AIs future may be limited not by chips, but by the power to run them. Eric Schmidt highlights how data centers fueling AI models are consuming record amounts of water and electricity, risking an environmental crisis. As big tech races toward superintelligence, the looming question is whether our energy grid can handle the load.
Category: robotics/AI – Page 98
New surveillance technology can track people by how they disrupt Wi-Fi signals
Hi-tech surveillance technologies are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you want sophisticated devices to detect suspicious behavior and alert authorities. But on the other, there is the need to protect individual privacy. Balancing public safety and personal freedoms is an ongoing challenge for innovators and policymakers.
This debate is set to reignite with news that researchers at La Sapienza University in Rome have developed a system that can identify individuals just by the way they disrupt Wi-Fi signals.
The scientists have dubbed this new technology “WhoFi.” Unlike traditional biometric systems such as fingerprint scanners and facial recognition, it doesn’t require direct physical contact or visual feeds. WhoFi can also track individuals in a larger area than a fixed-position camera, provided there is a Wi-Fi network.
Neural biomarkers identified for obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms in deep brain networks
For the first time, researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and Amsterdam UMC have identified what happens in neural networks deep within the brain during obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. Using electrodes implanted in the brain, they observed how specific brain waves became active. These brain waves serve as a biomarker for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and are an important step towards more targeted treatments.
OCD is a psychiatric disorder in which people suffer from obsessive thoughts (obsessions) and compulsive behaviors (compulsions). A well-known example is fear of contamination: someone is constantly afraid of becoming infected (the obsession) and feels compelled to wash their hands over and over again (the compulsion).
In OCD, communication appears to be disrupted between the cerebral cortex, the striatum, and the thalamus, areas of the brain that together form the CSTC circuit. Normally, this circuit mainly coordinates movement and motivation.
New Koske Linux malware hides in cute panda images
A new Linux malware named Koske may have been developed with artificial intelligence and is using seemingly benign JPEG images of panda bears to deploy malware directly into system memory.
Researchers from cybersecurity company AquaSec analyzed Koske and described it as “a sophhisticated Linux threat.” Based on the observed adaptive behavior, the researchers believe that the malware was developed using large language models (LLMs) or automation frameworks.
Koske’s purpose is to deploy CPU and GPU-optimized cryptocurrency miners that use the host’s computational resources to mine over 18 distinct coins.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns of an AI ‘fraud crisis’
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the world may be on the precipice of a “fraud crisis” because of how artificial intelligence could enable bad actors to impersonate other people.
“A thing that terrifies me is apparently there are still some financial institutions that will accept a voice print as authentication for you to move a lot of money or do something else — you say a challenge phrase, and they just do it,” Altman said. “That is a crazy thing to still be doing… AI has fully defeated most of the ways that people authenticate currently, other than passwords.”
The comments were part of his wide-ranging interview about the economic and societal impacts of AI at the Federal Reserve on Tuesday. He also told the audience, which included, representatives of large US financial institutions, about the role he expects AI to play in the economy.
OpenAI prepares to release advanced GPT-5 model in August
OpenAI is reportedly set to launch its highly anticipated GPT-5 model in August 2025, following hints from CEO Sam Altman who previously stated the release would come “very soon” and “sometime this summer.” According to reports from The Verge and other sources, the next-generation AI model will arrive alongside mini and nano versions, with API access for developers, marking a significant evolution from its predecessor GPT-4.
They helped make Waymo go. Now they’re building AI-powered robots to solve America’s labor crisis
To confront this growing labor crisis, Boris Sofman—a Carnegie Mellon robotics Ph.D. and early Waymo executive—cofounded Bedrock Robotics in 2024. Instead of building autonomous machines from scratch, Bedrock retrofits existing construction equipment like excavators, bulldozers, and loaders with AI-powered operating systems, sensors, and lidar to make them fully autonomous.
Sofman has brought together fellow engineers from Waymo, Google, and Caterpillar (CAT), many of whom were instrumental in scaling autonomous technologies in some of the world’s most complex machines. The team shares a fundamental belief: the future of construction lies in autonomy, not more manpower.
“I saw the powerful potential of applying modern ML approaches we developed at Waymo to construction. This is a problem you could not solve without the modern approaches we saw to be so effective, and helped deploy, in transportation, so it felt like a huge opportunity to address this critical need,” Sofman tells Fast Company. “We can get to a deployed product for a fraction of the cost it took Waymo, and continue to build toward the full potential while growing revenues and serving real customers.”
