1. Oceans marked 365 straight days of record-breaking global sea surface temperatures this week, fueling concerns among international scientists that climate change could push marine ecosystems beyond a tipping point. The consistent climb in temperatures reached a peak on Wednesday when the new all-time high was set for the past 12 months, at 21.2C. The world’s seas have yet to show any signs of dropping to typical, seasonal temperatures, with daily records consecutively broken since they first went off the charts in mid-March last year, according to data from the US National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration and the Climate Reanalyzer research collaboration. Driven by human-caused climate change and amplified by the cyclical El Niño weather phenomenon that warms the Pacific Ocean, this exceptional heat has bleak implications. (Source: ft.com)
Since the start of 2024, sea-surface temperatures have continued to climb; in February, they set yet another record. In a warming world, ocean temperatures are expected to rise and keep on rising. But, for the last twelve months, the seas have been so feverish that scientists are starting to worry about not just the physical impacts of all that heat but the theoretical implications. Can the past year be explained by what’s already known about climate change, or are there forces at work that haven’t been accounted for? And, if it’s the latter, does this mean that projections of warming, already decidedly grim, are underestimating the dangers?
“We don’t really know what’s going on,” Gavin Schmidt, the director of nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told me. “And we haven’t really known what’s going on since about March of last year.” He called the situation “disquieting.” (Source: newyorker.com)
3. Leading western and Chinese artificial intelligence scientists have issued a stark warning that tackling risks around the powerful technology requires global co-operation similar to the cold war effort to avoid nuclear conflict. A group of renowned international experts met in Beijing last week, where they identified “red lines” on the development of AI, including around the making of bioweapons and launching cyber attacks. In a statement seen by the Financial Times, issued in the days after the meeting, the academics warned that a joint approach to AI safety was needed to stop “catastrophic or even existential risks to humanity within our lifetimes”. “In the depths of the cold war, international scientific and governmental co-ordination helped avert thermonuclear catastrophe. Humanity again needs to co-ordinate to avert a catastrophe that could arise from unprecedented technology,” the statement said. (Source: ft.com)
4. Nvidia has unveiled its latest more powerful artificial intelligence chips as it sets its sights on extending its dominance in the burgeoning industry. Chief executive Jensen Huang on Monday said Nvidia’s Blackwell graphics processing units would massively increase the computing power driving large language models. The Blackwell GPU has 208bn transistors, compared with 80bn in last year’s H100, in a measure of its increased power. Huang said the chip was twice as powerful when it came to training AI models as its current generation of GPUs, and had five times their capability when it came to “inference” — the speed at which AI models such as ChatGPT can respond to queries. “The inference capability of Blackwell is off the charts,” he said, adding that there was “unbelievable excitement” about it. (Source: ft.com)
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