Dublin does not seem a fair city to those who move there to work but can’t afford a home. Ireland’s coalition government says it is acting on housebuilding, but bosses and staff say it must try harder
Ireland’s economy is “absolutely booming,” says Stephen O’Dwyer, the founder and owner of Dublin’s Tang cafe/restaurant chain. “But it has left people facing a very unequal and difficult society to work in.”
At the top of O’Dwyer’s concerns is housing, which is cited by businesses large and small as a significant barrier to Ireland’s economic growth. The capital is not alone: cities from Cork to Limerick report acute housing shortages and rising levels of homelessness.
The business groups’ big ideas, from payroll savings schemes to making big tech compensate for fraud on its platforms
Business interest groups are jostling for influence over political parties’ priorities before the 4 July election. Here are some of the big ideas being touted by the UK’s largest industry bodies in their own manifestos.
Big tech is playing its part in reaching net zero targets, but its vast new datacentres are run at huge cost to the environment
Mariana Mazzucato is professor of economics at UCL, and director of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose
When you picture the tech industry, you probably think of things that don’t exist in physical space, such as the apps and internet browser on your phone. But the infrastructure required to store all this information – the physical datacentres housed in business parks and city outskirts – consume massive amounts of energy. Despite its name, the infrastructure used by the “cloud” accounts for more global greenhouse emissions than commercial flights. In 2018, for instance, the 5bn YouTube hits for the viral song Despacito used the same amount of energy it would take to heat 40,000 US homes annually.
This is a hugely environmentally destructive side to the tech industry. While it has played a big role in reaching net zero, giving us smart meters and efficient solar,it’s critical that we turn the spotlight on its environmental footprint. Large language models such as ChatGPT are some of the most energy-guzzling technologies of all. Research suggests, for instance, that about 700,000 litres of water could have been used to cool the machines that trained ChatGPT-3 at Microsoft’s data facilities. It is hardly news that the tech bubble’s self-glorification has obscured the uglier sides of this industry, from its proclivity for tax avoidance to its invasion of privacy and exploitation of our attention span. The industry’s environmental impact is a key issue, yet the companies that produce such models have stayed remarkably quiet about the amount of energy they consume – probably because they don’t want to spark our concern.
Mariana Mazzucato is professor in the economics of innovation and public value at University College London, where she is founding director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose
Ex-England footballer’s deal with Alibaba’s AliExpress follows tie-ups with Hugo Boss and SharkNinja
The former England footballer David Beckham has signed up as a global ambassador for AliExpress, an online retail platform owned by the Chinese tech group Alibaba.
The deal comes in the run-up to the Euro 2024 football tournament, which starts in June, and is the latest tie-up for Beckham, following hot on the heels of partnerships with the suit maker Hugo Boss and the air fryer maker SharkNinja in recent weeks. He is also an ambassador for Tudor watches, Tempur mattresses, Unicef, and Nespresso coffee machines, and he also fronts a Walkers crisps ad.
Funding round values artificial intelligence startup at $18bn before investment, says multibillionaire
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has closed a $6bn (£4.7bn) investment round that will make it among the best-funded challengers to OpenAI.
The startup is only a year old, but it has rapidly built its own large language model (LLM), the technology underpinning many of the recent advances in generative artificial intelligence capable of creating human-like text, pictures, video, and voices.
Hollywood star’s claim ChatGPT update used an imitation of her voice highlights tensions over rapidly accelerating technology
When OpenAI’s new voice assistant said it was “doing fantastic” in a launch demo this month, Scarlett Johansson was not.
The Hollywood star said she was “shocked, angered and in disbelief” that the updated version of ChatGPT, which can listen to spoken prompts and respond verbally, had a voice “eerily similar” to hers.
Petrolheads are quick to scorn the idea of electric car racing, but the series’ chief executive is sure that time, technology – and even geography – are on his side
Jeff Dodds has been a fan of Formula One “all my life”, he says. That is probably a good thing because, as chief executive of electric racing series Formula E, he must find the comparison with its fossil-fuelled cousin is constant.
So he takes it head-on. Such is the growth and improvement in technology in Formula E that one day, he says, it is “realistic that a question will be asked about whether both can exist together”. Talking to the Observer in the race company’s west London headquarters, he adds that maybe one day, as Formula E develops, “they won’t [both exist]”.
Max Tegmark argues that the downplaying is not accidental and threatens to delay, until it’s too late, the strict regulations needed
Big tech has succeeded in distracting the world from the existential risk to humanity that artificial intelligence still poses, a leading scientist and AI campaigner has warned.
Speaking with the Guardian at the AI Summit in Seoul, South Korea, Max Tegmark said the shift in focus from the extinction of life to a broader conception of safety of artificial intelligence risked an unacceptable delay in imposing strict regulation on the creators of the most powerful programs.
UK-based used-car website once valued at £6bn is now looking for a buyer for its remaining assets
The online car dealer Cazoo, which was once valued at $8bn (£6.3bn), has collapsed into administration, putting 200 jobs at risk.
Administrators at Teneo have been appointed to the business, which was founded by Alex Chesterman, the serial entrepreneur who also launched property site Zoopla and Netflix forerunner LoveFilm.
Employers in UK, one of 15 countries studied, willing to pay 14% wage premium for jobs requiring AI skills
The sectors of the global economy most heavily exposed to artificial intelligence (AI) are witnessing a marked productivity increase and command a significant wage premium, according to a report.
Boosting hopes that AI might help lift the global economy out of a 15-year, low-growth trough, a PwC study found productivity growth was almost five times as rapid in parts of the economy where AI penetration was highest than in less exposed sectors.
The video game services company Keywords Studios has said it would be willing to accept a £2bn buyout offer, in the latest foreign takeover of a London-listed business.
Shares in the Dublin-headquartered Keywords jumped 62% on Monday morning after it said it would be minded to recommend an offer from the Swedish private equity investor EQT Group.
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