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Mail & Guardian
8 hours ago
- Automotive
- Mail & Guardian
Chinese technology punts AI Agents and 5G-advanced networks for the future
Technology experts punted AI Agents — a software programme that uses artificial intelligence to perform tasks and make decisions independently, with minimal human interaction or oversight — at the Mobile World Congress conference in Shanghai, China last week. (John McCann/M&G) Chinese technology developers are mapping out the future with Technology experts punted AI Agents — a software programme that uses artificial intelligence to perform tasks and make decisions independently, with minimal human interaction or oversight — at the Mobile World Congress conference in Shanghai, China last week. 'To build an AI agent for an individual, you need numerous touch points, so something that spreads across many devices, essentially,' Dominic Wallace, a senior global public relations manager at 'You need to create a personal memory model, something that knows and learns about what the user does, and keeps aggregating the knowledge to improve the service.' User-based experiences can also be used for business optimisation and infrastructure. 'It's about taking the data and analysing it and creating an ecosystem that fits each personal user based on their condition and their taste, and then the infrastructure is about synergy and cloud network [as well as] edge device synergy,' Wallace said. While the AI Agents are still conceptual, 5G-A is already available in more than 300 cities in China, and carriers now offer 5G-A mobile plans in more than 30 Chinese provinces while the country has about 10 million 5G-A users. The conference itself showcased automated vehicles that can transform into open vans — for a city that operates purely on electric vehicles and scooters — 3D and transparent laptop screens and futuristic robots in a human figure — equipped with technology to hand-deliver goods. According to industry experts, many mobile network carriers are becoming providers of personalised AI agents that people can constantly access. For example, in smart homes, they are improving services by helping devices work together for a better user experience. In cars, they are combining AI with new technologies to offer smarter, more connected spaces and in businesses, carriers are boosting computing and network services to support production and operations more effectively. 'The rapid adoption of mobile AI is bringing new vitality to the mobile industry in three brand-new ways,' said David Wang, executive director of the board at Huawei. The first is that mobile devices will host AI Agents, not just applications, 'that will improve every aspect of our life and work', while AI's convergence with the Internet of Things (IoT) — a network of physical appliances or devices and vehicles embedded with sensors that exchanges data over the internet to support smarter decision-making — will diversify AI capabilities. The system bases its personal memory on the users' real life habits, experiences and needs, Wallace said. 'A travel AI agent or travel assistant would be able to take minutes of all the key points of a phone call or a meeting, and when you're in transit, on a train for example, it's already working out what time you arrive and will book a taxi,' he said. 'If you have expenses on your business trip, it will be smart enough to know which are personal expenses, which are company expenses, and be able to file those with the finance department or something like that.' Food delivery drones, which are already in use, will also be personalised through AI Agents. '[Drones] can be used for things like food delivery, also medical items that maybe need to get somewhere quickly. With low velocity, they fly low and get there quickly,' Wallace said. 'It can't deliver the food directly to your door, because perhaps you live in a flat right in the building, but the drone can deliver it to, for example, outside the building …The concept is, eventually, the robot can then take it from that drop off point and then deliver it directly to your door.' He said some AI Agents would also be able to detect when a user needs to increase their water or food intake, when they need to stock up on specific groceries, and when they need to exercise. Some AI systems can also tailor an exercise routine for a user and demonstrate the actions on the screen, while monitoring their actions. 'It's about memory. It's about knowing the user and being able to do things they need,' he added. Other devices also enabled healthcare checks for cancer cells, education programmes and assistants and industry-specific mechanisms. Robots will play an integral role in people's lives, but will need better connectivity networks, said the chief executive of Leju Robot, Chang Lin. 