Philosopher warns of social conflict over AI consciousness
London School of Economics philosophy professor Jonathan Birch thinks many will oppose the exploitation of conscious AI.
Read More ›ArchiveBriefs
Vast decline in traditional TV viewership led by Gen Z
The key shift, of course, is away from top-down, more corporate-directed media to bottom-up, more consumer-directed media.
Read More ›
Study: Over half of LinkedIn posts now AI-generated
Of course, many people use LinkedIn simply as a venue for notifications. So they don’t read the longer posts. Turns out, that is probably just as well.
Read More ›
Neuroscientist: Silicon Valley transhumanism is a false religion
Àlex Gómez-Marín says that transhumanists want to “have their scientistic secular cake and let their pseudo-religion eat it too”
Read More ›
We are all the media now, whether we like it or not
It’s not even clear that relying on legacy media is a better way to be well-informed any more than citizen journalism is.
Read More ›
Can you fire or sue an AI employee? Or break up with a chatbot?
For a number of people, getting AI to do things that would otherwise be done by humans is not working out as planned. A couple of recent examples…
Read More ›
Researchers: Memories are not stored only in the brain
When we say that our bodies remember something, we could be in for a surprise about where, exactly, that particular memory is stored.
Read More ›
Remember when chatbots would write poetry better than Shakespeare?
If a human cannot see the difference between classic poetry and utter banality, that human will not succeed in literature simply by trying harder. Same for bots
Read More ›
Does electromagnetism contribute to human consciousness?
It is reasonable to believe that generations of neuroscientists will be at this question a long time.
Read More ›
Philosopher: Do animals have the same rights as humans?
At Skeptic Reading Room, South Korean philosopher and animal rights activist Seong-Han Kim offers some thoughts. He starts out with the observation that South Korea recently banned the consumption of dogs as a food. The idea is not new. It’s been illegal in the United States to sell dogs or cats as food since 2018. China also bans the practice. Read More ›
Post-COVID, trust in science said to be on the rise
The article doesn’t really get into the question of why public trust fell so much during the COVID years. Perhaps an anecdote will help.
Read More ›
Why would smarter dogs have smaller brains?
The underlying assumption is that brain size is a physical representation of brain power but there is no specific reason to believe that that is true.
Read More ›
Another warning that the AI bubble is near bursting…
Maybe the reason there is no principled solution to AI hallucinations is that we cannot create artificial human minds.
Read More ›Why science is not good evidence for atheism
Fr. Patrick Gorevan (St. Patrick’s Maynooth) offers some thoughts on God and science at Australia’s MercatorNet. He is discussing a recent book, Science at the Doorstep to God (Ignatius 2023) by Fr. Robert Spitzer: How about the extraordinary and unlikely fine-tuning which was needed for life to emerge? Sir Fred Hoyle, an adamant atheist, after discovering the need for exceedingly Read More ›
Debanking: Suddenly, you do not have access to money
Many people think that “debanking” is the sort of thing that could only happen to international criminals or truckers in Canada who protested government-sponsored panic measures around COVID. As Ottawa-based Rupa Subramanya reports at The Free Press, the people who think so are mistaken: Former first lady Melania Trump alleges in her new memoir that both she and her son, Read More ›
Fake degrees and universities: One outcome of the world online
People who resist messages that we should “trust the science” may be doing so for good and sensible reasons.
Read More ›
At Scientific American: Humans can learn to echolate
This and other studies show that human senses are not entirely fixed. They provide information in proportion to the extent that we pay attention to them.
Read More ›
Study: Near-death experience — not mere danger — transforms lives
There is significantly more openness to discussing these questions seriously in publications like Psychology Today than there used to be.
Read More ›
In the end, can even Jeff Bezos save the Washington Post?
When we are talking to ourselves — and we are the only audience — we do have, by definition, a communications problem… But there is a bigger issue too.
Read More ›
To think or think not. Tech pioneer worries about the AI future
Chatbot users will perhaps think “chat thoughts” and imagine that they are their own. That could turn out to be a bigger problem than simple illiteracy.
Read More ›