Robotics, AI and Other Tech

Probably not in the next several years.

In the next ten years?
I think so and maybe - probably a bit sooner than that.

 

For the first time ever, wind and solar produced more electricity than coal in the US

Regardless of shifting political winds in the U.S., renewables are surging ahead. In a landmark moment for the American power grid, wind and solar energy together outpaced coal for the first time in 2024, according to a new report from energy think tank Ember.

For decades, coal was the backbone of U.S. electricity generation, fueling factories, homes, and economic growth. But in 2024, solar and wind combined to generate 17% of the nation’s electricity—edging out coal, which dropped to just 15%. That’s a historic low for coal in a country that once relied on it for more than half of its power.

The Age of Electricity Arrives
This year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) declared that the world is officially leaving behind the Age of Coal and Oil. We are now entering the Age of Electricity. In all fairness, there is a bit of wishful thinking in that. Oil and gas in particular, but also coal, still play a huge role in global energy systems. But solar, wind, and batteries are not surging ahead. They’re just supplementing fossil fuels—they are replacing them.

The shift is happening almost everywhere. OECD nations, including the United States and European Union, are accelerating their transition away from coal and gas. The UK, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, shut down its last coal-fired power plant. Meanwhile, wind and solar overtook fossil fuels in the European Union for the first time, generating 30% of electricity in the first half of the year, compared to fossil fuels’ 27%.

In the U.S., wind and solar set another milestone: together, they produced more electricity than coal from January to November. Even more striking, wind power alone outperformed coal in March and April. The numbers are staggering: solar and wind supplied 90 terawatt-hours (TWh) more electricity compared to the same period last year—enough to power 9 million homes.

“Solar is winning,” Ember chief analyst Dave Jones told The Verge. “It added more generation than gas in 2024, and batteries will ensure that solar can grow more cheaply and quickly than gas.”

Batteries and Policy

The problem with renewables was always energy storage: you can only generate electricity during some parts of the day, so you need ways to store it for renewables to stand on their own. That’s exactly what we’re witnessing now, as battery costs are plunging. The price of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, which do not require expensive materials like cobalt or nickel, has fallen dramatically. In India, battery storage costs have halved in just three years, from $450 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2021 to around $200/kWh in 2024.

By 2030, grid-scale battery capacity is projected to rise tenfold. This means that for every 6 MW of renewable energy added, 1 MW of battery storage will be installed. Countries are investing in battery storage at record levels. In India, 16 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of grid-scale battery storage have been tendered, with 211 megawatt-hours (MWh) already operational. In the EU, battery storage capacity doubled to 16 GW last year.

 

Google Confirms Gmail Upgrade—3 Billion Users Must Now Decide

Update: Republished on March 23 with new a serious new warning for Google users, and advice on changing critical settings on your devices.


There’s a new battle taking place on your computers and your phones that will shape how you use technology for years to come. Google is leading the charge—albeit it’s not alone, and Gmail will likely change more than any other platform. That means serious decisions for its 3 billion users, who are well advised to think before clicking “yes.”

We’re talking AI and the breakneck speed with which new tools are being stitched into the platforms and services we all use daily. Apple may have been hit with an unintended slowdown, but not Google and Microsoft. There’s no stopping them.

Take your Chrome search history as an example. It’s surprisingly personal — what you search on the web and how you term those searches. But AI will be let loose on that history, if you let it, using this to get to know you better so it can help you more. But this isn’t an executive assistant, it’s a technology platform owned by the world’s most valuable marketing machine. Buyer beware, as they say.

Or how about Microsoft’s new (and seemingly automated) opt-in to having its own Copilot AI let loose on OneDrive. “Do you want Microsoft Copilot sniffing your OneDrive files?” PC World asks. “Too late. Allowing AI to sniff your cloud files may seem a little creepy, but Microsoft says it will only work with your authorization.”

And so we come to Gmail, and Google’s confirmation on Thursday that “Gmail is rolling out a smarter search feature powered by AI to show you the most relevant results, faster.” No doubt this is useful. Factoring in how you engage with emails and senders to better serve up results, to resolve the pain in email search. “If you’ve ever struggled with finding information in your overflowing inbox,” Google says, “you’re not alone.”

But again this is AI set loose on your personal information. I asked Google about the privacy implications and was assured that “our priority is respecting our users’ privacy while giving them choice and control over their data. To that end, this particular tool is one of the 'smart features’ that users can control in their personalization settings.” You can read more about those settings here.