'As robots become integral to production and daily life, their connectivity will have to go beyond mere stable to intelligent — where latency is just a foundational capability and collaborative decision-making will be the true game-changer,' he said. 5G-A networks and AI-assisted route planning can collectively boost efficiency and cut costs in the supply chain industry, and commercially, it can enhance experiences for low-latency and high-bandwidth applications, including like cloud gaming and multi-view immersive sports streaming, and can enable more user-friendly payment patterns. 5G-A 'will spur innovative new business models, and help carriers expand beyond traffic to begin monetising the experience itself,' Huawei's corporate senior vice president Li Peng said. Carriers can use AI agents to drive AI adoption while delivering targeted experiences for individuals, homes, businesses, and industries. Commercial 5G-A adoption is expected to accelerate in a number of regions in 2025, including China, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Huawei said in a statement. The journalist's trip to Shanghai to attend the conference was sponsored by Huawei Technologies
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Citigroup Sees Bigger IPOs as Private Deals Bulk Up Valuations
(Bloomberg) -- A wave of big initial public offerings is building as emerging growth companies stay private for longer and bulk up their valuations through secondary stock sales. Philadelphia Transit System Votes to Cut Service by 45%, Hike Fares US Renters Face Storm of Rising Costs Squeezed by Crowds, the Roads of Central Park Are Being Reimagined Mapping the Architectural History of New York's Chinatown Sprawl Is Still Not the Answer 'I don't know if it's here forever, but I think you are winding up a coil,' said John Collmer, global head of private placements at Citigroup Inc. 'You are creating this massive backlog of quality companies that will go public.' The shift is being bolstered by institutional investors who are increasingly eager to invest in late-stage companies that could go public in the next three years, Collmer said in an interview on the sidelines of the bank's Private Company Growth Conference in New York this week. This explains why private placements are on the rise in 2025 following a slump that began in 2022 when the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. As developing technologies become increasingly prominent, investors are scurrying for exposure to those sectors that aren't well represented in public markets — yet. 'Fifteen years ago, people wanted to invest in Uber because you couldn't get it in the public market,' Collmer said. 'Today they are looking for the artificial intelligence, robotics and defense technologies companies that they can't get in the public market. They tend to be big industries that are being disrupted and the disruptors are in the private market.' Take for instance Elon Musk's SpaceX, along with OpenAI, Stripe and Databricks Inc., all of which have turned to private secondary sales to provide liquidity to investors, including employees. That market has expanded to around $60 billion, up from $50 billion last year, according to a report released by research firm Pitchbook last month. New York-based Ramp Business Corp. recently revealed that new and existing investors had purchased $150 million of shares from employees and early investors at a price valuing the fintech startup at $13 billion. IPO Uptick Coming Despite the growth in private secondary sales, companies will eventually see the benefit of going public, according to Cully Davis, Citigroup's head of growth equity. Davis said there's at least one sign that there could be an uptick in the number of growth IPOs: A flurry of publicly traded tech companies, including some new ones, are selling zero-coupon convertible bonds to raise money. 'When that market starts to open up, and it has opened up dramatically in the last month and a half, those are really positive signals,' he added. From an M&A perspective, an IPO also has its advantages. 'It's quite helpful for a company to have a legitimate publicly traded security that is liquid and that is independently valued and allows them to pursue acquisitions with confidence and with a currency that has real value,' he said. which is a Citigroup client, is focused on growth for now while keeping its options open. The AI software firm was valued at nearly $800 million in 2023 after a capital infusion of $150 million from a group of investors that include Nvidia Corp. 'We are figuring out what's the right path of growth, whether it's through an incremental acquisition or, at the right point, looking at an IPO,' said DK Sharma, chief operating officer. 'But right now, we're focused on getting the appropriate muscles for growing big time on top of our momentum today. America's Top Consumer-Sentiment Economist Is Worried How to Steal a House Inside Gap's Last-Ditch, Tariff-Addled Turnaround Push Luxury Counterfeiters Keep Outsmarting the Makers of $10,000 Handbags Apple Test-Drives Big-Screen Movie Strategy With F1 ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Bloomberg
