Babbage from The Economist The Economist

An article from The Economist read aloud. Google DeepMind has once again demonstrated how AI is transforming scientific discovery. We report that over two million materials unknown to science have been found

COP28 is underway in Dubai, and delegates are negotiating policies to slow the rise of global temperatures. While reducing CO2 emissions is the main focus, another, more potent, greenhouse gas—which leaks from cows' bellies, rice fields and oil and gas fields—has mostly been ignored. But this week, a long-awaited deal on methane was reached at the conference. Will it do enough to get emissions of the gas under control?

Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Vijay Vaitheeswaran, The Economist’s global energy and climate innovation editor; Bryony Worthington, a climate campaigner; Claus Zehner, a mission manager at the European Space Agency

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As the COP28 climate summit kicks off, countries will be assessing and renewing their efforts to cut carbon emissions. But to meet the goal of keeping warming well below 2°C, as set out at the Paris agreement eight years ago, carbon dioxide will also need to be removed from the atmosphere at an unprecedented scale. How can carbon capture technologies be made attractive and cost-effective, so that people will scale them up in the future?

Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. Contributors: Oliver Morton, a senior editor at The Economist; Rachel Dobbs, our climate correspondent; Colin Hale, a chemical engineer at Imperial College London; Gavin Jackson, The Economist’s economics and finance correspondent.

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A year ago, the public launch of ChatGPT took the world by storm and it was followed by many more generative artificial intelligence tools, all with remarkable, human-like abilities. Fears over the existential risks posed by AI have dominated the global conversation around the technology ever since.
Fei-Fei Li, a pioneer that helped lay the groundwork that underpins modern generative AI models, takes a more nuanced approach. She’s pushing for a human-centred way of dealing with AI—treating it as a tool to help enhance—and not replace—humanity, while focussing on the pressing challenges of disinformation, bias and job disruption.
Fei-Fei Li is the founding co-director of Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence. Fei-Fei and her research group created ImageNet, a huge database of images that enabled computers scientists to build algorithms that were able to see and recognise objects in the real world. That endeavour also introduced the world to deep learning, a type of machine learning that is fundamental part of how large-language and image-creation models work.
Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor. 
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An article from The Economist read aloud. Scientific innovation has been waning in recent years. To combat this, we argue that it’s time to experiment with how science is funded.

This week, Israeli soldiers entered the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, claiming that Hamas runs a command centre in tunnels underneath the building. Hamas has denied this claim. Under the ground in Gaza, though, Hamas does run a sophisticated network of secret tunnels. Israel has vowed to destroy them and their forces will call on every technological trick they can have in their arsenal. But finding and eliminating tunnels is no easy task, and will no doubt make the war more deadly to civilians. How does war work, when it moves underground?

Host: Alok Jha, The Economist’s science and technology editor, with Shashank Joshi, The Economist’s defence editor. Contributors: Daphné Richemond-Barak, author of “Underground Warfare” and a researcher at Reichman University, Israel; Eyal Weizman, an architect at Goldsmiths, University of London and boss of Forensic Architecture, which investigates violence committed by states, police forces, militaries, and corporations.

Sign up for a free trial of Economist Podcasts+. If you’re already a subscriber to The Economist, you’ll have full access to all our shows as part of your subscription. For more information about how to access Economist Podcasts+, please visit our FAQs page or watch our video explaining how to link your account.