Artificial intelligence

EU and South Korea unite on AI and energy

The European Union and South Korea will bring together top policymakers, industry experts, and academics for a high-level seminar on the role of AI in transforming energy systems. The event, titled ‘AI & Energy: Delivering EU and Korea’s Digital and Green Ambitions’, will take place on 27 August 2025 during the World Climate Industry Expo in Busan.

It comes at a time when AI is revolutionising global industries and driving up energy demand, with data centres alone expected to double their electricity use by 2030. Around 150 participants will explore how AI can optimise grids, boost efficiency, and make energy systems more flexible, while ensuring sustainability.

Senior European officials, including Ditte Juul Jørgensen of the European Commission and climate leaders from Finland and the Netherlands, will join Korean representatives to discuss opportunities for cooperation. The seminar builds on the momentum of international clean energy talks held a day earlier.

The discussions also align with the EU’s Affordable Energy Action Plan, which launched a consultation earlier this month to shape its 2026 Strategic Roadmap on digitalisation and AI in energy. That initiative aims to scale up innovative technologies to accelerate decarbonisation.

Meanwhile, under President Lee Jae-Myung, South Korea is pursuing its own AI-driven growth strategy, investing in ‘AI highways’ and a national coordination body to support the energy transition.

The seminar underscores the EU–Korea Green Partnership’s vision: building a clean, competitive, and digitally empowered energy future by bringing together policymakers, researchers, and industry innovators.

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Google pushes staff to embrace AI to stay ahead

Google is urging its workforce to adopt AI in everyday tasks instead of relying solely on traditional methods.

CEO Sundar Pichai has warned that falling behind in AI could risk the company’s competitive edge, especially as rivals like Microsoft, Amazon and Meta push their staff to embrace similar tools.

Early trials inside Google suggest a significant boost in efficiency, with engineers reporting a 10% increase in weekly productivity after adopting AI.

The company has launched a training initiative called AI Savvy Google to accelerate the shift. The programme provides courses, toolkits and hands-on sessions to help employees integrate AI into their workflows.

One of the standout tools is Cider, an AI-powered coding assistant already used by half of the engineers with access to it.

Executives believe AI will soon become an essential part of software engineering. Brian Saluzzo, a senior leader at Google, told staff that internal AI tools will continue to improve and become deeply embedded in coding work.

The company stresses the importance of using AI to support rather than replace workers, with the training programme designed to upskill employees instead of pushing them aside.

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How to spot AI-generated videos with simple visual checks

Mashable offers a hands-on guide to help users detect AI-generated videos by observing subtle technical cues. Key warning signs include mismatched lip movements and speech, where voices are dubbed over real footage and audio isn’t perfectly aligned with mouth motions.

Users are also advised to look for visual anomalies such as unnatural blurs, distorted shadows or odd lighting effects that seem inconsistent with natural environments. Deepfake videos can show slight flickers around faces or uneven reflections that betray their artificial origin.

Blinking, or the lack thereof, can also be revealing. AI faces often fail to replicate natural blinking patterns, and may display either no blinking or irregular frequency.

Viewers should also note unnatural head or body movements that do not align with speech or emotional expression, such as stiff postures or awkward gestures.

Experts stress these cues are increasingly well-engineered, making deepfakes harder to detect visually. They recommend combining observation with source verification, such as tracing the video back to reputable outlets or conducting reverse image searches for robust protection.

Ultimately, better detection tools and digital media literacy are essential to maintaining trust in online content.

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Nvidia launches Spectrum-XGS to build global AI factories

American technology company Nvidia has unveiled Spectrum-XGS Ethernet, a new networking technology designed to connect multiple data centres into unified giga-scale AI factories.

With AI demand skyrocketing, single facilities are hitting limits in power and capacity, creating the need for infrastructure that can operate across cities, nations and continents.

Spectrum-XGS extends Nvidia’s Spectrum-X Ethernet platform, introducing what the company calls a ‘scale-across’ approach, alongside scale-up and scale-out models.

Integrating advanced congestion control, latency management, and telemetry nearly doubles the performance of the Nvidia Collective Communications Library, allowing geographically distributed data centres to function as one large AI cluster.

Early adopters like CoreWeave are preparing to link their facilities using the new system. According to Nvidia, the technology offers 1.6 times greater bandwidth density than traditional Ethernet and features Spectrum-X switches and ConnectX-8 SuperNICs, optimised for hyperscale AI operations.

The company argues that the approach will define the next phase of AI infrastructure, enabling super-factories to manage millions of GPUs while improving efficiency and lowering operational costs.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang described the development as part of the AI industrial revolution, highlighting that Spectrum-XGS can unify data centres into global networks that act as vast, giga-scale AI super-factories.

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NVIDIA eyes recovery in China after export deal ahead of Q2 report

NVIDIA is due to report its Q2 2026 financial results after the US market closes on 27 August, and analysts are expecting strong performance.

Consensus forecasts place revenue at around US $45.9 billion, up about 50 percent year-on-year, driven by ongoing demand for Blackwell GPUs, data centre expansion and redistribution of AI infrastructure investments globally.

Export changes are also pivotal. After entering a deal to resume H20 chip sales to China, despite revenue-sharing conditions, NVIDIA could reclaim as much as US$8 billion during Q2, mitigating past losses caused by restrictions.

