Saturday, May 31st, 2025

Time	Event
7:00a	AI Could Consume More Power Than Bitcoin By the End of 2025 Artificial intelligence could soon outpace Bitcoin mining in energy consumption, according to Alex de Vries-Gao, a PhD candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam's Institute for Environmental Studies. His research estimates that by the end of 2025, AI could account for nearly half of all electricity used by data centers worldwide -- raising significant concerns about its impact on global climate goals. "While companies like Google and Microsoft disclose total emissions, few provide transparency on how much of that is driven specifically by AI," notes DIGIT. To fill this gap, de Vries-Gao employed a triangulation method combining chip production data, corporate disclosures, and industry analyst estimates to map AI's growing energy footprint. His analysis suggests that specialized AI hardware could consume between 46 and 82 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025 -- comparable to the annual energy usage of countries like Switzerland. Drawing on supply chain data, the study estimates that millions of AI accelerators from NVIDIA and AMD were produced between 2023 and 2024, with a potential combined power demand exceeding 12 gigawatts (GW). A detailed explanation of his methodology is available in his commentary published in Joule. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
1:00p	Hugging Face Introduces Two Open-Source Robot Designs An anonymous reader quotes a report from SiliconANGLE: Hugging Face has open-sourced the blueprints of two internally developed robots called HopeJR and Reachy Mini. The company debuted the machines on Thursday. Hugging Face is backed by more than $390 million in funding from Nvidia Corp., IBM Corp. and other investors. It operates a GitHub-like platform for sharing open-source artificial intelligence projects. It says its platform hosts more than 1 million AI models, hundreds of thousands of datasets and various other technical assets. The company started prioritizing robotics last year after launching LeRobot, a section of its platform dedicated to autonomous machines. The portal provides access to AI models for powering robots and datasets that can be used to train those models. Hugging Face released its first hardware blueprint, a robotic arm design called the SO-100, late last year. The SO-100 was developed in partnership with a startup called The Robot Studio. Hugging Face also collaborated with the company on the HopeJR, the first new robot that debuted this week. According to TechCrunch, it's a humanoid robot that can perform 66 movements including walking. HopeJR is equipped with a pair of robotic arms that can be remotely controlled by a human using a pair of specialized, chip-equipped gloves. HopeJR's arms replicate the movements made by the wearer of the gloves. A demo video shared by Hugging Face showed that the robot can shake hands, point to a specific text snippet on a piece of paper and perform other tasks. Hugging Face's other new robot, the Reachy Mini, likewise features an open-source design. It's based on technology that the company obtained through the acquisition of a venture-backed startup called Pollen Robotics earlier this year. Reachy Mini is a turtle-like robot that comes in a rectangular case. Its main mechanical feature is a retractable neck that allows it to follow the user with its head or withdraw into the case. This case, which is stationary, is compact and lightweight enough to be placed on a desk. Hugging Face will offer pre-assembled versions of its open-source Reach Mini and HopeJR robots for $250 and $3,000, with the first units starting to ship by the end of the year. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)
4:34p	China Just Held the First-Ever Humanoid Robot Fight Night "We've officially entered the age of watching robots clobber each other in fighting rings," writes Vice.com. A kick-boxing competition was staged Sunday in Hangzhou, China using four robots from Unitree Robotics, reports Futurism. (The robots were named "AI Strategist", "Silk Artisan", "Armored Mulan", and "Energy Guardian".) "However, the robots weren't acting autonomously just yet, as they were being remotely controlled by human operator teams." Although those ringside human controllers used quick voice commands, according to the South China Morning Post: Unlike typical remote-controlled toys, handling Unitree's G1 robots entails "a whole set of motion-control algorithms powered by large [artificial intelligence] models", said Liu Tai, deputy chief engineer at China Telecommunication Technology Labs, which is under research institute China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. More from Vice: The G1 robots are just over 4 feet tall [130 cm] and weigh around 77 pounds [35 kg]. They wear gloves. They have headgear. They throw jabs, uppercuts, and surprisingly sharp kicks... One match even ended in a proper knockout when a robot stayed down for more than eight seconds. The fights ran three rounds and were scored based on clean hits to the head and torso, just like standard kickboxing... Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news. Read more of this story at Slashdot. (Comment on this)

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