Weekend Box #113: What’s the Rush, Rish? & more
Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business and cultural news from around the world.
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WHAT’S THE RUSH, RISH?
So the starting gun has been fired and the UK will go to the polls on 4th July. If this makes you want to hibernate for the next six weeks, allow the Weekend Box to cut through the noise.
Here’s everything you need to know.
1. Rishi Sunak needs to win the election. Keir Starmer doesn’t. This may sound odd but it’s the key point. To stay in power, Sunak needs to eek out a Conservative majority because no other party will prop him up. The DUP and Liberal Democrats have been there before and learned the lesson. They won’t do it again. So while Keir Starmer can become PM in a minority government with the support of smaller parties, nothing less than a majority will do for the Conservatives.
2. Universal swing is dead. You will hear people say Labour needs a bigger swing than Tony Blair achieved just to secure a majority of one. Don’t let this fool you. Universal swing is dead. The evidence from recent by-elections and the local elections in May is that tactical voting is rife. People are literally going out of their way to vote for the candidate most likely to beat the Conservative. The overall vote share doesn’t matter as much as where the votes fall.
3. Scotland’s coming home. Tony Blair won big in Scotland. Keir Starmer is poised to do the same. It’s hard to see how Labour could secure a majority without Scotland – but the implosion of the SNP has come at just the right time for Keir Starmer. All the signs are that for Labour in this election, Scotland’s coming home.
These are the fundamentals. Everything else is noise. Barring a disaster, Keir Starmer is going to be prime minister because he doesn’t even need to win the election to get the keys to Number 10. And it would take a collapse of epic proportions to lose it from here.
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VOICING ISSUES WITH OPENAI
As AI becomes increasingly present in our lives, so does the tension between realisation of its positive potential and concern that it might present threats to our livelihoods, or even our existence. This tension exists within the organisations that are pioneering AI’s applications, so it’s concerning if leaders like Open AI’s Sam Altman seem to pay lip service to ethical or safety concerns, or reveal the hubristic ‘move fast and break things’ mentality for which Big Tech is infamous.
Altman was raising eyebrows again this week, after Scarlet Johansson alleged that Open AI had chosen a voice for a demo of one of its new AI assistant characters, Sky, that sounded suspiciously like her. ‘Her,’ in fact: the AI assistant is startlingly similar to Johansson’s character in the 2013 film ‘Her,’ in which she played… an AI persona. Altman even invited the comparison, tweeting ‘her’ on X on the day of the demo.
Johansson then revealed, while expressing her ‘disbelief’, that Altman had asked her to use her voice, that she had declined, yet they ran the demo anyway. Cue awkward questions and unconvincing denials by Altman. Copying an actor’s voice without permission is not a good omen for the future of AI.
More ominously, the leaders of Open AI’s ‘superalignment team,’ tasked with ensuring that AI stays in its intended lane and doesn’t harm humanity, resigned. Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike left, with Leike saying: “safety culture and processes have taken a back seat to shiny products.” Their departure follows a string of others from the safety team since Altman survived an unsuccessful attempt in November to remove him by those who had concerns about Altman’s conduct and motives.
Without due commitment and resources, who will ensure that Open AI and its competitors keep their creations harnessed for the common good?
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CRISIS IN NEW CALEDONIA
President Emmanuel Macron visited New Caledonia this week as violent unrest swept the French overseas territory. The turmoil on the Pacific island, 900 miles north-east of Australia, has resulted in six fatalities, hundreds of injuries, and widespread destruction of property, prompting Paris to declare a state of emergency.
The French government has imposed a curfew, shut down the airport, deployed additional police forces, and controversially banned TikTok. These measures have yielded mixed results in quelling the violence.
The unrest was triggered by a constitutional amendment passed on May 15th, allowing French citizens residing in New Caledonia for over a decade to vote in local elections. This move has reignited longstanding grievances, particularly among the indigenous Kanak community. The Kanaks argue the amendment dilutes their political influence and violates the 1998 Nouméa Accord, which restricted voting rights to Kanaks and long-term residents.
