Hi, that is Yifan from Silicon Valley, your #techAsia host this week. Like many tech reporters, it's been an insanely busy few weeks for me, as all the large players within the space, from OpenAI to Google, have been showcasing their latest AI developments.
And this week is Apple's big moment. At its annual developer conference WWDC, the iPhone maker finally gave us a sneak peek at the way it plans to make use of generative AI. By working with OpenAI's ChatGPT, Apple promised that its next-generation devices can be more like an intelligent personal assistant that can assist with every little thing from rewriting emails to editing photos.
The long-awaited unveiling of the AI strategy sent Apple's stock price to an all-time high, and plenty of are hailing Apple Intelligence as a catalyst for true mainstream adoption of AI.
I actually have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I can't wait to see how the AI-powered iPhone will make my life easier. On the opposite hand, I ponder what this implies for the environment. While all of us hope that AI can change the planet for the higher, the extra computational burden of AI has led to a drastic increase in energy and water consumption, in addition to carbon emissions.
As AI models grow in size and more people use rapidly evolving technology of their every day lives, can we avert a climate crisis while harnessing the facility of artificial intelligence?
The other “AI”
In considered one of the cleverest marketing campaigns this 12 months, Apple called its AI strategy “Apple Intelligence” and touted it as a private intelligence system for iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Apple Intelligence offers latest AI-powered features, similar to more intuitive interactions with the voice assistant Siri, rewriting emails and texts, one-click photo editing, and generating text into emojis. For requests that Siri can't handle, ChatGPT steps in to fill the gap. The iPhone giant said it is usually working on Integration of other AI models on their devices, Nikkei Asias Yifan Yu reports.
While most users won't see how smart Apple Intelligence really is until this fall, the announcement appeared to please investors. On Wednesday, Apple briefly overtook Microsoft to turn into the world's most dear company.
Confused lines
A series of knowledge leaks at a $20 billion web company founded by Japan's SoftBank and South Korea's Naver has strained relations between the 2 countries and highlighted how government concerns about digital security can hamper the international ambitions of technology firms, writes D.enthusiastic Keohane, Kana Inagaki, Christian Davies And Song Jung-a for the Financial Times.
Japan and South Korea have been at loggerheads since Yahoo's network crashes were blamed on insecure systems at co-owner Naver, based in Seoul.
Officials in Tokyo are arguing that Naver should now reduce its 50 percent stake in A Holdings, the holding company of Line and Yahoo Japan, on national and economic security grounds, people conversant in the matter said, but that might give the opposite co-owner, SoftBank, the chance to take control.
The dispute spilled over into top-level talks between the 2 governments last month and threatened to overshadow the recent easing of relations.
Power hungry, power thirsty and dirty
Science fiction movies and novels have long portrayed artificial intelligence as a malevolent superintelligence that seeks to destroy humanity. But it seems that AI doesn’t should be evil to Eliminate people.
The environmental costs of AI are low on the priority list for many governments and users, behind concerns similar to copyright infringement, job losses and out-of-control killer robots. But training and deploying exponentially larger AI models has created enormous energy and water demands, in addition to rising emissions and e-waste, further increasing the chance of wildfires, floods, extreme weather events and all the risks that climate change brings, writes Nikkei Asia's Yifan Yu.
The primary culprits behind AI's insatiable and still-increasing energy consumption are data centers, the “central brains” chargeable for powering countries' digital needs. Between 2022 and 2026, total electricity consumption by the world's data centers is anticipated to double to over 1,000 terawatt hours, roughly akin to Japan's entire annual consumption, in accordance with an estimate by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Correction or discrimination?
Following the US decision to impose import tariffs of over one hundred pc on Chinese electric vehicles, the European Commission announced on Wednesday that it could impose additional tariffs of as much as 38 percent for Chinese electric vehicles after an investigation found that manufacturers in China benefited from “unfair subsidies” throughout their supply chains, from lithium refining to the transportation of the ultimate products.
But in an indication that EU members could have difficulty reaching agreement on their approach to China, Hungary subsequently issued an announcement declaring it “doesn’t agree with punitive tariffs because protectionism isn’t an answer” and calling the choice “highly discriminatory”. Rhyannon Bartlett-Imadegawa And Catherine De Beaurepaire Report.
Instead of a uniform rate, different firms can be subject to different tariffs. BYD's electric cars can be subject to import duties of 17.4 percent, Geely Holding's 20 percent and state-owned SAIC Motor's models 38.1 percent, the European Commission said in an announcement. These tariffs are along with the ten percent that the EU already imposes on Chinese electric automobile imports.
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