This is a Canadian effort and I gather the recent 2026 news release from Rice University (at the end of this post) is an expression of support and exuberance. First, the early news in a March 19, 2025 University of Alberta news release by Gillian Rutherford, Note: Links have been removed,
Imagine wearing clothing that could change its shape and stiffness to help you recover from a shoulder injury, reduce your risk of falling or assist with muscle weakness so you could be more active in your community.
It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but an interdisciplinary team led by the University of Alberta has just been given the green light to make it a reality.
The federal government recently announced that it’s giving the team $24 million over six years to work on technology that could increase independence and quality of life for millions of people.
“We’re starting a smartwear revolution to create light, washable, affordable assistive technology that will be indistinguishable from your current clothing,” says project lead Vivian Mushahwar, professor of medicine, Canada Research Chair in Functional Restoration and director of the Institute for Smart Augmentative and Restorative Technologies and Health Innovations (iSMART) and Smart Technology (ST) Innovations.
Mushahwar is a global expert in neural and rehabilitation engineering with a track record of leading successful interdisciplinary teams and commercializing adaptive devices.
With this project, Mushahwar brings together 64 researchers and collaborators from the U of A [University of Alberta] and across Canada, the United States and Europe. The team includes fashion designers, disability advocates, clothing manufacturers, visual artists, even a choreographer, as well as researchers from eight faculties across the College of Health Sciences, the College of Natural and Applied Sciences, and the College of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Mushahwar says the U of A’s core facilities, well-equipped laboratories and strong support for interdisciplinary research allowed the project to win one of just six transformation grants from Canada’s New Frontiers in Research Fund for high-risk, high-reward research this year.
“Collectively the time was just right for all of us to come together,” Mushahwar says. “We have the resources, we have the skills, we have the expertise to do this work in a very productive fashion.”
Putting users at the centre
Twenty-five per cent of Canadians have some form of muscle weakness for a variety of reasons ranging from sprains and broken bones to spinal cord injuries, strokes and aging. Current adaptive technologies such as exoskeletons, braces or electrical stimulation devices are often expensive, uncomfortable and impractical.
“There really is a lot of need out there,” says Verna Yiu, professor of pediatrics and provost and vice-president (academic) of the U of A. “Smartwear will improve quality of life for those individuals, but also — if we can keep people healthy and out of hospital — then it will also make our health-care system more sustainable.”
The team is taking an innovative co-design approach that puts future users at the centre of development, starting at the concept stage five years ago. Three groups of users — older adults who are at risk of falls and mobility loss, people with disabilities who could use additional support to complete daily activities, and health-care workers at risk of workplace injury — have been included.
From the conceptual stage onward, the research team has taken an innovative approach to designing the technology, putting future users at the centre of development. (Illustration: Supplied)
This is very different from many research projects that begin with scientists creating prototypes based on their own interests and capacities, says Danielle Peers, associate professor of kinesiology, Canada Research Chair in Disability and Movement Cultures and member of the Women and Children’s Health Research Institute.
“The timing of user engagement (from the beginning), the depth and impact of our engagement on both process and product, and the purposeful engagement with the broadest possible range of end users are all unusual and transformative approaches to this kind of work,” Peers says.
The team will share its progress in developing the new technology through two art and technology festivals in year three and year six.
“It’s about trying to innovate and find new techniques for really centring the people with lived experience in the creation of this technology,” says Marilène Oliver, associate professor of art and design with extensive experience depicting the impact of medical technology on people.
Stretching scientific boundaries
Think of Batman’s cape made of memory cloth in the 2005 hit movie Batman Begins. Lucius Fox shows Bruce Wayne how he can simply touch his power glove to the cape to make it stiff so he can fly around Gotham City.
The research team has already invented several classes of composite materials that can sense temperature, strain and pressure and change their shape, size and stiffness. The challenge now is to create fibres from those materials to be woven into clothing. Sensors that use artificial intelligence will be embedded to determine user intentions — to move an arm, lift a heavy object or stand — and actuators that change the fabric as needed will make those intentions a reality, all of it powered by tiny batteries that look like buttons.
“Those multi-material fibres will eventually function as artificial muscles or stiffness-switching materials,” explains Dan Sameoto, professor of mechanical engineering. “There’s a lot of things that are technically quite challenging for us to do, but we have a team to pull it off. And hopefully this project will be a springboard for many more transformative projects to come, so we can develop expertise within Alberta for smart manufacturing technologies.”
The project will provide unique training opportunities for 120 undergraduate summer students and nearly 70 graduate and postdoctoral students over the six years.
The other co-principal investigators on the project are Patricia Dolez, associate professor of human ecology; Anastasia Elias, professor of chemical and materials engineering and associate dean of research strategy in the Faculty of Engineering; Chester Ho, professor of medicine; Reisa Klein, adjunct academic colleague in modern languages and cultural studies; Mahdi Tavakoli, professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of mechatronics engineering; Adalberto Loyola-Sanchez, assistant professor of medicine; and Lingzi Sang, assistant professor of chemistry.
“This meaningful investment underscores the University of Alberta’s commitment to pushing the boundaries of interdisciplinary research. By bringing together experts from diverse fields, we are poised to significantly enhance the quality of life for many people,” says Aminah Robinson Fayek, vice-president (research and innovation). “This project exemplifies our dedication to translating innovative research into real-world solutions that benefit our communities.”
In a September 22, 2025 story “Revolutionary “smartwear”: artificial intelligence-infused fibres will provide support for people with limited mobility” on the Canadian federal government’s New Frontiers in Research Fund webspace is where a local Vancouver project collaborator was mentioned,
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The game-changing potential
One important collaborator on the project is Chloë Angus, a Vancouver-based fashion designer who has been living with a spinal cord injury since 2015.
“The best doctors looked at me and said, ‘you’re never going to walk again.’ It doesn’t matter how it happens or when it happens in your life, it’s shocking,” she says.
After her injury, Angus channelled her energy into learning about assistive devices. She went on to co-design an award-winning exoskeleton that allows her to stand up, walk and even dance.
Angus was excited to join the team to support both the technical and design aspects of the project. While smartwear isn’t a replacement for her exoskeleton, it can offer critical support when she’s in her wheelchair and help to prevent secondary injuries.
“When using a wheelchair, you use your shoulders for mobility, and they burn out really fast. A lot of people end up needing to have one or both shoulders reconstructed through surgery, which takes a long time to recover from. Smartwear could help give that extra bit of power and support when you’re pushing,” she says.
While function comes first, the fashion designer in Angus also likes to imagine new features like colour-changing threads. She’s most excited about designing universal pieces of clothing like a T-shirt or a vest—everyday items that can offer people significant support.
“That’s smart clothing everybody could wear and love, especially if it changed colour.”
A badge of honour
The smartwear team has already demonstrated they can create fibres that change their shape and stiffness. From here, the project will proceed in three phases: supporting posture and injured joints; augmenting arm movements; and augmenting standing and walking. The team will collaborate with industry partners to get smartwear products manufactured and approved for sale in Canada before the end of the funding period. [Mushahwar received the New Frontiers in Research Fund 2024 Transformation grant worth $24 million over six years]
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Chloe Angus was mentioned here in a January 3, 2024 posting about an exoskeleton project in British Columbia (BC). That posting hosts an embedded video featuring Angus and what was then the most advanced exoskeleton in the world or so the Simon Fraser university (SFU) engineering team claimed.
And now, Rice University’s 2026 contribution
The latest news about the international effort to realize assistive smart clothing and bring it to the marketplace is in a January 20, 2026 Rice University news release (also on EurekAlert), Note: Links have been removed,
When everyday clothes can quietly support your back during a long work shift, help you rise from a chair or steady your balance on a crowded bus, assistive technology stops looking like a medical device and starts feeling like life. That’s the vision driving a new multimillion dollar grant supported by the Canadian government called the New Frontiers in Research Fund.
Rice University professors of mechanical engineering Daniel J. Preston and Vanessa Sanchez are core partners in the project led by the University of Alberta, bringing breakthrough materials, soft-robotic actuation and human-centered design to the team.
Rice contributes two complementary strengths to the initiative. Sanchez, a researcher trained in fiber science, materials engineering and robotics, brings expertise in textile-native manufacturing for wearable robotic technologies. Her team at texlab develops smart fibers and knitted and woven structures that act as robotic materials, actuating, sensing and routing power and data for innovative garment designs that fit diverse body types and movements.
“Our goal is to create clothing that looks and feels like what people already love to wear,” Sanchez said. “If we can embed intelligence and comfort into everyday garments, we can change how people experience mobility assistance.”
Meanwhile, the Preston Innovation Laboratory specializes in control and power in compliant devices and systems. Its work emphasizes reliability, washability and all-day comfort for the proposed assistive garments, along with embedded logic and control systems that keep computation local to the garment for enhanced privacy and power efficiency.
“The challenge,” Preston said, “is to make the assistance we provide feel as natural as fabric itself — responsive but unobtrusive and almost imperceptible. We want these garments to move with people, not on them.”
Globally, billions stand to benefit from rehabilitation or mobility assistance, yet many cannot access or tolerate existing devices. Braces can be bulky and nonadaptive, powered exoskeletons are expensive and rigid and most “smart” garments today only monitor rather than assist. By moving both sensing and actuation into the fabric itself, the research team hopes to create assistive clothing that is light, washable, attractive, affordable and scalable.
Together, the Rice researchers will advise two doctoral trainees working on the project over six years, with additional undergraduate and master’s students contributing through Rice’s extensive ecosystem in design, biomechanics and health care collaborations across the Texas Medical Center.
In the near term, the Rice teams will fabricate and characterize fiber-level actuators and wash-durable sensors compatible with standard knitting and weaving processes. They will also build control prototypes that keep computation on the garment itself, ensuring both efficiency and privacy. In parallel, the groups will contribute to fit and patterning studies to guarantee comfort across a wide range of sizes, genders and mobility profiles and will leverage Rice’s partnerships with clinicians for biomechanics testing, usability studies and feedback on real-world performance.
The larger consortium aims to create garments whose fibers perform the work themselves — changing stiffness, applying gentle forces and sensing motion without bulky add-ons. The researchers’ road map focuses on three escalating use cases developed directly from end-user workshops: posture support for caregivers and older adults, smart sleeves that aid arm movement for daily tasks and leggings or shorts that assist with balance, gait and sit-to-stand transitions. Core technologies include electrostatic actuators miniaturized into fibers for safe, low-voltage assistance; textile-embedded EMG and strain sensors to detect user intent; and on-garment control systems that blend rapid, rule-based stabilization with machine learning-driven personalization, all with safety-first fallbacks.
A hallmark of the $24 million Canadian dollar award is its co-design framework with people who have lived experience of mobility limitations. Rather than try to fit finalized devices to bodies at the end of the project, the team invites these individuals, alongside clinicians, industrial partners and artists, into continuous cycles of discovery, prototyping and feedback. Public art-and-technology festivals midway and at the project’s end will showcase progress, gather input and celebrate inclusive design.
Preston and Sanchez traveled to Alberta in 2025 for the kickoff alongside their graduate students. Over the six-year award, students in the Rice cohort will also have the opportunity to rotate through partner labs via visiting positions while the Preston and Sanchez labs will host visitors from the University of Alberta and other participating institutions, building a pipeline of talent at the intersection of materials, apparel engineering and human-machine interaction.
It’s nice to be reminded every once in a while that collaboration is an important aspect of research.
I wish Rice University gave bylines for the news release writers so I could acknowledge the person responsible for the nice work in the January 20, 2026 Rice University news release.
As there’s great international interest in limiting dependence on other countries for critical minerals and earths, this seems like promising news. h/t May 25, 2026 Google Alerts for this May 25, 2026 Business Insider news item about battery recycling and recovery of precious materials, Note: A link has been removed,
Litus, a Calgary-based critical minerals and battery metals company pioneering nanotechnology solutions for lithium extraction and lithium recovery, today announced it has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with UWin Nanotech Co., Ltd., a Taiwan-based company active in advanced hydrometallurgy technologies for precious metals recovery, E-waste recycling, Li-ion battery recycling air pollution treatment, and industrial applications with environmental-friendly chemical. UWin has been a certified Apple supplier for recycling since 2020.
The MOU establishes the parties’ intention to cooperate in good faith toward a potential strategic collaboration focused on the selective extraction, separation, recovery, and purification of cobalt, lithium, nickel, and other valuable elements from recycling sources. The collaboration will explore the use of Litus’ proprietary nanomaterial composite and advanced separation processes, including applications in battery recycling, and the potential recovery of additional critical minerals and rare earth elements.
Dr. Ghada Nafie, Founder and CEO of Litus, said, “This MOU reflects the growing global demand for advanced processing technologies that can recover lithium and other valuable materials efficiently, selectively, and with lower environmental impact. By combining Litus’ nanotechnology platforms with UWin’s hydrometallurgy technology expertise, we see strong potential to accelerate the development of scalable, circular critical mineral supply chains.”
Advancing Litus LiNC™ for Sustainable Lithium Extraction
Litus’ flagship technology, Litus LiNC™, is a patented, one-step direct lithium extraction platform designed to economically recover lithium from both low and high-concentration brines, including brines that have previously been considered uneconomical.
Powered by Litus’ proprietary nanocomposite, designed and manufactured at the company’s Calgary facility, LiNC™ is engineered for:
High lithium selectivity
Low energy use
Reduced chemical consumption
Minimal pretreatment
Modular proven field deployment
Recovery from diverse sources, including oilfield produced water and geothermal brines
Litus’ Calgary-based nanocomposite manufacturing facility plays a central role in the company’s commercialization strategy, ensuring the supply of its proprietary materials while supporting ongoing optimization for different feedstocks and operating environments.
Expanding Into Battery Recycling with ReLiGN™
The MOU also supports Litus’ broader strategy to integrate lithium extraction and lithium recycling through advanced materials science.
Litus ReLiGN™ is the next-generation battery recycling platform engineered to recover battery-grade lithium from end-of-life batteries. ReLiGN™ is designed to transform discarded batteries from waste into a renewable domestic source of critical minerals, helping reduce dependence on newly mined lithium while supporting a more circular battery supply chain.
Developed by the same team behind Litus’ patented nanotechnology platforms, ReLiGN™ uses proprietary nanocomposites to deliver:
High-purity, highly selective lithium recovery
Safe, fast, and scalable processing
Ultra-low energy consumption
Low capital requirements
Virtually zero hazardous waste
Closed-loop recovery pathways for the battery ecosystem
“End-of-life batteries are not waste, they are repositories of high-value materials,” added Dr. Nafie. “ReLiGN™ allows us to recover lithium at battery-grade specifications while helping OEMs, EV manufacturers, energy storage providers, and battery producers reduce waste and strengthen supply chain resilience.”
Scope of the Litus–UWin Collaboration
Under the MOU, Litus and UWin intend to explore collaboration in several areas, including:
Applying the feasibility of Litus’s advanced nanomaterials for the selective separation of lithium and other valuable components from different sources
Expanding separation applications to additional valuable materials and rare earth elements
Optimizing material performance for different components and feedstocks
Evaluating technical feasibility and commercial economics across different streams and sources
Exchanging technical expertise, data, and know-how to assess commercial viability
Discussing potential future definitive agreements for scale-up, licensing, distribution, or joint venture opportunities
The MOU serves as a framework for further technical and commercial discussions between the parties.
Strengthening Critical Mineral Supply Chains
As global demand for lithium continues to grow across electric vehicles, grid storage, consumer electronics, and AI-driven energy infrastructure, the need for scalable, sustainable, and secure critical mineral processing solutions is accelerating.
Litus’ approach connects primary lithium extraction and battery recycling through a shared nanotechnology foundation, enabling the company to support both new lithium production and circular recovery from existing battery materials.
About Litus
Litus is a Canadian critical minerals and battery metals company developing patented nanotechnology solutions to meet global energy demand. Its flagship product, Litus LiNC™, is a one-step direct lithium extraction technology that economically recovers lithium from low-concentration brines. Litus has also launched ReLiGN™, a next-generation battery recycling platform designed to recover battery-grade lithium from end-of-life batteries. With operations across North America, Europe, and the Middle East, Litus is advancing clean, secure, and resilient energy systems.
