Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
A heart is shown on a computer screen
Hard Numbers: Deepfakes and pig butchering, Murati starts fundraising, Checking students’ work, The nuclear option, Perplexity’s money moves
100 million: Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, one of the biggest names in artificial intelligence, is expected to raise $100 million for a new AI startup with few public details. Murati, who briefly served as interim CEO of OpenAI last year following Sam Altman’s short-lived ouster, resigned from OpenAI last month. Murati said she wanted to start her own “exploration” of AI when she resigned and will reportedly serve as CEO of the new venture trying to do just that.
68%: About 68% of middle and high school teachers report using an AI checker for students’ work, according to a survey from March 2024. But Bloomberg, pointing to a rising number of students who claim to have been falsely accused of writing with AI, reports that popular AI checkers have a 1-2% error rate, calling into question their reliability.
99: Nuclear energy stocks are surging because of increased demand for power by AI companies in search of new energy sources. Oklo, a US-based small modular reactor developer – which counts OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as an investor – saw its share price pop 99% last week. Nuclear energy is considered a “clean” energy source because it has no carbon emissions.
8 billion: The AI search engine Perplexity is seeking to raise $500 million in a new funding round that would value it at $8 billion. Perplexity has positioned itself not only as a rival to OpenAI and Anthropic — leading AI chatbot companies — but also to Google, the longtime leader in the search industry.A statue of McGill University founder James McGill is seen on the campus in Montreal, October 2, 2009.
Trouble on the northern border
Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Millerwarned Canada on Sunday of an “alarming trend.” Foreign students are making asylum claims – the latest issue to confront his government as it struggles to get the immigration system under control.
In recent years, Canadian universities and colleges have increasingly relied on foreign students, who pay higher tuition than Canadians, to deal with funding shortfalls. But the wave of students – more than a million were admitted in 2023 – is being blamed for everything from a shortage of rental accommodations to security fears. A Pakistani national arrested as he was allegedly en route to New York to conduct a mass shooting at a Jewish centre came to Canada on a student visa.
Miller has twice decreased the number of visas available to foreign students, but more than 70,000 already in Canada are now facing deportation when their visas expire. In the next three years, 396,235 foreign student work permits will expire. If Canada gets tougher on students and other temporary foreign residents, a think tank warns that some could try their luck in the United States, increasing tension on the border.
The Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Center for North American Prosperity and Security wrote in the Wall Street Journal that a surge of migrants is already starting to enter the United States, crossing into New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont. There were 180,000 interactions with U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on the northern border between January and August, up from 27,180 in all of 2021.
The Canadian side may want to redouble its efforts to get a handle on the problem. Polling shows immigration is one of Donald Trump’s strongest issues, so any influx along the normally quiet northern border could give him a boost in the swing states where he and Kamala Harris are locked in a razor-close race.
And Canadians may want to avoid that. A report released Thursday from the Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated that Trump’s tariffs would cost the Canadian economy US$60 billion over the first three years.
Graphic Truth: The state of cellphone bans in schools
Should smartphones be banned in schools? Three-quarters of US schools already restrict the use of cellphones during lesson hours, but only a handful of state governments have imposed blanket restrictions. Florida became the first one last year, followed by Illinois and Virginia, where bans will take effect this school year. In Canada, half a dozen provincial governments have passed restrictions.
The measures come amid growing scrutiny of the harmful effects of smartphone use in general – and social media in particular – on teen mental health. US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy in May called for cigarette-style health warnings on social media. A recent bestseller traces the rise of the current “Anxious generation” to the emergence of smartphones in the early 2010s. And as any schoolteacher can tell you, smartphones are generally not great for the classroom learning experience.
But on the other side of it, parents have raised safety concerns. Cellphones are often the only way for caregivers to locate or contact children during emergencies. As the number of US school shootings has soared over the past 10 years, some parents are particularly reluctant to cut that tie – especially during school hours. Alongside these worries, many parents and lawmakers simply think the decision should be left to local school boards rather than faraway state legislators.
Here is a look at the current state of cellphone bans in the US and Canada. By the way, where do you stand on this issue? Let us know here, along with your name and location, and we may publish your response in an upcoming edition of GZERO North.
Students at Martin Van Buren High School in Queens
Hard Numbers: Segregation is back, Thai activist dies in jail, French “Fly” freed, New US arms sale to Israel
19.8: Over the past three decades, the share of US public schools where 90% of the students are non-white has nearly tripled to 19.8%, according to a UCLA report. Experts say the rise of charter schools and expansion of school choice is partly to blame for this de facto segregation. The data, crunched by the UCLA Civil Rights Project, come on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown vs. Boardof Education case in which the US Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation at schools.
