There's plenty of news right now about how people are trying to make real money through video games, and not just by trying to get a taste of that Ninja game-streaming fortune. Most recently, people are selling items for hard cash inside the new Animal Crossing: New Horizons. As the coronavirus takes a hammer to the economy and a number of people are at risk of penury, selling goods inside the game seems like a good idea. But while there's plenty of hype about the potential for virtual economies to thrive as the real-world ones collapse, the truth is a little different. If you're unfamiliar, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a sim game for the Nintendo Switch in which you build a life for yourself in a community of adorable, anthropomorphic animals. You fish, grow fruit, craft tools and furniture while working to improve your island home.

New writing… Pleased to say I have had another article published in The Times newspaper, as part of a special Raconteur report on Sustainable Business. The piece examines arguments For and Against the use of AI to achieve sustainabilty objectives and goals. As with many data-hungry tech solutions, artificial intelligence can end up consuming vast amounts of energy, as something of an unintended and unsustainable consequence of its development and implementation. However, given the many ways it can also be used to aid sustainability projects, maybe the pros outweigh the cons? The full 28-page Sustainable Business report is available to view/download here.

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. From the start, they have also made significant efforts to do this in a way that doesn't deplete the world's natural resources. The company has been fully carbon neutral since 2007 and ten years later they are hoping they have achieved the next major goal – drawing every watt of energy they use for their business operations from renewable sources. Kate E Brandt, their lead for sustainability, spoke to me about some of the ways they have been tackling this ambitious challenge while she was visiting London to speak at the Economist Sustainability Summit 2018. She told me "We set a goal in 2012 that we wanted to purchase 100% renewable energy for our operations – so it's a longstanding commitment.

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. From the start, they have also made significant efforts to do this in a way that doesn't deplete the world's natural resources. The company has been fully carbon neutral since 2007 and ten years later they are hoping they have achieved the next major goal – drawing every watt of energy they use for their business operations from renewable sources. Kate E Brandt, their lead for sustainability, spoke to me about some of the ways they have been tackling this ambitious challenge while she was visiting London to speak at the Economist Sustainability Summit 2018. She told me "We set a goal in 2012 that we wanted to reach a point where 100% of the energy used for our operations was coming from renewables – so it's a longstanding commitment.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing rapidly, thanks to ever-more-powerful computing, massive growth in the availability of digital data and increasingly sophisticated algorithms. The world's largest technology firms are investing billions to develop their AI capabilities, and companies across industries, from travel to real estate to fashion, are racing to bring AI-enabled services to market. "The world's largest technology firms are investing billions to develop their AI capabilities." AI has the potential to bring significant social benefits, including healthcare (via improved diagnostics), transportation (through self-driving vehicles) and law enforcement (with improved fraud detection). AI also brings new social risks, including discrimination (from algorithmic bias), privacy (through the misuse of personal information), child rights (through lack of informed consent) and labor rights (because of the mass displacement of workers by machines).