The word “robot” was coined in K. Čapek’s play ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’ in 1920, which depicted artificial beings created to perform manual labour. The word “robot” (“robota: in Czech) literally means “drudgery”. Well before this, in 1770, “The Mechanical Turk” was exhibited, which played chess very well, but this turned out to just be a…
DetailsThe release of ChatGPT in November 2022 opened the eyes of most of the world to the power of large language models (LLMs). This is the core technology that underpins ChatGPT and its rivals Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, etc, as well as their image-generating cousins Midjourney, Leonardo, Imagen, Firefly and Sora. Excitement about LLMs reached a…
DetailsArtificial intelligence requires plenty of computing power. Large language models (LLMs), the technology underlying generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, require vast amounts of data to train on, and in turn, this training requires massive computing power. Executing a prompt in an AI chatbot requires processing power, and it is estimated that executing an AI…
DetailsWhen most people think about artificial intelligence (AI) they may associate it with chatbots like ChatGPT and its rivals, or with elaborate computer models running in remote data centres. People tend not to think about AI being used in consumer devices that they encounter every day: thermostats, TV streaming services, fridges and telephones, yet AI…
DetailsThe large language models (LLMs) that underlie generative AI rely on being trained on vast volumes of data. This may be text, images or video, but in any case, the answers that a fully trained LLM will give to you will be heavily dependent on the nature of that training data. If you are going…
DetailsIn case you were in any doubt that ChatGPT and its AI cousins were heavily used by students to do their homework, data shows that the usage of ChatGPT dropped substantially during the 2025 summer break, just as it did the previous two summers. Students are heavy users of generative AI, which will not come…
DetailsThe wine industry favours tradition. The first traces of wine production were near Tbilisi in Georgia, around 6,000 BCE, but over the centuries, the industry has adapted to technological advances. The glass bottle was uncommon until the 17th century, though the first ever glass bottle dates back to Roman times. The wine industry is worth…
DetailsIn August 2025 it was revealed in the press that a report produced by Deloitte for the Australian government contained several entirely fabricated citations to articles and books that do not exist, other than in the fevered hallucinations of generative AI. The report, costing taxpayers AU$439,000, was presumably not offered at a substantial discount to…
DetailsFrom time immemorial, people have liked to gamble: the first six-sided dice was found in Mesopotamia, dating back to around 3000 BCE, and in ancient China, wooden tiles for a lottery-style game have been found dating back to 2300 BCE. The first casino emerged in Italy in 1638. More recently, the advent of the internet…
DetailsThe pharmaceutical industry was worth $1.6 trillion in 2024, employing around 8 million people directly and up to 75 million people indirectly. Various flavours of artificial intelligence show considerable promise in these industries. AI can be utilised in various applications, including research and drug discovery, clinical trials, operations such as manufacturing, and for other purposes,…
DetailsThe 26th of August 2025 may end up being quite a significant day when the definitive history book of AI is published. I had written previously about the unresolved issue of copyright associated with the training of large language models (LLMs), which underlie the generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and also the…
DetailsGenerative artificial intelligence (AI) technology, such as ChatGPT and its rivals, depends heavily on training data, but what if that training data is deliberately poisoned? The large language models (LLMs) technology that underlie generative AI go through three stages of training. The models are fed vast amounts of raw data, such as The Common Corpus,…
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