Project Syndicate

Driven by the same incentives that brought us social media and its many social and political ills, the tech industry’s pivot to generative AI has cast further doubts on the potential for online life to serve positive human ends. The question now is whether those still offering a humanistic vision of online life can make themselves heard over the din. Subscribe to PS Premium today to secure your copy, unlock our full magazine archive, and gain access to every future issue of PS Quarterly–all at a $50 discount.

The devastating floods in Nepal demonstrate what happens when reckless development puts climate-vulnerable communities in harm's way. They also highlight a climate-finance system that is unable to provide the funds countries need in the immediate aftermath of such disasters. Your browser does not support the audio element. Listen to this commentary Please log in to listen to this commentary Audio unavailable

Nischal Dhungel is a fellow at the Nepal Institute for Policy Research.

Europe's soil is gradually dying, and yet the continent has still not recognized it as a strategic asset. Fortunately, the EU has many of the tools it needs to act, but doing so will require an overarching framework that helps farmers access financial rewards for measurable soil outcomes.

Adrien Geiger is CEO of L'Occitane en Provence.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's recent appeal for a pause on AI development is a welcome one. But while AI companies do indeed need more breathing space to consider the full impact of their inventions before releasing them to the market, self-interested oversight is not the kind of governance we need.

At first glance, MAGA's fear of immigrants and the rest of America's fear of data centers have many similarities, with each reflecting insecurities about one's place in a changing economy. But while the first fear tells natives that their place is valuable, the second assumes that it will soon be worth nothing.

Lucky Gunasekara is CEO and co-founder of Miso.ai, an AI media lab that builds private AI systems for search, audience engagement, and research for digital publishers.

Although the United Nations system remains the foundation of global governance, its capacity to drive domestic implementation of urgently needed reforms and regulations is stretched thin. Fortunately, narrower "plurilateral" arrangements can help, provided that they are explicitly designed to strengthen democracy. Help us strengthen our reporting on global health and development by taking a short survey.

There is a method to the frontier AI labs' marketing madness. They claim that AI will not only replace workers and expand the potential market from software budgets to labor-saving applications, but also that the existential risk associated with the technology justifies curtailing additional capital spending.