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Wes Davis

Wes Davis

Former Weekend Editor

Former Weekend Editor

    More From Wes Davis

    Wes Davis
    Wes Davis
    The last of Apple’s best iPhone design has gone vintage.

    As MacRumors writes, Apple designated the original iPhone SE “vintage” today. The 2016 budget phone crammed the A9 chip — same as Apple’s priciest model at the time — into the flat sides, metal back, and chamfered edges of the 5S.

    The first SE got its last major OS update with iOS 15 over two years ago, and it’s been five since Apple last sold it. Does that make our iPhone SE video review vintage, too?

    Wes Davis
    Wes Davis
    IBM lays out a ten-year plan for useful quantum supercomputing.

    Meet Quantum System 2, a 22 ft wide, 12 ft high, cryogenically cooled package that IBM calls the first “modular, utility-scale quantum computer system,” using three of the company’s new Quantum Heron 133-qubit processors. An updated roadmap says that by 2033, its capabilities could go far beyond today’s supercomputer platforms.

    For more, check out Nilay Patel’s Decoder interview with Jerry Chow, IBM’s director of quantum systems.

    Wes Davis
    Wes Davis
    How many phone charges does an AI-generated image take?

    The answer, according to a pre-print study, is about one. Researchers at AI company Hugging Face and Carnegie Mellon University found that general-purpose AI models like GPT-4 are “orders of magnitude” more power-hungry than purpose-made models powering products like Google Translate.

    The study, though not yet peer-reviewed, puts into context the environmental cost of generative AI, particularly of inefficient models (one image from the least efficient image-creating model can use as much CO2 as an average gas car driving about 4 miles, for instance).

    A chart showing the cost of different generative AI tasks — image generation sits at the high end, generating significantly more CO2 than text classification models.
    A comparison of the power consumption required for different generative AI tasks.
    Image: Hugging Face / Carnegie Mellon University