Economic

Rising AI demand fuels new climate questions

A growing debate over AI dominated COP30 in Brazil, as delegates weighed its capacity to support climate solutions against its rapidly rising environmental costs.

Technology leaders argued that AI can strengthen energy management, refine climate research and enhance conservation programmes.

Participants highlighted an expanding number of AI-driven tools showcased at the summit, reflecting both enthusiasm and caution about their long-term influence.

Several countries noted that AI systems could help smaller delegations review complex negotiation documents and take part more effectively.

Environmental advocates warned that ballooning electricity use and water demand from data centres risk undermining climate targets.

Campaigners pressed for tighter rules, including mandatory public-interest testing for new facilities and reliance on on-site renewable energy.

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Meta wins antitrust case over monopoly claims

Meta has defeated a major antitrust challenge after a US federal judge ruled it does not currently hold monopoly power in social networking. The decision spares the company from being forced to separate Instagram and WhatsApp, which regulators had argued were acquired to suppress competition.

The judge found the Federal Trade Commission failed to prove Meta maintains present-day dominance, noting that the market has been reshaped by rivals such as TikTok. Meta argued it now faces intense competition across mobile platforms as user behaviour shifts rapidly.

FTC lawyers revisited internal emails linked to Meta’s past acquisitions, but the ruling emphasised that the case required proof of ongoing violations.

Analysts say the outcome contrasts sharply with recent decisions against Google in search and advertising, signalling mixed fortunes for large tech firms.

Industry observers note that Meta still faces substantial regulatory pressure, including upcoming US trials regarding children’s mental health and questions about its heavy investment in AI.

The company welcomed the ruling and stated that it intends to continue developing products within a competitive market framework.

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Chrome receives emergency update to fix high-severity zero-day flaw

Google has issued an emergency update to fix the seventh Chrome zero-day exploited in attacks this year. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2025-13223, is caused by a type confusion bug in the browser’s V8 JavaScript engine and was used in the wild before the patch was released.

The company says updates will roll out across the Stable Desktop channel in the coming weeks, though users can install the fix immediately by checking for updates in Chrome’s settings. Google is withholding technical details until most users have upgraded to avoid encouraging further exploitation.

The vulnerability was reported by a member of Google’s Threat Analysis Group and allowed attackers to trigger code execution or browser crashes through malicious HTML pages. It continues a pattern of high-severity zero-days discovered and patched throughout 2025.

Google stresses that prompt updates remain essential, as attackers often target unpatched systems. Automatic updates can help ensure that newly released fixes reach users quickly and reduce exposure to emerging threats.

Security experts also recommend enabling scheduled antivirus scans and using protective features, such as hardened browsers or VPNs. With multiple zero-days already patched this year, analysts say more are likely, and users should keep Chrome’s update settings enabled.

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Arizona astronomer creates ray-tracing method to make AI less overconfident

A University of Arizona astronomer, Peter Behroozi, has developed a novel technique to make AI systems more trustworthy by enabling them to quantify when they might be wrong.

Behroozi’s method adapts ray tracing, traditionally used in computer graphics, to explore the high-dimensional spaces in which AI models operate, thereby allowing the system to gauge uncertainty more effectively.

He uses a Bayesian-sampling approach: rather than relying on a single model, the system effectively consults a ‘whole range of experts’ by training many models in parallel and observing the diversity of their outputs.

This advance addresses a critical problem in modern AI: ‘wrong-but-confident’ outputs, situations where a model gives a single, confident answer that may be incorrect. According to Behroozi, his technique is orders of magnitude faster than traditional uncertainty-quantification methods, making it practical even for extensive neural networks.

The implications are broad, extending from healthcare to finance to autonomous systems: AI that knows its own limits could reduce risk and increase reliability. Behroozi hopes his code, now publicly available, will be adopted by other researchers working under high-stakes conditions.

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Diplomatic progress slows Nexperia crisis

The Dutch government has paused its intervention in chipmaker Nexperia after officials described promising diplomatic progress with China, easing a months-long standoff that had disrupted global supply chains. The suspension follows talks in which Beijing began relaxing export limits it had imposed on Nexperia’s finished chips, restrictions that had deepened shortages for major carmakers including BMW, Honda, Nissan, Volkswagen, and Bosch.

The dispute began in September when the Netherlands seized control of Nexperia from its Chinese owner Wingtech, invoking the Goods Availability Act, a Cold War-era law that had never been used before. Dutch authorities stated that the takeover was necessary to safeguard national security and prevent Wingtech founder Zhang Xuezheng from relocating production to China, citing allegations of mismanagement and attempts to undermine European operations.

Beijing retaliated by restricting chip exports, while management on both sides blocked shipments and orders amid a worsening internal corporate conflict.

Economy Minister Vincent Karremans stated that the government was encouraged by China’s efforts to restore chip supplies and would continue negotiations alongside European and international partners. The EU trade chief Maroš Šefčovič and several major automakers welcomed the announcement, though industry leaders cautioned that it remains too early to predict how quickly supply chains will stabilise.

With the Chinese side now selling stockpiled chips to ease shortages and the European side planning its response, the easing of tensions marks a temporary reprieve in a dispute that highlighted the fragility of Europe’s semiconductor dependencies and the geopolitical risks tied to them.

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Fight over state AI authority heats up in US Congress

US House Republicans are mounting a new effort to block individual states from regulating AI, reviving a proposal that the Senate overwhelmingly rejected just four months ago. Their push aligns with President Donald Trump’s call for a single federal AI standard, which he argues is necessary to avoid a ‘patchwork’ of state-level rules that he claims hinder economic growth and fuel what he described as ‘woke AI.’