Beyond geopolitical shifts, the Blackwell Ultra GPU is central to growth. Offering up to 50 times faster AI inference than earlier models, it is increasingly stocked by cloud providers and hyperscalers. Markets view this as a strategic advantage, fueling long-term AI momentum.

Risks remain. Gross margins may recover from prior pressure due to licensing charges, but margin expansion depends on supply and TAM realisation. China’s policy environment is also uncertain, making future guidance cautious for some analysts.

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Dell expands AI innovation hub in Singapore to drive regional growth

Dell Technologies has launched a new Asia Pacific and Japan AI Innovation Hub in Singapore, strengthening its role in advancing AI across the region.

The hub extends the company’s Global Innovation Hub, which has already received more than US$50 million in investment since 2019. Its focus is on driving AI transformation, enablement and leadership, in line with Singapore’s National AI Strategy 2.0.

Instead of offering only infrastructure, the hub delivers end-to-end support, from strategy to deployment, helping enterprises bridge the gap between ambition and practical results. Research shows 62% of Singaporean businesses prefer such holistic partnerships.

Since 2024, the hub has developed about 50 AI prototypes and carried out more than 100 proof-of-concepts, workshops and demonstrations across areas such as generative and predictive AI.

The projects have already influenced multiple sectors. In energy, AI solutions are strengthening infrastructure resilience and enhancing customer engagement with digital humans and chatbots.

In telecommunications, AI is supporting agility and operational efficiency, while in education, cloud-based technologies are empowering research and innovation.

Dell’s AI Centre of Excellence Lab further supports these initiatives by testing solutions for AI PCs and edge computing in collaboration with academic and hardware partners.

A strong emphasis is also placed on skills development. By the end of 2025, the hub aims to train around 10,000 students and mid-career professionals in AI engineering, platform engineering and related fields.

Working with 10 local institutes, Dell is addressing the talent shortage reported by nearly half of Singaporean organisations. Events such as the Dell InnovateFest and the Dell Innovation Challenge provide platforms for students and partners to showcase ideas and create solutions for social good.

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Scientists used AI model to anticipate fusion success ahead of experiment

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory employed a deep learning model to forecast the outcome of the December 2022 fusion ignition experiment at their National Ignition Facility (NIF).

The model, part of a cognitive simulation framework, predicted with approximately 74 per cent probability that the test would exceed the breakeven point, meaning it would yield more energy from fusion than the laser energy used.

The model combined over 150,000 high-fidelity simulations with real-world experimental data using Bayesian inference to enhance prediction accuracy. It ran on LLNL’s Sierra supercomputer and was embedded in their CogSim toolkit for physics-informed AI-driven simulation.

Researchers emphasise that this was not a lucky guess. The AI provided probabilistic forecasts complete with confidence intervals, guiding expectations and helping shape subsequent experimental designs.

Observers note that such an approach could dramatically reduce time and cost in future fusion experiments.

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OpenAI to open office in New Delhi

OpenAI has announced plans to open its first office in India later this year, selecting New Delhi as the location. India is now ChatGPT’s second-largest market after the US and continues to experience rapid growth in user activity.

Weekly active users of ChatGPT in India have increased over fourfold over the past year, with students making up the largest global user segment. CEO Sam Altman praised India’s talent pool and government support, stating the new office is key to building AI with and for India.

Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw welcomed the move, citing India’s AI mission and expanding digital infrastructure as a natural foundation for the partnership. OpenAI will also hold its first Education Summit in India later this month, aiming to further engage with students and educators nationwide.

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Senior OpenAI executive Julia Villagra departs amid talent war

OpenAI’s chief people officer, Julia Villagra, has left the company, marking the latest leadership change at the AI pioneer. Villagra, who joined the San Francisco firm in early 2024 and was promoted in March, previously led its human resources operations.

Her responsibilities will temporarily be overseen by chief strategy officer Jason Kwon, while chief applications officer Fidji Simo will lead the search for her successor.

OpenAI said Villagra is stepping away to pursue her personal interest in art, music and storytelling as tools to help people understand the shift towards artificial general intelligence, a stage when machines surpass human performance in most forms of work.

The departure comes as OpenAI navigates a period of intense competition for AI expertise. Microsoft-backed OpenAI is valued at about $300 billion, with a potential share sale set to raise that figure to $500 billion.

The company faces growing rivalry from Meta, where Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly offered $100 million signing bonuses to attract OpenAI talent.

While OpenAI expands, public concerns over the impact of AI on employment continue. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found 71% of Americans fear AI could permanently displace too many workers, despite the unemployment rate standing at 4.2% in July.

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Google claims Gemini uses less water and energy per text prompt

Google has published new estimates on the environmental footprint of Gemini, claiming a single text prompt uses about five drops of water and 0.24 watt-hours of electricity. The company says this equates to 0.03 grams of carbon dioxide emissions.

According to Google, efficiencies have reduced Gemini’s energy consumption and carbon footprint per text prompt by factors of 33 and 44 over the past year. Chief technologist Ben Gomes said the model now delivers higher-quality responses with a significantly lower footprint.

The company argued that these figures are significantly lower than those suggested in earlier research. However, Shaolei Ren, the author of one of the cited papers, said Google’s comparisons were misleading and incomplete.

Ren noted that Google compared its latest onsite-only water figures against his study’s highest total figures, creating the impression that Gemini was far more efficient. He also said Google omitted indirect water use, such as electricity-related consumption, from its estimates.

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