17 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
The Future of Venture Capital Investing: Uncharted Summit
Michael Loeb, founder and CEO of Loeb Enterprises and host of the Uncharted summit, talks about where he sees the future of venture capital investing and gives his thoughts on how artificial intelligence is shaking up business. (Source: Bloomberg)
The Guardian
17 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Google's emissions up 51% as AI electricity demand derails efforts to go green
Google's carbon emissions have soared by 51% since 2019 as artificial intelligence hampers the tech company's efforts to go green. While the corporation has invested in renewable energy and carbon removal technology, it has failed to curb its scope 3 emissions, which are those further down the supply chain, and are in large part influenced by a growth in datacentre capacity required to power artificial intelligence. The company reported a 27% increase in year-on-year electricity consumption as it struggles to decarbonise as quickly as its energy needs increase. Datacentres play a crucial role in training and operating the models that underpin AI models such as Google's Gemini and OpenAI's GPT-4, which powers the ChatGPT chatbot. The International Energy Agency estimates that datacentres' total electricity consumption could double from 2022 levels to 1,000TWh (terawatt hours) in 2026, approximately Japan's level of electricity demand. AI will result in datacentres using 4.5% of global energy generation by 2030, according to calculations by the research firm SemiAnalysis. The report also raises concerns that the rapid evolution of AI may drive 'non-linear growth in energy demand', making future energy needs and emissions trajectories more difficult to predict. Another issue Google highlighted is lack of progress on new forms of low-carbon electricity generation. Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), miniature nuclear plants that are supposed to be quick and easy to build and get on the grid, have been hailed as a way to decarbonise datacentres. There were hopes that areas with many datacentres could have one or more SMR and that would reduce the huge carbon footprint from the electricity used by these datacentres, which are more in demand due to AI use. The report said these were behind schedule: 'A key challenge is the slower-than-needed deployment of carbon-free energy technologies at scale, and getting there by 2030 will be very difficult. While we continue to invest in promising technologies like advanced geothermal and SMRs, their widespread adoption hasn't yet been achieved because they're early-stage, relatively costly, and poorly incentivised by current regulatory structures.' It added that scope 3 remained a 'challenge', as Google's total ambition-based emissions were 11.5m tons of CO₂-equivalent gases, representing an 11% year-over-year increase and a 51% increase compared with the 2019 base year. This was 'primarily driven by increases in supply chain emissions' and scope 3 emissions increased by 22% in 2024. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion Google is racing to buy clean energy to power its systems, and since 2010, the company has signed more than 170 agreements to purchase over 22 gigawatts of clean energy. In 2024, 25 of these came online to add 2.5GW of new clean energy to its operations. It was also a record year for clean energy deals, with the company signing contracts for 8GW. The company has met one of its environmental targets early: eliminating plastic packaging. Google announced today that packaging for new Google products launched and manufactured in 2024 was 100% plastic-free. Its goal was to achieve this by the end of 2025. In the report, the company also said AI could have a 'net positive potential' on climate, because it hoped the emissions reductions enabled by AI applications would be greater than the emissions generated by the AI itself, including its energy consumption from datacentres. Google is aiming to help individuals, cities and other partners collectively reduce 1GT (gigaton) of their carbon-equivalent emissions annually by 2030 using AI products. These can, for example, help predict energy use and therefore reduce wastage, and map the solar potential of buildings so panels are put in the right place and generate the maximum electricity.
