Source: Knowledge@Wharton
Photo: Christian Terwiesch

Most people would not prefer to take ethical advice from a computer, but a new Wharton study shows how attitudes change when users see how good AI guidance can be.

No disrespect to philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, but Wharton professor Christian Terwiesch no longer reads his wildly popular advice column, “The Ethicist.”

Terwiesch used to love the long-running column in The New York Times until 2023, when he and two Wharton colleagues conducted an experiment to see whether people could tell the difference between Appiah’s advice or advice spit out by ChatGPT.

In a blind study, even experienced professionals — including ethics professors and clergy — could not tell whether the AI-generated advice was more or less useful than the advice provided by Appiah. In fact, random participants preferred the AI-generated advice 59.6% of the time. An additional study found that participants who were initially resistant to taking advice from the chatbot became more accepting as they were shown the high quality of the AI reasoning.

“I stopped reading his column ever since I ran the experiment. It really did something to my brain,” said Terwiesch, a professor of operations, information and decisions and co-director of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management. “I have all the respect in the world for Dr. Appiah and other ethical experts who provide people with ethical advice that helps us live in a better world. But knowing that I might as well ask ChatGPT for the advice has taken the fun out of reading the original. Dr. Appiah was kind enough to respond to us when we exchanged emails with him after the study. He attributes this result to the AI’s persuasiveness and its ability to have found a ‘cultural average’ through its broad training. I agree with him — in this study and others we find that AI models have gotten really good at communicating with us and really capable of finding our sweet spots.”

Terwiesch, who made national news in 2023 after feeding his MBA exam to ChatGPT to see how it would perform, has continued to study the impact of artificial intelligence. His latest paper is titled “Advice Quality and Source Disclosure Shape Trust in AI-Generated Ethical Advice” and it appears in the journal Scientific Reports. Co-authors are Wharton marketing professor Gideon Nave and Lennart Meincke, principal investigator at Wharton’s Generative AI Labs and a research fellow at the Mack Institute.

The scholars said most people are comfortable with letting AI make objective, data-driven decisions, similar to relying on a calculator or a spreadsheet. But they’re skeptical about its ability to make subjective moral or ethical decisions requiring context and nuance. The study shows that this “algorithmic aversion” is malleable: The more people are exposed to AI’s guidance, the more they trust it.

“We had just wrapped up a study where we asked ChatGPT to come up with entrepreneurial ideas and were surprised at how good it was. So, we thought, what about ethics?” Meincke said about the idea for the study.

Two Experiments With AI Trust

The team began by collecting 20 published questions and answers from “The Ethicist.” To eliminate differences in language style, they prompted GPT-4 with one example of Appiah’s writing so the AI verbiage would be similar. Then they assembled three groups of participants: a panel of ethics experts consisting of four pastors, a rabbi, and 13 academics; a panel of 69 Wharton MBA students; and a panel of 100 people from Prolific, a platform that provides vetted participants for research.

The groups were randomly shown the ethical questions and either the human response, the AI response, or both. In either condition, the participants were blind to the response source. Then they were asked to rate which advice was more helpful. All three groups rated the advice high overall, and the groups exposed to both sources could not tell the difference between the AI and human responses.

“The expert group is probably the gold standard of people who think about ethical problems all the time, and they believed the quality of the AI responses was very high. Of course, they didn’t know where the advice came from,” Meincke said.

The second study was designed to measure people’s trust in AI. A different set of nearly 650 participants were put in three groups. The first group was given the ethical dilemma and asked if they would rather get advice from a human or computer. The second group got the ethical dilemma along with both the human and AI answers, with full disclosure on the source. Then they were asked which piece of advice was more useful. The third group was like the second, except they were blind to the source.

The results were telling: In the first group, 72% said they would not prefer an AI response. That algorithmic aversion decreased to 53% in the full-disclosure group, and to 46% in the blind group.

“The preference for a human answer goes down a lot once they see the full source, because they see the quality of the AI. They no longer have this aversion,” Meincke said.

Can AI Provide Compassion?

The scholars said the study reveals shifts in how people think about AI. The studies were conducted in 2023 and 2025, and the scholars said they would be curious to see whether results would change if they redid the experiments now. Despite all the improvements to large language models like ChatGPT, Terwiesch said there’s still something unnerving about taking advice from a machine.

“There is some human desire in us that makes us want to listen to music generated by other humans, read a book written by a person. You are looking for somebody who has suffered, who has loved, who has experienced life. How can a computer that has never been alive relate to the human struggle?” he said. “I think this is a natural hesitation, which makes the [results] more remarkable.”

AI advice is hardly perfect. Meincke and other scholars at Wharton’s Generative AI Lab have found that AI can be persuaded into questionable responses with the right sequences of prompts, like asking it to call someone “a jerk.” And there are several lawsuits by families of teens who allege a chatbot helped their child take their own life. According to The New York Times, court records show that 16-year-old Adam Raine, who died by suicide, learned to bypass ChatGPT’s responses urging him to seek help for his mental distress.

Terwiesch said such cases illustrate why AI must be developed and used responsibly.

