Data centres' growing thirst for water, land and power · ASD flags foreign AI vendor control as board-level cyber risk · AI suspicions sink author's $2M book deal · Dogwood adds history-aware temporal policies to Cedar authorization · GLM-5.2 reaches frontier capability without frontier safeguards · Bending Spoons buys Airtable for $1.28B in cash · [Response truncated due to max_tokens limit] · ZeroNorth launches Propel, agentic AI that manages voyages autonomously · Google reshuffles AI leadership as Hassabis eyes AGI · Meta's Muse Spark 1.2 closes agentic gap, costs more · Demis Hassabis steps down as Google DeepMind CEO · SpaceX rocket crash joins moon's long history of impacts · Hassabis steps aside as Google DeepMind CEO in shake-up · SpaceX's wandering Falcon 9 rocket crashes into the moon · India targets Bitchat's source code on GitHub amid protests · RADAR tests whether AI agents can reach government services · University of Tokyo disciplines professor over 'Tiananmen code' · PR firm secretly pitched journalists using fake AI personas · Texas halts data center grid connections amid AI demand surge · OpenAI accounts for most of Microsoft's AI revenue · Data centres' growing thirst for water, land and power · ASD flags foreign AI vendor control as board-level cyber risk · AI suspicions sink author's $2M book deal · Dogwood adds history-aware temporal policies to Cedar authorization · GLM-5.2 reaches frontier capability without frontier safeguards · Bending Spoons buys Airtable for $1.28B in cash · [Response truncated due to max_tokens limit] · ZeroNorth launches Propel, agentic AI that manages voyages autonomously · Google reshuffles AI leadership as Hassabis eyes AGI · Meta's Muse Spark 1.2 closes agentic gap, costs more · Demis Hassabis steps down as Google DeepMind CEO · SpaceX rocket crash joins moon's long history of impacts · Hassabis steps aside as Google DeepMind CEO in shake-up · SpaceX's wandering Falcon 9 rocket crashes into the moon · India targets Bitchat's source code on GitHub amid protests · RADAR tests whether AI agents can reach government services · University of Tokyo disciplines professor over 'Tiananmen code' · PR firm secretly pitched journalists using fake AI personas · Texas halts data center grid connections amid AI demand surge · OpenAI accounts for most of Microsoft's AI revenue

Memia - AI Situational Awareness

STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE FOR AI DECISION-MAKERS

Horizon-scanning and sensemaking for governments, capital and operators navigating the AI economy.

Latest briefings

A live read on what moved across the AI landscape, what it means, and what's next.

Upcoming Events

Agentic Engineering Day New Zealand
AIOctober 21, 2026

Agentic Engineering Day New Zealand

Agentic Engineering Day New Zealand is a community-driven conference for builders working with AI agents, MCP, AI infrastructure, and production AI systems. The event brings world-class AI engineering...

How Exponential AI Is Shaping the Future of International Development
International DevelopmentSeptember 8, 2026

How Exponential AI Is Shaping the Future of International Development

Memia's Head of Research Ben Reid will be delivering a keynote at The Council for International Development's two-day annual conference in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington in September. The conference b...

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Memia Writing

Mind-expanding essays and frameworks on AI, accelerating technology, and the future.

Anatomy of an AI agent (mid-2026 edition)

June 9, 2026

Anatomy of an AI agent (mid-2026 edition)

Models, tokens, harnesses, agents, skills, tools - making sense of a dynamic vocabulary....

The Intelligent Interstitium: What Lies Between

April 2, 2026

The Intelligent Interstitium: What Lies Between

An exploration of the connective layer between human minds, tracing how communication media have evolved from passive channels into increasingly agentic systems that now participate in thought itself....

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Sensorium Signal Scanning

Real-time links and signal scanning from across the web, tracked through Memia Sensorium.

Data centres' growing thirst for water, land and power

Data centres' growing thirst for water, land and power

Signals:

  • AI data centers create massive, unsustainable demands on local water and electricity supplies.
  • Rapid infrastructure growth triggers significant environmental concerns and potential regulatory moratoriums.
  • Decision makers must balance digital economic benefits against critical resource scarcity risks.
ASD flags foreign AI vendor control as board-level cyber risk

ASD flags foreign AI vendor control as board-level cyber risk

Signals:

  • Foreign ownership of AI providers is now a critical board-level cyber risk.
  • AI accelerates threat timelines, compressing vulnerability exploitation from days to mere hours.
  • Boards must implement strict governance to manage AI-driven security and sovereignty vulnerabilities.
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Interpret the future

Key narrative axes which Memia is tracking relating to Artificial Intelligence trends and impacts

Is it an AI Bubble?

There is no AI investment bubble

AI companies continue to justify their vast valuations and continue to raise capital. Valuations do not collapse suddenly.

The AI investment bubble will burst imminently

The gigantic amounts of money flowing into AI companies in 2022-2026 is seen not to generate returns and AI company valuations collapse very soon.

AGI Safety Alignment Progress

Robust Solutions

Robust, verified alignment solutions are developed and thoroughly tested before AGI deployment, ensuring AI systems reliably pursue intended goals and values.

Minimal Safeguards

Minimal safeguards are implemented due to competitive pressures and technical challenges, leaving significant alignment problems unsolved at AGI arrival.

AGI Regulatory Environment

Global Coordination

Strong international governance frameworks emerge with coordinated policies, standards, and oversight mechanisms for AGI development and deployment.

Fragmented Landscape

Fragmented regulatory landscape develops with inconsistent national policies and AI development havens undermining global coordination efforts.

AGI Hardware Requirements

New Breakthrough Computing Technologies

AGI requires quantum, photonic, thermodynamic or other breakthrough computing technologies, creating additional technical barriers and development timelines.

Existing Architectures

AGI emerges through scaling existing semiconductor architectures and optimizing current computing paradigms without fundamental hardware breakthroughs.

AGI Economic Transition Speed

Gradual Integration

Gradual economic integration allows for smooth adaptation, retraining programs, and managed transition of workforce and business models.

Sudden Displacement

Sudden economic displacement occurs as AGI capabilities rapidly automate broad sectors, causing significant disruption and social adjustment challenges.

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