The Audit

AI systems are becoming better at coding, research and operating independently. Some of the people building them think the trajectory could end in catastrophe. How much of that warning is supported by what we can actually observe today?

Metafuels is betting that the fastest route to cleaner flying runs through the fuel tank, not the aircraft.

Driverless taxis already work. Tesla is betting that a cheaper car, fewer sensors and no human driver can turn them into mass transportation.

Anthropic has shown that AI can increasingly operate the machinery of scientific experiments. The bigger question is whether faster experiments actually translate into faster scientific progress.

Growing meat is no longer the impossible part. Making it cheap enough to compete with one of the world's most efficiently produced foods is.

Europe has the money, the startups and increasingly the political will. The harder part is turning all three into military capability at scale.

AI can make individual tasks dramatically faster. The harder question is whether producing more, faster, actually means getting more useful work done.