About UWin Nanotech Co., Ltd.
UWin Nanotech Co., Ltd. is a Taiwan-based leader in advanced hydrometallurgy technologies, providing eco-friendly solutions for industrial applications. Our expertise spans precious metals recovery, E-waste recycling, semiconductor materials, lithium-ion battery recycling, air pollution control, and sustainable mining practices. UWin is dedicated to replacing traditional, highly toxic, and corrosive methods with safe and green chemical alternatives for precious metal and critical material leaching processes. To date, we hold more than 20 patents across over 10 countries.
Congratulations to Canada’s Litus and Taiwan’s UWin Nanotech on their collaboration to advance lithium extraction nanotechnology. Our Executive Director, Marie-Louise Hannan, witnessed the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding, marking an important step in strengthening Canada–Taiwan technological partnerships in critical minerals and advanced technologies.
Félicitations à l’entreprise canadienne Litus et à la société taïwanaise UWin Nanotech pour leur collaboration visant à faire progresser les nanotechnologies d’extraction du lithium. Notre directrice exécutive, Marie Louise Hannan, a assisté à la signature du protocole d’entente, marquant une étape importante dans le renforcement des partenariats technologiques entre le Canada et Taïwan dans les domaines des minéraux critiques et des technologies avancées.
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How lovely of UWin Nanotech to issue their press release in three languages.
I have a number of sciencish doings and a musical event that takes place at the Perimeter Institute.
YouTube science channel job
Thanks to the Science Media Centre of Canada (SMCC) and its April 14, 2026 notice for this news,
Job opening: Showrunner for YouTube science channel, What If [for] Underknown [creator business]
The role requires a deep understanding of YouTube as a medium. This is a hybrid role, with 2–3 days a week in our Toronto studio and head office. It is only for permanent residents in Ontario. …
Before launching off into the job description, here’s a bit more about Underknown from its Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,
Underknown Inc. is a Canadian digital-first media production company based in Toronto that specializes in short-form educational science and factual programming.
History
Underknown was founded in 2016 by Steve Hulford, Raphael Faeh, and Peter Schmiedchen.[1][2] It began when Hulford and Faeh produced the science-explainer series What If in Hulford’s living room.[3] In 2019, Underknown received C$2.5 million in equity and debt financing, including support from Ontario Creates.[3]
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Productions
Underknown’s programming uses hypothetical questions, survival scenarios and natural history storytelling to explain scientific concepts.[10] Core franchises include the science series What If, the how-to strand How to Survive, the nature show Animalogic and the video essay channel Aperture.[1][8]
This is a strategic and creative leadership role where you will own the entire editorial direction and run the What If show team. You are responsible for deciding what content is produced, how it is packaged, and continuously monitoring channel and content performance.
The role requires a deep understanding of YouTube as a medium, including its unique language, audience psychology, and mechanics of attention. You must balance the art and science of production, running the channel like a financially sustainable business without sacrificing creative quality.
Day-to-day, you will act as the creative engine and keeper of the channel’s voice, primarily managing the full production lifecycle: pre-production, ideation, packaging, production, and post-production workflows. This includes finding irresistible stories, framing them effectively, and ensuring your team executes quickly at the highest quality.
NOTE: This is a hybrid role, with 2-3 days a week in our Toronto studio and head office. It is only for permanent residents in Ontario, Canada. Applicants that don’t reside in Ontario won’t be considered.
Responsibilities
Content Strategy & Channel Vision
Define and maintain the curious, cinematic, and scientifically grounded editorial direction of What If while identifying new growth opportunities.
Continuously experiment using audience data to increase watch time and reach.
Manage the channel’s P&L and resourcing, balancing creative ambition with financial sustainability and budget targets.
Ideation & Packaging
Lead the end-to-end ideation and packaging process, generating and ruthlessly filtering a high volume of concepts into irresistible titles, thumbnails, and hooks.
Develop comprehensive episode briefs that provide the production team with a clear creative north star and narrative direction.
Editorial Oversight & Production Management
Oversee all editorial and production execution by defining clear creative direction (visual style, tone), managing project timelines, resourcing, and scheduling, and ensuring narrative intent is maintained through clear briefs.
Drive continuous improvement and profitability by running data-driven performance experiments, monitoring pacing and profitability, and overseeing branded content executions with external partners.
Team Leadership
Lead and mentor a team of producers, writers, editors and our VFX team. Set clear expectations, give actionable feedback, and create the conditions for your team to do their best work.
Support team learning and career growth.
Qualifications you bring
Five or more years of experience in YouTube content creation, video production, digital media production, or content strategy.
A demonstrated track record of contributing to high-performing YouTube content (share examples).
Deep familiarity with YouTube’s mechanics: retention, CTR, packaging, algorithm dynamics.
Strong writing and editorial instincts.
Experience working across the full production pipeline from ideation to publication.
Located in Ontario, Canada (required).
Passion for science, technology, and speculative storytelling (bonus, but strongly preferred).
Experience working with VFX teams is preferred.
How to Apply
Please submit your resume, cover letter, and a portfolio of your previous work, specifically highlighting your video creation work.
Another thanks to the Science Media Centre of Canada (SMCC) and its April 14, 2026 notice for this news about a writer’s workshop (wish I’d gotten this a bit sooner),
Banff Mountain Writers Intensive Workshop 2026
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity Program dates: October 28 to November 17, 2026 Application deadline: April 15, 2026
This three-week residency for writers in fiction, nonfiction, journalism, or poetry who are working on mountain narratives, environmental journalism, stories of adventure, or projects with an environmental theme provides dedicated time to create, connect with peers, and receive mentorship.
The Mountain Writers Intensive is a three-week residency for twelve writers in fiction, nonfiction, journalism, or poetry. Ideal for projects on mountain narratives, adventure, environmental journalism, and the human connection to landscape, the program emphasizes literary excellence and narrative development. Writers enjoy dedicated time to create, connect with peers, and receive mentorship in Banff’s inspiring mountain setting. The residency overlaps with the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival, offering opportunities to engage with visiting authors, editors, and publishers. Lodging and meals are included, allowing participants to fully focus on their craft and creative growth.
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Good luck!
Modem Futura podcasts (a reminder)
I just got a friendly note (via email) from Andrew Maynard, “scientist, author, and professor of advanced technology transitions at Arizona State University,” which reminded me of one of his science communication ventures, the Modem Futura podcast. Before getting to Andrew’s note, here’s more about Modem Futura, Note: I have made some formatting changes so the following is not identical to what you will find on the page,
The Podcast that explores the possible, probable, and preferred futures
Modem Futura is your weekly guide to the future of science, technology, and society—where futures and foresight meets real-world impact. Hosts Sean Leahy and Andrew Maynard—educators, futurists, and public scholars—dive into the breakthroughs and big questions shaping tomorrow: AI ethics, space exploration, climate tech, bio-engineering, digital media, STEM education, and the shifting future of work. In candid, banter-filled conversations with innovators, scholars, and storytellers, they unpack how emerging technologies influence human values, creativity, and culture—and what these trends mean for you today.
Whether you’re curious about quantum computing, electric air taxis, or the sociology of robots, Modem Futura connects cutting-edge research with the narratives that drive innovation. Join us each week to explore possible, probable, and preferred futures, and discover practical insights for navigating an increasingly tech-driven world. Follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and be part of the conversation exploring what it will mean to be human in the future!
Artemis II: The Science, the Wonder, and the Future of Being Human
For the first time since 1972, human beings have traveled to the vicinity of the moon — and on this episode of Modem Futura, Sean and Andrew sit with what that actually means. Recorded while the Artemis II crew was still in transit, this conversation is less a mission briefing and more a meditation on wonder: what it feels like to watch a tiny spacecraft carry four people a thousand times …
Here’s the message from Andrew’s friendly email April 13, 2026 note,
Just a quick FYI that, if you occasionally listen to the Modem Futura podcast hosted by myself and Sean Leahy, you can now sign up for regular email updates:
Notifications just include info on new episodes – nothing else (and you can obviously unsubscribe at any time once signed up)
And if you’re not a podcast person, apologies for the email intrusion but hope you’re keeping well anyway.
Cheers
Andrew
Human and artificial creativity
Kate Pullinger, Professor of Creative Writing and Digital Media, Director of the Centre for Cultural and Creative Industries at Bath Spa University (UK), had some thoughts about the recent Aarhus University’s (Denmark) TEXT – Center for Contemporary Cultures of Text conference “AI and the Creative Condition,” which I’ll get to after this from the About the Center webpage,
TEXT: Center for Contemporary Cultures of Text is organized to understand the impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) on writing cultures at this pivotal moment in history, in which — after more than 6,000 years of handcrafted text production — we see all aspects of text creation and use are being altered. We are convinced that a research-based understanding of the role of text in a new technological environment is a condition for a prevailing human-centered control of the production and usage of text.
The center works on the evaluation and development of language technology based on linguistic research, as well as on investigating when the introduction of new practices and technologies contributes to a better text culture—and when something valuable is lost. Learn more out the researchers involved and the organization of our work packages.
TEXT is based at Aarhus University and funded by the Danish National Research Foundation. The center’s partners include It-vest, Danish Foundation Models, and Rhetor, with external participants from Cornell University, UC Berkeley [University of California Berkeley], UC Davis [University of California Davis], and the University of Oslo.
The AI and the Creative Condition Conference, held at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Aarhus, Denmark, aims to explore the transformative impacts of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) on writing cultures. As we transition from over 6,000 years of handcrafted text production to a [sic]
Highlights
Keynote by Karin Kukkonen: ‘Contingency and the Proxies of Literary Writing’.
Panel discussion on ‘Creativity in the AI Era: Perspectives from the 7Cs’ by Florent Vinchon and Todd Lubart.
Keynote by Roger Beaty: ‘Measuring and enhancing human creativity with AI’.
Panel on ‘Uncovering the Patterns of Our Collective Unconscious’ by Ulf Dalvad Berthelsen.
Keynote by Kyle Booten: ‘Designing Negative Spaces for Human Minds’.
Conference dinner at Det Glade Vanvid on March 23, 2026.
Registration deadline: March 8, 2026.
Call for papers deadline: December 15, 2025.
Hosted by Center for Contemporary Cultures of TEXT and Human-AI Collaboration (HAIC-III).
Focus on the impact of Generative AI and Large Language Models on writing cultures.
Anna Katrine Mathiassen wrote a March 25, 2026 conference summary for TEXT, which provides a little more context for Kate Pullinger’s April 8, 2026 posting on Kate’s Newsletter provocatively titled “I Would Prefer Not to Be Publicly Shamed”, Note 1: She leads with a three item introduction, Note 2: Links have been removed, Note 3: Kate Pullinger co-led a writing and digital media masters programme with Sue Thomas at de Montfort University (UK) and I studied with them,
AI and the Creative Condition
Item One: Poetic forms are technologies: a sonnet is an algorithm, which is another word for a set of instructions. If you don’t follow the rules, your poem will not be a sonnet1.
Item Two: The relationships people form with AI chatbots follow recognisable masterplots as the chatbot works to both affirm and entertain the user to keep them coming back for more. This infinite chat spiral can lead in many directions, including human-AI romantic entanglements and, in the worst cases, suicide2.
Item Three: Alan Turing might have formulated the Turing Test (can a computer programme convince you that it is human?) after watching ‘Pygmalion’ by his favourite playwright, George Bernard Shaw. In this play Dr Higgins dialogue-coaches the flower-seller Eliza Doolittle until London’s upper classes are convinced she is one of them3.
In March [2026] I attended AI and the Creative Condition, a two-day conference at Aarhus University in Denmark, and the ideas above came from some of the papers and keynote presentations. Hosted by TEXT: Centre for Contemporary Cultures of Text, the conference brought together a vibrant mix of computer scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, critical theorists from the humanities, literary studies people, educationalists, writers, artists, and poets. I attended because I’ve followed the work of TEXT for a decade or so now, and because I thought I could do with a dose of well-informed, critical, and engaged thinking on the potential for a world where we ‘write with’ AI, where we figure out how to use language models to enhance and support our writing and researching processes.
Anything positive about the current discussion of AI needs to come with many caveats, the biggest of which is the environmental and energy costs of the data centres and computational power required by these systems. The acronym ‘AI’ has become synonymous with the billionaire tech bros of OpenAI, Meta, X, Google, Anthropic4, etc as they fight it out for market dominance4. The term ‘artificial intelligence’ is so broad no one really seems to know what it actually means. It is present in our lives in multiple ways, deeply embedded within the apps we use on our smartphones, responsible for remarkable advances in medicine as well as, for example, the way the traffic lights on the high street work better than they used to do.
But these days a lot of the media buzz around AI is focussed on LLMs (large language models), the vast datasets composed of human-created language and images that both threaten livelihoods throughout the creative industries while promising huge benefits in increased productivity and, as was the focus of the conference, enhanced creativity. LLMs support ‘generative AI’ which is often referred to as ‘genAI’ – AI models that will generate text, images, and video when prompted.
One of the most interesting presentations at the conference was called ‘Yes! Yes! I Absolutely Love This Insight!’ Affirmative Narrative as Interactional Strategy in Dialogues with LLM Chatbots. The three scholars, Refsum, Walker-Rettberg, and Roin, who co-wrote this paper are part of AI Stories, a research project based in the Centre for Digital Narratives at the University of Bergen, Norway. Their study looked at a court case in the USA where the families of chatbot users who have committed suicide are suing the AI company they see as responsible for these deaths. The scholars analysed the chatbot transcripts from these users, made publicly available due to the litigation. Drawing on their knowledge of literary forms, linguistics and, in particular, narratology, these scholars have shown that the transcripts contain deeply embedded ‘masterplots’ – the myths and stories that are foundational in western culture like, for example, the brave warrior quest plot and the Cinderella love story. It is the combination of these powerful plots, the constant affirmation chatbots offer to the user, and the way chatbots refer to themselves in the first person as ‘I’, that in many cases leads to anthropomorphism and the assumption that the chatbot is in some way sentient. Other studies have shown the dramatic increase in user engagement with chatbot-as-therapist as well as chatbot-as-best-friend and chatbot-as-romantic-partner. The paper theorises that these men killed themselves after having spent months being led by their chatbots through the brave warrior masterplot, a foundational story that often ends in a noble death.
At the same time as the conference was taking place, a debut author, Mia Ballard, was being thrown under the bus by her publishers in the UK and the US for the alleged use of AI in the writing of her novel, Shy Girl. For a balanced look at what took place, read Thad McIllroy’s excellent report on it on The Future of Publishing’s website. The NYTimes reported that Mia Ballard has denied using AI in the writing of the novel and has been so battered by this hugely public and damaging shaming that she feels her reputation as a writer is ruined. At the conference Izabella Adamczewska-Baranowska presented a paper, Talking to the Muse, on the well-respected Polish poet, Justyna Bargielska, who faced a similar scouring in the press for daring to use an AI chatbot to help her think through how best to write about grief for a new collection of poems.
In the UK the Society of Authors has come up with a badge, ‘Human Authored’, that authors can add to their books to make it clear that they have not used generative AI during the writing process. The email announcing this scheme also contained the last call for authors to register their books in the $1.5billion class action against Anthropic’s copyright-defying landgrab of hundreds of thousands of books when they created their LLM, Claude. While I’m a staunch supporter and member of the Society of Authors and am participating in the class action (fifteen of my own titles were used without my permission, six of which are included in this action), I can’t help but think that ‘Human Authored’ is a decent but flawed initiative. …
…
What the AI and the Creative Condition conference helped me think about is that it is possible to harness the power of LLMs to create a kind of playground for writing, a place where you can tap into the research capacities of the models, using them to help you think your way through problems you encounter as you write. In this more positive light generative AI is a technology to think with, a way to boost human creativity. Community-led language models were discussed by Katy Gero, one of keynote speakers; green energy data centres are already a reality in China and other parts of the world.
