5 Ways AI Supports City Adaptation to Extreme Heat

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Urban AI: “Cities stand at the frontline of climate change, confronting some of its most immediate and intense consequences. Among these, extreme heat has emerged as one of the most pressing and rapidly escalating threats. As we enter June 2025, Europe is already experiencing its first major and long-lasting heatwave of the summer season with temperatures surpassing 40°C in parts of Spain, France, and Portugal — and projections indicate that this extreme event could persist well into mid-June.

This climate event is not an isolated incident. By 2050, the number of cities exposed to dangerous levels of heat is expected to triple, with peak temperatures of 48°C (118°F) potentially becoming the new normal in some regions. Such intensifying conditions place unprecedented stress on urban infrastructure, public health systems, and the overall livability of cities — especially for vulnerable communities.

In this context, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is emerging as a vital tool in the urban climate adaptation toolbox. Urban AI — defined as the application of AI technologies to urban systems and decision-making — can help cities anticipate, manage, and mitigate the effects of extreme heat in more targeted and effective ways.

Cooling the Metro with AI-Driven Ventilation, in Barcelona

With over 130 stations and a century-old metro network, the city of Barcelona faces increasing pressure to ensure passenger comfort and safety — especially underground, where heat and air quality are harder to manage. In response, Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB), in partnership with SENER Engineering, developed and implemented the RESPIRA® system, an AI-powered ventilation control platform. First introduced in 2020 on Line 1, RESPIRA® demonstrated its effectiveness by lowering ambient temperatures, improving air circulation during the COVID-19 pandemic, and achieving a notable 25.1% reduction in energy consumption along with a 10.7% increase in passenger satisfaction…(More)”

Beyond the Checkbox: Upgrading the Right to Opt Out

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Sebastian Zimmeck: “…rights, as currently encoded in privacy laws, put too much onus on individuals when many privacy problems are systematic.5 Indeed, privacy is a systems property. If we want to make progress toward a more privacy-friendly Web as well as mobile and smart TV platforms, we need to take a systems perspective. For example, instead of requiring people to opt out from individual websites, there should be opt-out settings in browsers and operating systems. If a law requires individual opt-outs, those can be generalized by applying one opt-out toward all future sites visited or apps used, if a user so desires.8

Another problem is that the ad ecosystem is structured such that if people opt out, in many cases, their data is still being shared just as if they would not have opted out. The only difference is that in the latter case the data is accompanied by a privacy flag propagating the opt-out to the data recipient.7 However, if people opt out, their data should not be shared in the first place! The current system relying on the propagation of opt-out signals and deletion of incoming data by the recipient is complicated, error-prone, violates the principle of data minimization, and is an obstacle for effective privacy enforcement. Changing the ad ecosystem is particularly important as it is not only used on the web but also on many other platforms. Companies and the online ad industry as a whole need to do better!..(More)”

Can AI Agents Be Trusted?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Blair Levin and Larry Downes: “Agentic AI has quickly become one of the most active areas of artificial intelligence development. AI agents are a level of programming on top of large language models (LLMs) that allow them to work towards specific goals. This extra layer of software can collect data, make decisions, take action, and adapt its behavior based on results. Agents can interact with other systems, apply reasoning, and work according to priorities and rules set by you as the principal.

Companies such as Salesforce have already deployed agents that can independently handle customer queries in a wide range of industries and applications, for example, and recognize when human intervention is required.

But perhaps the most exciting future for agentic AI will come in the form of personal agents, which can take self-directed action on your behalf. These agents will act as your personal assistant, handling calendar management, performing directed research and analysis, finding, negotiating for, and purchasing goods and services, curating content and taking over basic communications, learning and optimizing themselves along the way.

The idea of personal AI agents goes back decades, but the technology finally appears ready for prime-time. Already, leading companies are offering prototype personal AI agents to their customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders, raising challenging business and technical questions. Most pointedly: Can AI agents be trusted to act in our best interests? Will they work exclusively for us, or will their loyalty be split between users, developers, advertisers, and service providers? And how will be know?

The answers to these questions will determine whether and how quickly users embrace personal AI agents, and if their widespread deployment will enhance or damage business relationships and brand value…(More)”.

What World Does Bitcoin Want To Build For Itself?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Patrick Redford: “We often talk about baseball games as a metric for where we are, and we’re literally in the first inning,” one of the Winklevoss twins gloats. “And this game’s going to overtime.”

