ai

Northamptonshire Police launches live facial recognition trial

Northamptonshire Police will roll out live facial recognition cameras in three town centres. Deployments are scheduled in Northampton on 28 November and 5 December, in Kettering on 29 November, and in Wellingborough on 6 December.

The initiative uses a van loaned from Bedfordshire Police and the watch-lists include high-risk sex offenders or persons wanted for arrest. Facial and biometric data for non-alerts are deleted immediately; alerts are held only up to 24 hours.

Police emphasise the AI based technology is ‘very much in its infancy’ but expect future acquisition of dedicated kit. A coordinator post is being created to manage the LFR programme in-house.

British campaigners express concern the biometric tool may erode privacy or resemble mass surveillance. Police assert that appropriate signage and open policy documents will be in place to maintain public confidence.

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Health sector AI growth in Europe raises safety concerns

Concerns are growing as European countries expand the use of AI in healthcare without establishing sufficient protections for patients or healthcare workers.

A new World Health Organisation report found significant disparities in how nations develop, regulate and fund AI tools.

Some countries are rapidly deploying chatbots, imaging systems and data-analysis tools, while others have barely started integrating AI into their health services. Only four nations across Europe and Central Asia currently have a national strategy dedicated to AI in health care.

WHO officials warn that weak safeguards could lead to biassed algorithms, medical errors and increased inequality in access to care.

The report urges governments to strengthen legal frameworks, train health workers in AI literacy and ensure these technologies are rigorously tested before reaching patients.

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Scepticism needed for AI says Alphabet CEO

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai recently warned people against having total confidence in artificial intelligence tools. Speaking to the BBC, the head of Google’s parent company stressed that current state-of-the-art AI technology remains ‘prone to errors’ and must be used judiciously alongside other resources.

The executive also addressed wider concerns about a potential ‘AI bubble’ following increased tech valuations and spending across the sector. Pichai stated he believes no corporation, including Google, would be completely safe if such an investment surge were to collapse. He compared the current environment to the early internet boom, suggesting the profound impact of AI will nonetheless remain.

Simultaneously, the largest bank in the US, JPMorgan Chase, is sounding an alarm over market instability. Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chair and chief executive, expressed significant worry over a severe US stock market correction, predicting it could materialise within the next six months to two years. Concerns over the geopolitical climate, expansive fiscal spending, and worldwide remilitarisation are adding to this atmosphere of economic uncertainty.

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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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UNESCO and SAP selected the AI system EDiSON for the Solomon Islands

SAP and UNESCO have agreed to deploy the AI-supported disaster management system EDiSON in the Solomon Islands.

The platform, created by SAP Japan and the start-up INSPIRATION PLUS, utilises the SAP Business Technology Platform with machine learning to merge real-time meteorological information with historical records, rather than relying on isolated datasets.

A system that delivers predictive insights that help authorities act before severe weather strikes. It anticipates terrain damage, guides emergency services towards threatened areas and supports decisions on evacuation orders.

The initiative aims to serve as a model for other small island states facing similar climate-related pressures.

UNESCO officials say the project strengthens early warning capacity and encourages long-term resilience. EDiSON will become operational in 2026 and aims to offer a scalable approach for nations with limited technical resources.

Its performance in Japan has already demonstrated how integrated data management can overcome fragmented information flows and restricted analytical tools.

The design of EDiSON enables governments to adopt advanced disaster preparedness systems instead of relying on costly, bespoke infrastructure. A partnership that seeks to improve national readiness in the Solomon Islands, where earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones and floods regularly threaten communities.

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AI helps to fight against antibiotic-resistant superbugs

UK scientists are launching a three-year initiative to use AI in the fight against drug-resistant infections, a growing threat to public health.

The project, backed by £45 million from GSK and coordinated with the Fleming Initiative, aims to develop new tools against pathogens that currently evade treatment.

Researchers will focus on priority bacteria and fungi identified by the World Health Organisation, including E. coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, MRSA and Aspergillus.

These AI models will be utilised to design antibiotics and enhance the understanding of immune responses, with data shared globally to expedite drug development.

Experts warn that antimicrobial resistance could claim millions of lives by 2050 if new solutions are not found. The initiative reflects an urgent need to pool scientific expertise and technology to create next-generation treatments and vaccines for resistant infections.

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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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AI promises better communication tools for disabled users

Students with disabilities met technology executives at National Star College in Gloucestershire, UK to explain what they need from communication devices. Battery life emerged as the top priority, with users saying they need devices that last 24 hours without charging so they can communicate all day long.

One student who controls his device by moving his eyes said losing power during the day feels like having his voice ripped away from him. Another student with cerebral palsy wants her device to help her run a bath independently and eventually design fairground rides that disabled people can enjoy.

Technology companies responded by promising artificial intelligence improvements that will make the devices work much faster. The new AI features will help users type more quickly, correct mistakes automatically and even create personalised voices that sound like the actual person speaking.

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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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