110: A young Thai activist jailed for demanding reform of the country’s uncriticizable monarchy has died after a 110-day hunger strike. Twenty-eight year old Netiporn “Bung” Sanesangkhom had been jailed under Thailand’s severe lèse-majesté laws after asking people’s opinion of the monarchy in public spaces in 2022.
2: A manhunt is underway in France after two masked gunmen ambushed a prison van and freed a notorious drug dealer nicknamed “The Fly.” The incident is the latest in a trend of rising narco-related crime in Europe, as authorities seize record volumes of cocaine entering the EU while rival gangs fight for turf and clientele. Of course, when it comes to jailbreaks, the cinema-obsessed French gangster Rédoine Faïd remains the master of the craft.
1 billion: The Biden administration reportedly told lawmakers it’s moving forward with a new sale of roughly $1 billion worth of arms to Israel, including tactical vehicles and ammunition. This news comes as the administration continues to butt heads with Israel over the Rafah operation, and just days after President Joe Biden put a hold on a shipment of bombs to the Jewish state as concerns rise over the mounting death toll amid the war with Hamas in Gaza.
Why the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals are not on track to be financed soon
The world faces a sustainable development crisis, and while most countries have strategies in place, they don’t have the cash to back them up. How far off track are we with the financing needed to support the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, ranging from quality education and health care to climate action and clean water?
Shari Spiegel, who runs the UN’s Financing for Sustainable Development Office, sat down with GZERO’s Tony Maciulis at a Global Stage event for the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings this week. She explains that the SDGs were off track even before the pandemic and that now, owing to global crises, many poorer countries have slipped backwards.
“We actually started backtracking on many of these goals as countries were under enormous stress, and particularly the poorest countries,” she said, noting that the global output of many of the poorest nations has fallen by 30% — and some, such as the Small Island Developing States, by 40%. This has led to an enormous finance divide — raising SDG financing and investment gaps from $2 trillion a few years ago to around $4 trillion today.
So how can the UN restrengthen multilateralism and, in turn, help narrow this gap? Watch here.
For more of our 2024 IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings coverage, visit Global Stage.
Ghana, Accra, 2023-02-16. Young schoolchildren in uniform learning multiplication tables. Illustration image of children in a school in Ghana. A little girl is at the blackboard reciting in front of the class.
To get rich, Ghana needs to wise up
About a quarter of all the chocolate you eat comes from Ghanaian cacao, so with prices at all-time highs, Ghanaian farmers should be raking it in. Instead, they’re selling at fixed prices to a government that’s struggling to settle its debts after a crushing $30 billion default last year.
On Monday, Ghana failed to reach a debt deal to restructure $13 billion in debt, breaching the terms of its International Monetary Fund bailout and pushing the country to the brink. According to the IMF, Ghana is borrowing too much in the same high-interest rate environment that led to the original default. If the government cannot formulate a plan that meets IMF standards, it risks $360 million in upcoming relief.
Nonetheless, the IMF is optimistic that the children of today’s cacao farmers will be driving the global economy in a decade or two. “The 21st century will be the African century,” said economist Michele Fornino on Monday at the IMF/World Bank spring meetings in Washington, DC. He pointed to the increasing numbers of young Africans joining the global workforce, contrasting it with the population slowdowns in Europe, East Asia, and North America that will diminish their economic clout.
But it all depends on getting those kids to school. About one in four children in Ghana is unable to attend school, a rate well below other developing countries. Improving that number will be crucial but difficult if Ghana stays trapped in perpetual cycles of debt and default.
Fornino pointed to South Korea, once among the poorest countries in the world before the vaunted “Miracle on the Han River” transformed it into a wealthy, globally connected society. “South Korean GDP would be one-third of what it is today without the improvements in education that began in 1970,” he said, and the IMF’s long-term goal is to help Ghana and other African countries make the most of similar demographic dividends.
Graphic Truth: Apprenticeships are on the rise
Whether it’s the price of college, the promise of the gig economy, or simply the desire to get paid while training, apprenticeships are having a moment. In the US, this surge has coincided with an 8% drop in undergraduate college enrollment; in Canada, it comes amid high youth unemployment.
In short, young people want options for brighter futures. As a result, apprenticeships are increasingly becoming an alternative to expensive four-year college degrees, or as a way to forge new careers mid-life. Apprentices get all the benefits of other employees, including wages, while getting valuable on-the-job training.
