Apple’s AI groundwork, OpenAI chip flex, and the joys of aeroplane contrails

Cognitive warmup. Remember when as kids, looking up at the sky and seeing those long white streaks being made by an aircraft told us two things. First, it was really high up in the sky and secondly, it was a ‘transcontinental flight’. We were young, we lived in simpler times, these little joys meant a lot, with a hope for the future. Watching these contrails form and then slowly dissipate as the aircraft disappeared from sight on the blue canvas. Apparently, these contrails are a bad thing, and AI wants to solve them.

Google and the UK government are collaborating on what is likely to be a 30-month project in the Shanwick airspace above the northeastern Atlantic Ocean, to test ways in which aeroplanes don’t create these contrails anymore.