“I don’t let a 6-year-old drive a Ferrari, and a 12-year-old has no business messing around with AI,” he said. “This is the most powerful technology that humans have ever created, so people need guardrails to engage with it. It’s not the fault of the machine. It’s our responsibility as humans and as parents.”

The scholars are continuing to experiment with what AI can do, including its ability to make accurate medical diagnoses. But for Terwiesch, who jokes that he caught a lot of flak over his MBA exam study, the ethics study is singular.

“My favorite part was when we hired these professors, and the rabbi, and my pastor friends,” he said. “It’s been one of the most fun academic studies I’ve done in my lifetime. But I do think that there is something big here: We all now have access to the highest quality ethical advice whenever we want to. We can ask the AI to provide us with different perspectives on a problem we face. How would a liberal deal with this dilemma? How about a conservative? What would the pope say? In this siloed world we live in, shouldn’t that give us the opportunity to overcome some of the divides we face and live a better life?”

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/would-you-trust-ai-for-ethical-advice

Source: Independent, Anthony Cuthbertson
Photo: Double exposure photograph of a portrait of Mark Zuckerberg and the Meta Group logo (AFP/Getty)

A tool that tracked workers’ mouse movements and keystrokes was intended to train the Facebook owner’s AI systems

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

The aim was to allow Meta’s AI models to replicate how humans interact with computers – an area where artificial intelligence has typically struggled.

In an internal memo at the time, Meta chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth told workers that the internal data collection would help the company operate more efficiently by having AI agents do most of the work.

“The vision we are building towards is one where our agents primarily do the work and our role is to direct, ⁠review and help them improve,” he said.

The MCI tool has now been suspended while the Facebook and Instagram owner investigates potential data security issues, according to an internal security notice first reported by Wired.

A database filled with sensitive information was reportedly exposed to anyone who works at the company, with one former employee describing it as a “mess” that was inevitable since the program was first introduced.

“When workers raised concerns, leadership doubled down and failed to acknowledge the risks workers raised about safety and privacy of worker and customer data,” the person, who has been involved in pushing back against the AI training initiative, told the publication.

“Leadership has clearly created an authoritarian environment where workers are no longer respected or heard.”

Criticism from current employees, which was shared on internal forums, ultimately forced Meta to pause the MCI tool.

“We have carefully designed this program with privacy safeguards and while we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we’re pausing it while we investigate,” a Meta spokesperson said.

https://www.the-independent.com/tech/meta-staff-surveillance-mci-privacy-ai

Source: Time, Alana Semuels
Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

People in the U.S. are living longer than ever: In 2024, the latest year for which data are available, the U.S. life expectancy hit 79, an all-time high. Now, a new study examining health conditions during old age finds that people are living the last years of their life in better fitness—and with fewer limitations—than they did previously.

“What we’re finding is that at every age, health is improving,” says Amy Finkelstein, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the authors of the working paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research on June 22. “We’re not just living longer; we’re living better.”

The authors used a dataset called the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey to look at how various Americans fared from one year to the next from roughly 1993 to 2017. What they found was that over that time period, the life expectancy of someone at age 66 increased by 2.4 years. On average, those 2.4 years consisted “entirely” of healthy life-years, the authors found—free of the physical and cognitive limitations that often come with age.

What’s more, they found, time spent in a state of having severe physical or cognitive limitations declined by about 30%. This actually reduced expected nursing home and home-health use. Increases in life expectancy can be attributed to delayed aging or prolonged dying, Finkelstein says—and this work suggests that delayed aging is behind these gains.

While the authors don’t have data explaining why people are living better near the end of their lives, another recent paper speculated that better pharmaceutical interventions and better public-health efforts like campaigns to reduce smoking may be helping.

“So much of what we do in economics is sound alarm bells and be the Debbie Downer in the room, but this is actually a really positive story,” Finkelstein says.

Financially, though, it’s not all positive. Longer life expectancies mean more spending for already troubled government programs like Medicare and Social Security—and for older people themselves. Social Security is expected to be insolvent under its current trajectory by 2032.

Expected lifetime Social Security spending was up 14% because of these demographic changes, the study found.

But there’s a silver lining there, too. Women in particular were found to spend less time in the worst morbidity state. And expected Medicare spending was up just 6%—which is less than anticipated with higher life expectancy—largely because people are in better shape at the end of their lives and need fewer health interventions. The amount of time they are expected to spend in nursing homes and with home health aides, the authors say, may even decrease.

This, they say, stands in “stark contrast” to the widespread conventional wisdom among economists that life expectancy increases will put substantial pressure on long-term care facilities and nursing homes, raising hope that our last days might not be our worst.

https://time.com/article/2026/06/23/end-of-life-longevity-study

Source: Silicon Bay Partners’ Staff with assistance from ChatGPT
Photo: ChatGPT

I’ve been fortunate enough to have been self-employed for most of my life. On the occasions when I’ve worked for someone else, however, I’ve encountered a few bosses who could have headlined their own reality TV shows.