After dipping during the pandemic, the number of apprenticeship registrations jumped 12% in 2022 to an all-time high in Canada. In the US, they rose 22% between 2020 and 2021 and saw an 82.1% jump between 2008 and 2021.
But this isn’t just a COVID-fueled trend. SAIT, one of Canada's largest post-secondary institutions for apprenticeships, has seen a 20% increase in enrollment over the last two years. So apprenticeships are likely to increase even more in the coming years.
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill testifies before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in Washington.
A bad case of “academentia” that needs to be cured
This week Claudine Gay, Sally Kornbluth, and M. Elizabeth Magill, the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, were brought before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to speak about the dangerous rise of antisemitism on campus, especially since the Oct. 7 attacks.
The Israel-Hamas war has triggered an alarming rise in antisemitic incidents on and off campus and also a rise in Islamophobic incidents. It was so bad that back on Nov. 14, President Joe Biden released an action plan to combat antisemitic and Islamophobic events on US campuses.
So the university presidents were steeped in this issue and knew tensions had been running high. They came to Washington prepared – well, prepared for something, at least.
Sadly, expectations for these kinds of hearings are low. Politics in Washington today is more like eye surgery done with a pickax, so no one predicted a nuanced, academic discussion with three illustrious leaders. Still, what happened under the big marble-top circus of politics was a genuine surprise.
Amid the usual grandstanding, ax-grinding, partisan preening, camera mugging, sound-bite fishing — and there was a lot of that on culture war issues like “wokeism” – something noteworthy happened.
At five hours and 23 minutes into the hearing — you can watch it here – New York Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, who graduated from Harvard in 2006, asked a basic question of the three presidents.
Here is part of the transcript, with Stefanik questioning the president of Penn, Dr. Magill.
Stefanik: … Does calling for the genocide of Jews constitute bullying or harassment?
Magill: If it is directed or severe and pervasive, it is harassment.
Stefanik: So, the answer is yes?
Magill: It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman.
Stefanik explodes in incredulity: This is the easiest question to answer yes, Ms. Magill.
Magill (smiles, oddly): If the speech becomes conduct. It can be harassment, yes.
Stefanik: Conduct meaning … committing the act of genocide? The speech is not harassment?
Stefanik gave Magill one more shot at the answer and got nowhere before asking Dr. Gay, president of Harvard, the same question.
Stefanik: Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?
Gay: It can be, depending on the context.
You get the idea.
Apparently, on campuses, calling for genocide is bullying only in certain contexts (when is it not?) and only when it turns into action.
Remember, Stefanik was not asking here if the presidents would shut down such speeches on campus. Or take action. She asked a basic, theoretical question of whether calling for the genocide of Jews constituted bullying and harassment. Not a single president answered yes.
This was academentia at its worst. The term, of course, is not medical; it describes hyper-intelligent academics who appear to have lost touch with reality. So caught up in nuance and qualifiers that they can’t answer a simple question.
Imagine for a moment, someone asking, “Is calling for the genocide of all Muslims an act of bullying or harassment? Or the killing of all women? Or the killing of all African Americans, or LGBTQ people?"
Even if US academics uphold the First Amendment, which, in the US, protects hate speech — that was not the question. The question was simply whether calling for the genocide of a specific group hit the threshold of bullying on campus.
How hard is that? Harder than we thought.
Free speech in the US versus Canada is handled very differently. In Canada, there are reasonable limits to speech, and the Criminal Code section 319 is clear that hate speech and antisemitic speech are indictable offenses and are liable for imprisonment.
Context matters as well. Hate crimes against the Jewish, African-American, Muslim, and LGBTQ communities are all up, according to recent stats. The latest FBI hate crimes data shows a 25% rise in antisemitic hate crimes between 2021 and 2022 — which is more than half of all reported hate crimes — against a population that comprises less than 2.4% of the US population. Crimes against the LGBTQ, Black, and Muslim Americans are also overrepresented, but FBI Director Christopher Wray said this week that antisemitism is reaching “historic levels.”
The same is true in Canada, where most hate crimes still target the Jewish population, but the Muslim and Black populations are also targeted.
While the Israel-Hamas war is deeply polarizing, and confusing, there are not two sides to hate. University presidents should not have to duck behind talking points and prepared statements to answer a basic question about human decency. And university students should not have to learn in hate-filled environments. We need to trust our places of education now more than ever, not less.
Higher education should not mean lower common sense.