<![CDATA[Ara Balears in English - price increase]]> 10 <![CDATA[The price of intelligence]]> For years, artificial intelligence has been sold to us as the tool that would make science faster, cheaper, and, above all, more productive. Much of this is true: AI already helps researchers with literature reviews, writing code, and analyzing genomic data. But the picture is more complex than press releases suggest. James Zou, a data biologist at Stanford,tells Nature in that he has spent "well over $100,000" on AI subscriptions in the past year. At his university, this figure is roughly equivalent to the cost of maintaining a postdoctoral researcher.The commitment of major private players to science is becoming increasingly explicit. In October 2025, Anthropic launched Claude for Life Sciences, a version of its model geared towards biomedical research, with connections to platforms like Benchling, PubMed, and 10x Genomics, and collaborations with pharmaceutical companies such as Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, and AstraZeneca. In April 2026, OpenAI responded with GPT-Rosalind (a tribute to Rosalind Franklin, discoverer of the DNA structure). Google DeepMind, for its part, has deployed AI co-scientist in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, and it is already credited with experimentally validated hypotheses on liver fibrosis and antimicrobial resistance.The results are real. But inStanford HAI's annual report presents two data points that coexist uncomfortably: on the one hand, the number of scientific publications mentioning AI has multiplied by almost thirty between 2010 and 2025; on the other, humans still outperform the best AI agents in complex tasks where reasoning and originality are key. In fact, this increase in productivity declared to be associated with the use of AI is obligatorily linked to a layer of human curation, verification, and correction that rarely appears in headlines. Matteo Niccoli, a geoscientist cited in the same article in Nature, says it bluntly: the bottleneck is not the tool, it is "the thinking and the discussion" around it. One must know when the model drifts, when it hallucinates, when it has lost context. It is useful, yes, but it is not exactly a labor-saving device.And when the work is not saved, the price, on the other hand, does go up. GitHub Copilot announced at the end of April that it was moving from a fixed subscription to pay-as-you-go billing. And a recent commentary in Nature recalls that in 2025, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta spent $380 billion on AI, with packages of up to $250 million for individual researchers. If the science of the future is built on these infrastructures, it also inherits their inequalities.The question is not whether AI is useful for doing science. It is. The question is who can afford it, who reviews its work, and who is left out when the bill comes.

]]> <![CDATA[The Balearic Islands' menu is now the most expensive in the entire country]]>

The Balearic Islands have set a new record for prices. The islands, which have seen year-on-year increases in the cost of basic necessities like housing (both rental and purchase) and groceries over the past decade, have also become the most expensive places in Spain to have a set lunch menu (a common option for workers and residents).

]]> <![CDATA[Housing prices have risen by more than 40% in Spain over the last decade, and almost double in the Balearic Islands.]]>

Housing prices in Spain have increased by more than 40% in the last ten years, exceeding €2,000 per square meter. The largest increase has been recorded in the Balearic Islands, where the price has almost doubled, according to data from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agenda. In the second quarter of 2015, the average price was €1,476/m². In the same period of 2015, it reached €2,093, an increase of €616. Approaching all-time highs

Over the last decade, prices have steadily increased. Between 2016 and 2018, the price per square meter exceeded €1,500; between 2019 and 2021, it remained above €1,600; and since 2022, it has surpassed €1,700. By 2024, it was approaching €1,900, and this year, for the first time since 2008—at the height of the real estate bubble—it has exceeded the €2,000 mark, reaching €2,093/m². Current prices are virtually identical to the historical highs of this statistical series, which began in 1995, recorded between January and March 2008 at €2,101/m².

]]> <![CDATA[Prices and touristification drive residents away from restaurants]]>

Sales at cafes and restaurants on the Canary Islands have fallen by between 20% and 30% in the first six months of the year, according to data from business associations. "This is the worst year in quite some time," confirms Juanmi Ferrer, president of CAEBRestauració, who points out that one of the causes of the situation is the decline in consumption by tourists and residents, who have significantly reduced their visits to bars and restaurants "mainly due to the price."

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