The Download: how AI is improving itself, and hidden greenhouse gases

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg declared that Meta aims to achieve smarter-than-human AI. He seems to have a recipe for achieving that goal, and the first ingredient is human talent: Zuckerberg has reportedly tried to lure top researchers to Meta Superintelligence Labs with nine-figure offers.

The second ingredient is AI itself. Zuckerberg recently said on an earnings call that Meta will focus on building self-improving AI—systems that can bootstrap themselves to higher and higher levels of performance. He hopes to tap into a very real trend. Here are five ways that AI is already making itself better.

—Grace Huckins

The greenhouse gases we're not accounting for

Back in 2021, climate scientists noticed that levels of methane had soared in the atmosphere the previous year, rising at the fastest rate on record despite the global covid-19 lockdowns.

Researchers eventually spotted a clear pattern: Methane emissions had increased sharply across the tropics, where wetlands were growing wetter and warmer.

The findings offer one of the clearest cases so far where climate change itself is driving additional greenhouse-gas emissions from natural systems, triggering a feedback effect that threatens to produce more warming, more emissions, and on and on.

There's now a major endeavor underway to better track and understand what's going on. Read our story about it.