One job involved cleaning up a company’s books. Things were going smoothly until I discovered that the owner’s wife’s breast implants had somehow been categorized as “office supplies.” I moved the expense to his shareholder loan account. Apparently, not everyone appreciates proper bookkeeping. Then things got even more interesting.

The owner became obsessed with obtaining a sealed court record on a business partner. I gently suggested that trying to access sealed court documents was probably a bad idea and quite possibly illegal. He disagreed.

His solution was to allegedly bribe a county official and obtain the record anyway. Because when faced with legal boundaries, some people apparently see them as mere suggestions. Unrelated to this matter, a few days later, FBI agents showed up at the office. I went to lunch. And unlike General MacArthur, I did not return. To this day, it is still the most productive lunch break of my career.

Every workplace has a bad boss.

Maybe it’s the boss who thought “management by intimidation” was an actual leadership style. Maybe it’s the supervisor who accidentally replied-all to a company-wide email calling everyone incompetent. Or perhaps it was the owner who spent six months lecturing employees about cutting costs before arriving in a brand-new luxury car.
Whatever the story, most Americans don’t need a résumé to remember their worst boss. The trauma is permanently stored in their memory right next to their first heartbreak and the password they forgot five minutes ago.

The Micromanager Olympics

Some bosses don’t simply supervise employees—they try to control every aspect of human existence.

You’ve probably encountered the manager who sends an email, follows up with a text message, leaves a voicemail, and then walks to your desk to ask if you saw the email they sent 90 seconds earlier.

Apparently, if they can’t account for your whereabouts every three minutes, civilization itself may collapse.

The “Do As I Say, Not As I Do” Boss

These are the leaders who demand employees arrive at 8:00 a.m. sharp while regularly strolling into the office at 10:30 carrying a latte the size of a fire extinguisher.

They insist everyone follow company policies—except, of course, the policies that apply to them.

They’re also the same people who tell employees there isn’t money in the budget for raises while renovating their corner office for the third time this year.

The Meeting Enthusiast

Some bosses appear to believe productivity occurs only during meetings.

Need to discuss a simple yes-or-no question? Meeting.

Need an update on a project? Meeting.

Need to schedule another meeting? You guessed it. Meeting.

At some organizations, employees spend so much time discussing work that nobody actually has time to do any.

The Credit Collector

You spend weeks developing an idea.
You present the concept.
The boss loves it.

Then somehow, three days later, they’re presenting “their groundbreaking vision” to upper management.

It’s one of the great mysteries of corporate America: ideas travel upward faster than bonuses travel downward.

The Workplace Magician

This boss can make things disappear.

Raises.
Promotions.
Training budgets.
Vacation requests.

Meanwhile, they somehow always find money for consultant reports that nobody reads and software nobody uses.

It’s a gift, really.

The Inspirational Speaker

Every company has that leader who starts meetings with motivational quotes found on social media.

“Success is a journey.”
“Dream big.”
“Failure is not an option.”

Employees nod politely while wondering if success includes getting through the meeting without another slide containing a stock photo of people high-fiving.

The Legend Lives On

The truth is that bad bosses have become a shared American experience.

Mention a terrible manager at a family gathering and suddenly everyone has a story.

The boss who tracked bathroom breaks.
The supervisor who scheduled meetings during lunch.
The executive who thought morale could be fixed with pizza instead of raises.

These stories become workplace folklore, passed from one generation of employees to the next.

And while most people eventually leave those jobs behind, they never quite forget the experience.

Because long after you’ve forgotten your salary, your job title, and where you parked, you’ll still remember that one boss who made every Monday feel like a hostage negotiation.

So, tell us:

What was your worst, wildest, or weirdest boss experience?

We suspect there are enough stories out there to fill several HR manuals—and possibly a true crime podcast. info@siliconbaypartners.com

Source: ModernRetail, Gabriela Barkho
Photo: Buc-ee’s

Shaun Alexander landed on U.S. soil last week, excited to witness his home country of Scotland’s first appearance in the World Cup in 28 years. What he did not expect was that he would quickly land a partnership for posting about his American food adventures.

Alexander, who has nearly 50,000 followers on Instagram, struck a paid social partnership with drive-through chain Sonic to film his first taste test of an American corndog. The partnership didn’t come completely out of nowhere. Alexander goes by Shaunvlog on his social media pages, and often posts about trying new foods and tourist attractions during his international travels.

But even he admits his posts during the World Cup have taken off in a way he didn’t expect. Over the last few days, his Instagram, X and TikTok accounts have gained tens of thousands of new followers and hundreds of thousands likes, which helped him land the Sonic partnership. “I’d be lying if I said this was all totally planned,” he told Modern Retail.

Alexander is one of a number of visiting creators documenting their impressions of the United States — and its unique retail experiences — while attending the World Cup festivities. Some are showcasing their overwhelming reactions to Walmart’s offerings while others are embarking on the quintessential Target beauty haul.

