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 }}
Pope Francis greets the crowd during a short appearance at Gemelli hospital, in Rome, on Sunday, March 23, 2025.
HARD NUMBERS: Pope returns to Vatican, Canadian PM calls snap election, Trump targets legal entry migrants, South Korean PM reinstated, US auto importers hit the gas, Orlando cops recover swallowed earrings
5: Pope Francis is back home at the Vatican. On Sunday, the 88-year-old pontiff was discharged from hospital, where he has been fighting double pneumonia for five weeks. The pope, who looked frail as he made his first public appearance since Valentine’s Day, has been advised by doctors that he will need to continue to convalesce for the next two months.
37: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, leader of the Liberal Party, called a snap federal election on Sunday in Ottawa. The move launched a swift, five-week campaign — it will last just 37 days, the minimum duration required by law — in a bid to keep up the Liberals’ current momentum. The party is ahead of the Conservatives in some polls, having come back from a steep deficit just two months ago, but behind by a few points in others.
530,000: Washington has pulled the welcome mat out from under 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. Migrants who came to the US under President Joe Biden’s legal entry parole program over the past two years learned on Friday that President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration will soon be retroactive. As of April 24, they will be stripped of legal status, and the administration is encouraging them to self-report – or face possible arrest and deportation.
7-1: South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo is no longer impeached. The country’s Constitutional Court overturned his impeachment on Monday, reinstating him in a 7-1 ruling. Observers do not see it as a sign that President Yoon Suk Yeol, whose brief imposition of martial law in December sparked these legal matters, will also see his impeachment overturned.
22: Carmakers have thrown their shipments of vehicles and automotive components into high gear in anticipation of the 25% tariffs to be imposed by the Trump administration on April 2 on imports from Mexico and Canada as well as reciprocal tariffs on other US trading partners. Many fear the tariff regime will upend auto supply chains, so manufacturers are sending more vehicles than normal, leading to a 22% year-on-year increase of such shipments from the EU to the US in February — and 14% and 15% increases from Japan and South Korea respectively.
769,500: We’ve all heard of swallowing one’s pride, but one’s crime? Jaythan Gilder, 32, allegedly swallowed two sets of Tiffany & Co. earrings worth $769,500 around the time of his arrest more than two weeks ago on robbery and grand theft charges. Gilder was monitored by detectives at an Orlando hospital until the jewels were, uh, expelled from his system. The earrings, which match the ones taken from an Orlando Tiffany store last month, have been returned to the retailer (and thoroughly cleaned).
Displaced Sudanese women prepare tea at a Medecin Sans Frontiere hospital at Golo, west Darfur, in October.
Hard Numbers: Sudan death toll far worse than feared, Gazprom cuts off Austria, Pope suggests Israeli “genocide” in Gaza, Record-breaking fight night, History-making Hebridean shopping
242,000,000: Russia’s state-owned Gazprom is cutting off natural gas supplies to Austria. The move comes in response to Austrian oil company OMV’s announcement that it would stop paying for the gas to offset a $242 million arbitration award it won due to an earlier energy cut-off to its German subsidiary. Gazprom responded that it would halt gas delivery starting on Saturday. Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer reassured citizens the country has enough gas reserves to last the winter.
70: Israeli airstrikes reportedly killed 70 people in northern Gaza early Sunday, and dozens more remained trapped in the rubble. This coincides with comments by Pope Francis suggesting that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza “has the characteristics of a genocide.” The comments were included in excerpts from an upcoming book published on Sunday.
60,000,000: If you tuned in for the Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson fight on Friday, you had lots of company. Netflix says a “record-breaking” 60 million households watched Iron Mike’s first fight in nearly 20 years. While Paul beat Tyson, neither boxer was knocked out, and they both made a killing: Paul is expected to have raked in around $40 million to Tyson’s $20 million.