It’s the first day of Bitcoin 2025, industry day here at the largest cryptocurrency conference in the world. This Winklevoss is sharing the stage with the other one, plus Donald Trump’s newly appointed crypto and AI czar David Sacks. They are in the midst of a victory lap, laughing with the free ease of men who know they have it made. The mangled baseball metaphor neither lands nor elicits laughs, but that’s fine. He’s earned, or at any rate acquired, the right to be wrong.

This year’s Bitcoin Conference takes place amid a boom, the same month the price of a single coin stabilized above $100,000 for the first time. More than 35,000 people have descended on Las Vegas in the final week of May for the conference: bitcoin miners, bitcoin dealers, several retired athletes, three U.S. senators, two Trump children, one U.S. vice president, people who describe themselves as “content creators,” people who describe themselves as “founders,” venture capitalists, ex-IDF bodyguards, tax-dodging experts, crypto heretics, evangelists, paladins, Bryan Johnson, Eric Adams, and me, trying to figure out what they were all doing there together. I’m in Vegas talking to as many people as I can in order to conduct an assay of the orange pill. What is the argument for bitcoin, exactly? Who is making it, and why?

Here is the part of the story where I am supposed to tell you it’s all a fraud. I am supposed to point out that nobody has come up with a use case for blockchain technology in 17 years beyond various forms of money laundering; that half of these people have been prosecuted for one financial crime or another; that the game is rigged in favor of the casino and those who got there before you; that this is an onerous use of energy; that all the mystification around bitcoin is a fog intended to draw in suckers where they can be bled. All that stuff is true, but the trick is that being true isn’t quite the same thing as mattering.

The bitcoin people are winning…(More)”

The path for AI in poor nations does not need to be paved with billions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Editorial in Nature: “Coinciding with US President Donald Trump’s tour of Gulf states last week, Saudi Arabia announced that it is embarking on a large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) initiative. The proposed venture will have state backing and considerable involvement from US technology firms. It is the latest move in a global expansion of AI ambitions beyond the existing heartlands of the United States, China and Europe. However, as Nature India, Nature Africa and Nature Middle East report in a series of articles on AI in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) published on 21 May (see go.nature.com/45jy3qq), the path to home-grown AI doesn’t need to be paved with billions, or even hundreds of millions, of dollars, or depend exclusively on partners in Western nations or China…, as a News Feature that appears in the series makes plain (see go.nature.com/3yrd3u2), many initiatives in LMICs aren’t focusing on scaling up, but on ‘scaling right’. They are “building models that work for local users, in their languages, and within their social and economic realities”.

More such local initiatives are needed. Some of the most popular AI applications, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google Gemini, are trained mainly on data in European languages. That would mean that the model is less effective for users who speak Hindi, Arabic, Swahili, Xhosa and countless other languages. Countries are boosting home-grown apps by funding start-up companies, establishing AI education programmes, building AI research and regulatory capacity and through public engagement.

Those LMICs that have started investing in AI began by establishing an AI strategy, including policies for AI research. However, as things stand, most of the 55 member states of the African Union and of the 22 members of the League of Arab States have not produced an AI strategy. That must change…(More)”.

Europe’s dream to wean off US tech gets reality check

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Pieter Haeck and Mathieu Pollet: “..As the U.S. continues to up the ante in questioning transatlantic ties, calls are growing in Europe to reduce the continent’s reliance on U.S. technology in critical areas such as cloud services, artificial intelligence and microchips, and to opt for European alternatives instead.

But the European Commission is preparing on Thursday to acknowledge publicly what many have said in private: Europe is nowhere near being able to wean itself off U.S. Big Tech.

In a new International Digital Strategy the EU will instead promote collaboration with the U.S., according to a draft seen by POLITICO, as well as with other tech players including China, Japan, India and South Korea. “Decoupling is unrealistic and cooperation will remain significant across the technological value chain,” the draft reads. 

It’s a reality check after a year that has seen calls for a technologically sovereign Europe gain significant traction. In December the Commission appointed Finland’s Henna Virkkunen as the first-ever commissioner in charge of tech sovereignty. After few months in office, European Parliament lawmakers embarked on an effort to draft a blueprint for tech sovereignty. 

Even more consequential has been the rapid rise of the so-called Eurostack movement, which advocates building out a European tech infrastructure and has brought together effective voices including competition economist Cristina Caffarra and Kai Zenner, an assistant to key European lawmaker Axel Voss.

