Technology

The vast data centers that power artificial intelligence are so energy hungry that they’re heating up their surroundings, according to new research. It’s an alarming finding given the number of data centers is predicted to explode over the next few years.

the FTC alleged that OkCupid gave an unauthorized third party access to the personal data of millions of OkCupid users in violation of its privacy policies.

An internal memo dispatched by senior execs at Red Hat suggests the software biz is starting to push AI tooling within its Global Engineering department. RHEL may be about to get some Windows 11-style "improvements."

It carries the heading "Engineering that's evolved and amplified for the AI era," and for any AI skeptics in the developer teams at Red Hat, the tone of the email may raise alarm bells. The times are changing, it states.

Most of the time the companies say the layoffs are because AI is doing people jobs, but the reality is that making things that use AI is just a lot more expensive. And enabling employees to use AI more than the free tier is really expensive too. So, they need to cut cost elsewhere to balance it out.

Panasonic has said demand for backup batteries is rising quickly, and it is largely driven by the expansion of AI infrastructure that requires stable, continuous power. It has already allocated around 80% of its planned output to existing customers, leaving only a limited share for new buyers attempting to scale systems.

India’s 50-year-old welfare programme now uses AI to decide who gets food. Across Anganwadi centres, pregnant women and new mothers must pass a facial recognition scan before receiving rations.

• Hacker News.

Major chatbot platforms found to be advertising unregulated online casinos across the continent, exclusive Investigate Europe research shows.

Folk are getting dangerously attached to AI that always tells them they're right

Paul McCartney’s official Reddit account seems to have been banned. The account, u/paulmccartney, had just dropped a set of photos and videos from the first night of his shows at the Fonda Theatre. It went straight into the r/PaulMcCartney subreddit. Then, not long after, the whole thing disappeared.

• Lobsters.

In an effort to gather material for its LLM training, Meta used BitTorrent to download pirated books from Anna’s Archive and other shadow libraries. According to several authors, Meta facilitated the infringement of others by "seeding" these torrents. This week, the court granted the authors permission to add these claims to their complaint, despite openly scolding their counsel for "lame excuses" and "Meta bashing."

Press Release.

Automated traffic—all non-human internet traffic—is growing eight times faster than human traffic, AI-driven traffic—traffic generated by or on behalf of AI systems—is the fastest-growing category of internet traffic, and for the first time, AI systems are not just reading the web but transacting on it.