2,039: History was made in Scotland’s Stornoway, the largest town in the Hebrides, on Sunday. Despite 2,039 of the town’s roughly 7,000 residents signing an online petition against a local Tesco store opening on Sundays – critics wanted to “keep Sunday special” and shopping-free – the United Kingdom's largest grocer opened its doors to “allow customers more flexibility.”
2023: The Year of AI
Art: Courtesy of Midjourney
The Trends
1. Chatbot mania: OpenAI brought AI to the masses with ChatGPT. Though it debuted in late 2022, it truly hit its stride this year, especially when it started charging $20 a month in February for access to its latest and greatest version, which was then upgraded with GPT-4 in March. Google also released Bard, Microsoft launched Bing Chat, and the startup Anthropic introduced us to Claude. Each chatbot has its strength: While ChatGPT is strong on creative writing and inductive reasoning, Bing is best used as a replacement for internet search engines, and Bard’s latest upgrade – to its new language model Gemini – strives for commonsense reasoning and logic. Anthropic's Claude rivals ChatGPT for complex tasks like organizing huge chunks of text. For now, ChatGPT is top dog, but the younger pups are nipping at its heels.
2. Regulators ready their lassos: Following years of debate, the European Union finally reached an agreement in December on the scope of its landmark AI Act, the first major regulation for AI models. Next door, the United Kingdom has proceeded with a hands-off approach, more concerned with courting AI firms than reining them in. Rishi Sunak’s Bletchley summit, which produced a voluntary agreement on AI safety, was a political winner for the PM. The US, by contrast, falls somewhere between the UK and Europe in its approach: Months after President Joe Biden secured voluntary commitments from major AI firms to stave off the worst risks from AI, he issued an executive order to start codifying those protections. There’s no forceful regulation on the books yet — but the wheels are finally in motion.
3. The chip race heats up: AI models are nothing without the semiconductors, aka chips, that power them. Making them, however, is difficult and expensive, and there’s always some kind of holdup. The most powerful AI relies on the most powerful graphics chips, like those produced by NVIDIA and AMD. Recently, OpenAI had to halt new signups for the paid version of ChatGPT for a month because it didn’t have enough graphics chips to accommodate new users. The US, fearful of China catching up technologically and using AI for military purposes, has placed strict export controls on the flow of US-made chips, rules that were tightened this fall. For now, the US maintains its major advantage in the chip wars.
The Moments
4. Puffer pontiff: Who says the pope can’t sport a bit of bling? In March, a photo of Pope Francis wearing a long white Balenciaga puffer coat (sells for $4,350), complete with an oversized crucifix necklace, went mega-viral. It was an outfit more befitting of a rap god than the bishop of Rome, and the fake image of the athleisure pope became a seminal example of the ways generative AI can fool people. It was ultimately harmless, but deepfake technology is getting better and better, and experts have long warned that it could cause chaos in fragile political environments, especially around elections. On Dec. 14, the pope, perhaps bothered by the uproar about his fantastical drip, called for an international treaty to ensure the ethical deployment of AI technologies, warning that it could disrupt democracy or enhance already deadly weapons of war.
5. The open letter: In March, a group of AI scientists and researchers called for a six-month pause on all AI development. “Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” their letter said. It was signed by technology luminaries and corporate leaders like Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, MIT professor Max Tegmark, investor Ian Hogarth (who now leads the UK’s AI task force), and Elon Musk (who notably then launched his own AI company). Of course, development wasn’t stymied, but the letter did send a message that there are real and present dangers to the unmitigated development of artificial intelligence. They could have just watched “The Terminator” if you ask me.
6. The Hollywood strike: Actors and writers hit the picket lines for months this year, putting many of our favorite shows on ice. The strike was inspired in no small part by threats from the major studios to use AI to replace union labor. At issue for the Screen Actors Guild was the use of AI to digitally replicate union talent without compensation, while the Writers Guild was more concerned with the use of AI writing tools to shrink writers’ rooms and automate their work. Instead of banning the use of AI, however, both guilds struck deals with the studios that effectively ensure they don’t lose work or money because of the advent of AI. Digital replicas are okay, for example, if the actor is properly compensated.