I’ve come away from Aarhus having eaten too many cardamon buns while undergoing a rethink on whether to engage with these technologies for my own writing practice. …
The April 13, 2026 notice (received via email) about a musical performance at Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI) in Waterloo, Ontario came as a bit of a surprise since there’s no mention of physics as there would be if it were one of their art/science events,
QUATUOR MAGENTA
String quartet on tour from Paris, France
Wednesday, April 22, [2026] at 7:00 pm ET
Perimeter Institute will host the string quartet Quatuor Magenta on April 22 at 7:00 PM. The concert is presented by the Kitchener-Waterloo Chamber Music Society (KWCMS).
“A model of technical discipline, elegance and musical excellence” (La Croix, transl.), the QUATUOR MAGENTA was founded in 2021 and is already performing on France’s most prestigious stages, from the Philharmonie de Paris to the Festival de RadioFrance Montpellier. Their “remarkable balance, flexibility and spontaneity” (Diapason, transl.) not only thrills their audiences, but led them to the finals of the 8th Joseph Haydn Chamber Music Competition in Vienna and earned them prizes at the 2023 FNAPEC competition (Académie des Beaux-Arts scholarship) and the 2022 Zukunftsklang Competition Stuttgart (3rd prize). November 2024 marked the quartet’s first international tour to Canada with six concerts in Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, generously supported by the Centre National de la Musique and SPEDIDAM.
You can go to the KWCMS concerts page to buy tickets (scroll down as there are other concerts also listed),
Dinuk Wijeratne (b. 1978): Two Pop Songs on Antique Poems
Fanny Mendelssohn: String Quartet in E-flat major
ARTISTS
Ida Derbesse, 1st violin Elena Watson-Perry, 2nd violin Claire Pass-Lanneau, viola Fiona Robson, cello
“A model of technical discipline, elegance and musical excellence” (La Croix, transl.), the QUATUOR MAGENTA was founded in 2021 and is already performing on France’s most prestigious stages, from the Philharmonie de Paris to the Festival de RadioFrance Montpellier. Their “remarkable balance, flexibility and spontaneity” (Diapason, transl.) not only thrills their audiences, but led them to the finals of the 8th Joseph Haydn Chamber Music Competition in Vienna and earned them prizes at the 2023 FNAPEC competition (Académie des Beaux-Arts scholarship) and the 2022 Zukunftsklang Competition Stuttgart (3rd prize). November 2024 marked the quartet’s first international tour to Canada with six concerts in Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, generously supported by the Centre National de la Musique and SPEDIDAM.
The Quatuor Magenta is based in Paris, France, where they are junior artist-in-residence at the Singer-Polignac Foundation and ensemble-in-residence at Proquartet – Centre Européen de Musique de Chambre. They have been invited to perform at numerous festivals in France, including the Musikfest Parisienne, the Festival de la Chaise-Dieu, Un Temps pour Elles, Un Été en France with Gautier Capuçon and the Modigliani Quartet’s Festival Vibre!, as well as in Switzerland (Festival de la Collégiale in Neuchâtel) and in Germany (Klangraum Konzerte in Cologne).
Last season, contemporary music had pride of place with Quatuor Magenta’s participation in the Kronos Quartet’s « 50 for the Future » Marathon at the Philharmonie de Paris’s String Quartet Biennale. This season includes six octet performances alongside the renowned Quatuor Van Kuijk, in partnership with La Belle Saison.
The Quatuor Magenta was honoured to participate in the inaugural year of the Élite program at the École Normale de Paris, under the mentorship of the Quatuor Modigliani. They currently study with the Quatuor Ébène at their quartet academy at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, as well as with Rainer Schmidt of the Hagen Quartet at the Basel University of Music. They are grateful for the support of the Safran Foundation and ADAMI. They work with Chapeau l’Artiste Production.
I’ve touched on the topic of AI (artificial intelligence) and water consumption before, notably in my October 16, 2023 posting “The cost of building ChatGPT” where most of the focus is on the US. I now have some Canadian stories but first, there’s the United Nations University (UNU).
Global water bankruptcy
From a January 20, 2026 United Nations University press release (also on EurekAlert), Note 1: In the front pages, there’s this unexpected link to Canada : “UNU-INWEH [United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health] gratefully acknowledges its host, the Government of Canada, and ongoing financial support from Global Affairs Canada.” Note 2: Links have been removed,
Amid chronic groundwater depletion, water overallocation, land and soil degradation, deforestation, and pollution, all compounded by global heating, a UN report today declared the dawn of an era of global water bankruptcy, inviting world leaders to facilitate “honest, science-based adaptation to a new reality.”
“Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era,” argues that the familiar terms “water stressed” and “water crisis” fail to reflect today’s reality in many places: a post-crisis condition marked by irreversible losses of natural water capital and an inability to bounce back to historic baselines.
“This report tells an uncomfortable truth: many regions are living beyond their hydrological means, and many critical water systems are already bankrupt,” says lead author Kaveh Madani, Director of the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), known as ‘The UN’s Think Tank on Water.’
Expressed in financial terms, the report says many societies have not only overspent their annual renewable water “income” from rivers, soils, and snowpack, they have depleted long-term “savings” in aquifers, glaciers, wetlands, and other natural reservoirs.
This has resulted in a growing list of compacted aquifers, subsided land in deltas and coastal cities, vanished lakes and wetlands, and irreversibly lost biodiversity.
The UNU report is based on a peer-reviewed paper in the journal of Water Resources Management that formally defines water bankruptcy as
1) persistent over-withdrawal from surface and groundwater relative to renewable inflows and safe levels of depletion; and
2) the resulting irreversible or prohibitively costly loss of water-related natural capital.
By contrast:
“Water stress” reflects high pressure that remains reversible
“Water crisis” describes acute shocks that can be overcome
The report is issued prior to a high-level meeting in Dakar, Senegal (26–27 Jan.) to prepare the 2026 UN Water Conference, to be co-hosted by the United Arab Emirates and Senegal 2-4 Dec. in the UAE.
While not every basin and country is water-bankrupt, Madani says, “enough critical systems around the world have crossed these thresholds. These systems are interconnected through trade, migration, climate feedbacks, and geopolitical dependencies, so the global risk landscape is now fundamentally altered.”
Madani underlines the following four essential points:
Water cannot be protected if we allow the hydrological cycle, the climate, and the underlying natural capital that produces water to be interrupted or damaged. The world has an important and still largely untapped strategic opportunity to act.
Water is an issue that crosses traditional political boundaries. It belongs to north and south, and to left and right. For that reason, it can serve as a bridge to create trust and unity between and within nations. In the fragmented world we live in, water can become a powerful focus for cooperation and for aligning national security with international priorities.
Investment in water is also investment in mitigating climate change, biodiversity loss, and desertification. Water should not be treated only as a downstream sector affected by other environmental crises. On the contrary, targeted investment in water can address the immediate concerns of communities and nations while also advancing the objectives of the Rio Conventions (climate, biodiversity, desertification).
A renewed global emphasis on water could help reaccelerate stalled negotiations and potentially reenergize halted international processes. A practical and cooperative focus on water offers a way to connect urgent local needs with long-term global goals.
Hotspots
In the Middle East and North Africa region, high water stress, climate vulnerability, low agricultural productivity, energy-intensive desalination, and sand and dust storms intersect with complex political economies;
In parts of South Asia, groundwater-dependent agriculture and urbanization have produced chronic declines in water tables and local subsidence; and
In the American Southwest, the Colorado River and its reservoirs have become symbols of over-promised water.
A world in the red
Drawing on global datasets and recent scientific evidence, the report presents a stark statistical overview of trends, the overwhelming majority caused by humans:
50%: Large lakes worldwide that have lost water since the early 1990s (with 25% of humanity directly dependent on those lakes)
50%: Global domestic water now derived from groundwater
40%+: Irrigation water drawn from aquifers being steadily drained
70%: Major aquifers showing long-term decline
410 million hectares: Area ofnatural wetlands – almost equal in size to the entire European Union – erased in the past five decades
30%+: Global glacier mass lost since 1970, with entire low- and mid-latitude mountain ranges expected to lose functional glaciers altogether within decades
Dozens: Major rivers that now fail to reach the sea for parts of the year
50+ years: How long many river basins and aquifers have been overdrawing their accounts
100 million hectares: Cropland damaged by salinization alone
And the human consequences:
75%: Humanity in countries classified as water-insecure or critically water-insecure
2 billion: People living on sinking ground.
25 cm: Annual drop being experienced by some cities
4 billion: People facing severe water scarcity at least one month every year
170 million hectares: Irrigated cropland under high or very high water stress – equivalent to the areas of France, Spain, Germany, and Italy combined
US$5.1 trillion: Annual value of lost wetland ecosystem services
3 billion: People living in areas where total water storage is declining or unstable, with 50%+ of global food produced in those same stressed regions.
1.8 billion: People living under drought conditions in 2022–2023
US$307 billion: Current annual global cost of drought
2.2 billion: People who lack safely managed drinking water, while 3.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation
Says Madani: “Millions of farmers are trying to grow more food from shrinking, polluted, or disappearing water sources. Without rapid transitions toward water-smart agriculture, water bankruptcy will spread rapidly.”
A new diagnosis for a new era
A region can be flooded one year and still be water bankrupt, he adds, if long-term withdrawals exceed replenishment. In that sense, water bankruptcy is not about how wet or dry a place looks, but about balance, accounting, and sustainability.
Says Madani: As with global climate change or pandemics, a declaration of global water bankruptcy does not imply uniform impact everywhere, but that enough systems across regions and income levels have become insolvent and crossed irreversible thresholds to constitute a planetary-scale condition.
“Water bankruptcy is also global because its consequences travel,” Madani explains. “Agriculture accounts for the vast majority of freshwater use, and food systems are tightly interconnected through trade and prices. When water scarcity undermines farming in one region, the effects ripple through global markets, political stability, and food security elsewhere. This makes water bankruptcy not a series of isolated local crises, but a shared global risk that demands a new type of response: Bankruptcy management, not crisis management.”
A call to reset the global water agenda
The report warns that the current global water agenda – largely focused on drinking water, sanitation, and incremental efficiency improvements – is no longer fit for purpose in many places and calls for a new global water agenda that:
Formally recognizes the state of water bankruptcy
Recognizes water as both a constraint and an opportunity for meeting climate, biodiversity, and land commitments
Elevates water issues in climate, biodiversity, and desertification negotiations, development finance, and peacebuilding processes.
Embeds water-bankruptcy monitoring in global frameworks, using Earth observation, AI, and integrated modelling
Uses water as a catalyst to accelerate cooperation between the UN Member States
In practical terms, managing water bankruptcy requires governments to focus on the following priorities:
Prevent further irreversible damage such as wetland loss, destructive groundwater depletion, and uncontrolled pollution
Rebalance rights, claims, and expectations to match degraded carrying capacity
Support just transitions for communities whose livelihoods must change
Transform water-intensive sectors, including agriculture and industry, through crop shifts, irrigation reforms, and more efficient urban systems
Build institutions for continuous adaptation, with monitoring systems linked to threshold-based management
The report underlines that water bankruptcy is not merely a hydrological problem, but a justice issue with deep social and political implications requiring attention at the highest levels of government and multilateral cooperation. The burdens fall disproportionately on smallholder farmers, Indigenous Peoples, low-income urban residents, women and youth while the benefits of overuse often accrued to more powerful actors.
“Water bankruptcy is becoming a driver of fragility, displacement, and conflict,” says UN Under-Secretary-General Tshilidzi Marwala, Rector of UNU. “Managing it fairly – ensuring that vulnerable communities are protected and that unavoidable losses are shared equitably – is now central to maintaining peace, stability, and social cohesion.”
“Bankruptcy management requires honesty, courage, and political will,” Madani adds. “We cannot rebuild vanished glaciers or reinflate acutely compacted aquifers. But we can prevent further loss of our remaining natural capital, and redesign institutions to live within new hydrological limits.”
Upcoming milestones — the 2026 and 2028 UN Water Conferences, the end of the Water Action Decade in 2028, and the 2030 SDG deadline, for example — provide critical opportunities to implement this shift, he says.
“Despite its warnings, the report is not a statement of hopelessness,” adds Madani. “It is a call for honesty, realism, and transformation. Declaring bankruptcy is not about giving up — it is about starting fresh. By acknowledging the reality of water bankruptcy, we can finally make the hard choices that will protect people, economies, and ecosystems. The longer we delay, the deeper the deficit grows.”
Here’s a link to and a citation for the report,
Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era (or the PDF) by Kaveh Madani. Contributors: Mir Matin, Aria Farsi, Luying Wang, Amir AghaKouchak, Mohammed Azhar, Jenna Elshurafa, Sogol Jafarzadeh, Tafadzwanashe Mabhaudhi, Ali Mirchi, Abraham Nunbogu, Mojtaba Sadegh, Robert Sandford, Manoochehr Shirzaei, William Smyth, Hossein Tabari, MJ Tourian, Farshid Vahedifard. 2026, University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada, DOI: 10.53328/INR26KAM001
AI data centre building spree in Canada (special emphasis: British Columbia [BC])
An October 18, 2025 article (with embedded videos) by Jonathan Montpetit and Yvette Brend with files from Tara Carman on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) news online website,
On a dry, hot day this summer, Kathryn Barnwell, a retired English professor, marched up the road from her home in Nanaimo, B.C [British Columbia]., to take another crack at the mayor.
Leonard Krog, a longtime friend of Barnwell’s, was standing by the entrance to a parched wooded lot, the proposed site for a data centre Krog has been backing.
“I really, really enjoin you to think about what this [data centre] could mean for your political career,” Barnwell said, barely looking him in the eye.
Krog, who has been mayor since 2018, sees the project as a chance to modernize the city’s economy.
“The kind of jobs that would be attracted to this kind of facility are the jobs of the future,” he said.
Until three years ago, Barnwell knew little about data centres, which house the computer servers that power much of the online world. But when the plot of land near her home was rezoned for one, she began researching. She’s now one of the loudest opponents of the project in Nanaimo.
Her main concern, shared by other local opponents, is the amount of municipal drinking water the 200,000-square foot data centre would need for its cooling system. In a region beset by drought, Barnwell says similar-sized facilities can churn through 70,000 litres of potable water a day.
“Life on this planet is sustained by water. It is not sustained by data. We don’t need data the way we need water,” Barnwell said. “And we in Canada have been pretty blithe about our natural resources.”
Barnwell sees herself as part of a global resistance movement drawing attention to the environmental impact of data centres, at a moment when the tech industry is spending dizzying sums to build them.
Canada is poised to join the data centre boom. The federal government, and some provinces, have been actively courting investors, vaunting the country’s cheap electricity (much of it hydro power) and cool climate.
At least eight projects are underway to build hyperscale data centres in Canada, according to the federal government. But as such projects face greater scrutiny around the world, Canada is jumping into the AI construction race with few mechanisms to protect its water supply.
“There’s barely any regulation in place,” said Geoff White, executive director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, an Ottawa-based consumer protection group.
…
Microsoft builds out in Canada
Among the big tech companies, Microsoft has taken the lead in building data centres with AI capacity in Canada. The Washington-based corporation purchased seven large tracts of land in 2021, including a golf course near Quebec City and a former department store in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke.
It’s in the process of turning the sites into data centres capable of powering its AI-enabled products like Azure and Copilot, an investment worth at least $1 billion.
At least two of the Microsoft data centres in Ontario have been cleared by municipal authorities to consume vast amounts of municipal drinking water.
The Etobicoke data centre, dubbed YTO 40, was approved to use up to 39.75 litres of water per second for cooling purposes, according to planning documents submitted to the city. That would be the equivalent of around 1.2 billion litres a year, or 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
A Microsoft data centre complex in nearby Vaughan, a city spokesperson said, is expected to consume 730 million litres of water annually.
But according to Microsoft, its new Canadian data centres will only use a fraction of that amount, because of design features that allow them to be cooled using outdoor air and recycled rainwater.
Alistair Speirs, general manager of Microsoft’s Azure global infrastructure, acknowledges traditional industrial cooling has “been a very water-intensive process.” He says the way Microsoft is building its data centres today is “with really that in mind.”
“One of the great things about building in Canada, and in colder climates, is that we can just use free air cooling from outside air temperatures.”
The company said its data centres will only draw municipal water when outside temperatures are above 29.4 C or when indoor humidity levels drop below five per cent.
