2023-10-20 15:20:28
The AI energy bill – …continues to increase. The electricity consumption of servers specifically dedicated to artificial intelligence systems is expected to reach 85 terawatt hours per year in 2027, according to projections by a team from Vrije University in Amsterdam. This is approximately the total electricity consumption of Belgium today [Scientific American]. In the archives: Memristors to solve the energy challenge of AI, 2023.
More cells than stars – Biologists have done the calculation: the cells of living beings are a million times more numerous than the stars in the Universe (1023). And the total number of cells that have lived on Earth exceeds the number of stars by ten orders of magnitude. The estimates also conclude that our planet’s ecosystems cannot support more than 1041 cells. Our little “pale blue dot” is a big world [Science]. In the archives: what is our place in the universe? 2015.
The purple color of ashes – A roll of carbonized papyrus, from the remains of Herculaneum, devastated by the eruption of Vesuvius which destroyed Pompeii in 79 AD, has just revealed some Greek letters, forming the word “purple”. It is an algorithm developed by a computer science student which revealed the characters, from images of the scroll obtained by X-ray tomography. The photos contain texture irregularities which betray, according to the algorithm, the presence precious letters. [Nature]. In the archives: Reading papyrus scrolls without unrolling them, 2015.
The avatar spirit – “Fake it until you make it,” says the American aphorism. Is it enough to take yourself for someone to benefit from their qualities? This is sometimes the case, and the phenomenon has been described under the name “Proteus effect”, when it concerns users of avatars operating in a virtual world. A creativity test conducted in this type of environment has just established that individuals wearing the avatar of Leonardo da Vinci produce 40% more ideas than individuals embodying ordinary characters. [Le Monde]
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#semaine #bref #global #energy #bill #soaring..