There’s no suggestion that your data is being syphoned off to train models or enhance marketing profiles, but it is being analyzed. As Android Police has just warned, “if you think Google’s terms of service are reasonable, you may still want to stop Google from storing your conversations in Gemini. The AI landscape is evolving rapidly, and legislators are slow to keep up with the ethical and legal ramifications of generative AI.”

Users must now need to decide on their own red lines. For me, there’s a big difference between auditable on-device AI analysis versus what’s done in the cloud, however assuring privacy policies might be. There’s a major difference between can’t and won’t, as Amazon’s recent change to its own local versus cloud processing makes clear.

Android Police recommends “turning off AI training now. It won’t impact your Gemini experience and acts as insurance against any changes to Gemini’s terms of service.” The good news is that “you only need to turn AI training off on one device to disable it across all devices where you’re signed into Gemini.” The bad news is that there is a variety of privacy policies governing different platforms and services. It’s worth double checking for any AI you’re using with access to private content — like emails.

I’ve argued before that Gmail and email more widely need to catch up with the on-device processing being applied to other platforms, and here’s another good reason why that’s becoming so critical. It has become a selling point for new message and app security features. The same should be true for email.

It’s no coincidence that Apple is struggling to make AI work where others are not. As Wired says, “Apple’s approach to this stuff is likely not close to the norm. You’ll need to be comfortable handing over large amount of data to make Alexa work its best, while OpenAI’s Sam Altman seems happy to destroy entire categories of jobs at the altar of progress. But Tim Cook and Apple? A cleaner, more positive image has for decades been part of the company’s appeal, and that includes a very clear focus on privacy.”

This new Gmail tool is dubbed “most relevant” search and is rolling out across personal Google accounts. Google says “it can be accessed on the web and in the official Gmail app for Android and iOS.” You can toggle back and forth between legacy “recent” and AI “relevant” results. Business users will get this as well, but not for some time.
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There is more at the link, but I will focus just on their ambitions about Tech.

China unveils big plan to fix its
ailing economy and transform into a high-tech power

Focus on AI and ‘industries of the future’

Artificial intelligence (AI) was the hot topic at this year’s gathering, with China’s enthusiasm for the technology supercharged by the breakout success of tech firm DeepSeek.

The privately owned Chinese company’s large language model, released in January, shocked Silicon Valley and thrilled the country. The model appeared to nearly match the capabilities of its American rivals, despite years of mounting US restrictions on Chinese access to high-power AI chips typically used to train such models.

China’s economic tsars on Thursday announced a state-backed fund to support AI and other technological innovations, which they estimated would attract nearly 1 trillion yuan ($138 billion) in capital over 20 years from local governments and the private sector.

The government’s work report, a roughly 30-page document laying out Beijing’s plans for the year ahead, called for the country to “foster emerging industries and industries of the future” like biomanufacturing, quantum technology, embodied AI and 6G technology. It also stressed that China needs to build up its domestic talent and improve the country’s research and development.

That’s all part of Xi’s overarching vision: to transform China’s industries with high-tech innovation and ensure the country is technologically self-sufficient in the face of US efforts to limit Chinese access to American technologies over security concerns.

“China is sending a signal to the outside world that it’s quite independent from the US now,” said Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University in Beijing, pointing to China’s homegrown tech innovations and its ambitious economic growth target. “Now we have to do (technological innovation) ourselves … it’s more like two circles of innovation.”

“China is sending a signal to the outside world that it’s quite independent from the US now,” said Wang Yiwei, director of the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University in Beijing, pointing to China’s homegrown tech innovations and its ambitious economic growth target. “Now we have to do (technological innovation) ourselves … it’s more like two circles of innovation.”

Xi also signaled he’s enlisting some new muscle for his high-tech push. Last month, the leader met with the heads of the country’s biggest tech firms in a symposium and told them it was was “prime time” for private enterprises “to give full play to their capabilities.”

The gathering was a significant tone shift toward an industry still recovering from a years-long regulatory crackdown – and Xi reinforced his message during a meeting on the NPC sidelines last week, where he told delegates to “fully implement” the “spirit” of that symposium.​

 

The writeup is heavy on the technical part of making AI - CPU Chips. It also mentions the goals - efforts by other countries to catch up to what the Dutch have accomplished in creating this machinery.

The race is on to build the world’s most important machine