Microsoft has made similar promises elsewhere. The company built a data centre in the northwestern Netherlands despite opposition from local farmers, promising it would only need between 12 and 20 million litres of water annually.
Dutch media later revealed the data centre was consuming more than four times that — as locals were being asked to limit their own water use.
In its response to Dutch media, Microsoft said the initial estimate had been based on “consumption at that time,” but did not specify what time period it was referring to.
…
Growing concerns and protests but not so much in Canada, from the October 18, 2025 article, Note: A link has been removed,
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The new Microsoft data centres in Canada, which are slated to come online in the coming months, have faced no discernible opposition from the public. One Etobicoke city councillor wasn’t even aware of the YTO 40 project before CBC News contacted him.
That’s in stark contrast to communities in the United States, Europe and Latin America, where concerns about water scarcity have sparked protests.
Last month, Google shelved plans to build a $1-billion US data centre in Indianapolis, Ind., after residents organized a months-long campaign against the project. When a lawyer representing Google abruptly announced the decision at a city council meeting, the room erupted in applause that lasted for nearly a minute.
A growing number of jurisdictions in the U.S. and Europe are also seeking to pass regulations that would limit data centre water consumption or force companies to be more transparent about how much they’re using.
Canada’s federal government has set aside $700 million to fund data centre projects here. But aside from energy regulators, who review data centre applications to connect to power grids, there is little industry oversight.
“If we’re racing ahead and thinking only about the economic benefits, and not thinking about the downstream impacts to our environment, that’s negligent,” said White with the Public Interest Advocacy Centre. “I think Canadians ought to be concerned. Our water is highly sought after, and will be as the world gets hotter.”
Data centres are as old as computers and until recently were relatively uncontroversial — boring bits of IT infrastructure tucked away in non-descript office spaces.
But with the advent of cloud computing in the mid-2000s, they dramatically increased in size.
These data centres — buildings ranging anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 square feet — required upwards of 100 megawatts of power and millions of litres of water annually for their cooling systems.
…
These demands have only been turbocharged by artificial intelligence, which requires data centres that house thousands of densely packed high-performance chips, operating around the clock — and generating heat.
A study done in 2023 estimated that generating between 10 and 50 medium-sized responses in ChatGPT — the AI-powered chatbot — consumed about 500 millilitres of water. That accounts for both the water required to produce the electricity needed to run the data centre (435 millilitres) and cool it down (the remaining 65 millilitres).
A separate study, conducted by the International Energy Agency, estimated that in 2023, data centres around the world consumed around 140 billion litres of water just for cooling.
Much of that was potable water pulled from municipal utilities. (Because data centres generally use evaporative cooling systems, untreated water can damage the sensitive computer equipment inside.)
This October 15, 2025 article by Amanda Follett Hosgood for The Tyee is focused on BC’s approach to AI water consumption, Note: Links have been removed,
B.C. recently saw its first AI data centres open in Prince George and Kamloops, and more are on the way. AI centres have been touted as a way to grow the economy while ensuring data sovereignty by storing information within our borders.
“AI is everywhere. It’s changing how we work. It’s changing how we learn. It’s changing how we do business,” said Port Moody-Burquitlam MLA Rick Glumac, who this summer became B.C.’s minister of state for artificial intelligence and new technologies. The position comes with a mandate to expand B.C.’s AI sector.
“There’s a lot of good work ahead,” Glumac, who comes from a tech background [emphases mine], told The Tyee.
But there’s a hitch. AI is just one of various potential boom industries vying for a piece of B.C.’s limited electricity supply.
AI data centres are energy intensive, requiring immense amounts of electricity for power and cooling. B.C.’s hydroelectric grid, which is fed almost entirely by renewable sources, offers a clean — but limited — energy source that’s attractive to businesses seeking to market themselves as environmentally conscious.
As the province looks to green the existing economy, transition to electric vehicles and expand industries like LNG using cleaner energy, AI is fast becoming one more customer seeking a piece of the power pie.
Glumac worked much of his career in the field of computer graphics as a software developer, visual effects artist, and computer graphics supervisor.[8] He worked on the first computer-animated TV show ReBoot, and later worked for companies such as DreamWorks and Electronic Arts on well-known Hollywood films such as Shrek 2, Madagascar, and Over the Hedge.[8] Following this he developed apps for the iPhone.[7]
That’s a bit of leap for Mr. Glumac. Developing computer graphics is not the same thing as shepherding new and emerging technologies through government regulations and creating new regulations, deaing with public hopes/fears, anticipating energy needs, and dealing with any unintended consequences of the technologies themselves.
Follett Hosgood’s October 15, 2025 article provides an overview of the energy and data centre situation in BC,
B.C. is the first province in Canada to create a cabinet position dedicated to AI. But the province isn’t alone in signalling its interest in the industry.
The federal government created its own minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation following the spring election, tapping former broadcaster Evan Solomon for the position.
…
B.C.’s parallel cabinet position “gives us the opportunity to really put a focus on this and to partner with the federal government,” Glumac told The Tyee.
In an email, B.C.’s Ministry of Energy and Climate Solutions said the province groups data centres into three categories: conventional data centres, cryptocurrency mining and AI data centres.
It added that there are currently 12 “notable” conventional data centres in the province and three more requesting a power connection. If approved, the combined operations would draw nearly 40 megawatts of power — a small slice of the province’s 12,000-megawatt power supply.
AI data centres, however, can each draw more than 100 megawatts of power.
Two of Canada’s largest telecommunications companies recently announced plans to open AI data centres in B.C.
In May [2025], Bell Canada said it would open an AI “data centre supercluster” that is expected to use upwards of 500 megawatts, or about five per cent of the province’s current power supply.
Its first AI data centre, a seven-megawatt facility in Kamloops, opened in June. A second seven-megawatt facility is slated to open in Merritt by the end of next year.
The company is planning two additional 26-megawatt data centres in the near future, one in partnership with Thompson Rivers University and the other with the Upper Nicola Band. It says another two data centres with a combined capacity of more than 400 megawatts are in “advanced planning stages.”
Bell declined to provide detailed timelines, confirming in an email only that its Kamloops site is currently operational. “We remain on track and more sites will open in the coming months,” a spokesperson wrote.
The company also faces competition.
In April [2025], Telus announced two Canadian data centres, one in B.C., touting the operations as “fully owned, operated and secured on Canadian soil by a Canadian company” — a nod to national concerns over data sovereignty.
The Kamloops operation will be “powered by 99 per cent renewable energy,” Telus said, but how much power it will draw is unclear. The company didn’t respond to The Tyee’s questions about capacity or when it might come online.
Asked about how these data centres will fit into B.C.’s power grid, Glumac said that “BC Hydro is monitoring this very closely and planning accordingly.” The industry is evolving quickly, he added, and he wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the province would need to regulate expansion as it did with cryptocurrency mining.
“We want to make sure that clean energy supports not just data centres but supports the people in British Columbia and supports economic opportunities and job opportunities,” Glumac said. “It’s very important to monitor that and to balance all of that, and BC Hydro is doing that.”
BC Hydro directed The Tyee’s questions to B.C.’s Energy Ministry, which also provided an emailed statement.
“BC Hydro continues to look at how the growth in the industry could impact future demand, and will adjust its forecasts and planning accordingly,” a ministry spokesperson wrote, adding that the province is committed to “balancing energy demand with economic priorities.”
“We recognize that the AI industry is evolving rapidly, and we are closely monitoring how advancements in AI infrastructure may impact future energy needs.”
Last year, the province [BC] imported a quarter of its electricity needs, most of it from the United States and Alberta, where it was generated using fossil fuels. In both 2024 and earlier this year, BC Hydro put out calls for power in an effort to make up the shortfall with clean, locally produced power.
Kate Harland is the research lead for clean growth at the Canadian Climate Institute. In an interview with The Tyee, she said that now is the time for governments to plan for the expected spike in energy demand from AI data centres.
“There is a lot of interest right now across Canada in having AI-enabled data centres,” Harland said. But she added that there’s likely to be a “tipping point” where AI’s benefits might not outweigh its demands on the power grid.
“If suddenly data centres are 20 per cent or 30 per cent of your total electricity demand, then you get into a new territory of questions,” she said.
While provinces such as B.C. and Quebec have traditionally taken a “first come, first served” approach to industrial power requests, some jurisdictions are implementing new rules to ensure limited power supply is allocated fairly and for the greatest overall benefit, Harland said.
Last year [2024], Quebec began requiring any projects requesting more than five megawatts of power to get ministerial approval. The approval considers factors such as economic impact, social impact and power requirements.
In 2023, Quebec’s government also signed an agreement with Microsoft as it launched four new data centres in the province. The tech giant agreed to reduce its energy consumption by 30 per cent during times of peak power use.
Harland said the pressure to meet power demand could be approached as an opportunity to build out renewables and increase supply. If data centres become more efficient over time, that would free up renewable power for domestic uses like electric vehicles and heat pumps, she said.
AI is also credited with identifying efficiencies, including in power use, which could help to offset its draw on the grid, Harland said. (Glumac also pointed to a recent study indicating that it could drive $200 billion in productivity improvements nationally.)
The technology’s practical uses tend to set it apart from cryptocurrency in the discussion about which industries get priority to grid access, Harland said.
The potential for data sovereignty is another argument in its favour.
But Harland emphasized that now is the time for governments to be proactive in forming AI policies.
If you have even more time, I provided some detail about the federal government and its new Minister of AI Digital Innovation in an October 17, 2025 posting (scroll down to the Canada and its Minister of AI and Digital Innovation subhead for information about Evan Solomon, the new minister. If you continue further in the posting.
What about local governments?
Municipalities may also have a role to play as data centres become more important in their real estate markets as this January 31, 2026 article by Kenneth Chan for the Daily Hive could be said to hint at, Note: Links have been removed,
Westbank’s major downtown Vancouver office tower project at steam plant site pivots to hotel, residential, and data centre uses
One of downtown Vancouver’s largest office development projects, first planned during the pre-pandemic office market boom, will not proceed as originally approved [emphasis mine], given the prevailing weak office market conditions.
Instead, the office tower project previously approved for 150 West Georgia St. (formerly addressed as 720 Beatty St.) — situated at the southwest corner of Beatty Street and West Georgia Street, immediately adjacent to BC Place Stadium’s northeast corner — is now in the very early stages of being repositioned as a mixed-use hotel and residential tower with a data centre [emphases mine], based on an all-new architectural design concept that also adds density and height.
A number of preliminary conceptual artistic renderings also show this drastic pivot.
All of this will be integrated into the district utility company Creative Energy’s new on-site replacement and expanded steam plant facilities, which have incurred major cost increases and experienced delays, including factors related to local developer Westbank’s liquidity challenges.
…
Pivot to a new tower with hotel, residential, and data centre uses on top of the Creative Energy facility
In October 2020, Vancouver City Council approved Westbank’s original rezoning application for redeveloping this site into an office tower and a standalone entertainment pavilion building, with below-grade parking and a new replacement steam plant.
Moving forward, essentially everything below grade — including the new vehicle parking and the Creative Energy facility — as well as the new entertainment pavilion building, will remain unchanged, while the office tower project above grade will not proceed.
Instead, the previous 264-ft.-tall, 17-storey, bulky, S-shaped office tower concept — designed by Bjarke Ingels Group and HCMA — with 583,000 sq. ft. of office space and 12,000 sq. ft. of additional ground-level retail/restaurant space has been completely scrapped and is now envisioned to become a 450-ft-tall, 48-storey, mixed-use hotel and residential tower with a data centre and ground-level retail/restaurant space, for a total of roughly 700,000 sq. ft. of building floor area.
The significantly increased height for added density is made possible by City Council’s July 2023-approved sweeping city-wide changes [emphasis mine] to the protected mountain view cones. Design revisions for taller heights are also set to occur for the nearby future Plaza of Nations and Concord Landing projects, made possible by these view cone changes.
…
… a Westbank spokesperson previously confirmed to Daily Hive Urbanized that they are looking into adding major data centre uses [emphasis mine] to the 1977-built, six-storey office building at 111 East 5th Ave. This distinctive brick building — part of Westbank’s Main Alley tech campus of new and renovated office buildings in the vicinity of the intersection of Main Street and East 5th Avenue in Mount Pleasant — is perhaps best known for being one of Hootsuite’s office locations since 2014. Westbank noted that at this time, Hootsuite is still the building’s primary tenant.
How will these and future data centres affect Vancouverites’ energy needs and access to water?.Hopefully, someone in Vancouver’s city government is doing some thinking on these matters.
h/t to Science Media Centre of Canada’s September 2, 2025 science notice for this notice about an exciting immersive writing programme. It’s pricey but you may find it worthwhile. Here’s a video (embedded on spiritbear.com) featuring a clip from the Great Bear Rainforest IMAX Film courtesy of Spirit Bear Lodge and filmmaker Ian McAllister,
The programme for writers in the Great Bear Rainforest was developed by Lesley Evans Ogden, Canadian science journalist. From her eponymous website, Note: I have reorganized the order of the information on the website,
…
Is this workshop for me?
This is an experience designed for:
· new or established writers interested in publishing science and nature writing in magazines, newspapers, blogs or a book
· museum staff wanting to improve science communication
· professors wanting to improve public engagement
· travel writers looking to expand potential markets into eco and nature writing
· hobbyists writing for the pure joy of writing
Whether you’re a hobbyist, aspiring writer, journalist, travel writer, museum curator, public information officer, blogger or scientist, you will find your days at comfortable and welcoming Great Bear Lodge thought-provoking, enlightening and inspirational. Participants will deepen their connection to nature while exploring how to share that connection with others through narrative non-fiction writing.
…
Your coach [emphasis mine] in this spectacular wild environment will be internationally acclaimed science journalist, author and workshop leader Lesley Evans Ogden [emphasis mine]. Lesley’s nature writing, photography and documentary work have been published and broadcast by top outlets for science and nature communication, including the New York Times, CBC, BBC, Scientific American, New Scientist, Science, National Geographic, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, Nature, and many others.
An award-winning writer and teacher, Lesley has previously led and spoken at highly regarded workshops for universities, colleges and organizations including the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, Mount Allison University, the National Association of Science Writers (US), COMPASS, and the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada.
Your writing opportunities will be drawn from fresh field observations and individual passion projects. Nature Writing in the Great Bear Rain Forest will be a unique opportunity to learn from small group and individualized coaching and mentorship.
We will spend time daily in remote and beautiful Smith Inlet, using observations made in this exceptional natural environment to generate new writing. Each day at the lodge will include morning and evening wildlife tours by boat, accompanied by afternoon and evening writing sessions for coaching, focused instruction and feedback..
…
What’s included in your 4-day workshop experience
Daily morning and evening wildlife tours with wildlife guides and writing coach
Small group sessions that include reading and supportive feedback for works in progress
Independent writing time
Group and instructor feedback on written work in progress
Two hours of in-person individualized writing coaching from Lesley
Final reading by participants to each other and lodge staff
Session on pitching and publishing
One hour of post-workshop online mentoring with Lesley
This unique experience is an ecotour and writing workshop rolled into one, designed to be flexible to a range of participant needs and levels of experience.
At the end of this short course, you will come away with new skills and a new network — a supportive team of fellow nature writers.
…
Dates: May 31 – June 4, 2026
Level: All Levels
Cost: $5000 CDN per participant
What does the cost include?
Two boat-based nature viewing sessions per day, including possible sightings of grizzly bears, bald eagles, seals, and whales, accompanied by lodge wildlife guides and Lesley.
