BIG Exclusives

Artificial intelligence is no longer defined primarily by benchmark scores or parameter counts. It is defined by control. The question that now matters most is not who has built the largest model, but who can inspect it, who can modify it, who can deploy it under which conditions, and who ultimately bears responsibility when it fails. The debate between open source and closed AI systems is therefore not ideological theatre. It is a structural contest...

The error bars disappeared from my presentations sometime late 2023, and I did not pay much attention. That is on me. I was preparing a lecture on climate projections for a sustainability and ethics course. My class consisted of future corporate sustainability officers and infrastructure planners – the kind of people who will need to understand long-term climate risks in order to help manage billions in assets. My slides showed the usual temperature projections through...

Key takeaways Data centres are not just energy intensive; they are mineral intensive, requiring 60-75 tonnes of metals per megawatt (MW) of capacity as a significant driver of mining and refining activity. The United States, home to 44% of global data-centre buildout is deeply import-dependent, with China, Canada, Belgium, Germany, and Mexico dominating mineral exposure. Critical artificial intelligence-enabling minerals (gallium, germanium, tantalum) face structural supply constraints that mining timelines cannot easily resolve. Copper emerges as the system-level bottleneck,...

Securing the internet and combatting misinformation and disinformation have been high priorities for governments across the western world since the COVID-19 pandemic began about six years ago. Citizens in many countries have had to contend with a range of policies intended to control speech, online content, and independent media. At the start of this decade, social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Linkedin were front and centre in the censorship game through their so-called...

In the first essay of this series, I discussed medieval vineyards in Yorkshire and cattle grazing in Greenland where permafrost now reigns. In the second essay, I revealed the dilemma of my conversion – the trappings of academic funding combined with narrative containment – you know, Deep Throat follow-the-money kinda stuff. I ended the second essay with a promise: this week I would show you what happened when I began asking, out loud, how...

Mea culpa: Earlier this month, I said I would tell you what happened when I started asking, out loud, how much of recent warming might be natural recovery from the Little Ice Age rather than entirely our fault – and why certain colleagues reacted as if I had defaced a cathedral. Well, I am doing that, but next month. I switched Essay 2 and 3, to convey more vulnerability and something else of concern...

In a remote farm in the Canadian province of British Columbia, a flock of ostriches survived an H5N1 avian influenza outbreak, sparking a year-long battle over science, policy, and survival. An ordeal that featured widespread mistrust of public health authorities, economic trade pressures, and unexpected U.S. interventions, culminated in a controversial cull that divided a nation. Universal Ostrich Farms (UOF), located in Edgewood, B.C., and operated by Karen Espersen and Dave Bilinski since the mid-1990s,...

People these days tell many stories about energy and the 21st century energy transition. Some promote or are at least enthralled by the merits of a particular technology. For example: “Wind, water, and solar can power the world by 2050” “Geothermal technology is improving and can provide 20% of electricity by 2030” “Renewables and battery storage (BESS) can power any grid” “There is enough naturally occurring hydrogen in the ground to power humanity...

Artificial intelligence has matured enough to influence medicine, finance, national security, and the structure of daily life, yet the systems behind these advances remain far less stable than their public reputation suggests. In the last several years, “AI safety” has become a term used by researchers, regulators, and corporate strategists to describe the growing effort to control the risks that accompany these models. But while the concept is now widely invoked, the tools and methods...

I committed my first act of climate dishonesty by omission. I stood at the front of lecture halls and projected the same graph every instructor uses: temperatures essentially flat for a thousand years, then a sharp blade upward beginning around 1900. The hockey stick. Clean. Causal. Irrefutable. I never showed the slides that should have come immediately before it. The one with vineyards flourishing in Yorkshire, England. And the slide with Viking cattle grazing on grasslands that are...