AI
Artificial intelligence, infrastructure and policy without the hype cycle.
TECHNOLOGY · 41 days agoWill AI take my job? The measured effect is real, narrow, and concentrated on people under 26
The clearest evidence so far comes from payroll records, not forecasts. It shows a 16 per cent relative employment decline for 22- to 25-year-olds in the most exposed occupations — and growth where AI augments the work instead of replacing it.
Verified · 5 sources · 5 min read
TECHNOLOGY · 41 days agoWhich jobs are safe from AI? The dividing line is not the industry — it is whether the work is augmented or automated
The same payroll analysis that found employment falling for early-career workers in exposed occupations found it rising elsewhere. What separates the two is not the sector but how the technology is applied to the task.
Verified · 4 sources · 4 min read
TECHNOLOGY · 41 days agoHow much energy does one AI prompt use? The only measured figure comes from Google, and it is 0.24 watt-hours
OpenAI has published nothing comparable for ChatGPT. The one production measurement in the public record is Google's, for a median Gemini text prompt — and it is small enough that the interesting number is not per-prompt at all.
Verified · 5 sources · 4 min read
TECHNOLOGY · 41 days agoHow much water do data centres use? The answer depends entirely on whether you count the power plants
Published figures differ by orders of magnitude, and almost none of the gap is disagreement about physics. It is whether the estimate stops at the cooling tower or follows the electricity back to where it was generated.
Verified · 5 sources · 5 min read
TECHNOLOGY · 43 days agoIs ChatGPT accurate? The number everyone quotes is not its score
The widely repeated finding that 45 per cent of AI news answers contain a significant issue is an average across four assistants. The one study that broke the figures out by name put ChatGPT lowest — which is not the same as putting it right.
Verified · 5 sources · 5 min read
TECHNOLOGY · 44 days agoAre data centres bad for the environment? The global numbers say one thing, the local ones say another
Data centres account for just over 1 per cent of world electricity and about 0.5 per cent of CO2 emissions. In Ireland the figure approaches a third of national supply. Both are true, and the gap between them is the entire argument.
Verified · 5 sources · 5 min read
TECHNOLOGY · 44 days agoHow much water does ChatGPT use? The researcher behind the famous number has revised it
The figure everyone repeats — roughly a bottle of water per email — came from a 2024 estimate its own author now calls outdated. His revised number is about 35 times smaller, and Google's published figure is smaller still. Almost all of the gap is what each one counts.
Verified · 6 sources · 5 min read