There’s wide agreement on the problem: U.S. cloud giants capture over two-thirds of the European market, the U.S. outpaces the EU in nurturing companies for artificial intelligence, and Europe’s stake in the global microchips market has crumbled to around 10 percent. Thursday’s strategy will acknowledge the U.S.’s “superior ability to innovate” and “Europe’s failure to capitalise on the digital revolution.”

What’s missing are viable solutions to the complex problem of unwinding deep-rooted dependencies….(More)”

Silicon Valley Is at an Inflection Point

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Karen Hao: “…In the decade that I have observed Silicon Valley — first as an engineer, then as a journalist — I’ve watched the industry shift to a new paradigm. Tech companies have long reaped the benefits of a friendly U.S. government, but the Trump administration has made clear that it will now grant new firepower to the industry’s ambitions. The Stargate announcement was just one signal. Another was the Republican tax bill that the House passed last week, which would prohibit states from regulating A.I. for the next 10 years.

The leading A.I. giants are no longer merely multinational corporations; they are growing into modern-day empires. With the full support of the federal government, soon they will be able to reshape most spheres of society as they please, from the political to the economic to the production of science…(More)”.

In a world first, Brazilians will soon be able to sell their digital data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Gabriel Daros: “Last month, Brazil announced it is rolling out a data ownership pilot that will allow its citizens to manage, own, and profit from their digital footprint — the first such nationwide initiative in the world. 

The project is administered by Dataprev, a state-owned company that provides technological solutions for the government’s social programs. Dataprev is partnering with DrumWave, a California-based data valuation and monetization firm.

Today, “people get nothing from the data they share,” Brittany Kaiser, co-founder of the Own Your Data Foundation and board adviser for DrumWave, told Rest of World. “Brazil has decided its citizens should have ownership rights over their data.”

In monetizing users’ data, Brazil is ahead of the U.S., where a 2019 “data dividend” initiative by California Governor Gavin Newsom never took off. The city of Chicago successfully monetizes government data including transportation and education. If implemented, Brazil’s will be the first public-private partnership that allows citizens, rather than companies, to get a share of the global data market, currently valued at $4 billion and expected to grow to over $40 billion by 2034.

The pilot involves a small group of Brazilians who will use data wallets for payroll loans. When users apply for a new loan, the data in the contract will be collected in the data wallets, which companies will be able to bid on. Users will have the option to opt out. It works much like third-party cookies, but instead of simply accepting or declining, people can choose to make money…(More)”.

Some signs of AI model collapse begin to reveal themselves

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: “I use AI a lot, but not to write stories. I use AI for search. When it comes to search, AI, especially Perplexity, is simply better than Google.

Ordinary search has gone to the dogs. Maybe as Google goes gaga for AI, its search engine will get better again, but I doubt it. In just the last few months, I’ve noticed that AI-enabled search, too, has been getting crappier.

In particular, I’m finding that when I search for hard data such as market-share statistics or other business numbers, the results often come from bad sources. Instead of stats from 10-Ks, the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) mandated annual business financial reports for public companies, I get numbers from sites purporting to be summaries of business reports. These bear some resemblance to reality, but they’re never quite right. If I specify I want only 10-K results, it works. If I just ask for financial results, the answers get… interesting,

This isn’t just Perplexity. I’ve done the exact same searches on all the major AI search bots, and they all give me “questionable” results.

Welcome to Garbage In/Garbage Out (GIGO). Formally, in AI circles, this is known as AI model collapse. In an AI model collapse, AI systems, which are trained on their own outputs, gradually lose accuracy, diversity, and reliability. This occurs because errors compound across successive model generations, leading to distorted data distributions and “irreversible defects” in performance. The final result? A Nature 2024 paper stated, “The model becomes poisoned with its own projection of reality.”

Model collapse is the result of three different factors. The first is error accumulation, in which each model generation inherits and amplifies flaws from previous versions, causing outputs to drift from original data patterns. Next, there is the loss of tail data: In this, rare events are erased from training data, and eventually, entire concepts are blurred. Finally, feedback loops reinforce narrow patterns, creating repetitive text or biased recommendations…(More)”.

Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Sheera Frenkel and Aaron Krolik: “In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.

Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.

The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)

Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service — about buying its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions.

The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal agencies, including D.H.S. and the Health and Human Services Department. Widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said…(More)“

Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is not just a pipe dream. The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status…(More)”.