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AI Chatbot Claude Passed My “Sex and Gender” Test. I’m Impressed.
The chatbot "Claude" isn't perfect, but it's miles ahead of the others.The Atlantic Warns of Smartphones in Schools. But Is Anyone Listening?
While word is getting out, there's still a long ways to go.This week, we ran a post covering a new public policy brief from the Institute for Family Studies and the Ethics and Public Policy Center. The brief conclusively demonstrated the tangible harms involved in exposing kids to the online world before they’re ready. The researchers concluded, in addition, that parents should not give their children digital devices. The stakes are too high, from increased risk of mental health disorders to learning impairments. Such warnings have been increasing over the past few years, thanks in large part to the in-depth research of people like Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge. The Atlantic published an article today on how smartphones are hurting kids’ cognitive and learning capacities. Derek Thompson writes, Researchers such as Read More ›
How Do We Define Successful Use Cases for Generative AI?
Current generative AI systems are designed to give us the most common solutions, instead of the new ones we need.Medical Journal Crosses a Whole New Line
Is blaming commercialism for global warming genuine science? Or just ideology?Alien 3 Review, Part 1
How to destroy a franchise in seven minutesNo sense in burying the lead. This one is awful. But it’s important to understand how and why it’s awful. Alien 3 manages to destroy the entire franchise with remarkable speed. I’ll explain how, as the reviews go on. We start off with a credit sequence, and already things feel off. Ripley and the surviving members of the previous film are still in their cryobeds, but something else is aboard the ship as well: an alien egg. This egg is seen hanging upside down, almost at eye level. Already, we have a plethora of problems, so let’s dive in, shall we? The previous movie, Aliens, established that it takes a queen to lay these eggs. Now, we don’t know exactly Read More ›
Substack Gets It. AI Can’t Replace Human Writers
It was encouraging to see the up-and-coming writing platform boldly herald the uniqueness of human creativity.Science Needs a Mind to Work
The use of science to discredit the existence of mental subjects is fatally flawed.Large Language Models are Still Smoke and Mirrors
Incapable of understanding, LLMs are good at giving bloated answers.I recently received an email invitation from Google to try Gemini Pro in Bard. There was an accompanying video demonstration of Bard’s powers, which I didn’t bother watching because of reports that a Gemini promotional video released a few days earlier had been faked. After TED organizer Chris Anderson watched the video, he tweeted, “I can’t stop thinking about the implications of this demo. Surely it’s not crazy to think that sometime next year, a fledgling Gemini 2.0 could attend a board meeting, read the briefing docs, look at the slides, listen to every one’s words, and make intelligent contributions to the issues debated? Now tell me. Wouldn’t that count as AGI?” Legendary software engineer Grady Booch replied, “That demo Read More ›
How Bottom Up Media Now Threaten the Traditional Top Tier
New media resources like subscription-based Substack are rapidly becoming the venue of choice for whistleblowers with stories to breakPsychology Researchers: AI Showed Imitation, Not Innovation
Testing children and adults against chatbots, the researchers found that the chatbots could match things up but struggled to solve problems on their ownIf Science Doesn’t Support Dualism — Well, It Should
At Big Think, Kmele Foster interviews five figures in consciousness studies. Not one is a dualist but a listener may come away with a new appreciation for dualismHow Bottom Up Media Are Slowly Replacing Top Down Media
The decline and death of legacy media organizations is speeding up and the media replacing them are much smaller, more numerous and more independentNew Report: Parents, Don’t Give Your Kids Smartphones
This has become a national health crisis.AI and the Chinese Room Argument
We still haven't cracked the mystery of human intelligence.Philip Goff’s “Why” and Inflated Success
We are still nowhere closer to arriving at a science of consciousnessWhy Does the Proposal for Chimp–Human Hybrids Keep Coming Back?
From David Barash’s perspective, the humanzee’s suffering is rendered worthwhile precisely because it enables the denigration of other human beingsGary Habermas on Near-Death Experiences
What is the evidence and how many reports of this phenomenon do we have?Aliens Review, Part 1
I found Alien to be tolerable, but not worth the hype. So, who’s to say if the second movie will be any better?Editor’s note: Parts one and two of this series have already been published here and here. The editor apologizes for the oversight and hopes you will enjoy this initial review and read the attending reviews as well. The first Alien film is considered a sci-fi classic, and Aliens, the sequel, is widely regarded as the best movie in the series. But personally, I found Alien to be tolerable, but not worth the hype. So, who’s to say if the second movie will be any better? It starts out with Ripley being found by a scavenger ship, where she is quickly taken back to earth and awakened from her cryosleep. Right away, we have a problem. One of “The Cooperation’s” big Read More ›