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Cloud services companies are rallying as earnings reports suggest the wave of spending cuts that had hammered the

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Solar energy has reached an “irreversible tipping point” that will see it become the world’s main source of energy by 2050, according to a new study. Researchers at the University of Exeter and University College London analysed recent technological and economic advances to determine that the transition to clean energy is not just reachable, but inevitable. “The recent progress of renewables means that fossil fuel-dominated projections are no longer realistic,” said Femke Nijsse from the University of Exeter. “Using three models that track positive feedbacks, we project that solar PV will dominate the global energy mix by the middle of this century.” Barriers may still arise to hamper this positive trend, the researchers noted, including political resistance from anti-environmentalists and the lack of financing for solar power in developing countries. “Solar energy is the most widely available energy resource on Earth, and its economic attractiveness is improving fast in a cycle of increasing investments,” the researchers wrote in a study detailing their findings. “We find that, due to technological trajectories set in motion by past policy, a global irreversible solar tipping point may have passed where solar energy gradually comes to dominate global electricity markets, without any further climate policies.” The study, titled ‘The momentum of the solar energy transition’, was published in the journal Nature Communications. The latest research comes less than a month after a Berlin-based research institute calculated that fossil fuel-generated power will no longer be economically viable within the next 30 years due to the plummeting costs of solar, batteries and other renewable technologies. The Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) found that the transition to renewable energy was “cheaper than expected” and could make fossil fuels obsolete by 2050. “This is an extremely optimistic scenario – but it illustrates that the future is open,” MCC researcher Felix Creutzig noted. “Climate science, which provides policymakers with guidance in its scenario models, must reflect technical progress as closely as possible.” The UK saw a record-breaking year for renewable energy last year, and is on track to do the same in 2023 following the installation of new solar and wind plants. Wind, solar, biomass and hydro power generated 40 per cent of the country’s electricity in 2022, according to figures compiled by Imperial College London, up 5 per cent from the year before. Read More Fossil fuels ‘becoming obsolete’ as solar panel prices plummet Solar panel breakthrough could supercharge ‘miracle material’ production ‘Game-changing’ facial recognition technology catches prolific shoplifters WhatsApp update will change how you log in forever Amazon trials humanoid robots to see if they can help staff warehouses

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Less than eight months after discouraging companies from developing advanced artificial intelligence, Elon Musk has unveiled his answer to “woke” AI chatbots like ChatGPT. The tech billionaire claims his new Grok AI is both smarter and funnier than its rivals, offering paid users of X (formerly Twitter) the chance to ask it “spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems”. The X boss offered an example of how it will answer “almost anything”, sharing a screenshot of a user asking it how to make cocaine. “Grok is designed to answer questions with a bit of wit and has a rebellious streak,” a blog post announcing its launch noted. “Please don’t use it if you hate humour!” What differentiates it from OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard is that it has access to real-time data from X, which Mr Musk took over almost exactly a year ago. Before the takeover, AI firms were using Twitter as a data set to train its models, however the tech billionaire shut this down following the release of ChatGPT last November. Initially labelled “TruthGPT”, Grok takes its name from Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Stranger in a Strange Land, meaning understanding something thoroughly and intuitively, while the tone of its responses are modelled on the same writing style as Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But with X as its training set, Grok risks mimicking the same misinformation and toxic discourse that has plagued the platform since before Musk’s takeover. Not only does it adopt a more informal tone to its rivals, Grok also appears to have less safety filters preventing it from answering questions about sensitive topics. Despite claiming that Grok outperforms ChatGPT, which is freely available, xAI did acknowledge that it does not yet match the capabilities of OpenAI’s more powerful GPT-4 model – which carries a similar monthly fee to Grok. In its own in-house tests, xAI graded Grok against GPT-4 on the 2023 Hungarian national high school finals in mathematics. Grok passed the exam with a mark of 59 per cent, while GPT-4 scored 68 per cent. In March this year, Mr Musk was among hundreds of leading tech figures to add their name to an open letter calling on all AI labs to pause the training of AI systems. The letter warned that artificial intelligence with “human-competitive intelligence” could pose “profound risks to society and humanity”, potentially leading to the loss of control of human civilisation and even its extinction. This letter of discouragement looks increasingly like a plea to allow his own companies – which include the newly formed xAI – to catch up. Just weeks before signing it, Mr Musk was approaching AI researchers to form xAI, with the explicit intention of taking on ChatGPT. The world’s richest person had been instrumental in the formation of OpenAI in 2015 but cut ties after it became a for-profit endeavour. His team included researchers from OpenAI and Google’s DeepMind, who had experience in developing large language models (LLMs) that power AI chatbots. The reason he cited for creating his own chatbot was due to apparent fears that these tech companies were creating “woke” AI systems. “The danger of training AI to be woke – in other words, lie – is deadly,” he tweeted last December in reply to a post by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman. The new chatbot fits in with Musk’s broader goals that he is hoping to achieve with his other companies, including SpaceX’s mission to transform humanity into a multi-planetary species “Unless the woke mind virus, which is fundamentally anti-science, anti-merit, and anti-human in general, is stopped, civilisation will never become multiplanetary,” Mr Musk said. In justifying why it built Grok, xAI said its goal was to create a tool that “maximally benefits all of humanity”. The blog post explained: “We believe that it is important to design AI tools that are useful to people of all backgrounds and political views.” Read More How Elon Musk’s ‘spicy’ Grok compares to ‘woke’ ChatGPT Musk shares cocaine recipe in effort to prove Grok AI is ‘rebellious’ Elon Musk unveils new sarcasm-loving AI chatbot for premium X subscribers 10 ways AI will change the world – from curing cancer to wiping out humanity Musk shares cocaine recipe in effort to prove Grok AI is ‘rebellious’

Kenya signed deals for seven green projects on the sidelines of the COP28 summit, include geothermal generation plants,