Welcome to our This Week in AI roundup - this week we have stories about measuring the true carbon footprint of artificial intelligence, GPT-4 rumours, and AI-based drone assassins.

1. Exploring the Environmental Impact of Artificial Intelligence
2. GPT-4 Rumors in Silicon Valley
3. Microdrones: AI-powered drones that could become weapons of mass destruction.

💎 Top Stories

Exploring the Environmental Impact of Artificial Intelligence

• AI startup Hugging Face has undertaken the tech sector’s first attempt to estimate the broader carbon footprint of a large language model.
• Hugging Face believes it has come up with a new, better way to calculate emissions produced during the model’s whole life cycle rather than just during training.
• To test its new approach, Hugging Face estimated the overall emissions for its own large language model, BLOOM.
• The researchers found that figure doubled when they took into account the emissions produced by manufacturing computer equipment used for training and running BLOOM once it was trained.
• While 50 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions is significant, it's significantly less than other LLMs of the same size because BLOOM was trained on nuclear-powered hardware.
• Emma Strubell says that this paper sets a new standard for organizations developing AI models and provides clarity on just how enormous LLMs' carbon footprints really are.

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We’re getting a better idea of AI’s true carbon footprint

AI startup Hugging Face has undertaken the tech sector’s first attempt to estimate the broader carbon footprint of a large language model.

MIT Technology ReviewMelissa Heikkilä

GPT-4 Rumors in Silicon Valley

• GPT-4 is the most anticipated AI model in history and is expected to be released sometime between December and February.
• OpenAI has been tight-lipped about GPT-4, but recent leaks suggest that the model will be significantly larger, better at multitasking, less dependent on good prompting, and have a larger context window than its predecessor.
• If these claims are true, GPT-4 would represent a >100x improvement over GPT-3.

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GPT-4 Rumors From Silicon Valley

People are saying things...

The Algorithmic BridgeAlberto Romero

Microdrones: AI-powered drones that could become weapons of mass destruction

• Drones are becoming increasingly prevalent and advanced, with some models being able to autonomously select and kill targets.
• This technology is not yet widespread, but it is rapidly improving and could have major implications for the future of warfare.
• Some experts are concerned about the potential misuse of this technology, particularly if it falls into the hands of groups with ill intentions.

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Drone assassins: the AI weapons of mass destruction rewriting the rules of war

We are entering the much prophesied age of the killer robot – but do we really know what we’re unleashing?

The TelegraphHenry Bodkin

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