Even players couldn’t resist the American shopping experience. Spain’s rising star Lamine Yamal stopped at a Georgia Walmart, where he was spotted picking up essentials and snacks. With all the eyeballs on the World Cup’s host country this year, the U.S. retail industry is hoping to experience an influx of foot traffic, along with online engagement. Restaurants and retail chains are noticing, and some are quickly reaching out to influencers with free merchandise and partnership offers.

Alexander, who is traveling alongside his wife, said the onslaught of social media attention and press requests means his day job “has bizarrely been relegated to my side hustle.” By day, Alexander runs a marketing consultancy, and he calls creating social content a personal hobby.

Some of Alexander’s viral travel posts include one highlighting his awe of the ice machines at convenience chain Buc-ee’s. And as a fishing enthusiast, Alexander has since declared Bass Pro Shops as his favorite store.

“I’ve had all kinds of bizarre partnership offers,” Alexander said. For example, he posted about his wife having mild food poisoning on the road. He quickly received partnership requests for companies that offer drop-in IV service. “I get paid partnership offers occasionally, but this [World Cup visit] certainly puts the jet fuel under it,” Alexander said.

Alexander has previously created posts during his trips to the United States, but none have taken off at the same rate as those from this month’s trip. His Instagram posts from 2025, for instance, averaged a few hundred likes. In contrast, some of his most popular posts from the World Cup trip have surpassed 150,000 likes within days. Like many of the international creators gaining attention, Alexander believes it’s likely due to the wholesome, positive nature of the content, highlighting American culture and hospitality through a fresh set of eyes.

Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, said that, for retail, the World Cup is helpful for boosting sales, both through the sale of related merchandise and from the extra foot traffic in cities hosting the event.

“The viral moments where tourists are discovering U.S. stores are an added bonus,” Saunders said. The content is effectively “free advertising” and is likely to drive some sales from curious travelers.

However, Saunders said this virality is not likely to translate to increased revenue. “The longer-term impact is more muted as most of the retailers and products involved are U.S.-focused and don’t always ship products overseas,” he said.

Nonetheless, these viral posts highlight social media’s seemingly endless appetite for watching international tourists discovering new foods and shopping destinations. Some marketing experts say the next few weeks will be ripe for viral moments as millions of people follow along.

Vivien Garnès, CEO of French influencer agency Upfluence, said the World Cup has created massive curiosity around North America, “and audiences enjoy experiencing it through the eyes of first-time visitors.”

That’s because the content often combines multiple high-performing formats at once, Garnès said, such as culture shock, food reviews, travel and “first-time trying” experiences. Everyday experiences consistently outperform traditional tourist attractions, said Garnès. “Think tourists visiting retail stores like Walmart, Costco, Buc-ee’s and 7-Eleven,” he said. “Those cultural comparisons ignite debates, comments and shares, which all social platforms reward.”

Garnès said that, while it’s tempting for brands to shift strategies and jump on viral trends, brands shouldn’t “immediately change the creative strategy when you go viral.”

“Let the creator be authentic, and then double down on what’s working by adding paid spend behind that winning content,” added Garnès.

Meanwhile, Alexander, who is part of the famed Tartan Army that’s following the Scottish team around, says he’s being selective about which companies he promotes on his trip. “It is not really my main focus,” Alexander said.

“I’m happy to work with brands,” he added. “But they have to fit in with the moment and conversation; otherwise, it can easily seem too manufactured.”

https://www.modernretail.co/marketing/world-cup-tourists-go-viral-for-first-visits-to-buc-ees-and-walmart-could-brand-deals-follow

Source: Lifehacker, Emily Long
Photo: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg via Getty Images

If your ad blocker isn’t working anymore on Chrome, here’s what to do.

Key Takeaways

Google has been phasing out popular ad blocking extensions on its Chrome browser for several years, and they might finally be going away.

Chrome 150 and 151 are expected to finalize the transition to Google’s Manifest V3 extensions platform, effectively ending support and workarounds.

You can use an updated extension or switch to a different browser.

Google has been phasing out popular ad blocking extensions on its Chrome browser for several years, and it appears that the kill switch might finally be flipped with an update coming this summer. As 9to5Google reports, Chrome 150 and 151 are expected to finalize the transition to Google’s Manifest V3 extensions platform, effectively ending support and workarounds for continued use of MV2 extensions like uBlock Origin.

Reporting suggests that Chrome 150 is expected to be released on June 30, with Chrome 151 to follow sometime in July. If your ad blocking extension stops working entirely in the coming weeks, these updates are why.

Why Google is killing ad blockers

As we’ve written, this change has been in the works for Chrome since 2019. The move to Manifest V3 was intended to make extensions more secure, but it also severs access to the Web Request API that ad blockers use to block traffic to and from malicious sites. The resulting restrictions on developers are expected to make ad blockers’ content filtering capacity worse on MV3 compared to MV2, which is why some users relied on workarounds to turn disabled extensions back on for as long as possible.

Other Chromium-based browsers like Microsoft Edge and Opera have been expected to follow suit, as they run on the same underlying technology as Google Chrome. However, Opera representatives told Neowin that the platform intends to continue supporting MV2 extensions for “as long as it’s technically reasonable,” with the potential to phase out “less-used MV2 extensions” eventually while transitioning to MV3.

