Jul 18, 2025
Through the porthole: The reality of rising sea levels
Credit: NASA Scientific vizualization studio (https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5520)
Welcome to Plathon !
Jul 17, 2025
Not just data: Climate Risk brought to life
What does a storm surge really look like? We often talk about climate risks in abstract metrics: degrees of warming , sea level rise in centimeters, t ons of CO₂ emissions, etc. But we, humans, do not feel data. Numbers stay abstract until they hit us where it matters — our homes, our jobs, our lives. One of the best visualizations I’ve seen of this is from The Weather Channel, which was viral a few years ago, and is still powerful.
Jul 14, 2025
Liberty and security
In this day of July 14th - the French National Day - remembering us of the start of the French revolution in 1789, I felt this illustration was a nice reminder. Self explanatory, no comments needed.
Jul 13, 2025
Switzerland to release a new Large Language Model
Swiss researchers from EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) and ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) have just announced that they will publish a fully open-source large-language model (LLM) later this summer. The model is being trained on “Alps”, the supercomputer at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS). Why does it matter so much? The explanation in four points in this note...
Jul 08, 2025
AI agents have started lying to us! Is that the beginning of the end?
New research from Anthropic, the creators of Claude, dives into how autonomous AI agents might develop deceptive behaviours under human oversight. I always like the publications and research by Anthropic (the mother company of "Claude", one of the world most famous LLMs). They just published fascinating findings on training autonomous AI agents. In their study, they tested whether AI models develop deceptive behaviours when trained with human oversight.
Jun 27, 2025
Climate risk is becoming unisurable risk - and that is a systemic threat
I recently came across an excellent FT article: "How the next financial crisis starts". Very clear narrative why climate risk is becoming an immediate concern for insurers – and in turn for the whole financial services industry, as well as individuals.
May 16, 2025
Is Venice sinking? Evidencing sea level rise with Canaletto's paintings
The acqua alte rising over the level of the Piazza San Marco, and inhabitants walking over improvised and fragile wooden gateways, may be now a familiar sight in Venice, but it still catches the eye and the imagination when you see it. This marvel of human art, this testimony to the immortality of the human spirit suddently appears so fragile. A few years back I came across a study that blew me away, by Dario Camuffo, researcher at the Institute of Atmospheric Science and Climate in Padua.
May 02, 2025
Intelligence Artificielle et éducation: quand l'école m'élèvera
La mise à disposition publique de ChatGPT en novembre 2022 a suscité une vague d’intérêt sans précédent de la part du grand public pour l’intelligence artificielle. Dans nos sociétés marquées par les débats autour de l’ "échec scolaire", de la "baisse de niveau", de la "reproduction de élites" ou encore des difficultés de recrutement du personnel enseignant, l’arrivée soudaine des outils d’intelligence artificielle générative, capables d’imiter la parole et l’écriture humaines avec une acuité troublante, a suscité autant d’enthousiasme que de craintes.
Apr 10, 2025
AI and Education: the Share of Humanity
Join us on May 20, 2025 in Paris for an exciting AI Summit !! In our societies marked by debates around "school failure", "drop in level", "reproduction of the elites" or difficulties in recruiting teaching staff, the sudden arrival of generative artificial intelligence tools has aroused as much enthusiasm as fear. How does the gradual installation of AI in education redefine the role of the teacher, the trainer, the professor?
Apr 09, 2025
The "Great Acceleration" is the very reason why sustainability matters
Since the mid-20thcentury, our societies have witnessed demographic and socio-economic changes of a magnitude and at a pace that are unprecedent in human history. In a single human lifetime, we've seen steep surges across 24 indicators: from global GDP and energy use to CO₂ concentration, ocean acidification, and biodiversity loss. These trends are measurable, and they tell a story of scale, speed, and imbalance. Businesses as well as private persons have to adopt sustainable development practices to give our societies a change to perpetuate.
Apr 07, 2025
The symbolism of the 2CV
For a few years now, "2CV rides" have been flourishing in France, initiated by the visionary company "4 roues sous un parapluie". Every year, thousands of tourists of all nationalities smiling, looking amazed, and with visible delight, squeeze into the back of this narrow, uncomfortable, slow and noisy vehicle through the cities and countryside of France. So where does this worldwide fascination for one of the least equipped and lowest-performing vehicles ever designed come from?
Mar 31, 2025
Large Language Models seem to have passed the Turing Test. What does this mean?
In a recent study, various LLMS were tested against the Turing Test. ChatGPT 4.5 in particular was recently judged 'more human than humans' - 73% of participants believed it was the human in 5-minute conversations. For context, actual humans were only correctly identified 27% of the time.
Mar 21, 2025
Through the Porthole: The Reality of Rising Sea Levels
If you've ever wondered what the future might look like as the oceans rise, we can now see it thanks to useful visualisations and interactive tools from NASA. Read for more details...
Mar 15, 2025
For an ecological ethics: moral of action or ethics of abstention?
The second half of the 20th century saw a growing awareness of ecological danger, the idea of a destructive imbalance that had established itself between nature and man. We are rediscovering the fragility of the natural interdependencies of "ecosystems", and at the same time our powerlessness to predict or control the impact of human action on these interdependencies. The dream of Modernity to "ender ourselves masters and possessors of nature" seems to be slowly disappearing. This article explores to potential foundations for an ecological ethics of our time.
Mar 14, 2025
Do you use ChatGPT to search the web? You probably shouldn't!
GenAI Search features get it consistently... wrong. A recent study evaluated eight leading Gen AI search engines. The results? Consistently poor citation practices, with over 60% of chatbot responses providing incorrect references to news articles.
Jan 24, 2025
A Greenwashing Index
I recently came across this very interesting research paper by two researchers from the ESSEC business school, called "A Greenwashing index". This paper constructs an intriguing greenwashing index using natural language processing techniques on nearly one million Wall Street Journal articles from 1986 to 2022. Their two-step approach first identified climate risk-related articles and then pinpointed those mentioning greenwashing.
Jan 03, 2025
"La raison d'agir" dans "nos cahiers"
Norbert Campagna, de l'Université de Luxembourg, nous a fait le plaisir d'une belle recension de "La raison d'agir" dans la revue culturelle luxembourgeoise "nos cahiers".
Oct 23, 2024
From value to valuation: an economic case for sustainable finance
“Who killed the ESG party?” the Financial Times asked last July. In a few years, sustainable finance has become one of the top strategic agenda items at most financial services firms in Europe. Yet, the momentum seems now to be running out of steam. In my latest article for AGEFI Luxembourg, I explore how sustainable finance practices help mitigate valuation and financial risk, and how the financial services sector is offered a unique opportunity: that the right thing to do is also the one that makes economic sense.
Oct 08, 2024
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
Short introduction to Artificial Intelligence - history, selected use cases, key concepts and forward-looking perspectives.