The Obtain: Squeezing extra steel out of getting older mines, and AI’s reality disaster


In a pine forest on Michigan’s Higher Peninsula, the one lively nickel mine within the US is nearing the top of its life. At a time when carmakers need the steel for electric-vehicle batteries, nickel focus at Eagle Mine is falling and will quickly drop too low to warrant digging.

Demand for nickel, copper, and uncommon earth parts is quickly rising amid the explosive progress of metal-intensive knowledge facilities, electrical automobiles, and renewable power initiatives. However producing these metals is changing into tougher and dearer as a result of miners have already exploited the most effective assets. Right here’s how biotechnology might assist.

—Matt Blois

What we’ve been getting improper about AI’s reality disaster

—James O’Donnell

What wouldn’t it take to persuade you that the period of reality decay we have been lengthy warned about—the place AI content material dupes us, shapes our beliefs even once we catch the lie, and erodes societal belief within the course of—is now right here?

A story I revealed final week pushed me over the sting. And it additionally made me understand that the instruments we have been offered as a treatment for this disaster are failing miserably. Learn the complete story.

This story initially appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly e-newsletter on AI. To get tales like this in your inbox first, join right here.

TR10: Hyperscale AI knowledge facilities

In sprawling stretches of farmland and industrial parks, supersized buildings full of racks of computer systems are springing as much as gas the AI race.

These engineering marvels are a brand new species of infrastructure: supercomputers designed to coach and run massive language fashions at mind-­bending scale, full with their very own specialised chips, cooling methods, and even power provides. However all that spectacular computing energy comes at a value.

Learn why we’ve named hyperscale AI knowledge facilities as of our 10 Breakthrough Applied sciences this 12 months, and take a look at the remainder of the record.