The Kanaks, New Caledonia’s original inhabitants, form the largest ethnic group but remain a minority at 41%, suffering from lower living standards and higher unemployment compared to the broader population. Many in the Kanak community advocate for independence from France, a sentiment that has grown after three failed referendums in recent years, the latest of which saw significant Kanak boycotts.
Macron’s visit is critical, as it coincides with France's strategic interest in New Caledonia's vast nickel reserves, crucial for energy transition efforts. The archipelago holds around 25% of the world’s nickel reserves, a key component in electric vehicle batteries and stainless steel. Nickel prices have surged 7% amid the unrest.
With European parliamentary elections approaching, Macron is keen to solidify his legacy of a strong Europe with France at its centre. As Macron engaged with local leaders, he pledged not to force through the voting change in the current context. He said more talks were needed and that he would review the situation in a month.
AI: A BIT OF A WASTE OF ENERGY?
Artificial Intelligence: the technology of the future, a cognitive miracle, a problem-solving powerhouse and, as it turns out, an incredibly inefficient way to do things. A recent study has shown that a Generative AI system uses 33 times more energy than machines running task-specific software. As demand for generative AI soars, concerns are growing about the toll on energy grids, which are struggling to cope under the pressure.
This is due to the fact that the point of energy consumption happens not at the device level, such as your laptop or iPhone, but rather at the data centre level. In a speech in March, the boss of National Grid stated that demand for data centre electricity will rise six-fold in the next 10 years in the UK, largely driven by AI and its increasing popularity.
Part of the issue is that people neither understand the fundamentals of generative AI, nor the toll on the grid. Data centres aren’t visible in our everyday surroundings and energy consumption is an intangible concept at the best of times; to quote the old adage, out of sight out of mind. Nonetheless, a fifth of Ireland’s electricity is used up by data centres.
As awareness of the issue increases, companies are racing to produce more efficient methods to cope with the surging demand. Wall Street darling Nvidia, who recently announced a whopping 629% year-on-year profit increase, have pivoted their business towards AI and have recently launched the Grace Blackwell supercomputer chips to power processes such as generative AI, quantum computing, and computer-aided drug design. These chips perform with up to 25 times better energy efficiency than the prior generation of Nvidia chips and innovations like these will be critical in years to come if the grid is to keep up with the soaring demand.
PYLOS NINE ACQUITTED
Earlier this week, nine survivors of the Pylos shipwreck, in which over 550 people are believed to have died, were acquitted of culpability for the catastrophe. With their charges, the role of the Hellenic coastguard in the sinking of the vessel is due to receive greater scrutiny.
The Pylos shipwreck, taking its name from the Greek town of Pylos near to where the boat sank, occurred in June last year. The Ariadna fishing boat, which is believed to have been carrying up to 750 migrants, sank in one of the deepest areas of the Mediterranean while transporting its occupants from Libya to Italy. 104 people were rescued from the ship and 82 bodies recovered, leaving a vast number of others who are believed to have drowned, including 100 women and children who were in the hold.
The nine defendants in court this week were alleged by Greek prosecutors to be members of a smuggling gang, who took payments from passengers to transport them on the ship, and to have caused the wreck by willingly operating it despite extreme overcrowding. Some survivors claim the nine were fellow paying passengers, and have contradicted the evidence against them, while others allege that they were mistreated by some of the defendants.
Judges ultimately ruled they did not have jurisdiction to hear the case, as the ship sank in international waters. However, it was within Greece’s demarcated rescue area, and the Hellenic coastguard’s own role in the shipwreck is being questioned. There are accusations that the nine defendants have been framed; survivors speaking to Al Jazeera allege that the coastguard, in trying to tow the vessel, in fact flipped it and then “did not sufficiently act to save the lives of those in the water.”
While one chapter closes in this tragic case, it appears many questions remain to be answered.
And that’s it for this week. I hope you found something of interest that you might want to delve into further. If so, please get in touch at cwilkins@audleyadvisors.com.
For now, that’s The Weekend Box officially closed.