🤖UK Caught Between AI Ambitions And Climate Consequences

PLUS: OpenAI Reveals User Insights

September 16, 2025

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Reading time: 5 minutes

🗞️In this edition

  • Google’s Essex data centre plan sparks emissions debate

  • Workflow Wednesday #36 ‘Competitive Edge’

  • OpenAI reveals ChatGPT user trends

  • In other AI news –

    • USA Today launches chatbot to engage readers

    • China accuses Nvidia of antitrust violations

    • OpenAI debuts GPT-5 Codex for coding tasks

    • Alphabet hits $3 trillion market cap on AI boost

    • 4 must-try AI tools

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Image Source: Google Images

♨️News – Google has put forward plans for a huge new data centre in Essex that could release more than half a million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. The proposed Thurrock site is part of the UK’s push to expand AI capacity, but critics say it comes at a steep environmental cost.

👨‍💻Fast facts –

  • Expected annual emissions: 568,727 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent.

  • Equal to about 500 short-haul flights from Heathrow to Málaga every week.

  • Planned size: 128 acres with up to four data centres.

  • Linked to wider investment deals with companies like Nvidia and OpenAI during the US president’s UK visit.

  • Campaign groups warn of rising emissions, energy use, and water demand.

🤓OpenTools POV –  The Essex project highlights the tension between economic ambitions and environmental responsibility. Britain wants to lead in AI, but how it balances growth with sustainability will shape the long-term impact of these massive data hubs.

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This Week in Workflow Wednesday #36: Competitive Edge

This Week in Workflow Wednesday: Competitive Edge

 Workflow 1: Out-Research Your Competition with Perplexity
Why waste hours Googling when Perplexity can hand you a competitive intel brief in minutes?

Step 1: Name your rival
Type in the company you want to track — pricing, features, customer praise and complaints all come back in a clean digest.

Step 2: Dig for weakness
Follow up with prompts that surface user frustrations from G2, Reddit, and X so you know exactly where to outshine them.

And here’s the kicker: we share the exact prompts and a simple template to flip this research into a strategy that…We break it all down in this week’s issue, along with 2 other AI workflows.

Image Source: Google Images

☕News – OpenAI has shared its first detailed study on ChatGPT usage, analyzing 1.5 million chats between May 2024 and June 2025. The research offers a clear picture of who uses the chatbot and how their behavior has evolved.

  • Nearly half of the conversations came from people aged 18 to 25.

  • Women now make up 52 percent of users, a shift from the early male majority.

  • Personal use dominates, making up 73 percent of chats compared with 50 percent a year earlier.

  • The most common category was practical guidance, followed by writing help and seeking information.

  • About 4.2 percent of chats involved coding, while 1.9 percent focused on relationships or personal reflections.

🤓OpenTools POV –  The findings show that ChatGPT is moving beyond the workplace and becoming a mainstream tool for learning, problem-solving, and daily life. Its growing role as a search alternative is especially significant for the future of online business models.

  • USA Today Enters Its Gen AI Era With a Chatbot // DeeperDive, a new tool that converses with readers, is an effort to beat the AI industry at its own game

  • China says Nvidia violated antitrust regulations // Trade tensions between China and the U.S. regarding semiconductors just got even more strained

  • OpenAI upgrades Codex with a new version of GPT-5 // The company says its new model, called GPT-5-Codex, spends its “thinking” time more dynamically than previous models, and could spend anywhere from a few seconds to seven hours on a coding task

  • Alphabet enters $3 trillion market cap club as Big Tech's AI momentum builds // Google parent Alphabet  hit a market capitalization of $3 trillion for the first time on Monday, riding on renewed optimism around artificial intelligence and a favorable antitrust ruling

  1. PitchPower - A software service that helps consultants and agencies create powerful proposals quickly

  2. Flowrite - A Chrome extension that helps users write emails and messages 5x faster

  3. MapsGPT - Helps users quickly find and explore interesting places near them using AI

  4. Smodin - A suite of tools designed to help students and writers save time and improve their work

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