Over the moon: Artemis II launches

This episode of The Intelligence from The Economist explores three major global developments: the successful launch of NASA's Artemis II mission, the growing linguistic bias in AI models, and the rise of 'influencer officials' in China. The launch of Artemis II marks humanity's first crewed mission to the moon in over 50 years, with the spacecraft now on a trajectory that will loop around the moon before returning to Earth. Host Rosie Bloor discusses the mission's significance with planetary affairs editor Oliver Morton, who explains that Artemis II is a critical step toward Artemis III, which aims to land astronauts on the lunar surface—part of a renewed U.S. space ambition driven by competition with China’s advancing lunar program. The episode also examines the ethical and practical risks of AI language models, particularly their performance gap in non-English languages. Science writer Dina Moussa reveals that models like GPT perform significantly worse in African languages, sometimes dropping from 75% accuracy in English to just 23% in others, due to biased training data and inefficient tokenization. This disparity poses serious risks in healthcare applications, especially in developing regions where AI is being deployed. Finally, the podcast highlights a surprising cultural shift in China, where young Communist Party officials are using social media platforms like Douyin to showcase their work—posting videos of serving noodles, doing fitness stunts with fruit, and engaging with local communities. While the party appears to endorse this trend as a way to combat bureaucratic inertia and boost public trust, it also raises concerns about safety and distraction from core duties. The episode concludes with a teaser for the companion podcast Drum Tower, which dives deeper into China’s digital landscape.