Q&A with Jason Pruet

Jason Pruet is working with teams across the Laboratory to help prepare for a future in which artificial intelligence will reshape the landscape of science and security. Five years ago, he viewed AI as just another valuable tool, but because of recent advances in the...

Reading Octavia Butler in a time of change

Following the January wildfires in Los Angeles and the inauguration of President Donald Trump, many people once again turned to the writing of Octavia Butler for comfort, guidance and reflection.  Butler, who grew up in Pasadena and has been called “the...

Navigating complexity: Embracing the human pace

For over two years, we’ve been working with diverse partners to understand how groups of organisations can collaborate more effectively to tackle challenges bigger than any single entity could manage alone. This journey has generated a wealth of detailed and complex...

Big tech and the US digital-military-industrial complex

Large digital platforms – Meta (Facebook), Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google) and Apple, the so-called Big Tech companies, which are compared to Chinese counterparts like Alibaba, JD or Tencent – dominate the world economy. Their market capitalisation has exceeded...

From polycrisis to metacrisis: a short introduction

Our world shows signs of multi-systemic breakdown. In this context, polycrisis names an entanglement of interconnected crises that affect one another. Metacrisis, by contrast, identifies foundational conditions that generate these crises. Just as symptoms signal an...