not trying to create photorealistic images that can be mistaken for photographs, and CEO David Holz says he is personally very uneasy with the uncanny quality of deepfakes and other work that simulates reality too closely. Instead, Holz says Midjourney is designed to unlock the creativity of ordinary people by giving them tools to make beautiful pictures just by describing them.

The use of artificial intelligence in business is showing signs of acceleration. Nearly three-quarters of companies are now using AI (31%) or are exploring the use of AI (43%), according to IBM's "2021 Global AI Adoption Index." IT professionals responding to the IBM survey cited changing business needs in the wake of the pandemic as a driving factor in the adoption of AI at their companies. Indeed, 43% said their companies have accelerated AI rollouts as a result of the pandemic. Advances in AI tools have made artificial intelligence more accessible for companies, according to survey respondents.

In this special guest feature, Florian Hillen, founder and CEO, VideaHealth, points out that Like many other industries within the healthcare ecosystem, dentistry is beginning to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to improve patient care, lower costs, and streamline workflows and care delivery. Like many other industries within the healthcare ecosystem, dentistry is beginning to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to improve patient care, lower costs, and streamline workflows and care delivery. While the dental profession is no stranger to cutting-edge technology, AI represents such a revolutionary change that few organizations have the knowledge and skill sets to implement an effective strategy. This is particularly important when applying AI to diagnose and treat patients. Ideally, AI should exceed human-level performance in speed, efficiency and accuracy. But unlike traditional technologies that are simply powered up and put to work, AI must be trained, conditioned and trusted to perform as expected even under difficult or unusual circumstances.

From product recommendations, to fraud detection, to route optimization, low latency predictions are vital for numerous machine learning tasks. That's why we're excited to announce a public preview for a new runtime that optimizes serving TensorFlow models on the Vertex AI Prediction service. This optimized TensorFlow runtime leverages technologies and model optimization techniques that are used internally at Google, and can be incorporated into your serving workflows without any changes to your training or model saving code. The result is faster predictions at a lower cost compared to the open source based pre-built TensorFlow serving containers. This post is a high-level overview of the optimized TensorFlow runtime that reviews some of its features, how to use it, and then provides benchmark data that demonstrates how it performs.

Microsoft will release a refreshed Arm-based desktop PC for developers later this year. Project Volterra will speed up machine learning algorithms for data scientists and AI developers. The vendor introduced the stackable PC, which can connect to multiple units for additional capabilities, last week at Microsoft Build, its annual software and web developer conference. The PC will enable developers to use Arm-native versions of Microsoft developer tools to build apps. The small PCs, which look like Mac minis, are built from recycled ocean plastic. They are the first to integrate the gasconaded neural processing units (NPUs) -- a controversial name that some analysts view with skepticism.