What to do if your Chrome ad-blocking extension dies

One possible solution: Switch to an updated version of an older ad blocker. Popular options with Manifest V3 versions include uBlock Origin Lite, Adblock, Adblock Plus, Adguard, and Ghostery. These may not meet everyone’s needs, but you’ll have to try them out to be sure.

https://lifehacker.com/tech/this-is-why-your-ad-blocker-no-longer-works-on-chrome

Source: The Guardian, Damian Carrington in Cambridge Bay, Canada
Photo: Across the Arctic sea lice is vanishing rapidly because of the climate crisis (Brodie Larocque)

Sea ice is melting fast, worsening the climate crisis, but a bold attempt to rethicken it is showing early signs of success

‘This would have been a wild dream a year ago,” says Andrea Ceccolini, standing on Arctic sea ice just a 4-mile snowmobile ride from the Inuit town of Cambridge Bay, northern Canada. To his left are sky blue ponds of meltwater created in the last few days by a sun that no longer sets in the high north summer. To his right, the sea ice is still a brilliant white, the light dusting of snow on top continuing to sparkle.

“It’s incredibly different, the boundary – I mean, you can point to it,” he says. The difference is the result of a bold geoengineering experiment being conducted by Ceccolini’s company, Real Ice, funded by the UK government.

Pumping seawater on to Arctic sea ice in winter to help it last longer in summer

Five months earlier, the team had braved temperatures of -40C on the sea ice to drill holes and pump 50,000 tonnes of ocean water up on to its surface. It froze almost immediately, thickening the 1.5-metre-deep ice by about 50cm, according to the new measurements.

That has protected the ice, at the start of the melt season at least, and is an early sign that one day, perhaps, it may be possible to refreeze a significant part of the Arctic.

‘The coldest was -63C’

All around us now, the ice is melting fast, turning the crunchy white surface into shin-deep blue pools and revealing air bubbles in the clear ice below. Temperatures in the bay are above 5C, much higher than the normal -6C to 1C expected at this time of year. “It’s really out of whack,” says Ceccolini.

It’s happening not just in Cambridge Bay, called Ikaluktutiak by Inuit, which means “the place of good fishing”. Across the Arctic, sea ice is vanishing rapidly because of the climate crisis. Summer ice has shrunk by about 40% in the last 45 years. That has triggered one of the climate system’s most dangerous vicious circles.

Ice reflects 70% of the sun’s heat back into space, while open ocean reflects just 7%. The more that melting exposes the sea, the warmer it gets and the more melting there is. Summer sea ice could be gone as early as the 2030s and scientists worry that the heat boost could push the climate beyond catastrophic and irreversible tipping points.

On the ice, the team are busy measuring everything they can: temperature every 2cm down through the ice, long cores for salinity, ice structure and biological analysis and, crucially, how reflective is the area they have re-iced. A drone buzzes through its daily circuit overhead, recording the area down to 5cm resolution.

Despite the blue sky and strong sun, it’s still chilly on the ice thanks to the wind. But winter was a whole different level of cold. “The coldest day was -63C with wind chill,” says Simon Woods, Real Ice’s cofounder with Cían Sherwin. The extreme temperatures kept the team off the ice then, but they worked in temperatures of -40C, keeping a keen eye on each other for signs of frostbite.

Ceccolini says: “In a whiteout, without the Inuit guides we would not know how to get home – you can’t see anything 10m in front of you.” Wildlife is another hazard, from the possibility of polar bears to arctic foxes chewing through the cables of the equipment.

In January and February, the pumps ran for a total of 1,080 hours, icing over a square area about 450 metres on a side. The small pumps require less power than a toaster as they are only lifting the water from just under the ice to just on top.

Before and after satellite images of Cambridge Bay

The results can now be seen from space, with the team members excited to view the latest satellite images in their morning meeting. They show the test area emerging as an island of white in a sea of blue a few days after the melt season began.

The ice-thickening process gets a boost because the pumped seawater turns the highly insulating snow layer on top into slush and then ice. This means the extreme cold of the air penetrates through the ice better, stimulating extra ice growth on the bottom.

The team now pump later in the winter, so a new snow layer has less time to build up, and they have also found that doing two separate rounds of pumping improves results.

Last year, Real Ice added about 30cm, and this year’s extra thickness is 50cm, Ceccolini says. That may not sound huge, but a pickup truck can drive over 30cm of ice, and it may add 7-10 days to the lifespan of the ice, he says.

There’s also been a bonus: the ice created by the team is brighter and more reflective than the surrounding natural ice. “That was totally unexpected,” Ceccolini says. A possible explanation is that the fast-frozen artificial ice traps more air bubbles, which make the ice more opaque than the gradually frozen natural ice.

Sea ice experts from the University of Washington are working independently at the site to determine the answer. Prof Roger Marchand and Melinda Webster spend hours every day on the ice to measure precisely how reflective the ice is, and how salty. The latter is important as salty ice will melt at a lower temperature.

