Latest news with #ScienceFoundationIreland
Irish Times
10-06-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Impact of AI on Ireland's energy demands ‘not going to be as steep' as feared
The impact of the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) on Ireland's energy demands is 'not going to be as steep as many people believe', Research Ireland has told an Oireachtas committee. Research Ireland, which was established last year by an amalgamation of Science Foundation Ireland and the Irish Research Council, was before the newly formed Joint Committee on Artificial Intelligence on Tuesday. The International Energy Agency expects data centres to consume close to a third of total electricity in Ireland by 2026. They used about 22 per cent of all metered electricity here in 2024, according to Central Statistics Office data. The current boom in AI is rapidly fuelling increased need for data centre capacity, as AI relies on vast consumption of data, and, by extension, energy. A ChatGPT query is said to consume 10 times more electricity than a Google search. READ MORE [ Data centres accounted for more than fifth of Ireland's electricity usage last year Opens in new window ] Asked about the need for more data centres and the impact of this on resources, Ciarán Seoighe, deputy chief executive of Research Ireland, said a price 'will have to be paid', but that evidence is emerging it may not be 'as steep' as current projections suggest. 'The projections are based on a straight line increase or even a curve up increase in the energy demands, but already we are seeing in the research area examples where that is not only deflected down, but hopefully even pivoted down,' he said. 'I'm not going to say this is a problem that is going to disappear, but I expect it to be less demanding than what the current projections would be. It is still a huge consumption of resources, not just of electricity. 'It's not going to go away. We are going to have to pay for this in some sense, but I don't think the penalty is going to be as steep as many people believe.' Separately, Mr Seoighe said he had concerns over the 'dominance of Big Tech' and the resources multinational companies have to invest in AI, which could leave state actors playing catch-up. 'There was talk at one point of a CERN [the European Organisation for Nuclear Research] for AI, because, as a small state, we are not at that level where we can invest the many, many millions required to be able to do this level of research,' he said. 'But, if at a European level, we had a large scale centralised investment, of which we could be a part, then we have the scale and the power to do real research in the area, and stay ahead of the curve.' Research Ireland's Susan Leavy, who is also an assistant professor with the School of Information and Communication Studies at UCD, said the issue that 'keeps me awake at night' is the use of AI by 'pernicious actors' to influence political viewpoints and elections. 'You have that possibility for pernicious actors to interfere [and] generate loads of AI content, and it could be super personalised to sway people's beliefs, voting patterns, polarise people, and that undermines democracy,' she said. 'The AI-generated content on social media hasn't yet been shown to have had an effect in elections. However, what we do know is the political polarisation in society coincides with the proliferation of the recommender algorithms.'
RTÉ News
17-05-2025
- Health
- RTÉ News
What does sunshine do to our brains?
We're certainly making up for the lousy weather we've seen so far this year with days of endless sunshine and blue skies. While it's a boost to morale and puts more of a pep in our step, what does sunshine do to our brains? Dr Ruth Freeman from Science Foundation Ireland joined The Business on RTÉ Radio 1 to discuss this matter. (This piece includes excerpts from the conversation which have been edited for length and clarity - you can hear the discussion in full above). "Sunshine produces a hormone called serotonin", explains Freeman. "It makes us feel good, it makes us feel calm and focused and of course it helps us to produce vitamin D and nitric oxide to keep our body working well but, yes, it does have an impact on our brain and we don't fully understand what it does. Generally, it does make us feel more optimistic because things look good and we probably make decisions then because we think things are going to go well so that can influence how we behave." Of course, it's not all good behaviourial changes. "One of the things that happens with sunshine is we all get out and interact so higher temperatures can cause arousal. In a study in Phoenix, Arizona, a researcher sat in a car at traffic lights. When the traffic light changed, they counted how many times people honked depending on the temperature from April to August in the same year. There's a linear relationship between the frequency and number of honks as the temperature gets up so people do get more aroused." We also tend to spend a little more when the sun shines. "There is evidence that we spend a little bit more and we're probably not concentrating that well either", explains Freeman. "A study in Australia put funny objects around a shop and then asked people when they came out if they remember seeing them. People remembered three times more on cloudy days than on sunny days. When people are exposed to artificial sunlight and then tested to see what would they buy from a list, they tend to choose to buy more things and buy more unusual things." Another area which sees a change when the sun shines is recruitment and, according to Freeman, clouds suit nerds. "There was a very interesting study about hiring people in different kinds of weather and the phrase from the researchers here was that clouds suit nerds. When interviewers in American colleges were looking at students on cloudy days, they were more likely to rate better students who had really strong records of academic performance. You might think 'oh we want to eat less in the summer, it's hot', but in fact that's not true if you're a man "On sunny days, they took into account people who had good athletic ability and good extracurricular activity. That's because our brain is so good at imagining how things fit in so we can see someone who's good at athletic performance on a sunny day." Sunshine also affects our appetites and an important difference between men and women. "You might think 'oh we want to eat less in the summer, it's hot', but in fact that's not true if you're a man. Researchers looked at 3,000 participants and mapped their food over the whole year and saw that men were eating approximately 300 calories extra per day. That's quite a bit and it's enough to cause weight gain if you're doing it all the time. "They then investigated what was going on behind this by exposing people to 25 minutes of sunlight and what they found was that this increased a hormone called ghrelin, a hormone that's boosts your appetite but only in men and this is fascinating. So if you're heading out in the sun to that BBQ, the sun might be causing you to eat a little bit more than you should. It's just a biological response to the sun."
BBC News
24-03-2025
- BBC News
Man appears in court following €10.6m cocaine seizure
A 61-year-old man has appeared in court in the Republic of Ireland, charged with possession of cocaine worth €10.6m (£8.4m). Gardaí (Irish police) seized 152kg of the drug, which was verified by Science Foundation Ireland, on Tuesday. A heavy goods vehicle was intercepted on the M9 in County Kilkenny shortly after 10:00 local time and there were searches of two business premises and a residential property in Waterford. Investigators believe the drugs were loaded in Spain and transported to Ireland on behalf of several organised crime groups, Gorey District Court heard on Sunday.
Yahoo
23-03-2025
- Yahoo
Man appears in court following €10.6m cocaine seizure
A 61-year-old man has appeared in court in the Republic of Ireland, charged with possession of cocaine worth €10.6m (£8.4m). Gardaí (Irish police) seized 152kg of the drug, which was verified by Science Foundation Ireland, on Tuesday. A heavy goods vehicle was intercepted on the M9 in County Kilkenny shortly after 10:00 local time and there were searches of two business premises and a residential property in Waterford. Investigators believe the drugs were loaded in Spain and transported to Ireland on behalf of several organised crime groups, Gorey District Court heard on Sunday. Gardaí objected to an application for bail. The man was refused bail and remanded in custody.
