Development

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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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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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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Hong Kong deepfake scandal exposes gaps in privacy law

The discovery of hundreds of non-consensual deepfake images on a student’s laptop at the University of Hong Kong has reignited debate about privacy, technology, and accountability. The scandal echoes the 2008 Edison Chen photo leak, which exposed gaps in law and gender double standards.

Unlike stolen private images, today’s fabrications are AI-generated composites that can tarnish reputations with a single photo scraped from social media. The dismissal that such content is ‘not real’ fails to address the damage caused by its existence.

The legal system of Hong Kong struggles to keep pace with this shift. Its privacy ordinance, drafted in the 1990s, was not designed for machine-learning fabrications, while traditional harassment and defamation laws predate the advent of AI. Victims risk harm before distribution is even proven.

The city’s privacy watchdog has launched a criminal investigation, but questions remain over whether creation or possession of deepfakes is covered by existing statutes. Critics warn that overreach could suppress legitimate uses, yet inaction leaves space for abuse.

Observers argue that just as the snapshot camera spurred the development of modern privacy law, deepfakes must drive a new legal boundary to safeguard dignity. Without reform, victims may continue facing harm without recourse.

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South Korea unveils five-year AI blueprint for ‘super-innovation economy’

South Korea’s new administration has unveiled a five-year economic plan to build what it calls a ‘super-innovation economy’ by integrating AI across all sectors of society.

The strategy, led by President Lee Jae-myung, commits 100 trillion won (approximately US$71.5 billion) to position the country among the world’s top three AI powerhouses. Private firms will drive development, with government support for nationwide adoption.

Plans include a sovereign Korean-language AI model, humanoid robots for logistics and industry, and commercialising autonomous vehicles by 2027. Unmanned ships are targeted for completion by 2030, alongside widespread use of drones in firefighting and aviation.

AI will also be introduced into drug approvals, smart factories, welfare services, and tax administration, with AI-based tax consultations expected by 2026. Education initiatives and a national AI training data cluster will nurture talent and accelerate innovation.

Five domestic firms, including Naver Cloud, SK Telecom, and LG AI Research, will receive state support to build homegrown AI foundation models. Industry reports currently rank South Korea between sixth and 10th in global AI competitiveness.

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