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Human activity has pushed the Earth's freshwater resources far beyond the stable conditions that prevailed before industrialisation, a study has found. The findings, published in the journal Nature Water, show that the updated planetary boundary for freshwater change was surpassed by the mid-twentieth century. This is the first time that global water cycle change has been assessed over such a long timescale with an appropriate reference baseline, the researchers said. Human pressures, such as dam construction, large-scale irrigation and global warming, have altered freshwater resources to such an extent that their capacity to regulate vital ecological and climatic processes is at risk, they said. The international team calculated monthly streamflow and soil moisture at a spatial resolution of roughly 50x50 kilometers using data from hydrological models that combine all major human impacts on the freshwater cycle. The researchers determined the conditions during the pre-industrial
Artificial intelligence will change the world of espionage, but it won't replace the need for human spies, the head of Britain's MI6 intelligence agency says in prepared remarks released Wednesday. Richard Moore, director of the UK's foreign intelligence agency, is set to speak in Prague on evolving threats to the West from Russia and Iran, and argue that the human factor will remain crucial in an era of rapidly evolving machine learning. AI is going to make information infinitely more accessible and some have asked whether it will put intelligence services like mine out of business, he says in extracts released in advance by the UK government. In fact, the opposite is likely to be true," he adds. "As AI trawls the ocean of open source, there will be even greater value in landing, with a well-cast fly, the secrets that lie beyond the reach of its nets. Moore, who has previously warned that the West was falling behind rivals in the AI race, will argue that the unique characteristics