UK's AI regulation strategy: an actual Brexit benefit?

By Alexander Philipp Rader | Fri Aug 04 2023

The government has released its strategy for the regulation of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which it calls a "pro-innovation approach". To sum it up, no new legislation or regulatory body will be introduced to deal with AI, at least for now. Instead, existing regulatory bodies are tasked to develop AI strategies and make sure that AI does not break current laws, such as the equality act. The aim is to regulate individual use cases of AI, not the technology as a whole. Of course, this leaves AI regulation as a patchwork of different laws in many sectors. The government's response is to introduce central monitoring and evaluation functions. Their purpose is to provide best practices and risk-assessments for AI on a cross-sectoral basis.

The Science behind Net Zero

By Judith Wolf | Mon Feb 13 2023

Achieving Net Zero is the key to limiting global warming and related climate change impacts, but what is Net Zero (or net zero carbon) and what do we have to do to achieve this? Here we explain the methods needed, including the urgent need for carbon capture and storage. While there are differences and error bars on the estimates for the numbers in this article, some estimates with their sources are included for illustration.

Energy Transition

By Josh Matthews | Fri Apr 08 2022

The energy and utilities industries are merging. The global energy transition is shaping new industries and influencing all others. To find their place in the new world, energy and utilities firms (and all those affected) must collaborate and align their strategies to this global context.

The energy transition dominated the conversations in our recent energy and utilities Top 10 studies. Under the global context of decarbonizing to avoid the worst effects of climate change and addressing all 17 UN goals covering environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, organizations worldwide are abandoning fossil fuels for renewable energy sources. But the transition so far is nowhere near fast enough.

STEMM News Roundup for March 2022

By Judith Wolf | Thu Mar 31 2022

Science

2 March 2022: Nations sign up to end global scourge of plastic pollution with the UN Plastics Treaty

7 March 2022: Ukrainian researchers are stranded at their Vernadsky Antarctic base, due to the war. 12 scientists, engineers, and support staff were nearing the end of a 13-month-long expedition when Russia invaded.

24 March 2022: The James Webb Space Telescope (launched from Kourou, French Guiana) is in cooldown and mirror alignment mode. The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s largest, most powerful, and most complex space science telescope ever built. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

Around the Coast: North West

By Judith Wolf | Fri Mar 25 2022

Fire on saltmarsh at Parkgate destroys habitat

Fire crews and six engines from Cheshire and Merseyside fire tackled the blaze on marshland on the Dee Estuary at Parkgate after being called out at about 6.20pm on Saturday 19th March, on a low spring tide. It is thought that the fire was started deliberately, and police are investigating the incident. The fire crews (partly thanks to the wind direction) were able to protect local housing and the next high tide put out the remaining fire.