Thousands of delegates, lobbyists, and journalists have converged on Antalya, Turkey, for COP31, the annual United Nations climate negotiations. This year’s talks unfold against a tense geopolitical backdrop, as the world continues to fall further behind the goals set by the Paris Agreement. Soaring energy prices have raised pressing questions about how nations will confront the climate crisis, and observers expect heated debate over fossil fuels, climate finance, and whether negotiators can reach agreement on meaningful action.
Elsewhere, a growing community of forward-thinking technologists is exploring ways to extend the human mind beyond biological death. Their ideas range from gradual brain replacement to uploading memories to the cloud. MIT Technology Review’s upcoming subscriber-only Roundtable, hosted by science editor Mary Beth Griggs and senior biomedicine editor Antonio Regalado, will examine these proposals live on Tuesday, November 17.
The broader tech landscape is equally eventful. Reports suggest Nvidia’s board may move as soon as this week to decide the future of CEO Jensen Huang, a development that sent the company’s shares down roughly 8 percent. Meanwhile, proposed tightening of chip export rules tied to an Nvidia-linked espionage scandal has drawn warnings of retaliation from China, which has reportedly begun stockpiling Nvidia chips. In defense and space, Anduril claims its new satellite can track spacecraft in orbital darkness using infrared sensing, while a startup has built an offline AI tool intended to detect AI-designed bioweapons. Researchers also reported that microplastics have reached remote Brazilian wildlife roughly 100 kilometers from waste sites, underscoring how far pollution has traveled.
Source: The Download: COP31’s climate challenge and the quest for immortality via MIT Technology Review