Researchers: Left-handedness is not a golden key to creativity
Because great creativity and left-handedness are both relatively rare, people may tend to associate them, researchers suggest.
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AI, unemployment, and what Einstein got wrong
Unemployment due to AI is widely predicted — and he believed in it — but things don’t really happen that way.
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Had to happen: Deepfake Marco Rubio calling U.S. officials
Unfortunately, the pointers offered for detecting deepfakes without electronic assistance don’t sound very reassuring.
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Wimbledon AI line judge doesn’t work out as planned…
AI may or may not mean more accurate decisions but it will mean decisions made due to events that would never otherwise have occurred.
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What happens when people uncritically use AI-generated content?
The AI revolution is not turning out as boosters hoped. But it is probably turning out the only way it could.
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Fat factory helped Neanderthals survive 125,000 years ago
The fat factory required a good deal of co-ordination of the work of many hands and co-operation.
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Babies may suffer more from pain than older people do
Knowledge of what is happening (which babies lack) often helps to contain and suppress pain.
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Can transparent peer review help resolve the replication crisis?
It will force those who are attempting to subvert honest enquiry to adopt much more doublespeak than they used to need.
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The Tao of meow: Cats mew mostly for humans
It will be most interesting to see what the AI comes up with. but its range of analysis should include body language in order to capture much animal communication.
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Journalist: As deepfakes improve, social trust begins to fray
Get ready for deepfakes of people we know that sound just like the originals — except that they are asking for money in an emergency.
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Researchers: Humans use far more baby talk than apes
Apes probably don’t need to simplify their language as much because there just isn’t nearly as much to get across.
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Those AI ghosts will not be quiet or harmless
Conversing with an AI version of a deceased loved one means embracing a harmful myth.
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At Nautilus: Slime molds show intelligence without a brain
At minimum, slime molds should warn us against false certainties that we have, for example, “found the secret” of animal intelligence or “know how it evolved.”
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Study: Neanderthals followed river systems, speeding up migration
At Gizmodo, Margherita Bassi reports on new insights into how Neanderthals crossed Asia speedily: Our prehistoric cousins likely first reached Asia around 190,000 to 130,000 years ago, with another substantial migration to Central and Eastern Eurasia likely between 120,000 and 60,000 years ago. But how did they get there? “Neanderthals Spread Across Asia With Surprising Speed—and Now We Know How,” Read More ›
Will there be any reckoning for COVID misinformation?
Journalist David Zweig looks at the bad information and bad decision-making that made the COVID panic especially painful for kids.
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Why electronics and AI don’t really save us time
The processes and devices developed to save time proliferate, creating new demands for our attention by their very existence.
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The rise of citizen journalism as a win for readers
Servicing hard core supporters can be a recipe for success but it will not give traditional media the market dominance it had in days gone by.
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Will you become a chatbot for grieving relatives? Maybe…
The biggest problem with an AI ghost is that it is a simulation, not the real person. It does not grow, shrink, or change.
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Did humans first start using fire to smoke, not cook, meat?
Bringing down an elephant meant food for families for months but that food needed to be protected both from predators and from spoiling.
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Is tech hype starting to get deflated?
Our fine writers, technology consultant Jeffrey Funk and Gary Smith have been covering this gap between hype and performance for years.
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