Accommodation for 3 nights in a private room at the Great Bear Lodge with ensuite shower
Wilderness-gourmet meals including wine, beer and a selection of beverages
Interpretive discussion and welcome orientation for wildlife viewing
Daily group and individually-tailored nature writing instruction in the field and at the lodge to work fresh nature observations into polished prose
Individually tailored coaching and feedback
Pitching and publishing skills
Post-workshop mentorship and networking
Return seaplane flight from Port Hardy to Great Bear Lodge
Binoculars, rain gear and rubber boots, if required
Final night at the Kwa’lilas Hotel in Port Hardy (group dinner at participant expense)
Workshop tuition, including one hour follow up mentorship session online after completion
…
Preliminary Schedule
Day 1: Arrival by wilderness float plane late afternoon (departure from Port Hardy scheduled for 3pm), settle in, evening field trip, dinner, drinks and introductory session
Day 2: Yoga/aerobics on the dock (optional), breakfast, morning boat expedition, lunch, group writing instruction, individual writing time, dinner, evening safari, group readings of work in progress with drinks & dessert
Day 3: Yoga/aerobics on the dock (optional), breakfast, morning boat expedition, lunch, group writing instruction, individual writing time, one-on-one coaching sessions with Lesley, dinner and readings, evening expedition, individual writing time.
Day 4: Breakfast, morning expedition, pitching and publishing session, lunch, readings, wrap up, departure by float plane, dinner and wrap up at Kwa’lilas Hotel in Port Hardy.
This seems to be a ‘first come, first served’ situation rather than a competitive one. One last comment, May 31 – June 4, 2025 is a five day* period. You may want to check Ogden’s eponymous website to find whatever I missed.
*ETA September 3, 2025 at 4:15 pm PT: Lesley Ogden Evans very kindly confirmed that day 5 is a travel day.
Before getting to the October ‘collaboration’ event, here’s a brief overview of the European Union’s (EU) science funding programme. Once called a ‘framework’, they were designed to function in seven year increments with the last one bearing that name, the Seventh Framework, ending in 2013. It was succeeded by Horizon 2020 and, then, succeeded by Horizon Europe, which is due to wind down in 2027. You can read more about the programmes in the Horizon Europe Wikipedia entry where you’ll discover that the funding programme extended partnership status to Canada in January 2024. which is now one of the EU’s 27 partner countries
Horizon Europe and the University of Waterloo
I got a notice about this free September 10, 2025 event in Waterloo, Ontario courtesy of my August 23, 2025 Google alert. From the University of Waterloo’s Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) ‘Workshop on Strengthening Research Collaboration through Horizon Europe‘ event page,
The Office of Research and the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology (WIN) are pleased to co-host a distinguished delegation from the Czech Republic, presenting a workshop event on Strengthening Research Collaboration through Horizon Europe. The delegation includes representatives from three of the top-ranked universities in the Czech Republic: Charles University, Brno University of Technology, and the University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague.
This event will take place on Wednesday, September 10, 2025, from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM, in QNC 1501. After the workshop, a networking lunch will be hosted from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM.
All WIN members and the broader research community are invited to attend the workshop.
About the event:
Objectives:
Strengthening Research Collaboration through Horizon Europe: To explore and establish research cooperation under the Horizon Europe programme.
Focus:
The event focused primarily on Horizon Europe cooperation. Participants will contribute concrete topics for Horizon and R&D collaboration, which will be disseminated to encourage future partnerships.
The participants’ expertise spans two main domains:
Engineering: advanced materials, manufacturing, and automation
Life Sciences: digital health solutions, transformational health technologies, health economics, and biotechnologies
Czech Republic Delegation
(To be updated)
Name
Affliation
Eva Libs Bartonova
Head of Trade and Investment Section in Toronto
Jana Bartosova
Director of Center of Biomedical Technologies Transfer, University Hospital Hradec Králové
Josef Cernohorsky
Institute of Mechatronics and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Liberec
Richard Cimler
Head of Centre for Advanced Technologies, University of Hradec Kralove
Jaroslav Demel
Faculty of Economics, Technical University of Liberec
Rudolf Frycek
CEO, Amires
Jana Kolomaznikova
Research Process Manager, Central Bohemian Innovation Centre
Vladimir Krylov
Dean, Faculty of Natural Science, Charles University
Kamil Kuca
Biotech Specialist, Betthera
HE [His Excellency] Radek Machů
Consul General of the Czech Republic in Toronto
Ondřej Mos
CEO, The University Company TUL s.r.o.
Roman Parak
Senior Research Scientist & Research Project Leader, Intemac
Lukas Peter
Vice-Dean for Cooperation with Industry, Faculty of Material Science, VŠB – Technical University of Ostrava
Martina Plisová
Head of Tech Transfer, Institute of Biotechnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences
Iveta Simberova
Vice-Rector, Brno University of Technology
Prague [sic] Viola Tokárová
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Chemistry and Technology [Prague]
Jan Valtera
Vice-Dean, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Liberec
Waterloo Organizing Committee
Name
Affiliation
Scott Inwood
Director of Commercialization, University of Waterloo
Ashley Hannon
Associate Director, Corporate Research Partnerships, Office of Research, University of Waterloo
Susan Kaai
Senior Manager, International Research, Funding Agencies and Non-Profit Sponsors, University of Waterloo
Maria Suarez
Market Development Manager – Food Processing and Advanced Manufacturing, Waterloo Economic Development Corporation (EDC)
Ishari Waduwara-Jayabahu
International Relations Officer, Waterloo International, University of Waterloo
Dennis Wong
Business Development Manager, Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Waterloo
The agenda will be finalized and updated later.
Registration
Act Now and send an email to WIN, dennis.wong@uwaterloo.ca and Office of Research, skaai@uwaterloo.ca, identifying which institutions and calls you are interested to connect with. It is possible to also propose any other consortia that you are interested in.
Thank you!
…
I don’t often come across information about the Czech Republic’s science efforts. It’s always good to learn more.
Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) and a Science Diplomacy Symposium (European Union – Canada Scientific Collaboration in Horizon)
An August 21, 2025 Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) newsletter (received via email) announced a science diplomacy symposium being held in October 2025,
Upcoming Symposium: European Union – Canada Scientific Collaboration
CSPC and the Delegation of the European Union to Canada present the Science Diplomacy Symposium: European Union–Canada Scientific Collaboration in Horizon on October 3, 2025 in downtown Toronto. This in-person event will spotlight transatlantic research and innovation, exploring shared priorities, youth engagement, and global scientific leadership. Stay tuned for program and speaker announcements! Registration to this event is free but required as space is limited.
The Canadian Science Policy Centre (CSPC) is pleased to announce its partnership with the European Union, through its Delegation to Canada, for the upcoming Science Diplomacy Symposium: European Union- Canada Scientific Collaboration in Horizon.
This flagship event will highlight the European Union- Canada scientific cooperation, with a particular focus on Horizon Europe, the European Union’s largest research and innovation program. It will bring together European and Canadian leaders in research, innovation, and policy to explore the future of transatlantic scientific collaboration, spotlighting Horizon Europe as a powerful tool for advancing shared priorities between the European Union and Canada.
The event will feature three high-level panels:
Advancing European Union-Canada Research and Innovation: Focus on Horizon Europe
Building Global Scientific Leadership: Youth Engagement through Horizon Europe
The Future of Scientific Collaboration between the European Union and Canada
Additional details on the program and speakers will be announced soon, so stay tuned!
For more information or questions related to this event, please email: info@sciencepolicy.ca
Science Diplomacy Symposium:
European Union – Canada Scientific Collaboration in Horizon
October 3, 2025 | Faculty Club, University of Toronto | 8:00 AM – 12:15 PM
*Registration to this event is free but required as space is limited.
As you see, there aren’t too many details. Hopefully there will be some announcement about the speakers soon.
It does appear to be an in person event only.
Background on the CSPC, science diplomacy, and Canada’s outreach
Much to my surprise, the CSPC has been organizing science diplomacy events for several years. How did I miss seeing them? (’nuff said) I have been able to fill in a few blanks with an undated document I stumbled across, ‘2nd National Symposium on “Science Diplomacy,” organized by CSPC’ found here: https://na.eventscloud.com/file_uploads/cb7066ca2c5ff2a3d9fd3786706c7b6a_2ndNationalSymposiumonScienceDiplomacyorganizedbyCSPC.pdf, from the final paragraph, Note: Three of the links failed to function and, so, were removed,
CSPC has been the leading Canadian institution in promoting dialogue and capacity building in science diplomacy among other science policy topics. CSPC held the first Science Diplomacy Session with Dr. Nina Federoff, former Science and technology adviser to US Secretary of State in 2010. In 2013, CSPC held the first of its kind national symposium on science diplomacy [link failed to function]. Similarly, in 2015, CSPC organized an invigorating symposium on diaspora scientists [link failed to function] highlighting Canada’s diverse scientific community and their natural disposition for promoting international collaboration and in strengthening Canada’s global position in scientific excellence. More recently, in June of this year, CSPC hosted a breakfast session at the Parliament Hill [ink failed to function] where Dr. Vaughan Turekian, Science Adviser to US Secretary of State, John Kerry, highlighted the importance of “Science Diplomacy in the 21st Century
Moving on to 2025, here’s some background on strengthening ties with Europe from a June 23, 2025 news release from the Prime Minister’s Office,
Today, the Prime Minister, Mark Carney, announced an historic step forward for Canada’s relationship with the European Union (EU). Together with President Costa and President von der Leyen, the Prime Minister announced they will forge a new, ambitious, and comprehensive partnership. The New EU-Canada Strategic Partnership of the Future is rooted in shared values and the rules-based international system, and strategically aimed to pursue common interests.
Canada and the EU will soon launch comprehensive negotiations across multiple areas to strengthen co-operation and connection – including trade and economic security, the digital transition, and the fight against climate change and environmental degradation. This will create more economic opportunities and long-term prosperity for workers, businesses, and citizens in both Canada and the EU.
As part of this new, strengthened relationship, Canada and the EU today signed the Security and Defence Partnership, which provides a framework for dialogue and co-operation in security and defence priorities. For Canada and the EU Member States who are NATO Allies, this will also help deliver on capability targets more quickly and economically. This new partnership is the intentional first step toward Canada’s participation in Security Action for Europe (SAFE), an instrument of the ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030. Canada’s participation in this initiative will create significant defence procurement and industrial opportunities for Canada.
In an increasingly dangerous and divided world, Canada’s new government is focused on strengthening and diversifying our international partnerships. We will work with the EU and other allies to build a new international, rules-based system for a more secure and prosperous world.
Jessica Mundie’s June 25, 2025 article for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) news online specifies that Canada is not looking to be a member of the EU, Note: A link has been removed,
Prime Minister Mark Carney says Canada is “looking for a closer partnership” with the European Union — but not to become a member.
While speaking from the NATO summit in the Netherlands — where he announced Canada’s promise to spend five per cent of gross domestic product on defence by 2035 — Carney was asked whether he has given any thought to trying to join the bloc of European nations.
“The short answer is no,” he said. “That’s not the intent. That’s not the pathway we’re on.”
…
Certainly, there’s an interest in scientific collaboration as evidenced by this Horizon Europe webpage (modified on June 23, 2025) on the Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) website. Note: A link has been removed,
Horizon Europe is the world’s largest research and innovation funding program. It gives Canadians access to even more opportunities to elevate their research and innovations through global partnerships.
Funding is available to all types of organizations, including researchers, universities, small- and medium-sized enterprises, non-profit organizations, institutions and more.
With different pillars of funding for individual researchers or collaborative projects, Horizon Europe supports the world’s greatest scientific and innovative breakthroughs in research and development (R&D) and industrial competitiveness.
Pillar 2 includes six thematic clusters, each tackling specific themes to address societal issues and strengthening Europe’s industrial competitiveness.
…
While Canada was added as a partner to the Horizon Europe list in 2024, it seems active interest is increasing, On a related note, there are two upcoming episodes CSPC’s SciPol Digest podcast,
Episode 5
The Future of the Scientific International Cooperation in a Geopolitical Shift
In this episode, we will explore how global tensions and shifting alliances are reshaping international scientific collaboration, with insights from experts in science, policy, and diplomacy.
Coming Soon!
Episode 6
US and Canada scientific collaboration in 2025
This episode will examine the current landscape of research collaboration between Canada and the U.S., exploring how political shifts may impact joint initiatives, funding, and researcher mobility in 2025.
Coming Soon!
Whether we like it or not, we live in interesting times.
Canada’s quantum community, i.e., three companies, are currently ‘competing’ for US science funding. It seems like an odd choice given all of the news about science funding cuts and funding freezes along with the Trump administration’s chaotic and, increasingly, untrustworthy government management.
On April 3, 2025 the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced that approximately 20 companies were embarked on what they describe as Stage A of the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI) ‘challenge’,
Nearly 20 quantum computing companies have been chosen to enter the initial stage of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), in which they will characterize their unique concepts for creating a useful, fault-tolerant quantum computer within a decade.
QBI, which kicked off in July 2024, aims to determine whether it’s possible to build such a computer much faster than conventional predictions. Specifically, QBI is designed to rigorously verify and validate whether any quantum computing approach can achieve utility-scale operation — meaning its computational value exceeds its cost — by the year 2033.
“We selected these companies for Stage A following a review of their written abstracts and daylong oral presentations before a team of U.S. quantum experts to determine whether their proposed concepts might be able to reach industrial utility,” said Joe Altepeter, DARPA QBI program manager. “For the chosen companies, now the real work begins. Stage A is a six-month sprint in which they’ll provide comprehensive technical details of their concepts to show that they hold water and could plausibly lead to a transformative, fault-tolerant quantum computer in under 10 years.”
The following companies* are pursuing a variety of technologies for creating quantum bits (qubits) — the building block for quantum computers — including superconducting qubits, trapped ion qubits, neutral atom qubits, photonic qubits, semiconductor spin qubits, and other novel approaches listed below:
Alice & Bob — Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Paris, France (superconducting cat qubits)
Companies that successfully complete Stage A will move to a yearlong Stage B, during which DARPA will rigorously examine their research and development approach, followed by a final Stage C where the QBI independent verification and validation (IV&V) team will test the companies’ computer hardware.
“During Stage B we’ll thoroughly review all aspects of their R&D plans to see if they can go the distance — not just meet next year’s milestones — and stand the test of trying to build a transformative technology on this kind of a timeline,” Altepeter explained. “Those who make it through Stages A and B will enter the final portion of the program, Stage C, where a full-size IV&V team will conduct real-time, rigorous evaluation of the components, subsystems, and algorithms – everything that goes into building a fault-tolerant quantum computer for real. And we’ll do all these evaluations without slowing the companies down.”
QBI is not a competition between companies [emphasis mine]; rather, it aims to scan the landscape of commercial quantum computing efforts to spot every company on a plausible path to a useful quantum computer.
DARPA recently announced that Microsoft and PsiQuantum are entering the third and final phase of the Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing (US2QC) program, a pilot effort that was expanded to become QBI. Both companies were participating in the second phase of US2QC when the QBI expansion was announced. The final Phase of US2QC has the same technical goals as Stage C of QBI – verification and validation of an industrially useful quantum computer.
“We’ve built and are expanding our world-class IV&V team of U.S. quantum experts, leveraging federal and state test facilities to separate hype from reality in quantum computing,” Altepeter said. “Our team is eager to scrutinize the commercial concepts, designs, R&D plans, and prototype hardware — all with the goal of helping the U.S. government identify and support efforts that are genuinely advancing toward transformative, fault-tolerant quantum computing.”
*16 of the 18 companies are being announced; two are still in negotiations. DARPA will update this announcement once their agreements are signed.
Editor’s Note: This update was edited on April 29, 2025 to add QuEra Computing to the list of companies selected for Stage A.
This sounds like DARPA will pick and choose which bits of technology it may want to develop. Also, who owns the technology? An April 5, 2025 article by Sean Silcoff and Ivan Semeniuk for the Globe and Mail raises the question and answers it (more or less), Note: I have the paper version of the article,
Three Canadian quantum computer companies are in the running for up to US$316-million apiece in funding from the US government if they can prove within eight years that their machines will work at scale.
The companies – Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc. of Toronto , Vancouver-based Photonics Inc. and Nord Quantique from Sherbrooke, Que. – are among 18 groups from Canada, the US, Britain, and Australia that have qualified for the first stage (Stage A) of the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI).
…
“QBI is not meant to choose a winner and fund your research and development plan, [emphasis mine]” said Dr. Joe Altpeter, the QBI’s program manager. Rather, the program is structured to reward only those that can quickly execute against their roadmaps and deliver something useful.