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is now attempting to insert the measure into the National Defence Authorisation Act, a must-pass annual defence spending bill expected to be finalised in the coming weeks. If successful, the move would place a moratorium on state-level AI regulation, effectively ending the states’ current role as the primary rule-setters on issues ranging from child safety and algorithmic fairness to workforce impacts.

The proposal faces significant resistance, including from within the Republican Party. Lawmakers who blocked the earlier attempt in July warned that stripping states of their authority could weaken protections in areas such as copyright, child safety, and political speech.

Critics, such as Senator Marsha Blackburn and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, argue that the measure would amount to a handout to Big Tech and leave states unable to guard against the use of predatory or intrusive AI.

Congressional leaders hope to reach a deal before the Thanksgiving recess, but the ultimate fate of the measure remains uncertain. Any version of the moratorium would still need bipartisan support in the Senate, where most legislation requires 60 votes to advance.

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NVIDIA pushes forward with AI-ready data

Enterprises are facing growing pressure to prepare unstructured data for use in modern AI systems as organisations struggle to turn prototypes into production tools.

Around forty percent of AI projects advance beyond the pilot phase, largely due to limits in data quality and availability. Most organisational information now comes in unstructured form, ranging from emails to video files, which offers little coherence and places a heavy load on governance systems.

AI agents need secure, recent and reliable data instead of fragmented information scattered across multiple storage silos. Preparing such data demands extensive curation, metadata work, semantic chunking and the creation of vector embeddings.

Enterprises also struggle with the rising speed of data creation and the spread of duplicate copies, which increases both operational cost and security concerns.

An emerging approach by NVIDIA, known as the AI data platform, aims to address these challenges by embedding GPU acceleration directly into the data path. The platform prepares and indexes information in place, allowing enterprises to reduce data drift, strengthen governance and avoid unnecessary replication.

Any change to a source document is immediately reflected in the associated AI representations, improving accuracy and consistency for business applications.

NVIDIA is positioning its own AI Data Platform reference design as a next step for enterprise storage. The design combines RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs, BlueField three DPUs and integrated AI processing pipelines.

Leading technology providers including Cisco, Dell Technologies, IBM, HPE, NetApp, Pure Storage and others have adopted the model as they prepare storage systems for broader use of generative AI in the enterprise sector.

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OpenAI and Intuit expand financial AI collaboration

Yesterday, OpenAI and Intuit announced a major strategic partnership aimed at reshaping how people manage their personal and business finances. The arrangement will allow Intuit apps to appear directly inside ChatGPT, enabling secure and personalised financial actions within a single environment.

An agreement that is worth more than one hundred million dollars and reinforces Intuit’s long-term push to strengthen its AI-driven expert platform.

Intuit will broaden its use of OpenAI’s most advanced models to support financial tasks across its products. Frontier models will help power AI agents that assist with tax preparation, cash flow forecasting, payroll management and wider financial planning.

Intuit will also continue using ChatGPT Enterprise internally so employees can work with greater speed and accuracy.

The partnership is expected to help consumers make more informed financial choices instead of relying on fragmented tools. Users will be able to explore suitable credit offers, receive clearer tax answers, estimate refunds and connect with tax specialists.

Businesses will gain tailored insights based on real time data that can improve cash flow, automate customer follow ups and support more effective outreach through email marketing.

Leaders from both companies argue that the collaboration will give people and firms a meaningful financial advantage. They say greater personalisation, deeper data analysis and more effortless decision making will support stronger household finances and more resilient small enterprises.

The deal expands the growing community of OpenAI enterprise customers and strengthens Intuit’s position in global financial technology.

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Web services recover after Cloudflare restores its network systems

Cloudflare has resolved a technical issue that briefly disrupted access to major platforms, including X, ChatGPT, and Letterboxd. Users had earlier reported internal server error messages linked to Cloudflare’s network, indicating that pages could not be displayed.

The disruption began around midday UK time, with some sites loading intermittently as the problem spread across the company’s infrastructure. Cloudflare confirmed it was investigating an incident affecting multiple customers and issued rolling updates as engineers worked to identify the fault.

Outage tracker Down Detector also experienced difficulties during the incident, later showing a sharp rise in reports once it came back online. The pattern pointed to a broad network-level failure rather than isolated platform issues.

Users saw repeated internal server error warnings asking them to try again, though services began recovering as Cloudflare isolated the cause. The company has not yet released full technical details, but said the fault has been fixed and that systems are stabilising.

Cloudflare provides routing, security, and reliability tools for a wide range of online services, making a single malfunction capable of cascading globally. The company said it would share further information on the incident and steps taken to prevent similar failures.

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Misconfigured database triggered global Cloudflare failure, CEO says

Cloudflare says its global outage on 18 November was caused by an internal configuration error, not a cyberattack. CEO Matthew Prince apologised to users after a permissions update to a ClickHouse cluster generated a malformed feature file that caused systems worldwide to crash.

The oversized file exceeded a hard limit in Cloudflare’s routing software, triggering failures across its global edge. Intermittent recoveries during the first hours of the incident led engineers to suspect a possible attack, as the network randomly stabilised when a non-faulty file propagated.

Confusion intensified when Cloudflare’s externally hosted status page briefly became inaccessible, raising fears of coordinated targeting. The root cause was later traced to metadata duplication from an unexpected database source, which doubled the number of machine-learning features in the file.

The outage affected Cloudflare’s CDN, security layers, and ancillary services, including Turnstile, Workers KV, and Access. Some legacy proxies kept limited traffic moving, but bot scores and authentication systems malfunctioned, causing elevated latencies and blocked requests.

Engineers halted the propagation of the faulty file by mid-afternoon and restored a clean version before restarting affected systems. Prince called it Cloudflare’s most serious failure since 2019 and said lessons learned will guide major improvements to the company’s infrastructure resilience.

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