Kill Switch.

Somalia on steroids.

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1. A Norwegian mining company yesterday announced it had found the largest deposit of rare earths in Europe in the southeast of the country. Rare Earths Norway (REN) said the Fensfelt deposit has 8.8 million tonnes of total rare earth oxides (TREO), which are essential for the transition to green technology. More details here. (Sources: muser.press, rareearthsnorway.com)

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2. Artificial intelligence heavyweights in California are protesting against a state bill that would force technology companies to adhere to a strict safety framework including creating a “kill switch” to turn off their powerful AI models, in a growing battle over regulatory control of the cutting-edge technology. The Californian legislature is considering proposals that would introduce new restrictions on tech companies operating in the state, including the three largest AI start-ups OpenAI, Anthropic and Cohere as well as large language models run by Big Tech companies such as Meta. The bill, passed by the state’s Senate last month and set for a vote from its general assembly in August, requires AI groups in California to guarantee to a newly-created state body that they will not develop models with “a hazardous capability”, such as creating biological or nuclear weapons or aiding cyber security attacks. “If someone wanted to come up with regulations to stifle innovation, one could hardly do better,” said Andrew Ng, a renowned computer scientist who led AI projects at Alphabet’s Google and China’s Baidu, and who sits on Amazon’s board. “It creates massive liabilities for science-fiction risks, and so stokes fear in anyone daring to innovate.” (Sources: ft.com, andrewng.org)

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3. Bureau of International Settlements:

Project mBridge continues its development and has reached the minimum viable product (MVP) stage, while broadening its international reach. The project aims to explore a multi-central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform shared among participating central banks and commercial banks, built on distributed ledger technology (DLT) to enable instant cross-border payments and settlement. 

Project mBridge is the result of extensive collaboration starting in 2021 between the BIS Innovation Hub, the Bank of Thailand, the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, the Digital Currency Institute of the People's Bank of China and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. The Saudi Central Bank is joining mBridge as a full participant. There are also now more than 26 observing members. 

The project aims to tackle some of the key inefficiencies in cross-border payments, including high costs, low speed and operational complexities. It also addresses financial inclusion concerns, particularly in jurisdictions where correspondent banking (which connects countries to the global financial system) has been in retreat, causing additional costs and delays. Multi-CBDC arrangements that connect different jurisdictions in a single common technical infrastructure offer significant potential to improve the current system and allow cross-border payments to be immediate, cheap and universally accessible with final settlement.