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Health
- Yahoo
A new AI breakthrough helped one couple get pregnant after 19 years—here's what it could mean for others
For nearly 19 years, Rosie and her husband tried to grow their family. Their journey spanned 15 IVF cycles, countless doctor visits, and emotional highs and lows that left them exhausted but still hopeful. Each attempt came with the quiet ache of disappointment. Still, they held onto their dream. In March 2025, something changed. Doctors at Columbia University Fertility Center helped the couple achieve what had always felt just out of reach—a successful pregnancy. What made the difference wasn't a new medication or procedure, but a scientific advance that sounded almost improbable: artificial intelligence. A novel AI-powered tool, developed by a team led by Dr. Zev Williams, found what doctors had never been able to detect in her husband's semen sample—viable sperm. That discovery led to the first pregnancy in the world using this new technology. Fertility care has long focused on women, despite male factors contributing to nearly 40% of infertility cases. Azoospermia—a condition where no sperm are found in the ejaculate—is among the most challenging to treat. Even with advanced microscopes, sperm can be nearly impossible to detect, and options are often limited to surgery or donor sperm. For many couples, especially those with religious or cultural reasons to avoid donor conception, that leaves few alternatives. This gap in care reflects deeper assumptions in reproductive medicine, where male fertility is often underexamined. The system, called STAR, is designed specifically to help address cases of azoospermia in a noninvasive and sperm-preserving way—offering a long-overdue shift in how male infertility is approached. Related: The Truth about Men's Infertility To tackle azoospermia, researchers at Columbia University developed a system called STAR (Sperm Track and Recovery). It uses artificial intelligence and a microfluidic chip to scan millions of microscopic images, identifying and isolating rare sperm that would otherwise go unnoticed. If sperm are detected, the system isolates and collects them—gently enough for use in IVF. In tests, STAR found dozens of sperm in samples that human embryologists had spent days analyzing without success. The inspiration came from astronomy, where AI helps spot new stars in a sky full of noise. Here, the system scans semen samples with similar precision. When STAR detects sperm, it diverts that tiny portion for collection—preserving viable cells for fertilization. In one early test, embryologists spent two days combing through a sample without success. STAR found 44 sperm in under an hour. It's opening doors for couples who were once told they had no options—offering more than just speed. This marks the first reported case where AI has been used not only to detect sperm in complex samples, but also to physically recover them for use in fertility treatment—offering new hope to families who previously had few or no options. Related: It's time to stop calling infertility a women's health issue For nearly two decades, Rosie and her husband dreamed of starting a family. After 15 unsuccessful IVF cycles and years of searching for answers, they were told that her husband's azoospermia left them with few options beyond using donor sperm—something they weren't ready to accept. Then they heard about STAR. Through a community group, Rosie connected with Dr. Zev Williams' team and learned about the new AI technology. For the first time, there was a tool that could potentially find viable sperm in a noninvasive, chemical-free way. That was enough to give them the courage to try one more cycle. This time, STAR found sperm—enough to fertilize Rosie's eggs. Just days later, she got the call she never thought she'd receive: she was pregnant. Now four months along, she says she still wakes up in disbelief. But the scans are real—and so is her baby. Related: The powerful documentary 'One More Shot' captures infertility on film like never before The success of STAR marks a technological milestone and signals a new frontier in understanding and treating infertility. Traditionally, couples facing azoospermia had few options beyond donor sperm. Now, STAR offers a potential path forward by making it possible to locate and retrieve even extremely rare sperm without damaging them. Here's what STAR could mean for the future of fertility care: Faster, more precise sperm selection: STAR scans millions of frames per hour, identifying and isolating viable sperm in real time. Expanded options for couples facing male-factor infertility: The technology may help those who were previously told they had no viable options. Less reliance on invasive or costly procedures: By improving sperm detection, STAR could reduce the need for more aggressive interventions. A shift in how infertility is approached clinically: STAR's success could signal a broader rethinking of diagnostic and treatment pathways. Potential to democratize access to advanced fertility care: As the technology becomes more scalable, it may increase availability and affordability. As Dr. Zev Williams explains, this AI doesn't replace the human touch; it extends it. With STAR, the goal is to give couples facing daunting odds a better chance—something that's long felt out of reach. AI is quietly transforming the way fertility challenges are understood and treated. Tools like STAR aren't science fiction—they're already helping families who've spent years navigating heartbreak and uncertainty. By spotting what even the most skilled eyes can miss, AI is opening new doors in cases that once seemed hopeless. For parents and parents-to-be, this isn't just about technology—it's about renewed possibility. As research continues, innovations like STAR could offer more families the chance to grow, with less guesswork and more hope.
