Why the extraordinary expectations surrounding large language models have yet to show up in the economic data Large language models may be the fastest-diffusing digital technology in decades. Within only a few years, they have become everyday tools for hundreds of millions of people, entered enterprise software and triggered extraordinary investment in chips, data centers, … Read more
From open weights to AI that can genuinely be inspected and rebuilt The word “open” is used so broadly in artificial intelligence that it risks losing its meaning. One lab publishes model weights, another releases inference code but not training code, and a third publishes a technical report while withholding the data pipeline. Each offers … Read more
The remarkable behaviour of language models makes machine consciousness a legitimate scientific question. It does not justify confusing linguistic competence, internal computation or self-reference with subjective experience. Large language models can discuss fear, pain, love, uncertainty and even their own supposed internal states. They can write “I think”, “I feel” or “I am afraid” with … Read more
Behind the anthropomorphic vocabulary are probabilities, vectors, and learned weighted averages A scientist who has spent decades studying nonlinear systems, modelling, statistics, or linguistics can open a modern paper on large language models and feel that an entirely new branch of mathematics has appeared. Query, key, value, attention, heads, embeddings, transformers. The impression is misleading. … Read more
The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence is making something increasingly visible that we often tend to overlook: the digital ecosystem has a very tangible physical foundation. AI models, cloud services and public digital applications run inside buildings filled with processors, storage systems, power supplies, networks, cooling loops and backup power systems. Data centers consume electricity … Read more
Why their value for the IT market lies in reuse, open standards and avoiding vendor lock-in In the IT sector, we know well that a successful prototype is not necessarily a sustainable information system. It may work perfectly in a controlled environment, yet fail when it has to integrate with existing infrastructure, be maintained for … Read more
The future of AI is not something that will simply happen to us. It is the result of choices about who designs technology, who owns it, who controls it, and to whom they are accountable. One of the most dangerous ways we talk about Artificial Intelligence today is as if it were a natural phenomenon. … Read more
From WiFi4EU to public connectivity infrastructure that remains open, controllable and sustainable Municipal and community wireless networks are no longer an experimental technology used by a small number of networking enthusiasts. They have become essential digital infrastructure for public squares, libraries, schools, cultural venues, health centres, tourist areas and remote communities. The European WiFi4EU initiative … Read more
The remarkable progress of Artificial Intelligence has revived an old idea with renewed force: that the human mind is essentially a highly complex computer and that, once we have enough data, enough computing power and sufficiently large models, we will eventually be able to reproduce a human being in a machine. This assumption sounds plausible … Read more
A recent Financial Times long-read article outlined how diverse financial institutions try to promote the use of blockchain technology to optimize how their transactions are performed. This will allow them to take place instantly, rather than waiting for clearing, around the clock, rather than during working hours, and with automated actions, such as the rebalancing … Read more
