News Summary

• South Africa withdrew its draft national artificial-intelligence policy after the document was found to have cited several fabricated academic references.
• Modern AI systems were developed under conditions of extraordinary abundance: cheap capital, plentiful energy, vast computing infrastructure and access to land and water for cooling.
• This has shaped the assumption that building ever larger models and increasing their scale is the way forward.
• But it is already running into physical constraints.
• Data centres are notorious guzzlers of water and electricity.
• Nations are increasingly putting AI sovereignty — control over crucial AI infrastructure and systems — at the core of their security and growth agendas.