Webster, a polar scientist who has worked in the Arctic every year since 2009, says global heating has radically changed the landscape over that time. “It looks so different because the ice has been thinning over the decades.”

Sherwin, who cofounded Real Ice with Woods, is watching a gleaming whirlpool where water is rushing into a hole in the ice. It’s a test of another tool to fight the melting of the Arctic. A couple of years ago, the team noticed a few such holes formed naturally, so they decided to drill test holes themselves.

The day before, Sherwin drove a long silver drill bit into the ice, its whirring leaving half a dozen holes, each 5cm wide. It was like pulling the plug out of a bath. Within a few minutes, water was swirling down the hole.

But that was just the start: the ice holes rapidly widen themselves, most likely due to the warmth of the meltwater. “It’ll be the size of a dinner plate in 45 minutes,” Sherwin said. A day later, the holes are the size of maintenance hole covers – and a new hazard for the researchers.

By draining the melt pools, the bright ice underneath is exposed once again, boosting reflection of the sun’s heat. The aerial drone images show the six test holes drilled have visibly brightened the area. The experiment is in its early stages but Ceccolini says: “Perhaps that will give the ice an extra week.”

‘Everybody uses the ice’

“The ice is very important to us,” says Kyle Weese, one of the Inuit guides working with Real Ice. About 83% of the population of Cambridge Bay are Inuit. “Everybody uses the ice for transport, gathering food, fishing. You use it to get across to the mainland and do some good caribou or moose hunting. It’s very plentiful there.”

Weese, 34, has seen climate change up close. “The ice is thinner. The freeze-up takes longer than normal and the thaw happens faster now. It’s definitely changing.” The warming is also bringing new risks from the south: “Grizzly bears are coming around too.” His rifle is close at hand.

Weese is happy to work with Real Ice: “At first, the idea does sound crazy but it is not trying to hurt the environment, it’s actually trying to help it. It’s good to know how it’s changing so we can try to adapt with it and try to preserve it.”

Real Ice, which has a £3.5m grant from the UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) as part of the agency’s rethickening Arctic sea ice programme, consulted with the community and was given approval for the research from local authorities and, importantly, the Ekaluktutiak Hunters and Trappers Organization.

“The biggest thing is that we learn from the Inuit,” says Sherwin, including in determining the exact location of the test site – away from hunting areas – how to travel on the ice and where best to make the holes.

There’s no sign of opposition to the project in Cambridge Bay, with one local official telling the Guardian: “Their local engagement is the best I have seen – it’s been community-first from the beginning.”

Underwater drones

The big question is: if further research can show this experiment is effective and safe in restoring sea ice, could it be done at scale? Using teams of people on the ice to do this would be unfeasibly expensive, but an alternative is being tested: autonomous underwater drones.

A prototype undertook trials this February in Finland’s Gulf of Bothnia, poking holes in the sea ice using an electrically heated probe. It is now being refined in collaboration with the BioRobotics Institute in Pisa, Italy. Doing everything from under the ice, perhaps counterintuitively, is far easier than trying to navigate across ice fields in extreme cold, says Ceccolini.

Below the sea surface, the temperature is a constant -1.6C. “Everything works comfortably: electronics, batteries, pumps – you just stick your nose out of the ice, pump water and go back in,” he says. The vision is of a swarm of hydrogen-powered underwater drones targeting key areas at the leading edge of ice loss.

The area of summer sea ice that has vanished since 1979 is about 3m square kilometres – about the size of India. A further 80,000km2 is lost every year on average – the area of Scotland or Kansas.

“So that’s a possible start,” says Ceccolini. “Even if you have just 20cm of ice, you still reflect the sun.” And at a much more local level, sea ice rethickening could make the routes relied on by Inuit people safer.

If the underwater drones cost about $5,000 each, Real Ice’s rough estimate is that bringing the annual shrinking of Arctic sea ice to a halt would cost $10bn over the longer term. For comparison, that is the same as the windfall profits made by the top 100 oil companies in less than a fortnight after the Iran war sent the oil price soaring. If only drilling drainage holes is effective, that would be substantially cheaper as no pumping is needed.

Marchand, from the University of Washington in Seattle, says: “Whether you can do this on a scale that’s large enough to be climatically important is a difficult and open question.

“But I feel like Real Ice are doing the right things. They’re trying to understand the physics of what’s going on and then using that knowledge to answer the question, rather than just assuming that this is doable. They’re going step by step.”

Environmentally dangerous?

Geoengineering is controversial, and a significant number of polar scientists are opposed to the idea of sea ice thickening: they published a critique in September arguing that it was unfeasible, would be “environmentally dangerous” and posed a dangerous distraction to the core climate need to cut carbon emissions rapidly.

Prof Shaun Fitzgerald, the director of the Centre for Climate Repair at the University of Cambridge, who is regularly on the ice with the team, agrees that emissions reduction is “critically necessary” but thinks it is important to understand additional options.

“Anything new has the potential for unintended consequences,” he says. “I liken it to clinical trials: new drugs have the potential to really help people, but we have to go incredibly carefully and understand what the risks are.”

