If the world is to move away from fossil fuels, we will need to extract far more rare minerals, to power renewable energy sources such as wind turbines and solar plants. However, energy experts point out that mining these minerals can be a dirty process, ravaging the environment, and leading to human rights abuses.
Cybercrime is a multi-trillion-dollar business. Drugs and weapons are being bought on the “dark web”, fraudsters are fleecing members of the public in elaborate online scams, and terrorists are grooming supporters and recruiting fighters.
The concept of “autonomous” cars, moving us all around in an orderly, congestion-free fashion has been around, in various forms, for decades. But, despite some impressive technological advances in recent years, that vision is still some way off.
South Sudan, one of the world’s poorest countries, is dealing with the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees from its northern neighbour, Sudan, which has been in the grip of a major conflict between the government and the Rapid Support Forces since April of last year.
After a year of hype surrounding the latest version of ChatGPT and other new AI tools, governments are starting to make concerted efforts to bring in effective regulations on the use of this powerful technology, with the support of the UN science agency, UNESCO.
Peace in Ukraine still seems to be a distant prospect, but thousands of UN staff continue to support the population, even in frontline towns coming under daily attack.
Ahead of Julian Assange’s upcoming court hearing in the UK, where extradition to the US is a possibility, a UN independent human rights expert has expressed concern about the potential for severe rights violations against the WikiLeaks founder. Alice Jill Edwards cautions that the repercussions of this case could significantly influence global journalism and freedom of speech.
The UN is helping to ensure that developing countries benefit from clean energy. In Madagascar, a promising initiative is showing the potential of clean electrification to change lives.
The fierce fighting between the Sudanese army and rebel RSF forces risks reaching the UN bases in the east of the country, warns the head of IOM, the UN migration agency in the country, sharing his frustration at being unable to reach the millions of civilians in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.
The release of GPT-4 in 2023, along with other powerful easy-to-use Artificial Intelligence tools such as deepfakes and voice cloning, led to heightened calls for regulation of the technology. UN News speaks to Carme Artigas, Co-Chair of the UN’s AI Advisory Body, about the group’s recommendations for advancing the international governance of AI.
