AI Research
Shoots of hope for Britain’s cherished ash trees
Getty ImagesAsh trees are fighting back against a disease that has ravaged the British countryside, new scientific evidence shows.
When ash dieback arrived in 2012, it was predicted up to 85% of ash trees could be lost. The disease has now spread to every corner of the British Isles, causing widespread damage to woodlands.
But now scientists have discovered that ash woodlands are naturally evolving greater resistance to the fungal infection.
The discovery offers fresh hope that the much-loved trees will remain part of the British landscape – one “borne out of the death of a lot of trees”, said Prof Richard Buggs, of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and Queen Mary University of London.
Getty ImagesHe added that other interventions would be needed to give ash trees a helping hand, such as protecting trees from grazing deer and breeding the most resilient trees for future planting schemes.
“We have fresh motivation to look after our ash populations, to protect them from other problems like deer browsing, and to let nature take its course and evolve trees with more resistance,” Prof Buggs told BBC News.
The ash dieback fungus originated in Asia and was introduced to Europe about 30 years ago.
Signs of the disease can be seen through withered and blighted leaves. In many cases, the fungal disease will eventually kill the tree.
A study of ash trees at a woodland in Surrey revealed subtle shifts in different genes over time, which should help new saplings fight it – suggesting they were evolving greater resistance to the disease than their predecessors.
Richard Nichols, professor of evolutionary genetics at Queen Mary University of London, said a “tragedy for the trees has been a revelation for scientists – allowing us to show that thousands of genes are contributing to the ash trees’ fightback against the fungus”.
Paul Figg © RBG KewAsh dieback demonstrates how devastating introduced pathogens can be for our trees and the species which rely upon them, according to Rebecca Gosling of the Woodland Trust.
“The findings highlight how vital it is to support natural regeneration in woodlands, furthering our understanding of how to best manage our ash woodlands,” she said.
Scientists had feared the ash would go the way of the elm, which has been almost wiped out by Dutch elm disease.
The loss of the native tree would have also had a devastating effect on biodiversity.
The research is published in the journal Science.
AI Research
Now Artificial Intelligence (AI) for smarter prison surveillance in West Bengal – The CSR Journal
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman walks on the day of a meeting of the White House Task Force on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Education in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 4, 2025.
Brian Snyder | Reuters
OpenAI has sharply raised its projected cash burn through 2029 to $115 billion as it ramps up spending to power the artificial intelligence behind its popular ChatGPT chatbot, The Information reported on Friday.
The new forecast is $80 billion higher than the company previously expected, the news outlet said, without citing a source for the report.
OpenAI, which has become one of the world’s biggest renters of cloud servers, projects it will burn more than $8 billion this year, some $1.5 billion higher than its projection from earlier this year, the report said.
The company did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment.
To control its soaring costs, OpenAI will seek to develop its own data center server chips and facilities to power its technology, The Information said.
OpenAI is set to produce its first artificial intelligence chip next year in partnership with U.S. semiconductor giant Broadcom, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, saying OpenAI plans to use the chip internally rather than make it available to customers.
The company deepened its tie-up with Oracle in July with a planned 4.5-gigawatts of data center capacity, building on its Stargate initiative, a project of up to $500 billion and 10 gigawatts that includes Japanese technology investor SoftBank. OpenAI has also added Alphabet’s Google Cloud among its suppliers for computing capacity.
The company’s cash burn will more than double to over $17 billion next year, $10 billion higher than OpenAI’s earlier projection, with a burn of $35 billion in 2027 and $45 billion in 2028, The Information said.
AI Research
Who is Shawn Shen? The Cambridge alumnus and ex-Meta scientist offering $2M to poach AI researchers
Shawn Shen, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of the artificial intelligence (AI) startup Memories.ai, has made headlines for offering compensation packages worth up to $2 million to attract researchers from top technology companies. In a recent interview with Business Insider, Shen explained that many scientists are leaving Meta, the parent company of Facebook, due to constant reorganisations and shifting priorities.“Meta is constantly doing reorganizations. Your manager and your goals can change every few months. For some researchers, it can be really frustrating and feel like a waste of time,” Shen told Business Insider, adding that this is a key reason why researchers are seeking roles at startups. He also cited Meta Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg’s philosophy that “the biggest risk is not taking any risks” as a motivation for his own move into entrepreneurship.With Memories.ai, a company developing AI capable of understanding and remembering visual data, Shen is aiming to build a niche team of elite researchers. His company has already recruited Chi-Hao Wu, a former Meta research scientist, as Chief AI Officer, and is in talks with other researchers from Meta’s Superintelligence Lab as well as Google DeepMind.
From full scholarships to Cambridge classrooms
Shen’s academic journey is rooted in engineering, supported consistently by merit-based scholarships. He studied at Dulwich College from 2013 to 2016 on a full scholarship, completing his A-Level qualifications.He then pursued higher education at the University of Cambridge, where he was awarded full scholarships throughout. Shen earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Engineering (2016–2019), followed by a Master of Engineering (MEng) at Trinity College (2019–2020). He later continued at Cambridge as a Meta PhD Fellow, completing his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Engineering between 2020 and 2023.
Early career: Internships in finance and research
Alongside his academic pursuits, Shen gained early experience through internships and analyst roles in finance. He worked as a Quantitative Research Summer Analyst at Killik & Co in London (2017) and as an Investment Banking Summer Analyst at Morgan Stanley in Shanghai (2018).Shen also interned as a Research Scientist at the Computational and Biological Learning Lab at the University of Cambridge (2019), building the foundations for his transition into advanced AI research.
From Meta’s Reality Labs to academia
After completing his PhD, Shen joined Meta (Reality Labs Research) in Redmond, Washington, as a Research Scientist (2022–2024). His time at Meta exposed him to cutting-edge work in generative AI, but also to the frustrations of frequent corporate restructuring. This experience eventually drove him toward building his own company.In April 2024, Shen began his academic career as an Assistant Professor at the University of Bristol, before launching Memories.ai in October 2024.
Betting on talent with $2M offers
Explaining his company’s aggressive hiring packages, Shen told Business Insider: “It’s because of the talent war that was started by Mark Zuckerberg. I used to work at Meta, and I speak with my former colleagues often about this. When I heard about their compensation packages, I was shocked — it’s really in the tens of millions range. But it shows that in this age, AI researchers who make the best models and stand at the frontier of technology are really worth this amount of money.”Shen noted that Memories.ai is looking to recruit three to five researchers in the next six months, followed by up to ten more within a year. The company is prioritising individuals willing to take a mix of equity and cash, with Shen emphasising that these recruits would be treated as founding members rather than employees.By betting heavily on talent, Shen believes Memories.ai will be in a strong position to secure additional funding and establish itself in the competitive AI landscape.His bold $2 million offers may raise eyebrows, but they also underline a larger truth: in today’s technology race, the fiercest competition is not for customers or capital, it’s for talent.
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