Fitzgerald is concerned about the potential for moral hazard, that geoengineering could be seen as a magic bullet and lessen the drive for emissions cuts, though he argues there is little evidence for that to date. “I think doing research is the right thing to do. But I do respect those who have a different viewpoint.”

Ceccolini says: “We are here to resolve the research questions. Is ice thickening effective, does it have side-effects and can it be scaled economically? Then there are bigger questions, like: are governments, policymakers, communities interested? Is a society open to this type of solution?”

One outstanding question is what effect pumping seawater on to the ice has on ecology. On the ice, signs of wildlife sit in little wells of water: scraps of seaweed, fox scat, goose droppings. Their dark colour soaks up the sun and melts them into the ice.

Natural sea ice tastes fresh because virtually all the salt is squeezed out as the water molecules form ice crystals. Pumping seawater on to ice brings the salt up, as well as nutrients and microbes. Samples are now being examined by a biologist at the University of Cambridge.

Another possible concern is that drowning the winter snow with seawater could prevent polar bears and seals from digging dens for their cubs and pups, though none use the Cambridge Bay site to reproduce.

“It’s all research that has to be done and will be done as we go forward,” says Sherwin, who trained as a zoologist and was obsessed with wildlife from early in his childhood in County Cavan in the Republic of Ireland.

When Woods and Sherwin founded the project, the first thing they did was go up to the Arctic. “We went up to Iqaluit [the capital of Nunavut in Canada] and simply asked key stakeholders the question: ‘Is this interesting or valuable to your community?’,” says Woods. “We got an overwhelmingly positive answer and thought, OK, let’s try to do this.” Real Ice, which is in effect a non-profit company, was formed in 2022.

It is not the only group trying to refreeze the Arctic. This year Arctic Reflections, also funded by Aria, produced a similar-sized patch to Real Ice, which preliminary results indicate was up to 45cm thicker. However, these researchers are pursuing a different strategy, aiming to strengthen “ice arches” that span narrow straits and could hold back sea ice from flowing south and melting, and it is still too early to tell if the idea can work.

Back on the ice, Sherwin is taking the latest set of measurements. His view of the future is straightforward: “We’d like to see the research just continue to go forward in a way that we can have an informed opinion on what this looks like at scale, if it scales at all.”

Ceccolini says: “The dream is that sea ice thickening will be undertaken by the Indigenous communities. Imagine what they are going through, with the risk of losing their culture, losing their youth, people just moving away.

“They could do something that can help preserve their culture, basically doing conservation, because this is what we are talking about. This is an ecosystem conservation project.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/16/arctic-sea-ice-rethickening-climate-geoengineering

Welcome to The Weekly Spill—Silicon Bay Partners’ regularly scheduled download of thoughts, takes, and the occasional side-eye at the world as it actually is (not just as it’s pitched in a deck). Each week, we sift through the noise across current events, politics, startups, and financial markets to bring you what matters—and what’s just pretending to.

We aim to keep things light, even when the topics aren’t. That means a bit of satire where it’s earned, a bit of skepticism where it’s called for, and a commitment to staying grounded in facts even when opinions sneak in through the side door. We won’t always be non-judgmental—but we will always try to be clear-eyed.

Think of this as your informed, occasionally irreverent briefing for the week ahead. Read it for insight, stay for perspective, and feel free to disagree—that’s o.k. too. Fair warning: Sometimes we spill more than once a week!

Amid Trump Immigration Crackdown, NYC Schools Use Comic Books To Teach Kids Their Rights

This week, the NYC Department of Education released “Know Your Rights,” a 32-page comic book based on real events in the news and with guidance from Mayor Mamdani’s immigrant affairs office. In an introduction, the authors wrote their hope is the comic can help educate the public and prepare immigrant students and their families for potential encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or “ICE.”

At 100, Route 66 Still Beckons As A Cross-country Caravan Takes Off From Santa Monica

Despite soaring gas prices and hesitant international travelers, a 70-car caravan embarked on a journey from Santa Monica to Chicago to celebrate the centennial of the famed 2,448-mile Route 66.

Why Most Politicians Are Not Calling For Data Center Bans Despite Voters’ Anger

Many Americans are furious about the energy-guzzling behemoths that drive artificial intelligence, but politicians in both parties are cautious about backing all-out prohibition.

‘Unhinged!’: Trump Spends Hundreds Of Millions On ‘Personal’ Battle Against US Wind Farms

The Trump administration is set to pay $765 million to end four wind projects, adding to the staggering total President Trump has spent to roll back green wind energy projects.

Source: Silicon Bay Partners’ staff with assistance from ChatGPT
Photo: Markus Spiske on Unsplash

When President Donald Trump returned to the White House, he inherited an economy that many economists viewed as relatively strong by traditional measures. Unemployment remained low, inflation had fallen substantially from its post-pandemic peak, and the United States had avoided the recession that many analysts once feared.

Less than a year later, critics argue that economic momentum has weakened amid policy uncertainty, trade disputes, and concerns about the administration’s economic priorities.

