Jensen Huang May Be Asked to Step Down by Nvidia's Board, and AI Short Dramas No Longer Require Human Actors

Nvidia's board is reportedly meeting as early as today to decide whether Jensen Huang will stay in his post. News of the meeting drove Nvidia's share price down 8%. While this move will send shockwaves across the AI industry, there are a few parallel developments worth examining together: chip export controls are tightening, AI is being deployed to detect AI-manufactured bioweapons, and Anduril uses infrared sensors to track spacecraft in dark orbital zones. On the content industry front, China's AI short drama production pipeline has fully eliminated the need for human actors, camera crews and CGI specialists.

COP31 Kicks Off Amid Unfavorable Circumstances

COP31 opens in Antalya, Turkey, with thousands of delegates, lobbyists and journalists in attendance. The backdrop is far from positive: energy prices are surging, and the world is drifting further away from the Paris Agreement targets. Fossil fuel regulations and climate financing will be the core sticking points in negotiations, and whether delegates can reach meaningful actionable agreements is the key highlight of this conference. Casey Crownhart from MIT Technology Review breaks down the key background information you need to know.

Jensen Huang and Chip Export Controls: Two Closely Intertwined Issues

The WSJ reports that Nvidia's board will meet as early as today to decide Jensen Huang's future at the firm, and the company's stock dropped 8% following the report. The piece also cited rumors of his extramarital affair with a fellow Nvidia employee, and Axios notes that his departure could send major ripples across the AI sector. Chip export control policies are tangled up in this too: the Nvidia spy scandal is pushing for stricter export restrictions, but Commerce Secretary Lutnick has delayed rolling out the limits. China has stated it will retaliate if the restrictions take effect, Chinese enterprises have begun stockpiling Nvidia chips, and the Democratic Party is preparing to launch a related investigation.

AI Is Starting to Detect AI-Manufactured Bioweapons

A startup has built an AI system designed to detect bioweapons created by other AI tools. The system runs offline, and only requires a laptop paired with a USB gene sequencer to function. A Wired report frames this development against the broader context of AI making bioweapon manufacturing far more accessible. Meanwhile, Ukraine has opened up its battlefield datasets to train AI-powered weapons systems.

Space and Battlefield Developments

Anduril claims its satellites can track spacecraft in dark orbital zones, identifying hidden satellites via infrared sensors, per an Ars Technica report. Ukraine has reported new restrictions imposed on SpaceX's Starshield service, with Zelensky stating the changes are undermining the country's drone defense capabilities.

Microplastics, Invasive Plants and Invisible Celestial Bodies

Microplastics have been found in the blood of remote wild animals in Brazil, even though the animals lived 100 kilometers away from the nearest waste disposal site, per a Nature report. AstroTurf fields are also a major growing source of microplastics. A NASA space camera can identify invasive plant species from orbit, by analyzing how the leaves of different species reflect light. Astronomers have discovered an "invisible" celestial body that is likely an extremely rare supermassive neutron star; new research has also provided supporting evidence for the first black hole image, and opened up new avenues for dark matter research.

Origins of Life and Cat-Eye Hallucinations

Per a Quanta report, life may have developed metabolic cycles first before genes emerged later, with self-sustaining chemical loops appearing far earlier than previously assumed. A separate piece from Gizmodo covers a man who started seeing cat eyes on other people's faces after brain surgery, with researchers using AI to render the exact hallucinations he experienced.

Palantir CEO's Self-Definition

Palantir CEO Alex Karp told Politico that he understands progressivism better than almost anyone else on Earth, and believes every product Palantir builds is inherently progressive. He has also publicly endorsed Donald Trump recently. This self-definition is very Silicon Valley-esque: political labels are treated like APIs that can be plugged in front of any product at any time.

China's AI Short Dramas: 470 Releases Per Day, Costs Cut by 90%

China's short drama industry grew to prominence by producing fast-paced, melodramatic, borderline titillating episodes optimized for mobile phone scrolling. Now a large number of these dramas are fully AI-generated, with no need for actors, camera operators, cinematographers or CGI specialists. MIT Technology Review data shows that an average of 470 AI-generated short dramas were released per day in January this year. Production timelines have been cut from months to weeks, with costs reduced by up to 90%. Storylines are increasingly driven by performance data. This format is now expanding overseas, and reshaping the work of screenwriting and production teams. Full report.

Cognitive Immortality Roundtable

MIT Technology Review's Roundtables event is hosting a discussion on cognitive immortality, covering everything from gradual brain replacement to uploading memories to the cloud. The session is hosted by science editor Mary Beth Griggs and senior biomedicine editor Antonio Regalado, exclusive for subscribers, with a live broadcast scheduled for November 17. Broadcast times: GMT 17:00 / EST 12:00 / PST 9:00.

For some lighter content: someone created a 3D timelapse of Rome from 1000 BCE to the present day, a skateboarder raced down a Quebec hillside at 94.3mph, there's flamenco photography on show at the Seville Biennial, and a Chinese mural has uncovered a little-known Sino-US collaboration project.

Taken together, these developments show AI expansion follows two parallel tracks: one penetrates capital, export control and military systems to decide who gets access to computing power; the other enters ultra-low-cost content assembly lines to decide who can still make a living from creative content. When short dramas start writing scripts fully based on audience data feedback, the audiences themselves will effectively be training the recommendation systems that serve them.