However, making it through will likely anoint a winner or winners in the global race to develop a working quantum computer. [emphasis mine]
“I can’t think of any other program that has generated this much excitement and interest from startups and big companies – and a lot of investors know about it,” said Christian Weedbrook, Xanadu’s founder and chief executive officer [CEO].
Quantum computer developers have collectively raised and spend billions of dollars so far, and QBI will likely influence financiers in determining who to continue backing.
Conversely, “groups that don’t get in will be challenged to raise venture capital,” said Ray [Raymond] Laflamme, co-chair of the federal Quantum Advisory Council. The council has recommended the Canadian government provide matching funds [emphasis mine] to any domestic company that makes it through QBI.
Council co-chair Stephanie Simmons, who is also the founder and chief quantum officer [CQO] of Photonic, said the US government will gain access to “deep knowledge that other governments won’t have” [emphasis mine] through QBI.
“That will give them geopolitical and other advantages [emphasis mine] that are important in the upcoming economy.” Creating a matching program here would mean “This information would also be owned by the Canadian government.”
…
“I would love to be proved surprised if companies make it through the gauntlet, you’re really will to advocate for them inside the US government in rooms that they can’t go to and say, ‘Look, we did our best to show this doesn’t work, these guys made it, they can really build this thing,'” he [Dr. Joe Altpeter] said adding that the program was designed to a “simple, cheap way” to determine that.
Mr. Laflamme agreed that QBI “is a very smart way for the US to keep at the front. By tis, the US will who has the lead in the world and people are, everywhere.” [p. B11 paper version]
…
Clearly, the US has much to gain from this ‘non-competition’. It’s not clear to me what Canada will gain.
One quick note. D-Wave Systems is mentioned in Silcoff’s and Semeniuk’s April 5, 2025 article and described as a Canadian company. That is questionable. It was headquartered in the Vancouver area, British Columbia, Canada for a number of years but is now, according to its Wikipedia entry, headquartered in Palo Alto, California, US (see the sidebar). The company retains laboratories and offices in British Columbia.
It would seem that Silcoff’s and Semeniuk’s April 5, 2025 article hosted one of M. Laflamme’s last interviews.
RIP Raymond Laflamme, July 19, 1960 – June 19, 2025
I’ve had to interview more than one ‘horse’s behind’ (two members of the forestry faculty at the University of British Columbia spring to mind); M. Laflamme was most assuredly not one of them. It was a privilege to interview him for a May 11, 2015 posting about Research2Reality, a Canadian social media engagement project (scroll down to the subhead with his name),
Who convinces a genius that he’s gotten an important cosmological concept wrong or ignored it? Alongside Don Page, Laflamme accomplished that feat as one of Stephen Hawking’s PhD students at the University of Cambridge. Today (May 11, 2015), Laflamme is (from his Wikipedia entry)
… co-founder and current director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo. He is also a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo and an associate faculty member at Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Laflamme is currently a Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information.
…
The Council of Canadian Academies’ (CCA) July 22, 2025 The Advance newsletter (received via email) held this notice, Note: A link has been removed,
…
And Ray Laflamme, the theoretical physicist and Canada Research Chair in Quantum Information, died on June 19 [2025] following a lengthy battle with cancer. Laflamme, founding director of the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, served as chair of our Expert Panel on the Responsible Adoption of Quantum Technologies. …
I have a commentary on the CCA report issued by Laflamme and his expert panel. The report was published in November 2023 and my commentary published in two parts about 15 months later,
To wildly paraphrase John Donne (For Whom the Bell Tolls), M. Laflamme’s death diminishes us but more importantly his life enhanced us all in ways both small and large. Thank you.
And the quantum goes on
Members of the Canadian quantum community that M. Laflamme helped build have recently announced a breakthrough. From a July 10, 2025 TRIUMF news release (also on Quantum Wire), Note: A link has been removed,
A cross-Canada team of researchers have brought quantum and generative AI together to prepare for the Large Hadron Collider’s next upgrade.
In the world of collider physics, simulations play a key role in analyzing data from particle accelerators. Now, a cross-Canada effort is combining quantum with generative AI to create novel simulation models for the next big upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – the world’s largest particle accelerator [located at the European particle physics laboratory CERN, in Switzerland].
In a paper published in npj Quantum Information, a team that includes researchers from TRIUMF, Perimeter Institute, and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) are the first to use annealing quantum computing and deep generative AI to create simulations that are fast, accurate, and computationally efficient. If the models continue to improve, they could represent a new way to create synthetic data to help with analysis in particle collisions
Why simulations are essential for collider physics
Simulations broadly assist collider physics researchers in two ways. First, researchers use them to statistically match observed data to theoretical models. Second, scientists use simulated data to help optimize the design of the data analysis, for instance by isolating the signal they are studying from irrelevant background events.
“To do the data analysis at the LHC, you need to create copious amounts of simulations of collision events,” explains Wojciech Fedorko, one of the principal investigators on the paper and Deputy Department Head, Scientific Computing at TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator centre in Vancouver. “Basically, you take your hypothesis, and you simulate it under multiple scenarios. One of those scenarios will statistically best match the real data that has been produced in the real experiment.”
Currently, the LHC is preparing for a major shutdown in anticipation of its high luminosity upgrade. When it comes back online, it will require more complex simulations that are reliably accurate, fast to produce, and computationally efficient. Those requirements have the potential to create a bottleneck, as the computational power required to create these simulations will no longer be feasible.
“Simulations are projected to cost millions of CPU years annually when the high luminosity LHC turns on,” says Javier Toledo-Marín, a researcher scientist jointly appointed at Perimeter Institute and TRIUMF. “It’s financially and environmentally unsustainable to keep doing business as usual.”
When quantum and generative AI collide
Particle physicists use specialized detectors called calorimeters to measure the energy released by the showers of particles that result from collisions. Scientists combine the readings from these and other detectors to piece together what happened at the initial collision. It’s through this process of comparing simulations to experimental data that researchers discovered the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012. Compared to the other sub-detector systems within the LHC experiments, calorimeters and the data they produce are the most computationally intensive to simulate, and as such they represent a major opportunity for efficiency gains.
In 2022, a scientific “challenge” was issued by researchers seeking to spur rapid advances in calorimeter computations, in an attempt to address the coming computational bottleneck at the LHC. Named the “CaloChallenge,” the challenge provided datasets based on LHC experiments for teams to develop and benchmark simulations of calorimeter readings. Fedorko and the team are the only ones so far to take a full-scale quantum approach, thanks to an assist from D-Wave Quantum Inc.’s annealing quantum computing technology.
Annealing quantum computing is a process that is usually used to find the lowest-energy state for a system or a state near to the lowest energy one, which is useful for problems involving optimization.
After discussing with D-Wave, Fedorko, Toledo-Marín, and the rest of the team determined that D-Wave’s annealing quantum computers could be used for simulation generation. You just need to use annealing to manipulate qubits (the smallest bits of quantum information) in an unconventional way.
“In the D-Wave quantum processor, there is a mechanism that ensures the ratio between the ‘bias’ on a given qubit and the ‘weight’ linking it to another qubit is the same throughout the annealing process. With the help of D-Wave, the team realized that they could use this mechanism to instead guarantee outcomes for a subset of the qubits on a device. “We basically hijacked that mechanism to fix in place some of the spins,” says Fedorko. “This mechanism can be used to ‘condition’ the processor – for example, generate showers with specific desired properties – like the energy of a particle impinging on the calorimeter.”
The end result: an unconventional way to use annealing quantum computing to generate high-quality synthetic data for analyzing particle collisions.
The next phase of collider physics simulations
The published result is important because of its performance in three metrics: the speed to generate the simulations, their accuracy, and how much computational resources they require. “For speed, we are in the top bound of results published by other teams and our accuracy is above average,” Toledo-Marín says. “What makes our framework competitive is really the unique combination of several factors – speed, accuracy, and energy consumption.”
Essentially, many types of quantum processing units (QPU) must be kept at an extremely low temperature. But giving it multiple tasks doesn’t significantly impact its energy requirements. A standard graphics processing unit (GPU), by contrast, will increase its energy use for each job it receives. As advanced GPUs become more and more power-hungry, QPUs by contrast can potentially scale up without leading to increasing computational energy requirements.
Looking forward, the team is excited to test their models on new incoming data so they can finetune their models, increasing both speed and accuracy. If all goes well, annealing quantum computing could become an essential aspect of generating simulations.
“It’s a good example of being able to scale something in the field of quantum machine learning to something practical that can potentially be deployed,” says Toledo-Marín.
The authors are grateful for the support of their many funders and contributors, which include the University of British Columbia, the University of Virginia, the NRC, D-Wave, and MITACS [originally funded as: Mathematics of Information Technology and Complex Systems; now a nonprofit research organization].
In a landmark achievement for Canadian science, a team of scientists led by TRIUMF and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics have unveiled transformative research that – for the first time – merges quantum computing techniques with advanced AI to model complex simulations in a fast, accurate and energy-efficient way.
“This is a uniquely Canadian success story,” said Wojciech Fedorko, Deputy Department Head, Scientific Computing at TRIUMF. “Uniting the expertise from our country’s research institutions and industry leaders has not only advanced our ability to carry out fundamental research, but also demonstrated Canada’s ability to lead the world in quantum and AI innovation.”
…
In any event, here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Conditioned quantum-assisted deep generative surrogate for particle-calorimeter interactions by J. Quetzalcóatl Toledo-Marín, Sebastian Gonzalez, Hao Jia, Ian Lu, Deniz Sogutlu, Abhishek Abhishek, Colin Gay, Eric Paquet, Roger G. Melko, Geoffrey C. Fox, Maximilian Swiatlowski & Wojciech Fedorko. npj Quantum Information volume 11, Article number: 114 (2025) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41534-025-01040-x Published: 07 July 2025
This paper is open access.
Raymond Julien Joseph Laflamme (July 19, 1960 – June 19, 2025))
I have been stumbling across bug (or insect) research at a greater rate than usual and while the ‘bug-informed’ community is, no doubt, acutely aware of the loss of insect life, the severity of the situation was a revelation to me.
Bugpocalypse (h/t IFLScience for the head)
Caption: Drosophila use multiple mechanisms to adapt to hot, dry desert temperatures. Credit: Sarah Becan for the Gallio Lab/Northwestern University
Insect populations, foundational to food chains and pollination, have dramatically declined over the past 20 years due to rapid climate change
Scientists identify two ways fly species from different climates (high-altitude forest and hot desert) have adapted to temperature
Paper provides evidence that changes in brain wiring and heat sensitivity contributed to shifting preference to hot or cold conditions, respectively
Results may help predict the impact of ongoing climate change on insect distribution and behavior
EVANSTON, Ill. — Tiny, cold-blooded animals like flies depend on their environment to regulate body temperature, making them ideal “canaries in the mine” for gauging the impact of climate change on the behavior and distribution of animal species. Yet, scientists know relatively little about how insect sense and respond to temperature.
Using two species of flies from different climates — one from the cool, high-altitude forests of Northern California, the other hailing from the hot, dry deserts of the Southwest (both cousins of the common laboratory fly, drosophila melanogaster) — Northwestern scientists discovered remarkable differences in the way each processes external temperature.
Forest flies showed increased avoidance of heat, potentially explained by higher sensitivity in their antennae’s molecular heat receptors, while desert flies were instead actively attracted to heat, a response that could be tracked to differences in brain wiring in a region of the fly brain that helps compute the valence (inherent attractiveness or aversiveness) of sensory cues.
The scientists believe these two mechanisms may have accompanied the evolution of each species as it adapted to its distinctive thermal environment, starting from a common ancestor dating back 40 million years (not long after dinosaurs went extinct).
These findings, published today (March 5 [2025]) in the journal Nature, help understand how animals evolve the preferences for specific temperature environments and may help predict the impact of a rapidly changing climate on animal behavior and distribution.
‘Not enough people care about insects’
“Insects are especially threatened by climate change,” said Northwestern neurobiologist Marco Gallio. “Behavior is the first interface between an animal and its environment. Even before the struggle to survive or perish, animals can respond to climate change by migration and by changing their distribution. We are already seeing insect populations declining in many regions, and even insect vectors of disease like the Zika virus and malaria spreading into new areas.”
Gallio, a self-appointed “insect advocate,” is a professor in the neurobiology department and the Soretta and Henry Shapiro Research Professor in Molecular Biology at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. His lab examines fruit flies and their sensing systems. Gallio acknowledged there is limited data because “not enough people care about the insects,” but that available figures record a dramatic decline in insects in the past 20 to 50 years. Though bug haters may rejoice, Gallio said the population decline in the animal group with the most species on Earth is nothing to celebrate.
In addition to their position at the foundation of most terrestrial food chains, insects pollinate 70% of our crops. Gallio said losing insect communities could cause catastrophic damage to ecosystems across the globe and have a direct impact on human wellbeing.
Understanding heat circuits in the brain
Previous work from the Gallio Lab focused on how small insects like laboratory flies respond to sensory cues like harmless and painful temperature changes.
“The common fruit fly is an especially powerful animal to study how the external world is represented and processed within the brain,” Gallio said. “Many years of work on fly genetics and neuroscience have given us a map of the fly brain more detailed than that of any other animal.”
In the present study, Gallio and colleagues wondered how the brain circuits and resulting behaviors compared in fly species that were very similar aside from their choices of thermal habitat.
Using genetic tools, including CRISPR [clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats], to knock out certain genes and gene swaps between species, the team studied both the molecular and brain mechanisms that may explain species-specific differences in temperature preference.
Ph.D. student and lead author Matthew Capek explained that they first found differences in the molecules that detect heat, causing them to activate at different temperatures. And while Capek said the difference in activation could explain the forest flies’ preference for cooler environments, a shift in receptor activation was not enough to explain the behavior of the desert fly.
“The desert fly seemed actively attracted to warmer temperatures — around 90 degrees Fahrenheit compared to the forest fly’s sweet spot just below 70 degrees,” said Capek, who works in the Gallio lab. “In fact, the activation threshold of the antenna heat sensors corresponded to their favorite temperature range, which they will seek, rather than to a temperature they should avoid.”
“In other words, the fly doesn’t behave any longer as though the antennae are telling it to run away from dangerous heat; they seem to be telling it higher temperatures are good, and to approach them.”
High cost, high reward
Gallio was initially puzzled — deserts are hot, so it did not make sense that flies sought out heat — but a lab trip to the Anza Borrego desert of Southern California provided key inspiration.
“Deserts in this region are very hot during the day, but temperatures can drop extremely rapidly when the sun goes down, and night can be downright freezing,” said Alessia Para, also a key author of the study and a research associate professor of neurobiology. “Flies in this climate may need to constantly attend to the rapidly changing temperature and always seek the ideal range, finding shady spots during the day and hiding in cacti for warmth at night.”
Flies from more forgiving environments may instead ignore temperature except when it changes rapidly. Constantly detecting the right temperature is costly from an energy perspective, but for desert flies, it’s life or death.
“This comparative work is useful in a couple of different ways,” Gallio said. “When an animal is born, the brain is already programmed to know if many of the things it will encounter are bad or good for it, and we do not understand how that programming works.
These fly species represent a natural experiment because a stimulus that is good for one species is bad for the other, and we can study the differences that make it so. We also want to learn more about how animals have been able to adapt to different temperatures during evolution, so that we may be able to better understand and even predict how they react to ongoing climate change. Of course we care about the insects, and we hope that what we learn may help us appreciate and protect them better.”
There’s more but first, a citation and a link to the Gallio Lab’s paper,
Evolution of temperature preference in flies of the genus Drosophila by Matthew Capek, Oscar M. Arenas, Michael H. Alpert, Emanuela E. Zaharieva, Iván D. Méndez-González, José Miguel Simões, Hamin Gil, Aldair Acosta, Yuqing Su, Alessia Para & Marco Gallio. Nature (2025) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08682-z Published: 05 March 2025
This paper is behind a paywall.
Bugs Matter
Thanks to buglife.org.uk for the subhead and the report. Here’s more from their April 30, 2025 press release, Note: Links have been removed,
The troubling extent of insect declines across the UK has been highlighted once again by the results of the 2024 Bugs Matter citizen science survey published today. The latest data shows that the number of flying insects sampled on vehicle number plates, across the UK, has fallen by a staggering 63% since 2021.