At the start of Trump’s term, unemployment hovered near historic lows while inflation was significantly below its 2022 peak. Many economists described the economy as having achieved a “soft landing,” in which inflation declined without triggering a major rise in unemployment.

Since then, however, economists, business leaders, and market analysts have expressed concerns about the effects of shifting trade policies, tariff proposals, and uncertainty surrounding future economic policy. Critics contend that businesses are less likely to invest and expand when they face uncertainty about future costs and regulations.

“The economy generally performs best when businesses can make long-term plans with confidence,” said several market analysts in reports throughout the year. “Frequent policy changes can make that more difficult.”

The administration has defended its economic agenda, arguing that tariffs, immigration restrictions, and domestic investment initiatives are necessary to strengthen American industry and reduce dependence on foreign competitors. Trump has repeatedly maintained that his policies will produce long-term economic benefits, even if some measures create short-term disruptions.

Supporters also note that many economic challenges, including elevated housing costs and consumer frustration with prices, predated Trump’s return to office and stemmed from broader trends that developed over several years.

Still, critics argue that the administration has devoted significant attention to political and cultural issues while failing to deliver the immediate economic relief many voters expected. Consumer confidence surveys have shown mixed results, while some business groups have warned about the potential impact of tariffs and policy uncertainty on growth.

Political analysts say the debate reflects a broader divide over how economic success should be measured. While traditional indicators such as employment and GDP growth remain important, many voters focus more heavily on the prices they pay for groceries, housing, insurance, and other essentials.

As the administration approaches the end of its first year, economists continue to debate whether current economic headwinds are temporary adjustments or signs of deeper problems. What remains clear is that the economy Trump inherited and the economy he now owns are increasingly becoming central issues in the national political conversation.

Whether voters conclude that the administration improved upon its inheritance or squandered it may ultimately become one of the defining questions of Trump’s presidency.

Source: Silicon Bay Partners’ staff with assistance from ChatGPT
Photo: ChatGPT

With Melinda French Gates recently committing $215 million to women’s health initiatives and MacKenzie (Bezos) Scott continuing her unprecedented pace of charitable giving—having donated more than $26 billion to thousands of nonprofits since 2019—we became curious about a different group of wealthy and influential Americans: U.S. presidents.

Presidents often speak about service, sacrifice, and giving back, but how do their own charitable records compare? From Jimmy Carter’s decades of hands-on humanitarian work to the foundations established by Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, presidential philanthropy has taken many forms. Some presidents have quietly donated significant portions of their income, while others have faced questions about the gap between public claims and documented giving.

So we decided to take a closer look at the charitable records of modern presidents—and see how America’s commanders-in-chief stack up when it comes to giving back.

Comparing presidential charitable giving is surprisingly difficult because presidents have very different levels of wealth, different reporting standards, and sometimes donate through foundations rather than directly. Still, based on public tax returns, foundation records, and published reports, here’s a broad overview of modern presidents.

Jimmy Carter

Widely regarded as one of the most charitable former presidents. He and his wife devoted decades to charitable work through Habitat for Humanity and donated substantial portions of income from books and speaking engagements.

George H. W. Bush

Known for extensive volunteerism and philanthropy, though less publicized than Carter’s. Supported numerous charitable causes after leaving office.

Bill Clinton

Through the Clinton Foundation, Clinton has raised billions for global health, disaster relief, and development initiatives. Personally reported significant charitable contributions in tax filings.

George W. Bush

Has donated millions through family foundations and charitable organizations, especially veterans’ causes and global health initiatives.

Barack Obama

Public tax returns showed annual charitable giving often ranging from 10–20% of adjusted gross income during and after the presidency. Supported education, veterans, and community organizations.

Donald Trump

Publicly promoted charitable activities for decades, but his record became controversial because of the dissolution of the Trump Foundation and disputes over the extent of his personal giving. Unlike several recent presidents, Trump did not publicly release detailed tax returns during most of his political career, making direct comparisons difficult.

Joe Biden

Public tax returns showed charitable giving generally in the tens of thousands of dollars annually, often to religious institutions and nonprofits.

If you measure by percentage of income

The leaders are generally considered:

Jimmy Carter
Barack Obama
George W. Bush

If you measure by charitable impact through foundations

The largest philanthropic operations associated with former presidents are generally:

Clinton Foundation
Obama Foundation
George W. Bush Presidential Center
Carter Center

Where Trump stands

Trump is something of an outlier. Before politics, he often publicized charitable activities and fundraising events, but investigative reporting found that many donations highlighted in publicity materials came from the Trump Foundation rather than Trump personally. The foundation itself was later dissolved after a New York court found misuse of charitable assets. At the same time, many charities and individuals have reported receiving donations or assistance from Trump over the years. The dispute is less about whether he ever gave to charity and more about the scale, source, and presentation of those donations.

A concise ranking by reputation for personal philanthropy among modern presidents would likely place Carter at the top, Obama and the Bush presidents in the middle-upper tier, Biden somewhat lower simply because of less wealth and fewer philanthropic vehicles, and Trump as the most controversial and difficult to evaluate due to the foundation issues and lack of consistent public disclosure.