A protest against a planned data center in Decatur, Georgia. A protest against a planned data center in Decatur, Georgia. Analysts see'global construction frenzy that shows no signs of slowing' amid surge in demand from AI boom A new report finds that investment in the worldwide data center market reached $61bn this year, setting a new record atop the wave of the artificial intelligence boom. The analysis by S&P Global, first reported by CNBC, documented what the market intelligence firm called a "global construction frenzy that shows no signs of slowing", to build out the massive real estate, hardware, and energy requirements driven by insatiable demand from AI companies. S&P pegged 2024's investment in the data center market at $60.8bn, just below the 2025 number.

In 2021, Google set a lofty goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. Yet in the years since then, the company has moved in the opposite direction as it invests in energy-intensive artificial intelligence. In its latest sustainability report, Google said its carbon emissions had increased 51% between 2019 and 2024. New research aims to debunk even that enormous figure and provide context to Google's sustainability reports, painting a bleaker picture. A report authored by non-profit advocacy group Kairos Fellowship found that, between 2019 and 2024, Google's carbon emissions actually went up by 65%.

Video recorded by a passenger at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport this year shows a federal agent seizing a traveler's bag. The Justice Department has now ordered the DEA to halt random searches at transit hubs. The Drug Enforcement Administration is no longer allowed to randomly search travelers at airports and other transit hubs after a scathing report from the Justice Department found "serious concerns" with the practice. DEA agents failed to properly document searches, may have illegally targeted minorities and, in at least one case, paid an airline employee tens of thousands of dollars over several years to suggest targets for searches, according to the report released Thursday by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. The deputy attorney general ordered the DEA to suspend the random searches Nov. 12 after seeing a draft of the memo.

In its first report on the state of LGBTQ inclusion in video games, US advocacy organisation Glaad (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) has said that games are yet to catch up with TV and film when it comes to queer representation. The study of US-based players found that 17% of gamers identify as LGBTQ a significant increase on the 10% reported in a 2020 Nielsen Games study, and 10% more than the proportion of the US general population thought to be LGBT . By contrast, only 2% of games feature an openly LGBTQ character. That compares with 28% of films released in 2022, and 11% of primetime TV characters in 2022 and 2023, per other Glaad reports. In partnership with Nielsen, Glaad surveyed 1,452 gamers in the US, from within and outside the LGBTQ community.

The artificial intelligence models underpinning chatbots could help plan an attack with a biological weapon, according to research by a US thinktank. A report by the Rand Corporation released on Monday tested several large language models (LLMs) and found they could supply guidance that "could assist in the planning and execution of a biological attack". However, the preliminary findings also showed that the LLMs did not generate explicit biological instructions for creating weapons. The report said previous attempts to weaponise biological agents, such as an attempt by the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult to use botulinum toxin in the 1990s, had failed because of a lack of understanding of the bacterium. AI could "swiftly bridge such knowledge gaps", the report said.

Jimmy Failla joins "The Big Money Show" to share his thoughts on the rapid expansion of driverless taxis in San Francisco. Customers are taking advantage of driverless vehicles, according to a report that that says sex in San Francisco robotaxis is on the rise. The San Francisco Standard said they spoke to four separate riders in recent months who admitted to having sex or hooking up in the back seat of the autonomous vehicles (AVs), which have become increasingly popular in San Francisco. "I mean, there's no one to tell you, 'You can't do that,'" one man told The Standard. "It gets to the point where you're more and more and more comfortable, and if you're with someone, like a more serious partner, it can escalate to other activities."

Two years after Los Angeles police leaders set tougher limits on the use of facial recognition technology, a follow-up report found the department lacks a way to track its outcomes or effectiveness. The report, by the LAPD inspector general's office, found that LAPD personnel used facial recognition software in an effort to identify criminal suspects nearly 2,000 times last year. Of those searches, about 55% resulted in a positive match -- meaning that an image of an unidentified suspect was matched through artificial intelligence to a mugshot or other photo of a known person, the report found. On Tuesday, Inspector General Mark Smith told the department's civilian oversight commissioners that the LAPD was largely in compliance with a 2021 policy that set out rules for when and how specially trained officers can use a facial recognition program maintained by the county Sheriff's Department. The county program runs images against a database of roughly 9 million mugshots of people who have been booked into the county's detention facilities -- a far less expansive pool than some third-party search platforms.

Police should be banned from using live facial recognition technology in all public spaces because they are breaking ethical standards and human rights laws, a study has concluded. LFR involves linking cameras to databases containing photos of people. Images from the cameras can then be checked against those photos to see if they match. British police have experimented with the technology, believing it can help combat crime and terrorism. But in some cases, courts have found against the way police have used LFR, and how they have dealt with infringements of the privacy rights of people walking in the streets where the technology has been used.

Next year will see a US$4.6 billion global spend on industrial digital twins. This is according to a new whitepaper, '70 Technology Trends That Will and Will Not Shape 2022', conducted by ABI Research analysts. The report identifies 35 trends that will shape the technology market and 35 others that, although attracting huge amounts of speculation and commentary, are less likely to move the needle over the next twelve months. According to the report, the fallout from COVID-19 prevention measures, the process of transitioning from pandemic to endemic disease, and global political tensions weigh heavily on the coming years fortunes. One primary finding of what will happen in 2022 is the rise of digital twin marketplaces.

The Transform Technology Summits start October 13th with Low-Code/No Code: Enabling Enterprise Agility. Alation today released its latest State of Data Culture report, which focused on how ignoring data can lead to major business missteps. The report highlights that 97% of data leaders say their companies have suffered the consequences of ignoring data, either missing out on new revenue opportunities, poorly forecasting performance, or making bad investments. "The organizations that learn from data faster understand their customers, innovate, and sense markets quicker and more clearly than others," Alation cofounder and CEO Satyen Sangani said in a press release. "Companies that invest in data and build a culture of data literacy do well. Companies need to transform how they make decisions and how they work to incorporate data into everything they do. They have to build a data culture."