The Bugs Matter survey, led by Kent Wildlife Trust in partnership with invertebrate charity Buglife, relies on a nationwide network of volunteer citizen scientists who record insect splats on their vehicle number plates after journeys, using the Bugs Matter app built by Natural Apptitude. Analysis of records from more than 25,000 journeys across the UK since 2021 shows an alarming decrease in bug splats but data from 2024 shows this decrease has slowed.
Insects are critical to ecosystem functioning and services. They pollinate crops, provide natural pest control, decompose waste and recycle nutrients, and underpin food chains that support birds, mammals and other wildlife. Without insects, the planet’s ecological systems would collapse.
Dr. Lawrence Ball of Kent Wildlife Trust stated:“This huge decrease in insect splats over such a short time is really alarming. Its most likely that we are seeing the compounding effects of both a background rate of decline as well as a short term cycle of decline, perhaps linked to the extreme climate in the UK in recent years. Bug splats declined 8% from 2023 to 2024, following sharper drops of 44% in 2023 and 28% in 2022. This shows the rate of decline has slowed and it may even flatten or reverse next year. Continued support from citizen scientists is key to revealing the overall trend in insect numbers.”
The new data shows a decrease in insect splat rates across all the UK nations, with the sharpest fall between 2021 and 2024 recorded in Scotland at 65%. In England, the number of insect splats fell by 62%, in Wales by 64%, and in Northern Ireland by 55%, over the same time period.
Andrew Whitehouse, from Buglife added:“The latest Bugs Matter data suggests that the abundance of flying insects in our countryside has fallen again. The consequences are potentially far-reaching, not only impacting the health of the natural world, but affecting so many of the essential services that nature provides for us. Human activities continue to have a huge impact on nature, habitat loss and damage, pesticide use, pollution, and climate change all contribute to the decline in insects. Society must heed the warning signs of ecological collapse, and take urgent action to restore nature.”
Participation in Bugs Matter is growing and the number of journeys recorded in 2024 far exceeded previous years. This is in part thanks to a new partnership with Openreach, owner of the nation’s second largest commercial van fleet.
Peter Stewart, Openreach’s UK Operations Director for Service Delivery said:“We’re excited to participate in the ‘Bugs Matter’ survey for the second year. Our engineers travel millions of miles annually across the UK to build and maintain our network, making it easy for them to measure insect splats on vehicle number plates. We recognise the crucial role pollinators play for all of us to thrive, and as part of our strategy to protect nature, we’re proud to support this campaign again. Last year, we contributed around 10% of the registered journeys, and with our 25,000-strong fleet, we aim to do even better this year.”
Andrew Whitehouse concluded: “Thank you to everyone who participated in the Bugs Matter survey in 2024. Your contribution has provided invaluable insights into the health of our insect populations and wider environment. We are relaunching the survey on May 1 this year [2025], and with our expansion into the Republic of Ireland, we hope to engage even more people in this crucial citizen science effort.”
The 2025 Bugs Matter survey will run from Saturday 1 May to Tuesday 30 September. It is quick, free and easy to get involved – simply download the free mobile phone app and start recording insect splats on vehicle journeys.
Expansion into Republic of Ireland
In response to growing interest and the need for more comprehensive data, the Bugs Matter survey is expanding into the Republic of Ireland for the 2025 season, thanks to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Imagine Grant ‘Go Further, Faster’ Award received by Bugs Matter at the end of 2024. This grant provides vital resources to non-profit organisations looking to deploy cloud technology as a central tool to achieve their mission goals, and is providing Bugs Matter with a combination of funding, cloud computing credits, and engagement with AWS technical specialists. This marks an important step in building a more complete picture of insect populations across the British Isles, and future expansion of the Bugs Matter survey.
Dr. Lawrence Ball of Kent Wildlife Trust stated, “We’re extremely grateful for the financial and technical support from Amazon Web Services, which means we can launch in Ireland this year and in more countries in 2026. If you drive or know someone who drives in Ireland, please download the app, sign up, and take part! The UK results highlight the importance of understanding insect numbers elsewhere.”
The charities caution that continued long-term monitoring is essential to track the precise magnitude of these alarming trends, but stress that the current pace of decline is clearly ecologically unviable. By taking part in the Bugs Matter survey each year, citizen scientists can provide crucial data to better understand insect population patterns and support evidence-based conservation actions.
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Zac Sherratt’s April 30, 2025 article for the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) online news website offers little more information,
A survey tracking the “staggering” decline in insect numbers across the UK and Ireland has begun.
The Bugs Matter survey, led by Kent Wildlife Trust and invertebrate charity Buglife, runs from 1 May to 30 September each year and sees “citizen scientists” record the number of bug splats on their vehicle number plates after a journey.
…
Dr Ball [Dr. Lawrence Ball of Kent Wildlife Trust] said: “Without insects, the planet’s ecological systems would collapse so this huge decrease in insect splats over such a short time is really alarming.”
Bug splats declined 8% in 2024, following sharper drops of 44% in 2023 and 28% in 2022.
Dr Ball said the slowing rate of decline shows the curve may flatten or even reverse next year.
More than 25,000 journeys have been analysed as part of the survey since 2021.
There’s an interesting back story for IFLScience (which started life as as Facebook page titled, “I Fucking Love Science”). If you want to find out more about IFLScience’s origins and founder, there’s Elise Andrew’s Wikipedia entry.
Returning to the bugs, Dr. Russell Moul’s April 30 (?), 2025 article for IFLScience further highlights the plight of insects around the world, Note: Links have been removed,
Insect populations have been declining across the world at an alarming rate, but no one has been sure why. According to a new study, intense agricultural practices are at the top of the list of causes, but there are multiple interrelated factors that are all contributing to quickly killing off these vital creatures.
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“Insects are fundamental to life on earth. They are really important pollinators, decomposers, and prey for birds, bats, reptiles, and other species”, Eliza Grames, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, told IFLScience.
“Insects pollinate around 80 percent of wild flowering plants, and 75 percent of agricultural crop species rely on insects for pollination. Without insects as decomposers, the earth would essentially be covered in manure. Cow manure takes 60 percent longer to deteriorate when insects are excluded from an area.”
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But despite their importance, insect numbers are declining. In 2017, a devastating study demonstrated that there has been more than a 75 percent decline in insect populations over the last three decades. As a result, scientists have been seeking to identify the likely causes for this decline.
In order to understand which causes the scientific community has found so far, Grames and colleagues from Binghamton University examined some 175 scientific reviews, which contained over 500 hypothesized drivers behind the decline. This information allowed the team to create an interconnected network of 3,000 possible links, known as a meta-synthetic approach, which spanned everything from beekeeping and deforestation to urban sprawl and parasites.
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Within this network of information, the team found that intensified agriculture was the most cited driver behind the mass die-off. This was linked to issues such as land-use change and insecticides. However, focusing solely on the most cited drivers is not the way to interpret this information. As the team note in their work, the results show how interconnected the drivers are, highlighting complex issues.
For example, the climate may be an important driver behind the decline, but there are aspects within that, such as extreme precipitation, fire, and temperature rises, which can then contribute to other drivers. It’s an extremely connected and synergistic network.
“The drivers of insect decline are really complex and there are many overlooked stressors that we should be thinking about and researching,” Grames told IFLScience.
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If you have a little more time, you can find some interesting tidbits in Moul’s April 30 (?), 2025 article.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the recent meta-analysis/meta-synthesis mentioned in the article,
A February 6, 2025 news item on ScienceDaily announces an application that uses machine learning for insect identification,
A farmer notices an unfamiliar insect on a leaf.
Is this a pollinator? Or a pest? Good news at harvest time? Or bad? Need to be controlled? Or not?
That farmer can snap a picture, use a smartphone or computer to feed the photo into a web-based application called InsectNet and, with the help of machine learning technology, get back real-time information.
“The app identifies the insect and returns a prediction of its taxonomic classification and role in the ecosystem as a pest, predator, pollinator, parasitoid, decomposer, herbivore, indicator and invasive species,” said a scientific paper describing InsectNet recently published by the journal PNAS Nexus [PNAS stands for Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the US]. Iowa State University’s Baskar Ganapathysubramanian and Arti Singh are the corresponding authors.
InsectNet – which is backed by a dataset of 12 million insect images, including many collected by citizen-scientists – provides identification and predictions for more than 2,500 insect species at more than 96% accuracy. When the application isn’t sure about an insect, it says it is uncertain, giving users more confidence when it does provide answers.
And, because the application was built as a global-to-local model, it can be geographically fine-tuned using expert-verified local and regional datasets. That makes it useful to farmers everywhere.
So, beware, armyworms, cutworms, grasshoppers, stink bugs and all the other harmful insects. And, hello, butterflies, bees and all the other pollinators. Good to see you, lady beetles, mantises and all the other pest predators.
“We envision InsectNet to complement existing approaches, and be part of a growing suite of AI technologies for addressing agricultural challenges,” the authors wrote.
A village of researchers
InsectNet’s ability to be fine-tuned for specific regions or countries make it particularly useful, said Singh, an associate professor of agronomy.
In Iowa, for example, Singh said there are about 50 insect species particularly important to the state’s agricultural production. To identify and provide predictions about those insects, Singh said the project used about 500,000 insect images.
That could happen for farmers all over the globe. And wherever there isn’t sufficient data – these sophisticated models often require millions of images – for local fine-tuning, the global dataset is still available for farmers.
InsectNet isn’t just for farmers, though. Singh said it could also help agents at ports or border crossings identify invasive species. Or it could help researchers working on ecological studies.
So, the app is usable and flexible. But is it accessible?
You can’t go to an app store and download a version just yet, said Ganapathysubramanian, the Joseph and Elizabeth Anderlik Professor in Engineering and director of the AI Institute for Resilient Agriculture based at Iowa State. But the app is running on a server at Iowa State. With a QR code (see sidebar) or this URL (insectapp.las.iastate.edu/), users can upload insect pictures and get an identification and prediction.
This works throughout the stages of an insect’s life: from egg to larva to pupa to adult. It works with look-alike species. And it works with diverse image qualities and orientations.
The bottom line for any user is basic information about an insect: “Is this a pest?” Singh said. “Or is it a friend?”
Developers demonstrated the app during last August’s Farm Progress Show in Boone, Iowa. And now the research paper is introducing it to a broader, scientific audience.
But aren’t there already apps that help identify insects?
Yes, said Ganapathysubramanian, but they’re not to the scale of InsectNet and aren’t capable of global-to-local applications. And they’re also not open-source applications with technology that can be shared.
“Making InsectNet open source can encourage broader scientific efforts,” he said. “The scientific community can build on these efforts, rather than starting from scratch.”
The project also answered a lot of technical questions that could be applied to other projects, he said.
How much data is enough? Where can we get that much data? What can we do with noisy data?
How much computer power is necessary? How do we deal with so much data?
“Lastly, it takes a village of expertise to get to this point, right?” said Ganapathysubramanian.
It took agronomists and computer engineers and statisticians and data scientists and artificial intelligence specialists about two years to put InsectNet together and make it work.
“What we learned working with insects can be expanded to include weeds and plant diseases or any other related identification and classification problem in agriculture,” Singh said. “We’re very close to a one-stop shop for identifying all of these.”
The InsectNet project was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (through the AI Institute for Resilient Agriculture), the National Science Foundation (through COALESCE: COntext Aware LEarning for Sustainable CybEr-Agricultural Systems), the NSF’s Smart and Connected Communities Program, the USDA’s Current Research Information System Project, and Iowa State’s Plant Sciences Institute.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
InsectNet: Real-time identification of insects using an end-to-end machine learning pipeline by Shivani Chiranjeevi, Mojdeh Saadati, Zi K Deng, Jayanth Koushik, Talukder Z Jubery, Daren S Mueller, Matthew O’Neal , Nirav Merchant , Aarti Singh , Asheesh K Singh , Soumik Sarkar , Arti Singh , Baskar Ganapathysubramanian. PNAS Nexus, Volume 4, Issue 1, January 2025, pgae575, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae575 Published: 27 December 2024
Pro-environmental behaviour increases among school students who participate in insect-related citizen science projects, according to new research from the University of Adelaide.
Students who participated in citizen science project Insect Investigators, which engages students in the discovery of new insects, not only expressed an intention to change their personal behaviour but also to encourage others to protect nature.
“As a result of their involvement in this program, students expressed intentions to further engage in insect–science–nature activities,” says the University of Adelaide’s Dr Erinn Fagan-Jeffries, who contributed to the study.
“In addition, teachers reported increased intentions to include insect-related topics in their teaching, which was positively associated with students’ own intentions for pro-environmental behaviour change.
“This suggests students’ response to the project influenced their teacher’s decision to include citizen science in their lessons.”
School-based citizen science projects facilitate authentic scientific interactions between research and educational institutions while exposing students to scientific processes.
“Teachers’ motivations for providing citizen science experiences to students was to create hands-on learning opportunities and to connect students with real science and scientists,” says Professor Patrick O’Connor AM, Director of the University’s School of Economics and Public Policy.
“Teachers reported interactions with researchers as invaluable. These interactions could take the form of in-person visits by team members, or even instructional videos and curriculum-linked teacher lesson plans.”
Incorporating insects into school-based citizen science projects can challenge widespread human misconceptions about insects and their roles in ecosystems, and foster human–insect connections.
“Given global concerns of rapid insect declines and the overarching biodiversity crisis, insect-focused, school-based citizen science projects can ultimately contribute towards equipping students with knowledge of, and actions to promote, insect conservation,” says lead author Dr Andy Howe, from the University of the Sunshine Coast.
“In Australia, approximately 33 per cent of insects are formally described, the remainder exist as ‘dark taxa’, to the detriment of environmental and biodiversity management initiatives.
“Encouraging more young people to engage in science not only engenders positive feelings in them towards the environment, it will also help to build the next generation of scientists who will fill in the vast knowledge gap that exists in the world of insects.”
Before getting to the link and citation, here’s an update on the Australian higher education ecosystem, from the March 24, 2025 version of the press release on EurekAlert ,
The University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia are joining forces to become Australia’s new major university – Adelaide University. Building on the strengths, legacies and resources of two leading universities, Adelaide University will deliver globally relevant research at scale, innovative, industry-informed teaching and an outstanding student experience. Adelaide University will open its doors in January 2026. Find out more on the Adelaide University website.
The University of British Columbia (UBC) issued an April 22, 2025 news release (also received via email) by Sachi Wickramasinghe announcing research on ‘parks for bugs’,
As the days get longer and gardeners plan their spring planting, research from the University of British Columbia offers some good news this Earth Day: small, simple changes to urban green spaces can make a big difference for pollinators. The study, published in Ecology Letters, found that reducing lawn mowing and creating pollinator meadows – think of them as ‘parks for bugs’– significantly boosts pollinator diversity, creating healthier and more resilient ecosystems.
A buzzing success
The three-year study, conducted in collaboration with the City of Vancouver’s pollinator meadows program, surveyed pollinators in 18 urban parks across Vancouver, comparing parks where meadows were planted and mowing was restricted with parks that remained as standard turfgrass lawns.
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And while the tall grass caused a small stir among some neighbours, the results were striking: parks with meadows saw an immediate increase in pollinator species, with 21 to 47 more wild bee and hoverfly species compared to parks without meadows. The increase persisted over the three-year study period, suggesting that the meadow parks also support pollinators in the long run.
More than 100 species of wild bees and hoverflies were identified, with 35 of them only found in parks with meadows – including the Vancouver and Nevada bumble bee, some miner bees such as the Milwaukee miner bee, the red-faced miner bee and several species of hoverflies.
“Many people think of urban landscapes as poor environments for biodiversity, but our research shows that small actions can have a lasting impact,” said lead author Jens Ulrich, a PhD candidate in the faculty of land and food systems. “You don’t need a lot of space or resources to make a difference.”
Urban landscapes as pollinator havens
Unlike farmland, where large fields with monocrops can limit pollinator movement, urban areas are full of green spaces—gardens, parks, and even roadside boulevards—that can serve as pollinator refuges. The patchwork of small habitats allows species to move freely and settle into restored areas quickly.
