Did you make an action figure avatar of yourself? Do you ask ChatGPT every time you have a question? Does Co-Pilot write your emails for you?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, did you think about the energy consumption and sustainability consequences?

We tell you how much energy a ChatGPT search uses – and as generative AI becomes increasingly commonplace, and infrastructure spring up around the world to cope with demand, we need to understand these often-invisible costs that come with it. It might even cost you a loaf from your local bakery!

Professor Adrian Friday – still not a fan of the Sustainable Development Goals – returns to talk to us about data centres, what they are, how big they are, and what happens in them; who they provide services for; their need for rare earth metals; and the need to cool and power them – and to deal with the heat they generate. It turns out data centres use more energy each year than Italy – and the demand is growing faster than the system can cope with.

We discover why Adrian’s picture (with silly hat included) is stuck on Paul’s fridge; contemplate the logistical difficulties of putting a data centre at the bottom of the sea; discuss the potential need to take an army of ninjas to change a lightbulb; realise the importance of AI to the survival of the Welsh language; and rant about the blanket default of AI across all of life.

And remember, to turn off the AI functionality of a ‘normal’ Google search, simply type ‘-ai’ at the end of your search.

A UK Parliament research briefing provides an entry point to our discussions: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10315/

And discover more about Adrian’s work here: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/sci-tech/about-us/people/adrian-friday

People are trafficked illegally around the world every day. They are coerced and exploited – the victims of criminal gangs, of war, of poverty, and are exploited for commercial and sexual means.

We return to the topic of modern slavery, this time with someone who has experience on the ground in the UK, Greece, Australia, and Bangladesh, and who has some shocking tales to tell.

Kyla Raby is an antislavery specialist completing her PhD at the University of South Australia. She has designed and managed support services for refugees and survivors of trafficking, is a Non-Executive Director of Be Slavery Free, and was an inaugural member of the New South Wales Anti-Slavery Commissioner's advisory panel. In other words, she knows her stuff.

We uncover the extent of human trafficking into the UK and the development of response services; how Modern Slavery Acts in Britain and Australia changed the situation in the two countries; the problem of forced marriage and domestic violence; the importance of recognising the impact of trauma on trafficking victims and building support structures; and the problem of relying on consumer behaviour to force corporations to change their actions on modern slavery in their supply chains.

Kyla talks us through her time in Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee camp on the border of Bangladesh and Myanmar – home to around 1.4 million people (which would make it the second-largest city in the UK). This is a hotspot for human trafficking, and one negatively affected by cuts to global aid funding. And we compare this with Greece in 2016, towards the end of the refugee crisis.

Kyla is also Australian, prompting Jan to test Paul out on his knowledge of the differences between New Zealand and Oz, and create a new species of koala bears made from kiwi fruit.

Watch the Everyday Slavery series here: https://www.youtube.com/@Everyday_Slavery

Find out about the Palermo Protocol, designed to present, suppress and punish trafficking in persons: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/protocol-prevent-suppress-and-punish-trafficking-persons

And the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act: https://oag.ca.gov/SB657

And, finally, discover more about Kyla and her work here: https://people.unisa.edu.au/Kyla.Raby#About-me

What’s the weather like in space? This isn’t the British obsession with the weather gone made, it really exists!

It may not be covered in the TV forecasts, but it affects our lives – and on technology.

This is not Michael Fish and telling us about rain on Mars, or storms on Jupiter, but how solar activity influences us on earth.

Jim Wild is President-Elect of the Royal Astronomical Society and a Professor of Space Physics at Lancaster University, and is perfectly placed to tell us all about what space weather is.

He brings us up to (light) speed about solar flares, predicting the sun’s behaviour, how space operators can protect themselves, how it might affect you and your phone, the importance of the Earth’s magnetic field (and its similarities with the shields on the Starship Enterprise), monitoring the aurora borealis, and his work with UK infrastructure operators on the risk of space weather to their operations.

Plus, we learn about the Carrington Event in 1859, when telegraph lines went haywire after a giant solar flare erupted. What might happen if something similar were to occur in the modern electronic world? How often do these big solar events happen (and could they be bigger)? And how does it all tie in with the Northern Lights over Lancaster and GPS glitches for farmers and their tractors in California?

You can find out about Aurora Watch UK here: https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/

See the latest space weather forecasts from the UK Met Office here: https://weather.metoffice.gov.uk/specialist-forecasts/space-weather

And discover more about Jim and his work here: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/sci-tech/about-us/people/jim-wild