Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company, announced plans to limit the impact of its data centers on local electricity bills, joining a growing trend among tech companies facing scrutiny over their energy consumption. This announcement comes as other developments in the tech and energy sectors are making headlines, including a controversial executive order from President Trump and a new fine-tuning method for large language models developed at MIT.
According to The Verge, Anthropic's commitment is a response to increasing concerns about the energy demands of data centers. The company aims to mitigate the financial burden on nearby residents.
Meanwhile, President Trump issued an executive order that would compel the military to purchase electricity from coal-fired power plants. Ars Technica reported that this move was part of Trump's effort to revive the coal industry, despite its status as the second most expensive source of power for the US grid, and its significant pollution output. Trump received an award from a fossil-fuel lobbying group, the Washington Coal Club, which named him the "Undisputed Champion of Clean, Beautiful Coal" on Wednesday.
In other tech news, MIT researchers, along with the Improbable AI Lab and ETH Zurich, developed a new technique called self-distillation fine-tuning (SDFT) for large language models (LLMs). VentureBeat reported that this method allows LLMs to learn new skills without losing existing knowledge, addressing a common challenge in fine-tuning these models. Experiments showed that SDFT outperformed traditional supervised fine-tuning.
In related news, Rocket Lab experienced an anomaly during an engine test at the Stennis Space Center, resulting in a fire. According to Ars Technica, the fire started when an electrical box caught fire during a test of the Archimedes engines. Satellite imagery suggested that the roof of the test cell was damaged. The CEO downplayed the incident, stating that it was not a major concern.
Finally, Wired published details of ICE's planned expansion into over 150 office spaces across the United States. The expansion includes plans to occupy existing government spaces and share facilities with medical offices and small businesses.
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