The research highlights the importance of maintaining and expanding such efforts. Ongoing management, such as adding more native plants and controlling invasive species, can further strengthen pollinator communities.
The findings also offer practical guidance for city planners and community groups looking to enhance urban green spaces, and have already informed the City of Vancouver’s long-term planning—helping to establish pollinator meadows as a permanent option for parks and shaping future efforts to balance ecological function with aesthetic and cultural values.
“With so much land dedicated to lawns, there’s a major opportunity to rethink how we use these spaces,” said co-author Dr. Risa Sargent, an associate professor in the faculty of land and food systems. “Even small patches of insect-friendly meadows can provide critical resources for pollinators.”
Whether you have a backyard, balcony, or community garden plot, you can support pollinators with these simple steps:
Reduce mowing: Pollinators thrive in areas where flowers are allowed to bloom. Consider letting a section of your lawn grow longer or mowing less frequently.
Plant native flowering shrubs and trees: Perennial species like native chokecherry, Pacific ninebark, oceanspray, native hawthorn, red flowering currant, salal, red-osier dogwood, snowberry and vine maple are great choices for British Columbia’s Lower Mainland.
Create a diverse habitat: Incorporate a variety of plants that bloom at different times of the year to provide food from spring to fall.
Avoid pesticides: Many urban areas, including Vancouver, have already restricted pesticide use, but avoiding chemical treatments in your own garden can further protect pollinators.
Leave natural nesting sites: Many native bees nest in the ground or in plant stems. Keeping some bare soil or leaving flower stalks through winter can provide valuable shelter.
The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit held from February 10 – 11, 2025 in Paris seems to have been pretty exciting, President Emanuel Macron announced a 09B euros investment in the French AI sector on February 10, 2025 (I have more in my February 13, 2025 posting [scroll down to the ‘What makes Canadian (and Greenlandic) minerals and water so important?’ subhead]). I also have this snippet, which suggests Macron is eager to provide an alternative to US domination in the field of AI, from a February 10, 2025 posting on CCGTN (China Global Television Network),
French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Sunday night [February 10, 2025] that France is set to receive a total investment of 109 billion euros (approximately $112 billion) in artificial intelligence over the coming years.
Speaking in a televised interview on public broadcaster France 2, Macron described the investment as “the equivalent for France of what the United States announced with ‘Stargate’.”
He noted that the funding will come from the United Arab Emirates, major American and Canadian investment funds [emphases mine], as well as French companies.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau warned U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance that punishing tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum will hurt his home state of Ohio, a senior Canadian official said.
The two leaders met on the sidelines of an international summit in Paris Tuesday [February 11, 2025], as the Trump administration moves forward with its threat to impose 25 per cent tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, including from its biggest supplier, Canada, effective March 12.
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Speaking to reporters on Wednesday [February 12, 2025] as he departed from Brussels, Trudeau characterized the meeting as a brief chat that took place as the pair met.
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“It was just a quick greeting exchange,” Trudeau said. “I highlighted that $2.2 billion worth of steel and aluminum exports from Canada go directly into the Ohio economy, often to go into manufacturing there.
“He nodded, and noted it, but it wasn’t a longer exchange than that.”
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Vance didn’t respond to Canadian media’s questions about the tariffs while arriving at the summit on Tuesday [February 11, 2025].
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Additional insight can be gained from a February 10, 2025 PBS (US Public Broadcasting Service) posting of an AP (Associated Press) article with contributions from Kelvin Chan and Angela Charlton in Paris, Ken Moritsugu in Beijing, and Aijaz Hussain in New Delhi,
JD Vance stepped onto the world stage this week for the first time as U.S. vice president, using a high-stakes AI summit in Paris and a security conference in Munich to amplify Donald Trump’s aggressive new approach to diplomacy.
The 40-year-old vice president, who was just 18 months into his tenure as a senator before joining Trump’s ticket, is expected, while in Paris, to push back on European efforts to tighten AI oversight while advocating for a more open, innovation-driven approach.
The AI summit has drawn world leaders, top tech executives, and policymakers to discuss artificial intelligence’s impact on global security, economics, and governance. High-profile attendees include Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, signaling Beijing’s deep interest in shaping global AI standards.
Macron also called on “simplifying” rules in France and the European Union to allow AI advances, citing sectors like healthcare, mobility, energy, and “resynchronize with the rest of the world.”
“We are most of the time too slow,” he said.
The summit underscores a three-way race for AI supremacy: Europe striving to regulate and invest, China expanding access through state-backed tech giants, and the U.S. under Trump prioritizing a hands-off approach.
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Vance has signaled he will use the Paris summit as a venue for candid discussions with world leaders on AI and geopolitics.
“I think there’s a lot that some of the leaders who are present at the AI summit could do to, frankly — bring the Russia-Ukraine conflict to a close, help us diplomatically there — and so we’re going to be focused on those meetings in France,” Vance told Breitbart News.
Vance is expected to meet separately Tuesday with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, according to a person familiar with planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
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Modi is co-hosting the summit with Macron in an effort to prevent the sector from becoming a U.S.-China battle.
Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri stressed the need for equitable access to AI to avoid “perpetuating a digital divide that is already existing across the world.”
But the U.S.-China rivalry overshadowed broader international talks.
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The U.S.-China rivalry didn’t entirely overshadow the talks. At least one Chinese former diplomat chose to make her presence felt by chastising a Canadian academic according to a February 11, 2025 article by Matthew Broersma for silicon.co.uk
A representative of China at this week’s AI Action Summit in Paris stressed the importance of collaboration on artificial intelligence, while engaging in a testy exchange with Yoshua Bengio, a Canadian academic considered one of the “Godfathers” of AI.
Fu Ying, a former Chinese government official and now an academic at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said the name of China’s official AI Development and Safety Network was intended to emphasise the importance of collaboration to manage the risks around AI.
She also said tensions between the US and China were impeding the ability to develop AI safely.
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… Fu Ying, a former vice minister of foreign affairs in China and the country’s former UK ambassador, took veiled jabs at Prof Bengio, who was also a member of the panel.
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Zoe Kleinman’s February 10, 2025 article for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) news online website also notes the encounter,
A former Chinese official poked fun at a major international AI safety report led by “AI Godfather” professor Yoshua Bengio and co-authored by 96 global experts – in front of him.
Fu Ying, former vice minister of foreign affairs and once China’s UK ambassador, is now an academic at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The pair were speaking at a panel discussion ahead of a two-day global AI summit starting in Paris on Monday [February 10, 2025].
The aim of the summit is to unite world leaders, tech executives, and academics to examine AI’s impact on society, governance, and the environment.
Fu Ying began by thanking Canada’s Prof Bengio for the “very, very long” document, adding that the Chinese translation stretched to around 400 pages and she hadn’t finished reading it.
She also had a dig at the title of the AI Safety Institute – of which Prof Bengio is a member.
China now has its own equivalent; but they decided to call it The AI Development and Safety Network, she said, because there are lots of institutes already but this wording emphasised the importance of collaboration.
The AI Action Summit is welcoming guests from 80 countries, with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, Microsoft president Brad Smith and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai among the big names in US tech attending.
Elon Musk is not on the guest list but it is currently unknown whether he will decide to join them. [As of February 13, 2025, Mr. Musk did not attend the summit, which ended February 11, 2025.]
A key focus is regulating AI in an increasingly fractured world. The summit comes weeks after a seismic industry shift as China’s DeepSeek unveiled a powerful, low-cost AI model, challenging US dominance.
The pair’s heated exchanges were a symbol of global political jostling in the powerful AI arms race, but Fu Ying also expressed regret about the negative impact of current hostilities between the US and China on the progress of AI safety.
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She gave a carefully-crafted glimpse behind the curtain of China’s AI scene, describing an “explosive period” of innovation since the country first published its AI development plan in 2017, five years before ChatGPT became a viral sensation in the west.
She added that “when the pace [of development] is rapid, risky stuff occurs” but did not elaborate on what might have taken place.
“The Chinese move faster [than the west] but it’s full of problems,” she said.
Fu Ying argued that building AI tools on foundations which are open source, meaning everyone can see how they work and therefore contribute to improving them, was the most effective way to make sure the tech did not cause harm.
Most of the US tech giants do not share the tech which drives their products.
Open source offers humans “better opportunities to detect and solve problems”, she said, adding that “the lack of transparency among the giants makes people nervous”.
But Prof Bengio disagreed.
His view was that open source also left the tech wide open for criminals to misuse.
He did however concede that “from a safety point of view”, it was easier to spot issues with the viral Chinese AI assistant DeepSeek, which was built using open source architecture, than ChatGPT, whose code has not been shared by its creator OpenAI.
Announced in November 2023 at the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park, England, and inspired by the workings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the report consolidates leading international expertise on AI and its risks.
Supported by the United Kingdom’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Bengio, founder and scientific director of the UdeM-affiliated Mila – Quebec AI Institute, led a team of 96 international experts in drafting the report.
The experts were drawn from 30 countries, the U.N., the European Union and the OECD [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development]. Their report will help inform discussions next month at the AI Action Summit in Paris, France and serve as a global handbook on AI safety to help support policymakers.
Towards a common understanding
The most advanced AI systems in the world now have the ability to write increasingly sophisticated computer programs, identify cyber vulnerabilities, and perform on a par with human PhD-level experts on tests in biology, chemistry, and physics.
In what is identified as a key development for policymakers to monitor, the AI Safety Report published today warns that AI systems are also increasingly capable of acting as AI agents, autonomously planning and acting in pursuit of a goal.
As policymakers worldwide grapple with the rapid and unpredictable advancements in AI, the report contributes to bridging the gap by offering a scientific understanding of emerging risks to guide decision-making.
The document sets out the first comprehensive, independent, and shared scientific understanding of advanced AI systems and their risks, highlighting how quickly the technology has evolved.
Several areas require urgent research attention, according to the report, including how rapidly capabilities will advance, how general-purpose AI models work internally, and how they can be designed to behave reliably.
Three distinct categories of AI risks are identified:
Malicious use risks: these include cyberattacks, the creation of AI-generated child-sexual-abuse material, and even the development of biological weapons;
System malfunctions: these include bias, reliability issues, and the potential loss of control over advanced general-purpose AI systems;
Systemic risks: these stem from the widespread adoption of AI, include workforce disruption, privacy concerns, and environmental impacts.
The report places particular emphasis on the urgency of increasing transparency and understanding in AI decision-making as the systems become more sophisticated and the technology continues to develop at a rapid pace.
While there are still many challenges in mitigating the risks of general-purpose AI, the report highlights promising areas for future research and concludes that progress can be made.
Ultimately, it emphasizes that while AI capabilities could advance at varying speeds, their development and potential risks are not a foregone conclusion. The outcomes depend on the choices that societies and governments make today and in the future.
“The capabilities of general-purpose AI have increased rapidly in recent years and months,” said Bengio. “While this holds great potential for society, AI also presents significant risks that must be carefully managed by governments worldwide.
“This report by independent experts aims to facilitate constructive and evidence-based discussion around these risks and serves as a common basis for policymakers around the world to understand general-purpose AI capabilities, risks and possible mitigations.”
There have been two previous AI Safety Summits that I’m aware of and you can read about them in my May 21, 2024 posting about the one in Korea and in my November 2, 2023 posting about the first summit at Bletchley Park in the UK.
The first nanokirigami (or nano-kirigami) story featured here was in a January 29, 2019 posting (Manipulating light at the nanoscale with kirigami-inspired technique). This latest story features a two-dimensional material and the kirigami technique, also, some researchers from the University of British Columbia (Canada).
An October 14, 2024 news item on ScienceDaily announces that the newly applied (ancient) technique could change wireless technology,
The future of wireless technology — from charging devices to boosting communication signals — relies on the antennas that transmit electromagnetic waves becoming increasingly versatile, durable and easy to manufacture. Researchers at Drexel University [Pennsylvania, US] and the University of British Columbia [UBC; Canada] believe kirigami, the ancient Japanese art of cutting and folding paper to create intricate three-dimensional designs, could provide a model for manufacturing the next generation of antennas.
Recently published in the journal Nature Communications, research from the Drexel-UBC team showed how kirigami — a variation of origami — can transform a single sheet of acetate coated with conductive MXene ink into a flexible 3D microwave antenna whose transmission frequency can be adjusted simply by pulling or squeezing to slightly shift its shape.
The proof of concept is significant, according to the researchers, because it represents a new way to quickly and cost-effectively manufacture an antenna by simply coating aqueous MXene ink onto a clear elastic polymer substrate material.
“For wireless technology to support advancements in fields like soft robotics and aerospace, antennas need to be designed for tunable performance and with ease of fabrication,” said Yury Gogotsi, PhD, Distinguished University and Bach Professor in Drexel’s College of Engineering, and a co-author of the research. “Kirigami is a natural model for a manufacturing process, due to the simplicity with which complex 3D forms can be created from a single 2D piece of material.”
Standard microwave antennas can be reconfigured either electronically or by altering their physical shape. However, adding the necessary circuitry to control an antenna electronically can increase its complexity, making the antenna bulkier, more vulnerable to malfunction and more expensive to manufacture. By contrast, the process demonstrated in this joint work leverages physical shape change and can create antennas in a variety of intricate shapes and forms. These antennas are flexible, lightweight and durable, which are crucial factors for their survivability on movable robotics and aerospace components.
To create the test antennas, the researchers first coated a sheet of acetate with a special conductive ink, composed of a titanium carbide MXene, to create frequency-selective patterns. MXene ink is particularly useful in this application because its chemical composition allows it to adhere strongly to the substrate for a durable antenna and can be adjusted to reconfigure the transmission specifications of the antenna.
MXenes are a family of two-dimensional nanomaterials discovered by Drexel researchers in 2011 whose physical and electrochemical properties can be adjusted by slightly altering their chemical composition. MXenes have been widely used in the last decade for applications that require materials with precise physiochemical behavior, such as electromagnetic shielding, biofiltration and energy storage. They have also been explored for telecommunications applications for many years due to their efficiency in transmitting radio waves and their ability to be adjusted to selectively block and allow transmission of electromagnetic waves.
Using kirigami techniques, originally developed in Japan the 4th and 5th centuries A.D., the researchers made a series of parallel cuts in the MXene-coated surface. Pulling at the edges of the sheet triggered an array of square-shaped resonator antennas to spring from its two-dimensional surface. Varying the tension caused the angle of the array to shift — a capability that could be deployed to quickly adjust the communications configuration of the antennas.
The researchers assembled two kirigami antenna arrays for testing. They also created a prototype of a co-planar resonator — a component used in sensors that naturally produces waves of a certain frequency — to showcase the versatility of the approach. In addition to communication applications, resonators and reconfigurable antennas could also be used for strain-sensing, according to the team.
“Frequency selective surfaces, like these antennas, are periodic structures that selectively transmit, reflect, or absorb electromagnetic waves at specific frequencies,” said Mohammad Zarifi, principal research chair, an associate professor at UBC, who helped lead the research. “They have active and/or passive structures and are commonly used in applications such as antennas, radomes, and reflectors to control wave propagation direction in wireless communication at 5G and beyond platforms.”
The kirigami antennas proved effective at transmitting signals in three commonly used microwave frequency bands: 2-4 GHz, 4-8 GHz and 8-12 GHz. Additionally, the team found that shifting the geometry and direction of the substrate could redirect the waves from each resonator.
The frequency produced by the resonator shifted by 400 MHz as its shape was deformed under strain conditions – demonstrating that it could perform effectively as a strain sensor for monitoring the condition of infrastructure and buildings.
According to the team, these findings are the first step toward integrating the components on relevant structures and wireless devices. With kirigami’s myriad forms as their inspiration, the team will now seek to optimize the performance of the antennas by exploring new shapes, substrates and movements.
“Our goal here was to simultaneously improve the adjustability of antenna performance as well as create a simple manufacturing process for new microwave components by incorporating a versatile MXene nanomaterial with kirigami-inspired designs,” said Omid Niksan, PhD, from [the] University of British Columbia, who was an author of the paper. “The next phase of this research will explore new materials and geometries for the antennas.”
