Exploring the power and pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence.
All generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity are based on artificial neural networks that are trained on huge amounts of data, such as text or images. The large language models (LLMs) that underlie this technology are voracious in their need to ingest training data in massive quantities. Some of the…
Science fiction is full of AIs that have gone rogue. The HAL 9000 computer in the 1968 Stanley Kubrick movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” determined that the crew of the spaceship it operated was superfluous to its mission and attempted to kill them all when it suspected they were plotting to shut it down. When…
Artificial intelligence (AI), in particular its trendiest flavour, called generative AI, is having an increasing impact on the world’s environment. The large language models (LLMs) that are the basis of generative AI require prodigious computing resources. An LLM needs to be trained on data and, once up and running, then produces answers to user prompts.…
With all the current levels of excitement about generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the form of chatbots like ChatGPT and its rivals, it is easy to forget that the scope of AI goes well beyond this particular strand of AI. The media is awash with stories about the large language models (LLMs) that underpin generative…
Most of us by now will have tried using an AI chatbot like ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity or Grok. They are hard to avoid, with, for example, Google now putting AI-generated answers at the top of its queries, with sometimes amusing results. However, if you are to implement one of these generative AI tools…
Large language models (LLMs) are the underlying technology of popular generative AI applications like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Grok. They are well known for their ability to generate fluent text in response to natural language prompts from users, such as: “write me an essay on the industrial revolution”, or “draft me a letter for…
“Large language models” (LLMs) underly all the current generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Grok. The same technology is also the basis for the AI image and video tools like Midjourney, DALL-E! Leonardo, Firefly and Stable Diffusion. Before we get into the main thrust of this blog, which…
There has been great public excitement about artificial intelligence (AI), and in particular generative AI, ever since the release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in November 2022. The underlying large language model (LLM) technology allows AI models to generate content on a wide range of subjects in a fluent, conversational manner. From answers to basic questions…
The hottest topic at the moment in artificial intelligence (AI) is “agentic AI”. This is the idea of AI systems that have autonomous decision-making ability and the ability to take action. In principle, these may be actions without human supervision. This is quite different from the current use of chatbots such as Claude, Perplexity, Grok…
There is no doubt that AI is having a huge impact on the world. Statements by the likes of McKinsey and Goldman Sachs have predicted huge economic effects, though some more recent studies, such as this from the MIT Sloan School of Management, are more nuanced. ChatGPT claims 800 million users in mid-2025, and is…