7. OpenAI’s blowup: What in the world happened at OpenAI? The company’s nonprofit board of directors in late November suddenly and inexplicably fired Sam Altman, the face of the company and CEO of its for-profit arm, for being dishonest with them. But the board never really explained itself. After a weekend of pressure from Altman, OpenAI’s lead investor Microsoft, and 700 of the 770 employees at OpenAI who threatened to quit and work instead at Microsoft, the board reinstated Altman and some of its members resigned. There are still big questions about what happened, but for a brief moment, the most unstoppable company in tech seemed extremely fragile.
The People
8. Sam Altman: Altman is the face of AI. He helms OpenAI, the company that makes the GPT series of large language models, the chatbot ChatGPT, and the image generator DALL-E. But he has also been the AI whisperer for regulators in the US and around the world. Altman played a hands-on role in calling for regulation – as long as it was the kind he likes, such as government licensing for AI developers – and that’s been effective in helping shape global governance of this emerging technology. Of course, Altman was fired and then reinstated (see above), and that was a never-before-seen drama in Silicon Valley. But the ordeal was so surreal and so shocking because Altman isn’t just the head of the most important company in AI; he’s the poster boy for the entire technology.
9. Jensen Huang: OpenAI might be the most important software company in AI, but NVIDIA rules hardware. Under Huang’s guidance, NVIDIA has gone from a little-known company making graphics cards for computer gamers to one of the most critical semiconductor firms in the world. NVIDIA’s graphics chips, or GPUs, are necessary for high-powered computing operations like training and running AI systems. Sure, there’s competition — the chipmaker AMD has grand ambitions to compete directly on AI-ready graphics chips. But it’s leading an industry with very little supply and a ton of demand. That’s one of the reasons why Huang led NVIDIA to a trillion-dollar valuation this year. He’s not as public a figure as Altman, but his work has proven invaluable this year.
10. Geoffrey Hinton: Known as the “godfather of AI,” Hinton distinguished himself over a long career as one of the most prolific and accomplished researchers of artificial neural networks, a set of technologies that powers machine learning. He even won the Turing Award in 2018 — the most esteemed prize in computer science. But this year, Hinton made headlines in May after quitting his job at Google and citing the risks of unfettered development of AI. A whistleblower of sorts, Hinton’s message is extra potent — because, in many respects, he made the breakthroughs that led to present-day AI.
Pope Benedict, who shocked the world by resigning, dies at 95
Pope Benedict XVI, the first pontiff to retire in six centuries, died early Saturday at the age of 95. Benedict surprised the world in 2013 by announcing he was stepping down from the papacy due to his advanced age. The first German pope in 1,000 years, Benedict took up the mantle of his close friend and predecessor, Pope John Paul II, and is credited with starting to reform Vatican finances and disciplining priests in Latin America who promoted Marxist ideology. Along the way, his strict adherence to church doctrine earned him the nickname “God’s Rottweiler.” Benedict’s papacy was plagued by global clerical sexual misconduct charges, and he charted a course for stricter discipline and defrocking of priests. But he’s also remembered for the 2012 “Vatileaks” controversy in which his brother leaked secret files revealing corruption and infighting at the Vatican. His reputation was further damaged by this year’s Munich diocese report, which alleged he mishandled sexual abuse allegations when he was an archbishop decades ago, prompting him to publicly apologize. Pope Benedict wasn’t always great at interfaith work. He managed to upset Muslims by suggesting Islam was inherently violent, and Jews by lifting the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop. While leaving a mixed legacy, Benedict will perhaps be remembered most for making a daring choice to resign when he felt he could no longer fully serve the papacy.
World in 60 Seconds: Maduro's Numbered Days
Venezuelan President Maduro's days are numbered. But how long until he gives up power?
It's your World in 60 Seconds with Ian Bremmer and special guest Parag Khanna!
And go deeper on topics like cybersecurity and artificial intelligence at Microsoft Today in Technology.