Good morning. The future of the artificial intelligence boom is back in question. More on that below, along with fighting Ebola in Congo and B.C.’s atmospheric rivers.
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A man places a candle in front of an Nvidia sign outside the company’s headquarters on Thursday in Santa Clara, Calif.Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images
TOP STORIES
The CEO downfall that threatens the AI bubble
Jensen Huang resigned as CEO of Nvidia yesterday amid multiple infidelity scandals. Now that he’s gone, the big question is whether Nvidia, worth some US$4-trillion, is prepared to continue spending big to keep the AI boom going.
The context: Huang founded the company in 1993 and transformed it into the world’s predominant supplier of computer chips to power AI development. He has been synonymous with Nvidia and with the AI industry as a whole.
The response: Nvidia’s share price had fallen more than 4 per cent by the end of trading on Thursday, and it is down 11 per cent so far this year. Stocks tied to AI development had been sliding even before the scandal.
What now: Chief financial officer Colette Kress will lead the company on an interim basis. Time will tell whether she maintains its strategy of investing billions of dollars into its own customers, which has helped fuel spending on AI data centres and stimulated demand for Nvidia’s chips.
Opinion: Why do Nvidia investors care who Jensen Huang sleeps with?
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A health care worker walks by a young patient inside an Ebola treatment centre in Congo’s North Kivu Province last week.Sebastien Kitsa Musayi/The Associated Press
Rebel attacks set back Congo’s Ebola response
Humanitarian agencies say rebel attacks are killing health care workers and destroying clinics in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, jeopardizing efforts to fight the fastest-spreading Ebola outbreak in history.
The details: Workers are still searching for those who fled attacks last week, including three confirmed Ebola patients and more than 1,000 contacts of people with the virus. In just six months, the epidemic has now infected more than 11,100 people, killing more than 5,430 of them.
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Cole Bennett, an online influencer whose video material has been redubbed with AI-generated voiceovers and scripts, in Edmonton.John Ulan/The Globe and Mail
Deepfakes pushed content on politically sensitive issues
In a report published yesterday, researchers at McGill’s Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy uncovered a network of Instagram and TikTok accounts that “steals real people’s faces” to push content about politically sensitive issues to Canadians and Americans.
The report: Researchers have identified a network of AI deepfakes that attracted over 20 million views in just the last three months. The content typically focuses on hot-button topics like the Alberta referendum, provincial elections in British Columbia and Quebec, and U.S.-Canada trade tensions.
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A pedestrian walks in heavy rain in Vancouver on Tuesday.Justine Beaulieu-Poudrier/The Globe and Mail
Heavy rain rocks B.C.’s South Coast
A succession of powerful storms has battered British Columbia’s West Coast for a week, swelling rivers, obstructing some roadways and raising the threat of landslides. Communities on Vancouver Island and along the Sea-to-Sky corridor were facing evacuation orders, alerts and warnings to shelter in place.
The impact: The storm has been linked to two deaths in Metro Vancouver. Last Friday, the driver of a sedan struck a 78-year-old woman who was attempting to cross the street during heavy rain in Vancouver’s Dunbar neighbourhood. The day after, a driver was killed when a falling tree struck two vehicles in Surrey.
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Western University history professor Alan MacEachern pets his cat, Simon, at their home in London, Ont.Nicole Osborne/The Globe and Mail
In better news: Doomsday averted
Sixty years ago, an unusual prediction made Nov. 13, 2026, famous. On this day, humanity would take its last gasp, wiped out by a mass suffocation event. And it wasn’t a conspiracy theory: It was published in Science, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals, based on the math of a respected physicist at the University of Illinois.
Present day: Alan MacEachern, a Western University historian, recently pored through the original author’s papers after the 1960 article piqued his academic curiosity. The Science paper, he says, challenged the widely accepted idea that the population of a species was naturally constrained by food supply – but argued that humans would eventually jam-pack the world to our own doom.
The Take
Americans view impeachment as something akin to regicide, too horrible even to contemplate: A national trauma. You can see the Democrats hesitating, even now, even in the face of Mr. Trump’s monumental, flagrant corruption, to pick only one of the most obvious grounds.
America needs to normalize impeachment, writes Andrew Coyne.
The Shot
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Heavy rainfall triggered flooding through displacement camps in Gaza City on Nov. 7.OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP/Getty Images
Heavy rains and wind bring more misery for Gazans sheltering in tents, writes Hasan Jaber, reporting from the Bureij refugee camp.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives say they want to strengthen oversight of career colleges through limits on OSAP and enrolment.
In auto: Industry Minister Mélanie Joly notified Stellantis that it is in default of a federal funding agreement that gave it millions to retool an auto plant in Brampton, Ont., that it has sold to a defence contractor.
Abroad: President Donald Trump said the U.S. does not need a deal with Iran and will instead focus on alleged crime and corruption in Democratic-run cities and states.
Achoo: How to stay healthy during an early flu season, according to our experts.
Oof: A widespread outage hit Microsoft platforms including Outlook.
Play: Women’s professional leagues and teams hitting Canada has piqued girls’ interest in sport, but a report says participation gaps still remain.
Watch: Hooked on the Nvidia drama? We’ve got some TV and movies for you.