A once-retired California mine could supply the US renewable revolution
The US may have its own rare Earth element supply chain, and the very first in the Western Hemisphere at that. Could this end China’s dominance over the West’s renewable revolution? Just across the border from Nevada resides the only large-scale rare-Earth element mine in the entire Western Hemisphere. Named Mountain...
Current in Technology
Tencent launches WeChat Palm Payments in China
This week, Tencent started introducing palm recognition through its WeChat Pay service. The tech is to be installed in Beijing’s Airport Express Line, where it will take payments by scanning people’s palm prints and their unique formation of veins without physical contact. Like the idea of completing financial transactions with...
Wimbledon to use AI commentary at upcoming championships
The All England Club has teamed up with tech group IBM to leverage the boom in large language models such as ChatGPT to cover matches that would ordinarily be watched in silence. Although Wimbledon has a reputation for favouring tradition over change, it’s set to follow a global trend...
Should we put restrictions on AI in music?
An anonymous artist called ‘ghostwriter’ created a song using AI-generated vocals from Drake and The Weeknd. It gained over 250,000 streams overnight before it was pulled from Spotify. Is this the start of an AI takeover in music? A song made using AI-generated vocals from The Weeknd and Drake was...
Google launches new AI tool PaLM 2
In an attempt to keep up with the competition, Google has announced PaLM 2, a ‘next-generation language model’ that will be available for many of its upcoming products. It will be in direct competition with services like Midjourney and DALL-E. Google is attempting to throw itself back to the forefront...
Closing the technology gender divide in Africa
Technology is an essential tool for social and economic development in Africa. However, despite significant progress in recent years, there is still a significant gender gap in technology access and participation across the African continent. As the world becomes increasingly digital, the gender divide in technology is a growing concern,...
AI ‘godfather’ Geoffrey Hinton warns of its risks and quits Google
For half a century, AI ‘godfather’ Geoffrey Hinton nurtured the technology at the heart of chatbots like ChatGPT. Now, having left Google, he warns it could cause serious harm in the future. Regarded by many as a ‘godfather’ of AI technology, Geoffrey Hinton’s pioneering research paved the way for sophisticated generative systems like ChatGPT. The British-Canadian earned his chops over half a century in computer science and cognitive phycology. Now, at...
How has espionage evolved in the modern world?
Espionage has been a part of human history for centuries and will continue to be an issue in the modern world. Especially in the age of rapidly advancing technology. The US recently faced scrutiny after highly classified documents from the Pentagon leaked online, implicating that the US was spying on both adversaries and allies. It caused distress over the future of the country’s foreign relationships within government. Despite the fanfare,...
Chicago researchers create EV battery prototype with 1,000-mile range
Researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory and the Illinois Institute of Technology have created a prototype battery with the potential to expand the range of electric vehicles to 1,000 miles. This could also be huge for sustainable aircrafts. The average electric vehicle on the market will likely have a range of between 100 and 300 miles per charge, though automakers are striving for more with solid-state battery releases. Unlike their lithium...
Google employees reportedly call Bard ‘worse than useless’
In its efforts to prevent Microsoft and Open AI running away in the commercial AI chatbot race, Google rolled out Bard way ahead of schedule. A new report claims company employees begged executives not to launch it at the time. Chiefs at Microsoft probably can’t believe their luck. AI has long been tipped as the next massively lucrative venture within tech, and ChatGPT remains largely unchallenged as the benchmark product. In...
